Merry heat wave! I’m back filling in and I’ll be writing more of this newsletter, alternating with our beloved Nikita through the summer.

On that subject, New York summers … can feel like a drag. Maybe I’m actually the drag — or I just need to move to Los Angeles (kidding!) — but when it’s above 85 degrees, the normal schlepping and commuting can feel torturous. The salve: drinking a beverage that feels like vacation. You know exactly where I’m going with this: boozy, brain-freezy drinks.

Here are a few of my favorites, and, because this is a food newsletter, what you should eat alongside them.

Once you’re done here, take a look at the New York Times Food staff’s picks for 22 of the best pizza spots across the country, showcasing pizza’s many exciting new forms. Let us know what your favorite pizza place is, and after that, you can read Brett Anderson on America’s storied pizza history.

Bright and boozy, plus a burger

If you’re not interested in this intel because your experience with frozen drinks is getting hungover from cloying, one-note cocktails, please know that I despise frozen drinks that are even slightly syrupy-sweet. I would never direct you to one of those.

I’ve spent the better part of a decade yapping about the frozen drinks at Mother’s Ruin, my local all-occasions bar in NoLIta (it exists in that liminal space between a dive and a cocktail bar). The contents of their slushy cocktails, which spin in a refrigerator-size frozen drink machine named Kathleen Turner, change pretty often. Currently called the Squalor Squad, the drink is a pinkish, miraculously balanced combination of rum, Campari, coconut, blueberry and citrus. And after a couple of those, you’ll be primed for a great, secret-sauced and pickle-heavy bar burger and waffle fries dusted in Old Bay.

18 Spring Street (Elizabeth Street)

Coney Island is for margaritas

Did I think I’d enjoy a frozen margarita from a Coney Island counter called Margarita Island? No, I really didn’t. But consider this is my formal apology to Margarita Island, a delightfully shabby, distinctly Coney Island-y bar right next to Luna Park, where the view is directly of the Wonder Wheel. The classic frozen margarita is tart, creamy and stronger than it tastes, all hallmarks of a delightful frozen drink.

I’m not sure if this is legal, but because Coney feels like a lawless place: Take your margarita to the boardwalk a block away and drink it with a Nathan’s hot dog, or fried fish from Tom’s, to reach the Summer Behavior Zenith.

1105 Bowery Street (West 12th Street)

‘That green drink’

Florida-core bar the Commodore in Williamsburg, where striped lawn chairs litter the sidewalk and they put cocktail umbrellas on the burgers, is far from a hidden gem. Their frozen mojito, though, remains criminally underrated. Everyone goes for their namesake drink, basically a frozen piña colada, but they sleep on what I call “that green drink.”

They’re made to order in a blender behind the bar with so much fresh mint that the result is basically a mint-and-lime slushie with some rum sneaked in there. It’s served in a hurricane glass with, yes, a cocktail umbrella, as is the will of the summer gods. To order the hot chicken sandwich is human, but to order the Cadillac nachos is divine. The nachos are at their best when they come heavy on the cilantro, scallions and sliced radishes, and Southerners in New York will understand how valuable it is to find white queso in this town.

366 Metropolitan Avenue (Havemeyer Street)

Straight-up fruit slush from the deli

Maybe you don’t want a cocktail. I don’t know your life! One of the greatest treats downtown has to offer is at a bodega: the fruit slush at A&N Fruit Store, in the Lower East Side. You pick a type of frozen fruit, they blend it up with water and ice, and serve it in a deli quart container with an extra wide straw. The strawberry and lime slush is best enjoyed sitting outside on the wood palettes seemingly designed for loitering, or on a walk to Regina’s Grocery for a sunny sandwich.

25 Canal Street (Essex Street)

A few moments from the past week reminded me why I love New York. On Friday, I sat in the sun outside a wine bar, next to a greyhound named Snork. (It was her birthday!) On Monday, I made it from Midtown to Fort Greene in 30 minutes (when the M.T.A. works, it’s like magic). And on Tuesday I did the best, most life-affirming thing you can do in this town: walking right into a restaurant, sitting at the bar and having dinner.

I struggle to imagine an occasion when a table is preferable to the bar. A work dinner with someone you don’t know well enough to share dishes with? A painful logistics-ironing lunch with an ex, maybe? For every other scenario, the bar is the best seat in the house.

Here are four places to enjoy dinner at the bar, ideally solo or with one other person (at the bar, three people is pushing it, and four should be illegal):

Bars are for seafood

The folks at Penny know where I’m coming from, because their restaurant in the East Village has no tables at all. It’s just a very long bar with a barely-there kitchen and a pricey-but-worthwhile menu of seafood small plates. The “ice box” is a sampler platter of oysters, clams, shrimp and the like, and is a great excuse to linger for a long time with a glass of wine. For more of a full dinner, throw in the schmaltzy confit oysters, stuffed squid and pillowy sesame brioche.

French classics at a not-so-hidden gem

Every time I utter the name of this restaurant, someone yells at me that I should be gatekeeping it. Too late! I understand the impulse, because as a walk-in-only spot with just nine bar seats and a few (less desirable) tables, Le French Diner can feel like a tough ticket. But show up early-ish, write your name and number on a clipboard passed to you from behind the bar, have a drink nearby and wait for the call, because it will come. There’s a short, unchanging menu of simple dishes like steak tartare, grilled octopus with aioli, hanger steak and a simple, acidic green salad. From your bar perch, you’ll see all the kitchen action, get chummy with your neighbors and feel like you’re anywhere but on Orchard Street.

Good old-fashioned fun

Getting off the L train in Bushwick and being confronted with the Turk’s Inn feels like seeing a mirage. (Maybe you got a contact high from that guy smoking on the subway?) There’s a good explanation for why it looks the way it does — it was originally a supper club in Wisconsin, a cheerful tourist attraction serving Turkish food from the 1930s until about a decade ago. It’s since reopened in Bushwick (the Wisconsin of Brooklyn?) with over-the-top design (tassels everywhere, paisley everything) and a menu to match. The wraparound bar, guarded by taxidermy peacocks, is the center of the action, and the best place to order the relish tray, cheese curds with hot honey, lamb meatballs and buttery pilaf.

Hot noodle in the city

When I think of eating at the bar, I think of noodles. Udon noodles, to be more specific, and the ones at the Raku location in SoHo, to put the finest point on it. The noodles are epically chewy and springy, and there’s a long list of ways to eat them, both hot and cold. Even at the height of summer, you won’t regret the niku udon with beef short ribs, tripe and chile oil, or the cloudy tantan udon with a spicy miso broth, pork and a poached egg. After all, that’s what air conditioning is for.

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New York City is flavored by all kinds of cultures — and their cuisines. That can make going out to eat thrilling but deciding where to go fairly complicated.

Say you’re in the mood for Chinese food from a specific region. There may be plenty of options, but the best one might seem like it’s a world away — an hour or more on the subway. Perhaps a neighborhood-favorite bagel counter was featured on TikTok, so now the line trails out the door. Or maybe you’re feeling fancy, but all the reservations for that Michelin-starred, splurge-worthy spot were scooped up by scalpers who are reselling them for as much as you were planning to spend on the meal.

That’s where Nikita Richardson, a Food editor for The New York Times, comes in. In Where to Eat, a weekly column and newsletter, she offers both local diners and epicures from afar a taste of the city’s restaurant scene, with suggestions for where to find the freshest fish tacos, alternatives to restaurants with impossible-to-get tables and even a guide to the best hot dogs within the five boroughs.

In an interview, Ms. Richardson talked about her love of food, the city’s evolving dining scene and separating good social media branding from “actually good food.” This interview has been edited and condensed.

How would you describe the mission of Where to Eat, which you started in March 2022?

Since the pandemic, the landscape is very different. I wanted to help people fall back in love with New York City restaurants and going out to eat. The goal was to represent all five boroughs and beyond, like the Catskills.

That was in theory. In practice, it’s very hard to do. Newsletters about a specific neighborhood don’t always do very well, but we found that going deep on a subject does. We want to provide a service.

Your articles — including about the state of pizza in New York and the Jewish deli scene — seem to pique the interest of readers across the country.

I get plenty of emails from people who say, “I don’t even live in New York, but I read your newsletter because I just love dining,” or, “I miss New York.” It’s the only Food newsletter that also runs as a weekly column in the newspaper, which means that Where to Eat is available to read in, say, Madison, Wis. It’s accessible to them, too, whether or not they subscribe to the newsletter.

Do you still enjoy food the same way as before you started writing this newsletter, or does it feel more like you’re occupationally eating?

I always love eating. Whenever anyone asks, “Why are you in food journalism?” I say it’s because I love to eat. That’s where it began; that’s where it’s going to end.

I love the ritual of going to restaurants. I love the idea of having a great meal and a glass of wine with friends. It is really true sometimes, though, that you shouldn’t turn your passion into a job. You can’t go out to eat three nights in a row without feeling like you’re going to keel over. It’s heavy; restaurants use a lot of butter and salt and all those things that make food so good. I can only do so much of that before I need a break — and a salad.

Has your taste changed since you started writing the newsletter?

I now have a much wider view of food in New York City. I try really hard to go all over the city, and it’s made me do a lot of things for the first time. I’ve lived here almost 12 years, and I hadn’t gone to Coney Island until last year. It’s taken me to Staten Island, the Bronx and all over Queens. The newsletter is something that pushed me into pursuing more diverse types of foods.

I think it’s put me off fine dining a little bit. Since the pandemic, a lot of restaurants were, and still are, taking advantage of people’s desire for high-quality dining, but they’re not really delivering on that promise. But there are a lot of the old standbys where the quality is still great and costs half the price.

My favorite places end up being neighborhood places, like Café Camellia in East Williamsburg. I ended up putting them on our Restaurants List for last year, The Times’s list of our 50 must-try restaurants in the United States. I am more interested in finding those places, where your check isn’t going to be $400.

I think my reader, or any New Yorker, just wants to be able to get into a place and have a good meal, a good time and then be home in bed by 10. That’s how a lot of people, I think, are eating now.

Lately social media and newsletters like yours have been highlighting restaurants that don’t appear on a lot of lists, but are still making phenomenal food.

It’s about separating good branding and aesthetics from actually good food. If you’re lucky, those two things can coincide, and you can go into a lovely restaurant with great food.

The restaurant that’s fancy is going to get a lot of coverage. They don’t need my help. If my audience is eager to know if a fancy restaurant is any good, I’ll tell them. But those smaller places really represent that New York is a melting pot. You can get regional Chinese food, or regional Thai food. We have such a breadth of food, and to focus only on the places that are all selling variations of Caesar salad doesn’t represent what New York really is about.