The Top Inexpensive New York Restaurants of 2022

I loved a lot of restaurants in 2022. Here are some where a normal person can eat an astoundingly good meal for about $10. An abnormal person, by which I mean anyone who orders the way I do, might spend twice as much. It will be worth it.

Sanmiwago Taiwan Dumpling House

As you wander through Chinatown’s first Flushing-style food court, your eye may be caught by the signs hawking Sanmiwago’s Taiwanese noodle soups and fried chicken. Maintain focus, because dumplings are the goal. The choices are fairly standard — chicken with cabbage; pork with kimchi, corn or chives; steamed or pan-fried. Once you’ve made your choice, you’re handed a beeper. Then you wait. And wait. Each batch is rolled at the last minute, and just when you are thinking you should just walk out to find something else to eat the beeper flashes, and you are handed what may well be the freshest-tasting dumplings in Chinatown. The pan-fried ones are especially good, with tissue-thin wrappers that are both tender and crisp at the same time.

Inside Mott Street Eatery, 98 Mott Street (Canal Street), Little Italy; 646-775-7884; no website.