Astoria Seafood

Astoria Seafood is a working fish market on an industrial block that happens to run one of the most joyful dinner formats in New York: you grab a plastic bag, pick your fish and shrimp from the iced cases, hand it over, and tell the kitchen Greek-style grilled, fried, or over pasta. Minutes later it lands at a paper-covered table amid the happiest BYOB chaos in Queens.

There is nothing polished about it — fluorescent light, a weekend line out the door, retsina in plastic cups someone brought — and that is the entire charm. Three generations of a Greek family have kept the fish honest; the room does the rest.