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Manhattan

Hell's Kitchen

Ninth Avenue noodles, a 1930s bar with free hot dogs, and the theaters a block away.

Hell's Kitchen runs west from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson, roughly between 34th and 59th Streets, and for most of its history it was a tenement district of Irish dockworkers and the rail yards beside them. Nobody agrees on where the name came from — a police officer's joke, a notorious tenement on 39th Street, a German restaurant — and developers spent decades trying to rename it Clinton. Residents kept the old name.

Ninth Avenue is the spine. Between 42nd and 57th Streets it is one long row of restaurants, cheap and good and from everywhere: Thai above all, in shopfronts barely wider than a doorway, but also Afghan kebab, Southern Thai seafood, Greek, Mexican, old Italian. Every May the avenue closes to traffic for the Ninth Avenue International Food Festival, which has run since 1974.

On the eastern edge the neighborhood leans into the Theater District. West 46th Street between Eighth and Ninth is Restaurant Row, built for the pre-curtain dinner, and a few doors along it is the bistro where Broadway people have eaten since the 1960s. Come early in the evening, eat on Ninth, and walk east toward the marquees.

Thai noodle shops one after another on Ninth Avenue

Restaurant Row on West 46th Street, built around curtain time

Walk-up tenements with fire escapes over the avenues

The Intrepid and the Hudson at the far west end

Local notes

Restaurant Row

West 46th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, lined with brownstone-front restaurants that live by the 8 p.m. curtain. Book for 5:30 and you will be out with time to spare; the rooms empty all at once just before showtime and fill again afterward.

Ninth Avenue International Food Festival

One of the city's oldest street fairs, held along Ninth Avenue from 42nd to 57th Streets, usually on the third weekend of May. It began in 1974. Expect crowds, grills in the street, and every restaurant on the avenue selling something on a paper plate.

Intrepid Museum

The aircraft carrier USS Intrepid is moored at Pier 86, at the foot of West 46th Street, carrying the Space Shuttle Enterprise and a Concorde alongside it. A long walk west from Ninth Avenue, and a good one at sunset along the river.

Through the lens

Ninth Avenue is a night street: shoot the run of awnings and neon from a corner looking north around 50th Street after dark, when the restaurant windows glow. In daytime the walk-up tenements on the side streets in the 40s and 50s show off their fire escapes best in hard, low sun from the south.

Editorial draft — core details last reviewed October 13, 2026. Confirm practical details with the official site before you go.

Where to eat & drink