The Best Ice Cream, Coffee and More ‘Little Treats’ in NYC

Little treat culture — defined by this news organization as “the habit of indulging in small luxuries” — is most certainly in the running for phrase of the year. But where can they be found and which ones are worth your hard-earned dollars? “Where to Eat: New York City” is here to help with 46 treats.

We set out with three guidelines: A little treat is (1) $20 or less, (2) available without a reservation and (3) best enjoyed on the spot. It can be sweet or savory, solid or liquid, frozen or warming. And there’s absolutely no limit to how happy it can make you.

No Bake, No Problem

Kellogg’s Diner

Passion fruit Tajín icebox pie

Priya Krishna put it best when she named a slice of this icebox pie from Kellogg’s Diner ($10) one of her favorite dishes of 2024: “It’s more than just a diner pie spiffed up with Tajín.” The salty and nutty graham cracker crust is a perfect foundation for sweet passion fruit curd underneath a veritable cloud of burnished meringue. Even better, it’s available 24 hours a day. NIKITA RICHARDSON

518 Metropolitan Avenue (Union Avenue), Williamsburg

Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pie

Blondie swingle

How to make a destination-worthy treat, according to Steve’s Authentic: Take a miniature version of the best Key lime pie ($9.50) in the game, freeze it on a Popsicle stick, spread a thin layer of raspberry purée across the surface and dip the whole thing in salty white chocolate. BECKY HUGHES

185 Van Dyke Street (Ferris Street), Red Hook

Caffè Panna

Ice cream with panna

Whether it’s concord grape granita, gingerbread ice cream or an affogato drowned in espresso, always add a scoop of panna at Caffè Panna. Made with heavy cream imported from the Piedmont region of Italy, it’s beaten daily into a dense, whipped cloud that can be decorated with a range of complimentary toppings, such as olive oil, caramel, sprinkles and flaky salt. The flavors change constantly, but there’s nothing the panna doesn’t improve. LUKE FORTNEY

Multiple locations, Gramercy and Greenpoint

Sugartown NYC

Pick ’n’ mix candy

This pick-and-mix candy shop in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown is for fans of sweet, salty and super sour treats. Alongside tubs of the typical gummy peach rings and rainbow belts are an assortment of dried plums, salty tangerine strips and Chinese candies like White Rabbit milk candy (from $8 per half pound). MAHIRA RIVERS

63 Bayard Street, Unit B (Elizabeth Street), Chinatown

Confectionery!

Tahini meltaway by Lagusta’s Luscious

The name of these vegan chocolate bonbons ($3.25) from Confectionery! is technically a nod to the dual layers of chocolate and vanilla tahini mousse, which “melt away” in your mouth. Or, you could take the more generous read and let these bonbons melt away your worries, even if just for a moment. MAHIRA RIVERS

440 East Ninth Street (Avenue A), East Village

The Good Batch Bakery

Chocolate chunk ice cream sandwich

There are many, many little treats to choose from at the Good Batch Bakery, but its most well-known — a disk of rich vanilla ice cream ($8) sandwiched between chocolate chip cookies and dipped in chocolate — is still its best offering. (Though all of Good Batch’s ice cream sandwiches are very, very good.) And this ice cream sandwich manages to do what only mass-produced versions can: It’s perfectly soft straight out of the freezer. NIKITA RICHARDSON

936 Fulton Street (St. James Place), Clinton Hill

Treats You Can Sip

Superiority Burger

Date shake

This is the kind of malted shake served with two straws anyone would be lucky to have their first kiss over. The date shake ($14) at Superiority Burger is made with homemade coconut gelato, as thick as newly laid cement, and studded with chopped California dates. It’s finished with a shower of orange zest and served with a fat straw like you’d find at the nearby Xing Fu Tang boba shop. You’d never guess that it was vegan if it weren’t written on the menu. LUKE FORTNEY

119 Avenue A (St. Marks Place), East Village

Ho Foods

Homemade soy milk

This isn’t your grocery-store variety soy milk. At Ho Foods, fresh soy beans are pressed, cooked and strained in-house, yielding a soy milk ($6) so smooth and silky it could be cream. Order it cold, or better yet: steaming and served in a mug, with a thin layer of foam on top. PRIYA KRISHNA

110 East Seventh Street (Avenue A), East Village

Pasa Pasa Juice Bar and Food

The Sun Love

Here’s a fresh-pressed juice that tastes like sunshine and looks that way, too. With enough ginger and turmeric to cure a season’s worth of sniffles, and pineapple juice to sweeten and brighten things up, the Sun Love ($10) at Pasa Pasa lives up to its name. PRIYA KRISHNA

404 Rogers Avenue (Sterling Street), Prospect-Lefferts Gardens

Larry’s Ca Phe

Egg custard coffee

Strong Vietnamese coffee made tooth-achingly sweet with condensed milk is a little treat all its own. But for a taste of just how delightful it can be, you’ve got to try the cà phê trứng, or egg custard coffee ($8) with a sweet egg foam on top at Larry’s Ca Phe. It’s the priciest coffee the shop offers — call it the taste of luxury. NIKITA RICHARDSON

Multiple locations, Bushwick and Park Slope

Sonbul

Banana milk latte

When Taeil Kim took over the coffee shop he’d worked at for years, he turned it into Sonbul, a Korean restaurant by night and a Korean-influenced cafe by day. The shop’s banana latte ($6.50 or $7) is a loving tribute to Binggrae, a brand of banana-flavored milk popular in South Korea since the ’60s. Kim substitutes shelf-stable banana milk powder but stirred into a hot latte on a cold day you won’t be able to tell the difference. NIKITA RICHARDSON

356 Throop Avenue (DeKalb Avenue), Bed-Stuy

Ba Xuyên

Salted pickled lemon soda

Order the salted lemon soda ($3.25) at Ba Xuyên and watch as a cashier mashes preserved lemon and sugar into an intoxicating, pickled pulp. Each cup is finished with crushed ice, soda and an expert flick of the wrist that swirls the flavors together. LUKE FORTNEY

4222 Eighth Avenue (43rd Street), Sunset Park

Hibiscus Brew

Espresso Yo’ Self coffee smoothie

There are vanishingly few great coffee smoothies in New York City, but the Espresso Yo’ Self ($12) at Hibiscus Brew is one of them. This isn’t simply frozen coffee — almond butter, cinnamon and almond milk give it a full-bodied flavor. You’ll be tempted to recreate it at home, but there’s nothing like the real thing. NIKITA RICHARDSON

546 Flatbush Avenue (Lincoln Avenue), Prospect-Lefferts Garden

Not Too Sweet (or Sweet At All)

Brodo

Signature Hearth broth

For the same price as a latte — and in the same vessel — you can be healed by soup. The Brodo window counter serves paper cups of piping-hot broth ($7) made with the same care as the homey fare at the connected restaurant, Hearth. Get the signature broth, made from chicken, turkey and beef — savory but not overly so, with little, pleasing droplets of fat. PRIYA KRISHNA

200 First Avenue (12th Street), East Village

West Rice Roll King

Cheung fun

Of the many, many places to slurp rice noodles in Manhattan’s Chinatown, this sliver of a stall on Hester Street is a favorite. Order West Rice Roll King’s cheung fun ($5) with shrimp, beef or scallion and watch a cook transform a ladleful of pale rice slurry into a bountiful plate of noodles: chewy, translucent sheets meant to be splattered with plenty of chile oil and Sriracha. LUKE FORTNEY

124 Hester Street (Chrystie Street), Chinatown

Jubilee Marketplace

Cheeseburger

No matter how you crunch the numbers, there’s no reason a burger made with local beef and garlic confit should cost less than a subway ride. And yet, Young Kim, the owner of Jubilee Marketplace in Greenpoint, sells his burgers nearly at cost ($2.75), making a few cents on each sale. At four bites big, the burgers are an ideal snack, seared on the grill with raw onion in the style of the famed New Jersey spot White Mana. LUKE FORTNEY

145 West Street (India Street), Greenpoint

Bolivian Llama Party

Beef salteña

The menu at Bolivian Llama Party describes salteñas ($6.25) as part empanada, part soup dumpling. It’s the undersell of the decade. The dough, made with cane sugar and ají amarillo, a chile native to South America, is sturdier and sweeter than an empanada, and the broth inside is more like a pot roast, thickened with gelatin, carrots and hard-boiled egg. One feature salteñas share with xiao long bao is the way you eat them: Nibble off one end, allowing some of the steam to escape, and pour in the chutney-like hot sauce before taking a slurp. LUKE FORTNEY

44-14 48th Avenue (45th Street), Sunnyside

Rose Marie

Cheese curds

The problem with most cheese-based bar foods — mozzarella sticks, nachos — is that eventually you hit a wall. Not so with the cheese curds ($16) at Rose Marie. Crunchy globules of deep-fried Wisconsin Cheddar are made eminently crushable with every dip into the tangy blackened olive ranch, which could be guzzled by the gallon. NIKITA RICHARDSON

524 Lorimer Street (Ainslie Street), Williamsburg

Omusubi Gonbei

Umeboshi onigiri

The rice balls wrapped in plastic you find at most Japanese grocers are room temperature and barely filled. The onigiri at Omusubi Gonbei, on the other hand, are shaped by hand into fluffy, fragrant triangles of rice that are often still warm. For a few dollars, they come crammed with meat or seafood, like warm, barely set soy-marinated egg; briny pearls of pollock roe; and craggly chicken karaage, darker in some places from a brush of soy sauce. But we recommend the umeboshi ($2.50): salty, pickled plum folded into the rice and swiped over the top for good measure. LUKE FORTNEY

370 Lexington Avenue (East 41st Street), Midtown East

The tofu pudding (from $10) at the family-run tofu factory Fong On is so versatile, it could be your breakfast, snack or sweet treat. Protein purists might enjoy the ethereally soft tofu with just a touch of syrup, but there are abundant sweet and savory toppings like boba or pickled radish on hand for the more-is-more type of person. MAHIRA RIVERS

81 Division Street (Eldridge Street), Chinatown

Silver Rice

Silver Rice sushi cup

In the 2004 movie “Envy,” Jack Black and Ben Stiller invented Pocket Flan, because it’s hard to eat flan on the go. In 2014, Silver Rice solved that problem for sushi, introducing a coffee cup layered with rice, sashimi, spicy mayonnaise, lots of scallions and a few cucumber slices for good measure ($6.95 to $10.95). BECKY HUGHES

Multiple locations, Brooklyn

Win Son Bakery

Fan tuan

In terms of hand-held luxury, it’s hard to beat Win Son Bakery’s Taiwanese fan tuan ($7), tightly wrapped parcels of sticky rice filled with, as at both locations of Win Son Bakery, fried eggs, pork floss, preserved radish and scallions with a straw of youtiao, fried dough, running through the center. BECKY HUGHES

Multiple locations, Manhattan and Brooklyn

Parrot Coffee Market Place

Goat yogurt

The aisles of Parrot Coffee Market Place are filled with gems like French and Bulgarian feta and buckets of olives. But hidden within the fridge at this European grocer is the prize pony: pint containers of goat yogurt ($4.99 per pound). With the tartness of labneh, the luxurious texture of clotted cream and some underlying funk from the goat’s milk, this yogurt needs nothing else but a spoon. PRIYA KRISHNA

Multiple locations, Sunnyside

Al-Sham Sweets and Pastries

Crunchy kunafeh

The kunafeh ($15 per pound) at Al-Sham is not of this world. It oozes, melts, glistens and crunches. Each slab — sliced off a pizza tray — is thin and elegant yet brims with layers of stretchy cheese, syrup-soaked dough and shreds of kataifi. To utter the four magic words: It’s not too sweet. PRIYA KRISHNA

24-39 Steinway Street (25th Avenue), Astoria

Fuska House

Panipuri

The roads of Jackson Heights are lined with fuska — the Bengali name for the famed Indian street snack. What sets Fuska House apart from the many other carts are the shells — thin and freshly fried, shattering like tempura. In the panipuri variety ($7.50), the little shells overflow with potato crumbles, crunchy sev, diced onions and frills of cilantro. Pour on tamarind water and bask in the abundance. PRIYA KRISHNA

73-01 37th Avenue (73rd Street), Jackson Heights

The Early Risers

Bub’s Bakery

A big cinnamon roll

You may have heard: Cinnamon rolls are all the rage right now. Which makes it all the more impressive that one of the city’s best new cinnamon rolls ($9.50), at Bub’s Bakery, is allergen-free: meaning no nuts, no dairy, no eggs and no gluten. It tastes exactly like, if not better, than the original. NIKITA RICHARDSON

325 Lafayette Street (Bleecker Street), NoHo

Birdee

Churro croissant

The city didn’t need another croissant hybrid — yet the churro croissant ($8) at Birdee has earned its spot in the pantheon of great laminated pastries in New York. Tight, dewy rounds of pastry dusted in salty cinnamon sugar surround a reflective pool of dulce de leche. As you pull the delicate coils apart, the caramel slides between each layer, making this croissant a feat of not just flavor, but engineering. PRIYA KRISHNA

316 Kent Avenue (South Third Street), Williamsburg

Masa Madre

Sourdough concha

The sourdough conchas ($2.50) at Masa Madre barely resemble the baked buns at most panaderías. They’re run through with tiny pockets of air, like croissants, and baked to a deep malted brown. The crunchy sugar shell, pressed with a seashell pattern, is impressive, too, made with high-fat butter and flavored with chocolate or vanilla. LUKE FORTNEY

47-55 46th Street (48th Avenue), Sunnyside

Fan-Fan Doughnuts

Guava and cheese doughnut

Guava is to cream cheese what peanut butter is to jelly (or, lately, what strawberry is to matcha) and at Fan-Fan Doughnuts in Bed-Stuy, this timeless pairing reaches its zenith in the form of an impeccably fluffy yeast doughnut ($4.75) topped with a brown butter walnut crumble. MAHIRA RIVERS

448 Lafayette Avenue (Franklin Avenue), Bed-Stuy

Sixteen Mill Bakeshop

Sourdough scallion scone

The ingredient list may be long, but all you need to know is these vegan and gluten-free scones ($9) are unequivocally delicious. Sixteen Mill Bakeshop’s baker, Talia Tutak, has done the hard work of finding the right proportions of allergen-friendly ingredients to produce a buttery shell and fluffy crumb. MAHIRA RIVERS

552 Union Street (Third Avenue), Gowanus

Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop

Scone with butter and jam

Just a few blocks from her Irish bar, Mary O’s, Mary O’Halloran’s Soda Bread Shop serves one thing at her scone shop, perfectly executed, from Thursday through Sunday: craggly, warm soda bread scones ($6), sliced in half with a pat of Kerrygold butter and a spoonful of blackberry jam. BECKY HUGHES

32 Avenue A (East Third Street), East Village

Padoca Bakery

“PDQ” breakfast sandwich

What could be better than a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich? Try swapping out the standard deli roll for warm pão de queijo, Brazilian cheese bread, made from cassava flour and a top-secret cheese. It’s Padoca Bakery’s chewy unctuous upgrade to the B.E.C. ($11.75) you already know and love. MAHIRA RIVERS

Multiple locations, Upper East Side

Brooklyn Granary & Mill

Morning bun

Morning buns are usually big, pillowy confections, but at Brooklyn Granary & Mill in Gowanus, the real breakfast of champions is a firm, freshly milled spelt and whole wheat roll ($4.50) filled with sharp clothbound Cheddar cheese and a generous swipe of cultured butter. MAHIRA RIVERS

240 Huntington Street (Smith Street), Gowanus

Cookies, Cakes & Pies

Xin Fa Bakery

Egg tart

It’s no secret that some of the finest egg tarts ($1.75 each) in town are found at Chinese bakeries. Still, the tarts at Xin Fa Bakery in Brooklyn’s Chinatown stand out. They’re made as they would be in Macau, a former Portuguese colony: gently bruléed and thick with creamy egg custard that’s cooked to the consistency of a perfect scramble. And because the egg tarts are baked throughout the day, there’s a good chance yours will still be warm. LUKE FORTNEY

5617 Eighth Avenue (57th Street), Sunset Park

Red Gate Bakery

Pickled PB&J bar

Red Gate Bakery is the kind of bakery that shoots for the moon and never misses. One prime example of the bakery’s excellence is this perfect square of rich peanut butter and miso shortbread rippled with punchy, pickled concord grape jam ($5). BECKY HUGHES

68 East First Street (First Avenue), East Village

Culture Espresso

Chocolate chip cookies

All Midtown computer-job employees know that Culture Espresso’s chocolate chip cookies ($5.75) are some of the best you can find on Work Island. They’re baked throughout the day — all day, every day, at all three locations — to guarantee doughy centers and pools of bittersweet chocolate at any hour. BECKY HUGHES

Multiple locations, Manhattan

Trinidad Golden Place

Currant roll

For a few minutes each day, right around 3 p.m., Trinidad Golden Place can feel like the center of the universe. A small crowd forms out front, and the smells of cinnamon, butter and baked currant spill out of the swinging door and into the streets. People are there for the borough’s best currant rolls ($2). A staple of Trinidad and Tobago, they’re perfected here with a flaky, buttered crust that’s folded over a generous scoop of tart, tiny berries. LUKE FORTNEY

788 Nostrand Avenue (St. John’s Place), Crown Heights

Salty Lunch Lady’s Little Luncheonette

Daily slice of cake

One of the city’s best sandwich shops is also one of its best cake shops. The cake of the day ($13) at Salty Lunch Lady rotates, running from chocolate hazelnut to blackberry and yuzu. But between the layers, you’ll find far more than just cake and frosting — whimsical jams, colorful curds, fresh fruits, crunchy toppings, even torched meringues. Each one is a feat of originality — and true to the shop’s name, always the right shade of salty. PRIYA KRISHNA

5-65 Woodward Avenue (Menahan Street), Ridgewood

​Elbow Bread

Cinnamon sugar pretzel

In the era of bakery lines, ​Elbow Bread is one of few places where the crowds keep moving — and my favorite pastry, a sweet potato pretzel ($7) dusted with cinnamon and sugar, is almost always available. There’s nothing wrong with ripping into the chewy, sweet potato dough on its own. But there’s something right about dipping it into tangy cream cheese frosting made with more sweet potato. LUKE FORTNEY

1 Ludlow Street (Canal Street), Chinatown

Lisbonata

Seasonal egg tarts

What separates the very good egg tarts ($4.25 each or $24 for six) at Lisbonata from the very good egg tarts elsewhere is the breadth of flavors: The Nutella-like Belgian chocolate egg tart is always on the menu, along with a yuzu variant. But depending on the day there might also be chai custard pastel de nata with candied pistachios or a play on a Key lime pie. No matter what you choose, it will be great — and freshly baked. NIKITA RICHARDSON

619 St. Johns Place (Franklin Avenue), Crown Heights

Petee’s Pie

Hudson Valley apple pie slice

The world is overflowing with domed apple pies, their crunchy crusts covered with speckles of raw sugar or artfully layered apple slices. But fork into the dead-simple apple pie slice ($8) at Petee’s Pie Company, with a crust that shatters over a melty filling of locally grown apples, and you’ll quickly realize that all that other stuff is just window dressing. NIKITA RICHARDSON

Multiple locations, Lower East Side and Clinton Hill

The View

Chocolate cake with caramel ganache

One of the great things about The View — besides its adjacency to “Oh, Mary!” — is that you don’t really need a reservation to sidle up to the bar in the restaurant’s revolving lounge and order a drink and a slice of chocolate cake ($19) with the gooiest chocolate caramel ganache this side of Broadway. NIKITA RICHARDSON

1535 Broadway (West 45th Street), Midtown

Brooklyn Cupcake

Tres leches or coquito cupcakes

It’s all business inside Brooklyn Cupcake as employees cram dozens of cupcakes ($3.30 each) into plastic clamshells for large party orders. These fluffy treats have many fans. Try the Puerto Rican-inspired flavors like coquito or tres leches, and you’ll become a fan, too. MAHIRA RIVERS

335 Union Avenue (Maujer Street), Williamsburg

Veselka

Medovyk cake

Nothing says little treat better than a slice of layer cake on a random afternoon, but why limit yourself to butter cakes and chocolate frosting? Veselka’s medovyk cake ($13 per slice) offers six slim layers of honeyed cake interspersed with sour cream frosting and a freckled topping of walnuts. MAHIRA RIVERS

Multiple locations, East Village, Grand Central Terminal and Williamsburg

Cafe Miomio

Dacquoise cookie

The dacquoise cookie was once as rare in New York City as an unobstructed bus lane — until Cafe Miomio began making them in 2023. Popular in Japan, it’s technically a cookie sandwich made with crisp and chewy almond meringue ($5.50). Here, you’ll find it in flavors like chocolate and matcha. MAHIRA RIVERS

61 Vandam Street (Varick Street), Hudson Square

Saint Street Cakes

Chocolate peanut butter cake slice