Pic courtesy of Gothamist.com

One of the best things about Gramercy’s small Spanish restaurant Casa Mono is that if you’re stuck waiting for your table, you can hit the tapas joint Bar Jamon around the corner for a pre-dinner Iberico ham gorge. And if you can’t quite cram into the tightly jammed Jamon, you can…try to get a last-minute table at Mono without a reservation? (Good luck with that.) However oversubscribed and high-maintenance both places can be, Mario Batali and company had the foresight to open the sibling restaurants right near each other—to double your pleasure or pain, depending on how you see it. Casa Mono: Fiercely flavorful Spanish-Mediterranean food (confited goat with saffron honey; soft-shell crab with Meyer lemon aioli; morcilla sausage with chanterelles) in a miniscule dining room. Jamon: An impeccable mix of Spanish cheeses, wines—and hams, naturally—in a Madrid-style, standing-only tapas bar.

Casa Mono: 52 Irving Pl. between 17th & 18th Sts.; (212) 253-2773. Bar Jamon: 125 E. 17th St. at Irving Pl.; (212) 253-2773.

Prices/Features: MOD     (See Welcome to Salmaland for key to letter abbreviations.)

Pic courtesy of Ilili

Impossible to be Lebanese and not have cripplingly high expectations of Lebanese restaurants in NYC—partly because there are barely any to speak of. (Yours truly is of Beirut extraction.) But chef Philippe Massoud is doing spectacularly authentic, big-flavored Lebanese food, and it’s really unmissable. The kibbe nayeh (a steak-tartare-like hill of raw meat mixed with burghul and eaten with pita bread, olive oil, and white onion); the red mullet with pita chips, tahini, and and lemon; the juicy kebabs; and the chicken livers with sumac and pomegranate molasses are reasons enough to be alive. The lunch and dinner prix-fixes are some of Manhattan’s best deals.

Ilili. 236 Fifth Ave. between 27th and 28th Sts.; (212) 683-2929.

Prices/Features: MOD, VGT, GRP     (See Welcome to Salmaland for key to letter abbreviations.)

Pic courtesy of TastingTable.com

Chef Floyd Cardoz deserves more fame than NYC’s overcrowded celeb-chef ranks seem to have room for. But his true-believers know he’s got some serious chops—evidenced in his menu at Tabla, which recently merged with its downstairs spinoff Tabla Bread Bar to serve a mix of fanciful Euro-Indian and more casual, regional-Indian-inspired dishes: Look for tandoori-smoked eggplant with ginger, chilies, and yogurt, or the lamb naanini, a pressed lamb sandwich stuffed with cilantro and turmeric-spiced potatoes on crispy, slightly sweet rosemary naan. The cocktails are ingenious here too, like the Masala Mary, a Bloody Mary spin made with spicy tomato juice and house-pickled onions.

Tabla Bread Bar. 11 Madison Ave. at 26th St.; 212-889-0667.

Prices/Features: MOD, VGT, DRNK   (See Welcome to Salmaland for key to letter abbreviations.)

Pic courtesy of GoWorldTravel.com

Before anyone reads any further, it should be said: This is a raw-foods restaurant we’re about to discuss. But don’t stop reading. Most raw-foods restaurants are probably a little sad in some way (this hypothesis has not been tested), but somehow Pure Food and Wine feels like a real restaurant—low-lit and humming and sexy even—and serves food that could just about pass for the cooked kind, except it won’t matter because it’s mostly delicious in its own right. Having to work without (much) heat results here in maximum flavor and texture, as in the fierce garlic, tangy-sweet tomato, and absurdly tasty basil-pistachio pesto in the tomato-zucchini lasagna. Cocktails are wickedly good too, if embarrassingly named, like the Master Cleanse Tini: a transfixing sake-honey-cayenne concoction.

Pure Food and Wine. 54 Irving Pl. between 17th & 18th Sts.; (212) 477-1010.

Prices/Features: MOD, VGT     (See Welcome to Salmaland for key to letter abbreviations.)

Pic courtesy of EuskaKultura

Ultra-talented chefs Alex Raij and Eder Montero were fired from their previous jobs at the Spanish spot Tia Pol (where crowds consistently spilled out the door). So what did they do? Open up their own restaurant, Txikito, down the street—and promptly kick lots of ass with their robust, fragrant Basque tapas (which range from little sandwiches of tuna and piquillo-infused oil, to lamb chops grilled a la plancha, to daily specials like a warm chickpea-and-squid stew with a potent anchovy broth). The crowd in the dark, electric dining room is, fittingly, packed with Tia Pol regulars.

Txikito. 240 Ninth Ave. at 25th St.; (212) 242-4730.

Prices/Features: MOD, VGT     (See Welcome to Salmaland for key to letter abbreviations.)