Casa Adela

Casa Adela sits on Loisaida Avenue — the stretch of Avenue C that took on its Spanglish name from the Puerto Rican families who settled the Lower East Side in the mid-20th century — and it's run the same way for decades: a narrow counter room, a handwritten specials board, and pernil, rice and beans, and stewed meats cooked the way a home kitchen would do them, not a restaurant kitchen.

There's no reservation system and not much decor; the room is small enough that a line forms out front at peak lunch and dinner hours. That's the point — it's a neighborhood counter that never scaled up or dressed up, in a part of the Lower East Side where most of what surrounded it has.

Cash-friendly and unfussy: order at the counter, take a table if one opens up, and expect the person next to you to be a regular who's been coming for years, not a first-timer working off a list.