Miss Lily’s Chef Andre Fowles’s Favorite New York Spots to Chill With Friends

I like the vibe there. It’s a cute, very charming restaurant. It’s small. I like steak. I like a good cocktail. And personally, I’ve never been to Paris before so it’s like my little getaway with friends. First of all, I always have to go with at least three friends because French cuisine tends to be on the heavy side, but when you have your friends who love food as much as you do, it all goes down quickly. It’s the best way to eat at restaurants.

We usually start off with some martinis and a steak tartare. Theirs is amazing. It’s the balance: the quality of meat, the acidity, the texture. It doesn’t taste like you’re just eating raw beef. And personally, I’m not a fan of a raw egg yolk on top of my steak tartare, and I’m glad they don’t serve it that way.

I’m a carnivore at heart. I love meat on the grill. So apart from the steaks, we’ll always get the côte de boeuf, perfectly medium, with some crispy French fries, frisée salads, and a beautiful bottle of Cabernet.

This is the complete opposite of Steak Frites. Being that I’m from Jamaica, I also do enjoy great seafood. So to get seafood in its purest form, something really rustic, I go to Astoria Seafood. I live in Harlem, so it’s really quick for me to get there.

I got hooked on this restaurant a few years ago through a friend of mine. Here, you pick your own seafood and tell them how you want it. They make it fast. It’s fresh, it’s delicious. There isn’t any music there. It’s just everything in its raw, rustic form. My friends and I come here and we connect through conversation. We talk about the projects that we’re working on, whether it’s something in Jamaica or New York, or how we grew up in Jamaica from humble beginnings and ended up here in New York. You’re just breaking bread over amazing fresh food.

I usually like to get my seafood fresh off the grill with a deep char: whole branzino, octopus, shrimp, scallops, all with lemon and garlic butter. We’ll also order a large red snapper, too, deep-fried until it’s nice and crispy.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t know this, but Jamaica has a huge Chinese community, so I grew up eating Chinese food there. And that’s one of my favorite things. I love Wu’s Wonton King. It’s one of those places that when you get there, you just start ordering because you want everything, and you don’t really realize how much food you’ve ordered until you get it, but even when you get it, it goes down so fast because it’s so good.

I got turned on to them a couple of years ago when I went here with some family and friends. It was absolutely special because I like sweet, spicy, salty flavors, and I like how you can share everything. We got the huge crab, dumplings, scallion pancakes, noodles. One of my favorite dishes is the pork spare ribs in black bean sauce. It’s super tender, and very savory.

Fish Cheeks is a quintessential New York story, with a line out the door all the time. Their curry crab is absolutely insane. The red curry sauce is so delicate, and so velvety, and you have to pair that with some fried rice. And they also have a whole roasted branzino which actually reminds me of how we cook fish in Jamaica because we’ll capture a whole fish, and we’ll roast it very nicely in aluminum foil. And that’s how the branzino is presented at Fish Cheeks. It brings back a nostalgic experience.