The best mornings are the ones with memorable food. Therefore, your morning exploration of Little Italy begins at Egg Shop, where food is beyond great and original. The restaurant has become so popular that it spread into two additional locations in SoHo and Williamsburg. There’s even a cookbook that lists out the restaurant’s signature dishes and breakfast cocktails. And all this based on Egg Shop’s love for the taste and art of the egg. Egg Shop has more than 15 dishes that offer a variety of versions of eggs such as the Spandex (poached egg, miso quinoa, roasted pumpkin seed and goji berry), and Fish Out of the Water (smoked salmon, pickled egg, cucumber, fresh dill, caper berry mustard on rye).

There’s a long, dark and deep history to Little Italy, a major hotbed for organized crime for many decades. The fact leads you to Umberto’s Clam House, where famed gangster Joe Gallo was assassinated. The place also happens to be one of the best seafood restaurants in the city. Umberto’s has become famous for its calamari, clams, scungilli and mussels above anything else, but it also offers some impressive seafood risotto and shrimp Francese.

The most famed street in the city – next to Broadway – may just be Mulberry Street. The street has so much history, given how it was at the very core of the infamous Five Points in the early 20th century. In the late 1700’s, the street was the center of slaughterhouses. Today, the street maintains much of its original architecture, and is filled to the brim with restaurants and Italian food stores. The biggest landmark on the street is the 1885 Puck Building.