Museum-going in New York City requires stamina. Hard floors, long hallways, and heavy crowds undermine your ability to concentrate on what you’re looking at. Good news: Food helps.

Gone are the days of plastic-wrapped sandwiches and spiritless salads; museum cafés now strive to actually keep visitors in the museum. Restaurateurs like Danny Meyer (who opened Untitled at the Whitney in 2011, and manages dining at MoMA) and Steven Starr (responsible for fare at the Rubin Museum of Art and the New-York Historical Society) have helped drive this upswing, but there’s also greater awareness of the wider intermingling of food and culture. Increasingly, menus connect to museum missions and effectively enhance the intellectual experience. Sustenance fuels both body and mind.

Most museums in New York now have passable restaurants associated with them. Some have very good ones. The aforementioned Starr opened Caffe Storico at the New-York Historical Society in 2012, bringing with it a notion of fine Italian dining that, while perfectly pleasant, had little to do with the institution’s story. Similar experiences can be had atop Columbus Circle’s Museum of Art and Design (the restaurant, Robert, began welcoming guests in 2010), at the Wright in the Guggenheim, and at Saul Bolton’s eponymous venture at the Brooklyn Museum. Meyer’s Modern, located next door to MoMA, is a cut above, but sufficiently removed from the museum’s core to distinguish itself more as a standalone enterprise.

Museum cafés thrive when administrators, chefs, and curators share a vision. The best of the bunch express institutional competencies and offer contextual cultural touch points, helping diners better understand the intentions or history of the place they’re visiting.

Here are our five favorite places to eat inside NYC museums.   

Address and phone: Rubin Museum of Art, 150 W 17th St (212-620-5000) Website: rubinmuseum.org Good for: Escapist lunches with mom

If there’s one knock on Cafe Serai, it’s the atmosphere. Situated in the lobby of the Rubin Museum, the space isn’t unlike a run-of-the-mill college student center. On a recent visit, some guests were reading quietly, while others with quizzing a museum administrator on the potential of future partnerships. Food is ordered from a bar counter, and you take a number to bring to your table. The whole ordeal is pleasantly casual.

Serai is operated by Starr Restaurants, which also manages food service at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Caffe Storico at the New-York Historical Society. At the Rubin, chef Ali Loukzada offers food to match the collection—flavors that fit the museum’s mission of promoting the ideas, cultures, and art of Himalayan Asia. Though the space doesn’t surround diners with paintings or artifacts, Loukzada’s dishes provide a fitting entry-point. The curried chicken momos (traditional Tibetan dumplings) are essential. Follow those with a thali plate, including soup, red rice, and a choice of main dish. Our vote goes to the subtle curry beef—and don’t forget to explore the museum’s wide selection of imported teas.

Order this: curried chicken momos, curried beef thali plates, custom tea blends

Order this: beef tartare, truffle-stuffed roast chicken, tres leches

Address and phone: The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Ave (212-683-2130) Website: themorgan.org Good for: Gilded Age dreams

In 2006, architect Renzo Piano completed an expansion and renovation project that left The Morgan Library & Museum with one of New York’s great atriums. Inhabiting a corner of the grand central pavilion, the Morgan Café creates the illusion of outdoor dining, even during the NYC’s punishing winter—escapism at its best.

As an homage to namesake J.P. Morgan, the café deals in early 20th-century fare. Asparagus salad and deviled eggs are fitting fuel for adventures in collecting. And the Morgan’s version of high tea sustains an afternoon of exploring exhibitions dedicated to the literary arts. The balance of material on view and well-heeled food on the plate adds up to a welcome level of refinement. Here, hidden away from the blur of Madison Avenue, is a place to revel in the glory of a New York once populated by rich industrialists and pioneer bankers.

Order this: The Morgan Tea

Address and phone: The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W 53rd St, 2nd floor Website: momacafes.com Good for: Recharging between exhibitions

MoMA doesn’t skimp on food. At Long Island City off-shoot PS1, M. Wells Dinette holds it down. Next door to the main building on 53rd Street, the Modern connects to the institution’s vibrant galleries and serves, for some, as the de facto museum café. It isn’t. It does a disservice to Danny Meyer’s partnership with MoMA to suggest that it begins and ends with fine dining.

On MoMA’s second floor, Cafe 2 provides a more traditional museum experience—communal tables, espresso, and panini. It’s designed for mid-visit meals. And, thanks to executive chef Dan Jackson, it avoids standard cafeteria cliches in favor of seasonal Italian specialities. There are pastas, salumi tastings, and tiramisu. All succeed in lifting spirits, providing a second wind for tackling another part of the collection.

Cafe 2 is an anomaly on this list in that it doesn’t exactly enhance the museum mission. But it is simply the best place to eat while firmly entrenched within the galleries of any of NYC’s monolithic institutions.

Order this: Salumi and cheese tasting

Address and phone: Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Ave (212-288-0665) Website: neuegalerie.org Good for: Old-school Viennese specialities

Often overlooked by tourists heading north on Fifth Avenue for the more famous institutions of “Museum Mile,” Neue Galerie specializes in early 20th-century Austrian and German art and design. At Café Sabarsky, the museum’s main eatery, visitors are welcomed into a time capsule of sorts. Named after co-founder Serge Sabarsky, the space is filled with lightning by Josef Hoffmann, as well as furniture designed by Adolf Loos and upholstered with fabrics imagined by Otto Wagner. The menu draws from the great cafés of Vienna, offering sturdy meals (schnitzel and sausage), as well as handsome cakes. It’s an appropriate place to engage in rhetorical discourse, and to remind oneself of what life was like before leisure lost its elegance.

Order this: Bavarian sausage with warm pretzel, sachertorte