Small wonders: The delectable deviled eggs at Prune.

BEYOND BEER NUTS
A budget meal at the bar

Bar food means different things to different people. The common denominator? It should go well with a drink, be it a pint of Brooklyn Lager or a dry martini. Burgers at bars are a dime a dozen, but few measure up to the juicy, five-napkin whopper at Donovan's, the Irish pub with branches in Woodside and Bayside, Queens. It's so devastatingly delicious, we'd even send teetotalers ($4.95 at lunch, $5.75 at dinner). When the legendary Pearson's Texas Barbecue shut its doors in Long Island City, fans of its wood-smoked brisket and ribs -- the best in town -- were bereft until it reopened, curiously, in the back of Legends, a sports bar in Jackson Heights, Queens, where clued-in 'cue connoisseurs pay much more attention to the pulled pork and tender brisket sandwiches on Portuguese rolls than to the score of the game ($5.95 to $12).

In "serious" restaurants, bar food gets short shrift. If you're Jean-Georges Vongerichten or Daniel Boulud, do you really want your customers filling up on Triscuits and sardines? Gabrielle Hamilton, chef-owner of Prune, doesn't seem to mind. Her bar menu (available at tables too) offers delectable finger food like radishes on the stem with sweet butter and coarse salt; unapologetically retro deviled eggs; an Iberian arrangement of figs, fried almonds, and serrano ham; and, yes, those aforementioned straight-out-of-the-cupboard (yet unexpectedly satisfying) sardines with Triscuits and Dijon mustard ($3 to $7).

DONOVAN'S, 57-24 Roosevelt Ave., Woodside (718-429-9339), and 214-16 41st Ave., Bayside (718-423-5178); PEARSON'S, 71-04 35th Ave., Jackson Heights (718-779-7715); PRUNE, 54 E. 1st St. (212-677-6221).

THE RIGHT STUFFING
Dandy dumplings from all over

The best dumpling deal in town just got better: Now that Fried Dumpling has opened a second branch in Chinatown on Mosco Street, there are two places -- not counting the inferior clones -- to buy five flavorful crescent-shaped minced-pork-and-leek dumplings for a dollar.

Vegetable dumplings, too often a bland cabbage-and-mushroom-stuffed afterthought, are reinvented at Dim Sum gogo, where they come in ten different versions, with three kinds of dough wrappers and four kinds of sauce. No. 4, the snow-pea-leaf dumpling, reminded us a bit of spinach ravioli ($2.25 for three).

Mandoo are Korean dumplings, the chief attraction at 32nd Street's Mandoo Bar, where they're hand-formed in the window by a pair of nimble-fingered women who stop traffic with their engaging labors. We're partial to the steamed kimchi mandoo, in which the typical pork-and-vegetable stuffing is fortified with tofu and a smidgen of the cuisine-defining pickled cabbage ($7.99 for ten).

Once you've tried mandoo, it's time to tackle momo, the oversize Tibetan take on Chinese potstickers. At Tibetan Yak in Jackson Heights, they're steamed or fried; stuffed with your choice of vegetables, chicken, or beef; and served with a sesame-dressed cabbage salad ($6.75 to $7.25 for eight). The momo at Shangrila remind us of Japanese gyoza, but maybe that's because the Tibetan-born chef-co-owner used to cook at Honmura An. (Hence the presence of tempura and edamame alongside gutse ritu, hand-rolled Tibetan pasta stewed in lamb broth and garnished with cottage cheese.) We find ourselves craving these momo, and keep rotating between the sesame-flavored chasha chicken and the "Shangrila special," stuffed with spinach and homemade curd cheese ($8.50 steamed, $9.50 fried).

FRIED DUMPLING, 99 Allen St. (212-941-9975); DIM SUM GOGO, 5 E. Broadway (212-732-0797); MANDOO BAR, 2 W. 32nd St. (212-279-3075); TIBETAN YAK, 72-20 Roosevelt Ave., Queens (718-779-1119); SHANGRILA, 129 Second Ave. (212-387-7908).

FAMILY CONNECTIONS
Favorite pasta parlors

The recent history of cheap Italian restaurants in New York is a befuddling chronicle of families -- some extended, some dysfunctional -- writ large in red sauce. The tale goes something like this: A casual, rustic trattoria is born. It thrives. It either expands or clones itself or, more often, loses a beloved maître d', or a star cook, who goes off to open a similarly cheap and delicious place of his own. Our story focuses on what we'll call the Four Families -- a loosely connected network of irresistibly cheap Italian restaurants and their offspring.

The most far-flung family is the Pepe posse, engendered by Pepe Rosso to Go in SoHo. What began as little more than a takeout alcove with a sidewalk table, scrumptious focaccia sandwiches, and robust pastas (all hovering around $10) begat Pepe Verde in the West Village, Pepe Giallo in Chelsea, Capa and Paprika in the East Village, Caffè Linda in midtown, and Pepe Viola in Brooklyn. Ownership varies, but the grub, like a terrifically savory Bolognese, remains the comfortingly familiar lingua franca.

Then there's Frank in the East Village, a trattoria so tiny and overrun it soon expanded into an adjacent storefront, which became a wine bar called Vera. Besides becoming a destination for crunchy fennel salad, mozzarella flown in from Naples, and rosemary-roasted chicken, owner Frank Prisinzano's minuscule restaurant also served as a pit stop for a couple of Italian pals who worked there briefly before heading deeper into the East Village to open Max, which recently spawned a Morningside Heights outpost called Max SoHa (South Harlem). Both excel at rich, zesty ragùs and the Italian-style meat loaf called polpettone ($10.95-$11.95).

Piadina, best-known for its house bread, a delectably chewy Emilia-Romagnan stuffed flatbread, was the rustic, candlelit precursor of Malatesta and Gradisca (all in Greenwich Village). When chef Salvatore Zapparata left Piadina to open La Madrastra, he brought his personal takes on northern and southern classics like a particularly savory, deeply flavored rigatoni melanzane e ricotta salata ($9) and a green vegetable soup from his hometown in Sicily but conscientiously left the signature piadina behind.

The six-year-old Il Bagatto began as a joint Alphabet City venture by Roman chef-owners who've since parted ways, but their partnership has spawned two new spots, one opened by each original owner -- Il Posto Accanto, the wine bar next to Il Bagatto, and Miss Williamsburg Diner, a rehabbed Italian-flavored eatery in industrial Williamsburg. A broken home, perhaps, but one that's given us three distinctive sources for cheap, carefully made fare like perfect bruschetta, tortellini con ragù, thin strips of rosemary-infused beef called straccetti (Il Bagatto, $5-$12), a lovely selection of panini and cocci, hot crock pots full of vegetables and bubbling cheese (Il Posto Accanto, $7-$9), and hake casserole with zucchini and potatoes (Miss Williamsburg, $14).

PEPE ROSSO TO GO, 149 Sullivan St. (212-677-4555); FRANK, 88 Second Ave. (212-420-0202); MAX, 51 Ave. B (212-539-0111); PIADINA, 57 W. 10th St. (212-460-8017); LA MADRASTRA, 93-95 First Ave. (212-475-6620); IL BAGATTO, 192 E. 2nd St. (212-228-0977); IL POSTO ACCANTO, 190 E. 2nd St. (212-228-3562); MISS WILLIAMSBURG DINER, 206 Kent Ave., Brooklyn (718-963-0802).

SUPER BOWLS
Noodle shops that hit the spot

Don't look for any resemblance between a packet of instant ramen noodles and a steaming bowl of deeply flavored tonkatsu ramen from Ajisen Noodle, the first American branch of an Asian ramen chain that opened in Chinatown this spring. Expect, instead, springy noodles, roasted pork, scallions, and hard-cooked egg in a smoky, buttery broth made from long-simmered pork bones ($4.75). The "tenderous ribs" version features something the menu ominously calls "steamed gristly ribs," which turn out to be rich, fatty chunks of tender, slow-cooked boneless pork ($6.25).

Not in the mood to pig out? Choose an alternative soup stock, like curry or miso, which is also an option at Rai Rai Ken, a new East Village noodle shop with a menu as minute as its fourteen-stool premises. There's gyoza (Japanese pork dumplings) and ramen, available three ways: miso with chicken, shoyu (soy sauce), and shio (chicken broth), the latter two of which come chock-full of bamboo shoots, sliced roast pork, egg, scallion, and seaweed ($6.50). In the theater district, Little Yokohama occupies an equally cramped, twelve-seat space. Customize your soup by selecting one of four noodles -- a thick udon, a thin udon, soba, or seaweed -- or beat the heat with a wonderfully refreshing summer cold-noodle special. Yakko-soba is our idea of the perfect, slurpable pre-theater supper: slick buckwheat noodles adorned with squares of cold tofu, julienned cucumbers, eggs, seaweed, and shaved bonito, in a scallion and ginger dressing ($8.75).

AJISEN NOODLE, 14 Mott St. (212-267-9680); RAI RAI KEN, 214 E. 10th St. (212-477-7030); LITTLE YOKOHAMA, 374 W. 46th St. (212-315-3161).