Thanksgiving Dishes Upper East Side: The Pizza Side Table

Late November on the Upper East Side has a particular sound: a buzzer going off every twenty minutes as grandparents, cousins and the aunt with the folding chairs arrive at a 2nd Avenue apartment. If you’re hunting for Thanksgiving dishes Upper East Side hosts can actually pull off in a galley kitchen, here’s the honest answer. You make the one dish that matters to you, and you let Two Boots at 1243 2nd Ave, in the 60s, cover the rest of the table: the kids, the vegan cousin, the hungry arrivals and the friends who show up the weekend before.

We don’t have a Thanksgiving menu, and we won’t pretend to. What we do have is a regular menu that happens to fill most of the roles on a holiday table. There are bready starters, herby veggie pies, a Cajun-leaning main, a vegan lane built on Daiya, a kid-sized face pie and a couple of desserts. That’s a potluck in a box, minus the roasting pan.

Below you’ll find how each classic dish role maps to a Two Boots item, how to feed a mixed vegan, vegetarian and meat-eating household, how much to order for a crowd, and how to plan around a very Upper East Side Thanksgiving week.

Key Takeaways

• Two Boots Upper East Side has no special Thanksgiving menu, but its regular pies, knots, sliders, salads and desserts can fill the starter, side, main and kids’ table roles at a holiday or Friendsgiving spread.
• For mixed households, pair Cleopatra Jones with Vegan Cleo, and add Emily Litella and Earth Mother so meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans all get a real plate.
• Pizza Face (small only) and a plain cheese pie handle the kids’ table, and Bombinis, savory Cajun hand pies, are a Manhattan-only extra.
• Order online for a small family dinner, or use the Upper East Side catering page for a Friendsgiving or school-parents party, with 24 to 48 hours’ notice.

Check Out Our Menu!

Why a Pizza Box Belongs Next to the Casserole Dishes

Most Thanksgiving dinner dishes were designed for a house with a double oven. Most Upper East Side kitchens were designed for one person making toast. Somewhere between the bird, the stuffing and the sweet potatoes, the oven runs out of room, and the host runs out of patience.

That’s the gap a pizza order fills. The point isn’t to replace the meal your family cares about. It’s to take the pressure off everything around it: the hour before dinner when everyone’s starving, the kids who won’t touch anything with a crust of breadcrumbs, the vegan cousin who has been eating side salads for years, and the second wave of guests who arrive after the dishes are done.

There’s also a flavor reason. Two Boots has blended Italian and New Orleans Cajun cooking since 1987, when the first shop opened on Avenue A in the East Village. The name points to the two boot-shaped places on the map, Italy and Louisiana. Cajun and Creole flavors already have a seat at plenty of Southern holiday tables, and our crust has cornmeal in it, which gives it a crisp edge with a bit of a cornbread feel. And a box stacks on top of the fridge, needs no burner and never needs carving, which matters in a 2nd Avenue walk-up.

Thanksgiving Dishes Upper East Side Hosts Can Cover With Named Pies

Every Thanksgiving table has roles, even if nobody writes them down. Someone brings the rolls, someone owns the stuffing, someone is responsible for “something green,” and someone always forgets dessert. Here’s how our regular menu lines up against those roles. Every item below is on the Two Boots menu today.

Table role	Two Boots stand-in	Why it works
The bread basket	Garlic Knots, or Hot Knots doused in jalapeño pesto (marked spicy)	Pull-apart, passable, gone in minutes
The passed starter	Eggplant Parm, Chicken Parm or Meatball Parm sliders on house-made garlic knots	Two-bite food for the hour before dinner
The savory side	Emily Litella: breaded eggplant, sweet red pepper pesto, ricotta, mozzarella	Rich and comforting, like a baked casserole
The stuffing slot	Tony Clifton: wild mushrooms, vidalia onions, sweet red pepper pesto	Earthy and oniony, sits well beside roasted sides
The Cajun main	Mr. Pink (Creole chicken, plum tomatoes, fresh garlic) or Cleopatra Jones (sweet Italian sausage, roasted peppers, red onions)	Hearty, no jalapeños, wide appeal
The green dish	Larry Tate (organic spinach, plum tomatoes, garlic, white pie) or a Caesar Salad	Vegetables people actually eat
The plant-based plate	Vegan Cleo and Earth Mother	A real main for vegan guests
The kids’ table	Pizza Face (small only) and a plain cheese pie	Familiar, fun, no negotiation
The gravy boat	Marinara, Basil Pesto, Sweet Red Pepper Pesto and Cajun Ranch dippers	Everyone gets something to dunk
The dessert tray	House-baked chocolate chip cookies; a gluten-free brownie is on the menu too	Handheld and easy to share

And then there are the Bombinis. They’re savory Cajun hand pies, and they’re only on the menu at our three Manhattan shops (Upper West Side, Upper East Side and West Village). They make a handy pre-dinner bite.

The Kids’ Table and the Mixed-Diet Family

Thanksgiving on the Upper East Side is often a three-generation event. Grandparents fly in, cousins take the train down, and suddenly a one-bedroom on a 60s side street is feeding a toddler, a teenager who just went vegetarian, a vegan sister-in-law and an uncle who considers a vegetable an insult. One pizza order can feed all of them.

The kids’ table

Pizza Face is our kid-friendly face pie, and it comes in a small size only, which is exactly the right scale for a card table set up next to the couch. Pair it with a plain cheese pie (Create Your Pizza starts from a cheese base, so you can add one topping or leave it alone) and a side of Garlic Knots with marinara. That covers the under-ten crowd before the adults have even sat down.

The vegan and vegetarian guests

The trick with a mixed household is pairing. Order a meat pie and its vegan twin, so nobody feels like they got the consolation prize.

• Cleopatra Jones and Vegan Cleo. The original brings sweet Italian sausage, roasted peppers, red onions and mozzarella. Vegan Cleo is its plant-based counterpart made with Daiya. Put them side by side and both camps eat the same dish.
• Earth Mother. Organic fresh spinach, roasted garlic, roasted peppers, wild mushrooms, red onion and marinara, with no cheese at all. It’s the pie that works for the guest who avoids dairy for any reason.
• Emily Litella. For vegetarians who still want something indulgent: breaded eggplant, sweet red pepper pesto, ricotta and mozzarella. It reads like a slice of eggplant parm, and it disappears fast.

How Many Thanksgiving Menu Items to Order for Your Crowd

Whole pies come in 10″, 14″ and 18″ sizes on our menu, so you can scale up or down. Use the table below as a rough planning starting point, and remember that on Thanksgiving week, pizza usually sits next to other dishes rather than carrying the whole meal.

Gathering	Who’s there	A sensible starting order
Arrival-night dinner	Grandparents and cousins just off the train or plane	Two large pies (one meat, one veggie), Garlic Knots, a House Salad
Kids’ table on the big weekend	Four to six young cousins	A Pizza Face per two or three kids, one plain cheese pie, knots with marinara
School-parents Friendsgiving	Ten to fifteen adults plus kids	Three or four large pies across meat, veggie and vegan, sliders, Bombinis, cookies
Mixed-diet family meal	Meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans	Cleopatra Jones plus Vegan Cleo, Emily Litella, Earth Mother, Caesar Salad

An Upper East Side Thanksgiving Week, Block by Block

The Upper East Side does Thanksgiving week its own way. Here’s how it tends to play out around our shop at 1243 2nd Ave.

The weekend before: Museum Mile and a hungry walk home

A lot of UES families use the weekend before Thanksgiving to show visiting relatives the neighborhood’s big hitter. The Metropolitan Museum of Art sits on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, at the heart of Museum Mile, and it is very good at tiring out grandparents and kids in equal measure. After a few hours of armor, temples and paintings, nobody wants to cook. Walk back east through the side streets, pick up a couple of pies on 2nd Ave, and let everyone collapse in the living room with a slice and a strong opinion about which gallery was their favorite.

The family-room Friendsgiving

There’s a very UES version of Friendsgiving that doesn’t involve roommates at all. It’s the school-parents gathering: the families from your kid’s class, packed into whichever apartment has the biggest family room. Everyone brings something. Someone brings the mac and cheese, someone brings a pumpkin pie from home, and the host needs food that feeds twelve adults and eight kids without a single extra pan. That’s the moment for a catering order: a few large pies, a tray of sliders, Bombinis for the grown-ups and cookies for the kids.

Central Park, before and after

The Upper East Side has the kind of Thanksgiving-week tradition you can’t replicate elsewhere: the long walk. Families head west into Central Park to walk off one meal and work up an appetite for the next. A loop past the reservoir with the cousins, back home as it gets dark, and there’s a box of Garlic Knots waiting. If you’ve read our earlier post on garlic knots on the Upper East Side, you already know they’re built for exactly this kind of hungry return.

Ordering Ahead and Catering for Thanksgiving Week

Thanksgiving week fills up fast on every calendar in Manhattan, so plan the pizza the way you plan the rest of the menu: early, and with a headcount.

For a family dinner or a small group, order online through Toast from the Order Online button on our locations page. Ordering before the first guests arrive saves you a hungry wait while the buzzer keeps going.

For a Friendsgiving, school-parents party or office gathering, use our Upper East Side catering page. Catering is drop-off delivery, there are packages by group size, and there are vegetarian and vegan options. Give the team 24 to 48 hours’ notice so your order is sized and ready when guests arrive. Planning a pre-holiday office party instead? Same route.

For the host gift, Two Boots gift cards are sold through Toast. A nice thank-you for whoever offered up their family room.

Conclusion

The smartest Thanksgiving dishes Upper East Side hosts can serve are the ones that don’t need the oven. Make the family recipe that matters, then let Two Boots handle the kids’ table, the vegan cousins, the Museum Mile crowd and the school-parents Friendsgiving with Pizza Face, Cleopatra Jones and Vegan Cleo, Emily Litella, Earth Mother, Bombinis and a box of Garlic Knots.

Find us at 1243 2nd Ave, in the 60s, and start your order from our locations page.

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