Milkflower — A Girl's Guide to Drinking Alone

34-12 31st Ave btw 34th and 35th Sts, Astoria

The Place: A pizza restaurant I had saved in my Google maps because it was on the Times’ list of best pizza in New York–a list I should’ve checked twice!

*glass of rosé and matching pizza condiments*

The Time: Thursday April 9, 5:45pm. My brilliant friend Nora (a guest writer for Girl’s Guide, you can read her reviews here, here, here and here!) won the Sloan Prize for emerging filmmakers for her ingenious screenplay, The Head Cases, about women in STEM, and the award ceremony and reading is tonight at the Museum of Moving Image! Since I’m never in Queens*, I thought I should take this opportunity to hit up somewhere flagged on my handy dandy G-Maps, cuz a girl’s gotta eat! (I did not realize I could’ve filled up on free cheese and crackers at the awards reception but oh well.)

The Vibe: All I know about Milkflower going in is that it’s a pizza place a short walk from both the N train and the museum, and that my note about it in Google maps reads: “NYT best pizza in New York, the Stun Dunn.” Past me gave future me marching orders! Perhaps I should’ve done a tad more research than this, because I walk in and there’s no bar. There are tables in the front space and the back space, separated by the large open kitchen and wood-fired pizza oven. I really don’t love sitting at a table alone for a few reasons: 1) you’re sitting across an empty chair the whole time, and usually the server or host has to do the awkward dance of removing the second place setting; 2) there’s no real possibility for social interaction, which a bar inherently provides, both with other patrons and with the staff; and 3) I’m a bar girl! What restaurant in this city doesn’t have a bar to sit at?! The answer with Milkflower, friends, is that they don’t have a liquor license. Again, should’ve done more research.

I realize as I sit down that I’m at a pizza place before 6pm, which is prime kid time. Luckily, there’s only one family with a toddler. Otherwise there’s a couple to my right having a hushed conversation, two twenty-somethings drinking Cokes, an older couple toward the back. It’s not full, but it’s certainly not empty, and begins filling up around 6, 6:15. It definitely feels like a neighborhood spot, and between the navy wooden walls, the enormous American flag on the wall by the entrance, and the bright lighting, I feel more in the suburbs than in NYC proper. The soundtrack is heavy on the karaoke hits (Motown hits, Father John Misty, etc) and it sounds like a lot of people in here are actually singing along? Wild.

The Bartender: In this case server, a baby face blonde who can’t be older than 23. Either he is afraid of me or feels sorry for me, because he’s avoiding eye contact at all cost.

The Drank / The Dish: One look at the drink menu and I discover that it’s just beer and wine, which is probably why they didn’t invest in a bar. It seems to be an entirely American wine program, and an (almost) entirely New York beer program, which is pretty cool, and feels intentional. I go with a glass of the rosé. It is…fine, but it’s also only $12. A bargain in this town now! The wine glass is comically huge.

The food menu is substantial, with plenty of appetizers and veggie options, even a few pastas, though everyone around me is eating pizza, and I am here for pizza. My decision was pre-destined, but plenty of the pizzas look good. I almost change my mind, but I have always been an A student, so I follow my own instructions and order the Stun Dunn: caramelized onion, gruyere, scallions, red onion, mozzarella. It’s probably a terrible choice to order a pizza covered in three types of onion before I go to a social event but I am committed now. The pizza is pretty good, a little wet in the middle, as is often the case with Neapolitan-style, but the flavor is there.

While I’m here, I decide to check the aforementioned NYT best pizza list. Milkflower is not on it anymore! It must’ve been at one point because of my note (I never lie to myself!) but I guess it got bumped for something else. (The article was originally published in October 2024, most recently updated in June 2025, as of this writing.)

Was I Hit On? / Did I Make Friends?: Neither. The trouble with eating alone at a pizza joint (that serves only pies) is that I want to try more than one, and maybe even a few starters, but it feels absolutely insane to sit with two pizzas in front of me, knowing that I won’t be able to finish them, and in this case, I can’t take any leftovers with me. Also if I had ordered two pizzas from my server, this guy might’ve told his manager to check on my mental wellbeing.

Should You Drink Here Alone?: No. Milkflower certainly wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t spectacular, and the lack of a bar to sit at makes it much less conducive for those going stag. Nora’s screenplay, however, is incredible and I can’t wait for that movie to get made!

P.S. After I left, I texted my friend Robert who lives in Astoria if he’d been to Milkflower and he responded: “yes–it has always been a mid experience to me,” so the moral of this story is ask your friends for recommendations and don’t believe everything you read on the internet!

*lol my last Queens post also stated “I’m basically never in Queens,” and that was from 2019.