The 8 best ethnic neighborhoods in New York City

K-Town, a highly concentrated strip along Manhattan's West 32nd street, between Broadway and 5th Avenue, is a slice of Seoul in the city, and officially known as "Korea Way."

It features dozens of Korean restaurants, karaoke clubs, and even 24 hour spas, most of them stacked on top of each other thanks to the narrow borders of the area.

New York is home to over 140,000 Korean residents — the second largest Korean population in the US — and while they may not all live in Koreatown (many live in Flushing, Queens, another Korean hotspot), they do frequent it enthusiastically, giving the area a super local and authentic vibe.

While there's always a debate as to where the food is better, Flushing or Manhattan, K-Town is steadily gaining a stellar foodie rep.

Jackson Heights is incredibly diverse, and it can make you feel like you've been transported to a different country with every block.

However, India (and Bangladesh and Pakistan) has staked its claim on 74th Street between Roosevelt and 37th Avenue, where women will shop for jewelry and rich fabrics while wearing colorful saris, and stores are full of Bollywood films and incense.

Like an open air market, the air is thick with the smell of curries and spices, and the streets are lined with sweet shops, curry houses, and eateries selling fresh curry leaves and chutneys.

With a tight-knit Russian-speaking community dating back to the 1800s, Cyrillic signs and newspapers, Russian baths, Putin coffee mugs, and more fur coats than you can shake a stick at, you'll be forgiven for thinking you've landed in the Ukraine, despite the sandy beach (which is probably not much warmer than the Black Sea).

Brooklyn's southernmost spot, Little Odessa has one of the highest concentration of Russian immigrants this side of the globe, and New York as a whole is home to over 700,000 of them.

Venues like Tatianas, where the vodka flows and folk dancing shows and traveling Russian acts are the main attraction, are super popular among locals and visitors alike. Take a tour of the neighborhood here.

Sure, most US cities can boast Chinatowns, but New York's is one of the oldest in the country, as well as outside of Asia.

Once you bypass the fake purses, knockoff perfumes and general insanity of Canal Street, you'll enter a surreal, bustling world full of fruit and veggie stands overflowing with exotic produce you've never seen before, open air fish markets writhing with live eels, and parks full of people playing XiÀngqí (Chinese chess).

Dense and boisterous, Chinatown has 103,060 people per square mile to New York’s 27,183.

Like we said, maybe only Aussies call the area around Mulberry Street in downtown Manhattan "Little Australia" but hey, with more Australian-owned businesses than anywhere else in the city (around 10 on only six blocks) and flat whites and Vegemite aplenty, we dig the Down Under vibe of this little sub-hood.

Despite the onslaught of Williamsburg's infamous hipster set, Little Poland refuses to budge.

Though wildly international (read, gentrified), Polish is Greenpoint's foremost foreign population, with the second largest concentration of Poles after Chicago.

Polish culture here is tangible: you'll hear the language everywhere, and see it on every sign and marquee, and the Polish national symbol — a white eagle on a red background — is as ubiquitous as restaurants and shops selling pierogis and kielbasa.

Back in the day, Little Italy was a Neapolitan village whose primary language was Italian.

Immigrants from Naples and Sicily flocked to it in the 1880s, and the area peaked in 1910, with a population of over 10,000 Italians and an area spanning 50 blocks. It has since shrunk (it's now around 14 blocks between Broome and Canal, Lafayette and Bowery), deteriorating into an enclave that can often feel like a souvenir slinging tourist trap.

However, it's a vibrant and fun neighborhood with narrow, European-feeling cobblestone streets full of gelaterias and bakeries, and real foodie gems, like Parm and Rubirosa. Don't miss September's Feast of San Gennaro, a colorful street festival and foodie fave.