Tell a New Yorker that you’d like to eat a meal outdoors, and you’ll usually be led to a restaurant where the best you can hope for is to share approximately one square yard of sidewalk or patio space with sixty other diners. But that never stops us; after all, eating al fresco is one of the season’s biggest joys. And nowhere is noshing outdoors more of an unalloyed pleasure than on the shore of the Hudson River at Riverside Park South’s Pier I Café. And really, there is no choice here: all seats are outdoor seats. Even the kitchen itself is a miniature tent village where the cookers, the barbecue grills, and the bar supplies all sit in full view of the sunset.

There has been a mobile café on this site for the past two or three years, but after a nasty accounting scandal surrounding last year’s incarnation, a new contract was awarded to a different proprietor. So this year’s Pier I Café is not affiliated with anything that may have come before it. That is entirely a good thing, because the team behind the current iteration, headed up by the Frying Pan at Chelsea Piers’ John Krevey, appears to know how to make the most of a pared-down kitchen, striking many more sweet than sour notes in the bargain.

Their strategy appears to be perfectly simple: focus on serving drinks, as well as a small menu of dishes that either benefit or are not diminished by being cooked outdoors. This explains why, of the ten regular menu items, five are burgers or hot dogs. Not only is this sensible logic comforting, it also yields cooking that is consistently competent. Drinks here are also made to a high standard. We have sampled all three of their specialty drinks (each $8) and two of their frozen cocktails (each $10) over several visits, with the Key West Melonade, the Bahama Coco Mama, and the Frozen Mango Margarita (these last two are shown in the photograph here) ranking as our favorites.

Menu specials offer a few welcome surprises that distinguish Pier I Café from a concession stand. On a visit this past weekend, we sampled a Mixed Berry Salad ($8), a dish that was made up of nearly equal parts mesclun and fresh berries, all dressed in a tart berry vinaigrette and topped with candied walnuts. I was impressed by the variety of berries– blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries all added depth and complexity to the salad. Plain walnuts would have been a better choice than candied, as the salad was already very sweet, but otherwise, the dish was lovely– exactly the sort of thing you might expect to be eating under the fading sun.

Burgers here are also very good. HungryMan is a fan of the Flintstones-thick Classic Hamburger (shown in the first photograph above, $6), which when cooked medium rare is gorgeously juicy. I, on the other hand, love the Veggie Burger (shown in this photograph, $6). Normally, I don’t order veggie burgers at restaurants, figuring that they are likely to be frozen and uninspiring, but Pier I Café took me by surprise. Their patty may well be frozen, but it contains light, green edamame, and just enough garlic to make the burger worth ordering. Both kinds of burgers do suffer a bit from being served on potato rolls that are too dense and filling; HungryMan and I generally solve this problem by converting our burgers into open-faced sandwiches, ditching half the bread in order to leave room for fries.

French fries ($3) here are long, pinky-wide planks, sprinkled generously with salt and a seasoning mix that tastes similar to Tony Cachere’s Creole mixture. French fries are a difficult dish for an outdoor restaurant to get just right, but Pier I manages the job admirably, producing potatoes that are moist inside, slightly crispy outside, and remarkably, not greasy. The portion is adequate, but if you’re really hungry, order two, as the woman ahead of us in the line did. Gesturing to a furry lump on her shoulder that we hadn’t noticed until that point, she effused, “The fries are for me– I love them! And the chicken tenders I ordered are for my cat.” While we have not yet sampled the chicken tenders, we can say that the restaurant staff obliged the woman’s request, announcing, “Chicken tenders, for Cat, Chicken tenders, for Cat,” over the loudspeakers. We can also report that the grumpy feline did, in fact, eat said chicken tenders. Make of that what you will.

Pier I Café is scheduled to remain open well into autumn (or at least until the end of September), so you still have time to pay a visit, with or without a kitty in tow. On weekend evenings, there is also live music (mostly salsa and jazz) on the shore end of the pier– an added bonus that makes this already affordable café an even more compelling summertime destination.

Pier I (the letter ‘i’) Café, Riverside Park South at West 70th Street, Noon- about 10 p.m. every day