The 43 Best Restaurants in New York

What makes a best restaurant the absolute best? With Borgo, I contend it fires on all cylinders simultaneously. “It’s a 360-degree restaurant,” an industry guest I brought with me said recently. Andrew Tarlow’s lone Manhattan restaurant has reliably excellent food, but so do other places on this list. Where Borgo really excels is in the ineffables of the dining experience: the service is warm but unthirsty, and the two dining rooms are spaced graciously and decorated decorously. Even the light tapers to exactly the right low warmth. (“Wow,” said my husband as we sat down. “Everyone looks great in here.”) Jordan Frosolone’s cooking is careful and ambitious, but the restaurant never sacrifices consistency for novelty; on the contrary, it’s a place that I’ve quickly come to consider an Old Reliable, to be recommended confidently and visited regularly, even in its slightly esoteric neighborhood. Since opening in 2024, it’s added lunch, and (in the warmer months) opened its sculpture-adorned back garden, only amplifying the pensione atmosphere.

124 E. 27th St.; borgonyc.com

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When Bong opened last year, I celebrated its wins and lamented its little frustrations. “I look forward to the day when reservations are not a fight,” I wrote, “when the three days of service become most of the week, the return visit when I can wash everything down with cold beer.” That day is now. Chakriya Un’s showcase for her (and her mom’s) Cambodian cooking is open every night but Monday, accepts walk-ins as well as reservations, and serves a natural-leaning list of wine and beer. That’s not to say its spunky energy has been dimmed. The server in the open-snapped track pants, the old Rihanna album on repeat, the tropical-meets-seasteading décor: They all betoken a restaurant not looking for anyone’s approval but its own. Let me lavish mine anyway. Un’s spicy, sweet, sour, savory cooking is both delicious and a hell of a lot of fun. Slurp away at your shell-on shrimp, your bowl of pork jowl and green mango, described by a server as a “BLT in a bowl.” Jimmy Nardello peppers are stuffed to bursting with ground pork and crab meat, and bathed in a sweet crab sauce; a messy pile of tiny clams is soaked in sweet-sour tamarind and threaded with wisps of water spinach and rice paddy herb.

724 Sterling Pl., Crown Heights; instagram.com/bong.nyc

Though they rose to fame with Claud, a Paris-style bistro with the city’s most famous chocolate cake, I believe Chase Sinzer and Joshua Pinsky reached their highest form with Penny, the seafood counter and raw bar directly upstairs. Light where Claud is darkly atmospheric, cool where Claud is warm, Penny opened in the seafood-mad days of 2024, when fish and mollusk supplanted Berkshire pork belly as the proteins du jour. Even in a crowded field, Penny stands out. “Ice box” platters are stocked with unusual fruits de mer — such as razor clams and live scallops — while cooked dishes are as good as the raw. Chef Forrest Florsheim’s tuna-stuffed squid made me a cephalopod believer, and his butter-bomb bowl of lobster was an indulgence I went back to for my birthday meal. If waits are long, you can now bide your time at Stars, the duo’s stylish new wine-and-snacks spot a quick walk away.

90 E. 10th St.; penny-nyc.com

The wait can be an hour long even on a rainy, random Monday: proof that the locals haven’t abandoned this Astoria original. Sure, an East Village location has come and gone (Bayside remains), but the Greeks I know (I’m married to one) agree. This is as close an approximation of an island taverna as you’re likely to find in the boroughs. Whole fish, grilled to sooty blackness and tender oil-soaked richness as they are at any chora, is as good as you’ll find at the five-star Greek Republican fat-cat restaurants of Manhattan, and the lemon potatoes are as bright as Yiayia’s.

36-01 Ditmars Blvd., Astoria; tavernakyclades.com

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If every era gets the canteen it deserves, ours — or at least, my small slice of ours — gets Bistrot Ha. Among the not-quite-middle-aged, downtown-spirited, gender-expansive party people of what Steven Phillips-Horst has indelibly called “the GoFundMe corridor,” if the question of where to eat pops up, there’s always at least a suggestion of Ha’s. The bistrot has the fizzing energy (and not the stolid drag of the city’s multiplying actual private members’ clubs) of a de facto clubhouse, an Elaine’s of the Lower East. Anthony Ha’s and Sadie Mae Burns’s feisty, Franco-Vietnamese cooking can be excellent — though you have to really like fish sauce — and even if it can also be inconsistently executed at times, the place has enough verve that most of its regulars hardly mind.

137 Eldridge St.; instagram.com/has_dac_biet

Kabawa started life with the chips stacked against it — a dark, down-an-alleyway space, for one — but it’s a credit to chef Paul Carmichael that Momofuku’s new flagship is both indispensable and joyful (and, after 18 or so months in business, arguably this city’s most in-demand reservation). Actually two restaurants in one — Bar Kabawa, next door, is a full-service spot with its own menu of flaky patties and small plates — the Kabawa dyad turns out wonderful Pan-Caribbean cuisine with cheer. “Love yuh self. Eat yuh guts full,” the menu instructs. The road to self-actualization is paved with frilled, Puerto Rican–style chuletas can can, cassava dumplings, plantains, and jerk sausage. I’m a believer.

8 Extra Pl.; kabawa.com

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The town’s overrun with wine-bars-with-food, a model that I sometimes think appeals more to dining operators than to everyday diners. But Lei, a solo project from King partner Annie Shi, has become essential in the year-and-a-half since it opened. The room is sexy and Shi, who runs the wine program with wine director Matt Turner, is serious about her list without ever tipping into sententiousness; there’s a sense of play here that other establishments would do well to emulate. But Lei wouldn’t make it onto this list without its food. Patty Lee, a veteran of Mission Chinese, adapted many favorites from her and Shi’s families’ kitchens: hand-rolled cats-ear noodles with cumin-y lamb sauce, viridescent celtuce in kombu jelly, and sweet-and-sour short rib glazed with strawberry jam seem to have earned permanent place, while new dishes rotate in regularly. That they all pair beautifully with wines is a welcome reminder that wine’s versatility is greater than cliché gives it credit for.

15-17 Doyers St.; leiwine.nyc

Lines formed at Bánh Anh Em the day it opened, and they haven’t died down, though with faster turnover, a larger room, and the option of takeout, things move quickly. No matter the queue, the rewards at the end are great: little puff-pastry hot pockets stuffed with pork and pâté, phos, fry-your-own catfish. It’s the bánh mìs I dream of, combinations of pork belly, cold cuts, mustard greens, chiles, and yet more pâté on homemade rolls, crowned if you’re lucky with pork floss.

99 Third Ave.; bananhem.com

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There was a time, the better part of a century back, when the West Village was chockablock with Galician immigrants homesick for a taste of the motherland’s morcilla. These days, the neighborhood is better known for its West Village Girls than its displaced Spaniards, though it had a sort of cosmic rightness when unofficial Spanish (and Basque) ambassador Ryan Bartlow chose this location for his fancier followup to Ernesto’s. A recent visit confirms that the W.V.G.s have made the low-ceilinged, romantic bar and dining room of Bartolo their own, while the cooking, much of which Bartlow honed during his years in San Sebastián, remains accomplished. I prefer the earthier entries on the menu to some of the swankier, more truffled choices, and Bartolo would earn its spot on this list for its earthen crock of shrimp, fries, and sunny-side-up eggs alone, pierced on arrival by your server so that the yolks emulsify with the sputtering garlic oil into something sublime.

310 W. 4th St.; bartolonyc.com

If you’re going to leave your corporate job and dedicate yourself to wontons, they better be damn good wontons. Maxi Lau’s are. Filled to nearly bursting with big meaty hunks of tender shrimp and just enough pork to keep things interesting (a 90-10 ratio), they’re among the best bargains in New York — something the city’s many purveyors of $30 shrimp cocktail might like to keep in mind. Hong Kong-style noodle soup is the thing here, with broth so lip-smackingly rich with pork bones that it’ll smooth your lips. With an optional thatch of duck-egg noodles on top, a meal comes in at under $20, including a very generous tip.

Multiple locations; maxisnoodle.com

This city’s reputation as a Mexican-food desert has now long passed, thanks in part to the arrive of Taqueria Ramírez in 2021. Its undeniable excellence has led to several offshoots (Carnitas Ramírez, for chopped-and-screwed pig bits; Soccería, for all-day dining with the mega-screens of a sports bar tuned whenever possible to the Beautiful Game; El Camarón Peludo, “the Hairy Shrimp,” its new wine-bar-with-food), but while each has something to recommend it, my heart directs me back to the tacos of the Greenpoint original. The usual cuts are supplanted by Mexican favorites, like suadero, an underused muscle near the rib, slow-cooked and then butchered into a creamy, mild mince by a cook wielding a curved cleaver. There are beef intestines — almost too yielding, sopping up plenty of fat before being torched with a butane canister — and a single vegetarian option, nopales, though strict meat-avoiders may want to give Ramírez a pass. “All may contain lard,” the menu warns, and the option of adding chicharrónes to the nopal taco in particular seems like a good move. I especially like the barky, fatty, crispy (pork) pastor, which revolves on the largest trompo I’ve ever seen, like an oblong planet, waiting to be slashed off and piled taco high.

94 Franklin St., Greenpoint; taqueriaramirezbk.com

Sandro’s is no longer the great restaurant that Gael Greene and Mimi Sheraton proclaimed it to be in the 1980s, but it’s a perfect one: warm, neighborhoody, and ready to offer, unbidden, homemade grissini. The food hasn’t kept up with the times and doesn’t need to: Amatriciana is smoky and admirably al dente, and a costoletta di vitello is like a hot, salty veal potato chip, served with a tangle of arugula and, in the Italian style, a fried bone.

322 E. 86th St.; sandrosrestaurant.com

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Maybe the most dangerous contention I’ll advance on this list: In its yearling era, I Cavallini (“the little horses”), has outstripped its older sibling, the Four Horsemen, across the street. When I first reviewed I Cav last September, I found it to be a warm, ultimately neighborhoody spot, less cerebral than 4H. Nick Curtola, the chef who oversees both, has spent the year locking in on the newer spot’s potential and as a result, it’s become a better version of itself, less a bucket-list item for food tourists than 4H, less austere and reverential, more actually New York. A few dishes endure from opening — roast chicken, pork with cherry glaze, an acidic salad of soft, cold beef tendons — and more recent additions wow: Thin slices of tripe, served under a pile of potato petals, are crisp fried and melty inside. Japanese sardines, flown in every day, simply marinated sit with griddled flatbread pustulated with char. The corniest corn pasta, almost too sweet in the season, and my old favorite from the first menu, farfallone in Calabrian-chile butter. I don’t mean to sow discord among siblings. But a little rivalry seems to have done I Cavallini very well.

284 Grand St., Williamsburg; icavallinibk.com

A Manhattan landmark, buffed and polished back to greatness. Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr — with their capable third, the natural-wine prophet Jorge Riera — have had hits at Frenchette, Le Rock, and Wild Cherry, but no restaurant showcases their particular balance of finesse and lusty plush like Le Veau d’Or, a rare example of historical homage done absolutely right. Served “table d’hôte” style (i.e., prix-fixe), dinner at LVD will set you back $145 these days. Spend it right — a good rule of thumb is to order anything that would seem more at home in the court of a French king, like the rosy magret of duck with cherries — and you’d happily fork over twice the price. Or play hooky and go for lunch, when you’re more likely to find an open seat, and where two courses runs for $85. It all but requires you to blow off the rest of the afternoon.

129 E. 60th St.; lvdnyc.com

While semi-professional clout diners can be distracted by newer, shinier objects, members of the Modern’s well-heeled clientele make their reservations with unbothered relief. Lucky them. Thomas Allan’s tasting menu is still executing at a high level, and the main dining room still provides unparalleled scenery (it overlooks the MoMA’s Philip Johnson–designed Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden). This is a worthy special-occasion destination. My discerning mother-in-law cooed over a kind of trompe l’oeil lobster claw — scallops, draped in thin slices of kohlrabi and dusted with a mix of raspberry powder and espelette pepper. Roasted monkfish served with lemon-thyme sabayon, lobster bisque, and a scattering of perfect pumpkin dumplings gave me flutters.

9 W. 53rd St.; themodernnyc.com

All the classics, mezedes to pitas, are good at this growing chainlet from the same people who run Ayat in Bay Ridge, but the family-size six-layer fattats of roast chicken, rice, chickpeas, yogurt, pita, garlic, and almond are out of this world — and joyfully enormous. I’ve taken my leftovers home and eaten for days, happily.

Multiple locations; albadawinyc.com

Ali Saboor cooked at Sofreh before decamping to a lonely stretch of Bushwick, where deli-meat trucks park in a chain-link lot across the street. It’s worth the trip, and it makes you wonder why there isn’t a Persian restaurant on every third corner. A briochelike round of komaj, flavored with cumin, fought and barely won the contest for “favorite bread” against the stretchier, crustier oval-shaped barbari with sesame and nigella seeds. Brochette kebabs of beef are richly gamy but not overwhelmingly so, and tahdig — topped with hash-brown-style potato shreds in a hoisinish salted plum sauce — is predictably (and necessarily) excellent. After a certain point, my notebook just becomes a list of hits with check marks beside them. “Sea bass with frizzled onions and tamarind.” “Need to come back for lamb ribs and dates.” “Yes.”

25 Bogart St., Bushwick; eyvalnyc.com

This tiny alcove is Marais as far as the eye can see. One cook runs the entire station, about the size of an airplane bathroom, turning out classics like rounds of escargots, grilled octopus with aïoli, and no-nonsense hanger steak. If the wine is a little too warm or a little too cold, it’s nevertheless glugged out to the rim of each glass. Can the service be a little gruff? Can the quarters be a little tight? Is the mustardy steak tartare chopped coarser than you’ll find elsewhere and served in a cereal bowl? Oui, oui, and oui, but if Le French Diner were “better,” it’d be worse.

188 Orchard St.; instagram.com/lefrenchdiner

There’s just something about Ann Redding and Matt Danzer’s multicolored, slightly chaotic all-day diner that holds up, even in the midst of an undeniable citywide Thai boom. (Soothr, Sappe, Sukh, Bangkok Supper Club: any of these could easily have wound up on this list, and may still in the future.) This Nolita spot simply has it: the spice, the flavor, the variety, and a healthy dose of heresy. You can get your lettuce wraps and crab fried rice and som tum and better-than-takeout phat Thai and phat see ew; also Thai disco fries. I’m not proud of it, but that half-sogged platter of French fries, massaman curry, and coconut cream, brightened with pickled green peppercorns, is the one I always lick clean.

186 Mott St.; thaidiner.com

Chef Maxime Pradié has Gallic blood and a New York heart: He spent childhood summers in the south of France, learning to cook at his grandmother’s stove, then trundled back in the fall to Brooklyn’s Poly Prep. Is that why this 37-seat French spot he runs with co-owner Jenni Guizio feels like the village restaurant you’d stumble into en vacances and brag about at home ever after? Pradié is a kind of country cousin to more urbane French chefs around town, though his foie-gras flecked artichoke soup would be equally at home at the fussiest fine-dining palaces. I’ve called his style “auberge cooking,” the cuisine of a rural innkeeper, ethereal and rib-sticking at once. This month, the wine-bar-and-cafe Bar à Part opened, a showcase for Guizio and Cory Holt’s wine list, Pradié’s house-butchered charcuterie, and pastry chef Clodagh Manning’s baked goods.

72 Bedford St.; zimmisnyc.com

Accolades pile onto accolades for Semma, and the plaudits are earned. Under chef Vijay Kumar, it is the finest restaurant within the Unapologetic Foods empire, a win in a very competitive race. All of those good reviews have made the place an exceedingly hard one to broach, even with a few burbles of bad press lately. The triangular potato-filled gunpowder dosa (named for the spice-and-lentil mix that gives it its kick) is justly famous, the Goanese oxtail curry zippy with cardamom and cilantro, but the dish that sticks in my mind is a recipe of miniature snails fiery with ginger and tamarind, served with a few fluffy, blinilike dosa.

60 Greenwich Ave.; semma.nyc

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You do love to see it: a Jackson Heights favorite makes good, goes big — how many new locations in the last year or two alone? (I write this from the Park Slope branch.) Just north of “fast casual,” the chainlet, with its metal bistro chairs and beachy décor, is busy even at off hours with couples, friends, and groups speaking in a mix of English and Spanish. There are tropical ceviches and aguachiles, and a taco so big it’s almost a quesadilla, drooling cheese and packed with shrimp cooked in shell-infused butter. The standout is the famous tuna tostada, thin strips of Ruby-Red-grapefruit colored fish laid over avocado on a crisp tortilla and doused in garlicky salsa matcha. Why does this ring familiar? Ah yes — it’s an affordable cousin to Le Bernardin’s famous tuna over foie gras (see below), reimagined with avocado as the hidden pocket of fatty indulgence.

Multiple locations; mariscoselsubmarinonyc.com

Does anyone need a $450 dinner? This city’s highest-end tasting menus, omakases, and kaisekis can be transportive, but they’re so expensive and exclusive that they may as well not even exist as restaurants. All that said, if there is one sushi splurge to do, for my money, it’s Sho. Keiji Nakazawa is a grand master, practicing the edo-mae style of sushi that’s like the fish version of constitutional originalism. In a world where many sushi places, even high-end ones, offer the same rotating selection of toro and shrimp, Sho brings in not only the best, but much of the rarest of Japan. From a list of à la carte add-ons, I selected kawahagi, thread-sail filefish I’d never seen on a sashimi menu before; and nodoguro, creamy black-throat sea perch. No photos are allowed, so all I have are my memories of taste. It will be a long time before I have a celebration worthy of going again, but if you have the right one, New York doesn’t offer many more special capstones.

3 E. 41st St.; instagram.com/sushishonyc

More important than having a go-to omakase heaven is maintaining a great Wednesday-night option, something decently priced and uncommonly good. That place is Mitsuru. Fish is in the hands of Mitsuru Tamura, who for years plied his trade at Sushi Yasuda, one of the best of the midtown power-lunch sushiyas. The selection is familiar and well handled: toro hand rolls with pickled daikon, hamachi and scallion, freshwater eel, Nobu-style miso black cod, very good tempura-fried sea bass. For a medium-big night, Tamura’s omakase counter awaits you for a comparatively reasonable $175, but any given weeknight, I’ve been very happy at a table, drinking up the atmosphere with a five-piece selection of “Mitsuru’s choice” sushi, a seaweed salad, and a few pops of chicken kara-age.

149 W. 4th St.; mitsurunyc.com

Even as its fustily impeccable midtown contemporaries have started to go a bit stale, Le Bernardin remains unimpeachable for people with the means to pay. Much of the menu is made of timeworn classics, and dishes like Eric Ripert’s thin-pounded yellowfin placed over a hidden tile of foie gras remind you why. Aldo Sohm is one of America’s great sommeliers — he and his team steward their 15,000-bottle collection with all the grace one might expect from a wine staff that still wears tastevins— and Maguy Le Coze’s front of house staff are as solicitous as yachties and twice as steady. To live like a CEO, even for just a few hours, Le Bernardin is de rigueur. And to live like one on a budget, note that à la carte is an option in the front bar room.

155 W. 51st St.; le-bernardin.com

Rich Torrisi’s love letter to the city is a parody of itself: The crush of customers feels like a Disney World version of Manhattan’s most popular restaurant. To its credit, the restaurant remains incontrovertibly excellent, with all the service but less of the staginess of Carbone. Greaseless zeppole with pineapple mostarda and Kentucky ham: Hawaiian pizza in its final form. Octopus Nha Trang, with sweet, spicy fish-sauce-and-soy and Tropea onion is fabulous. Among the pastas, the most boring, tortellini pomodoro, is also the most excellent: soft, desserty sheep’s milk ricotta and basil-kissed cherry tomato sauce that tastes not just of tomato but of cherry tomato.

275 Mulberry St.; torrisinyc.com 

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Broadway babies know that the Theater District has one million options for pre- or post-show dining — and that none of them are particularly good. So I was pleased to discover this shoebox-sized Singaporean spot whose quick service, low prices, and absolutely delicious Hainanese chicken rice now offers sweet deliverance: a godsend before Godspell, if you will. Raymond Kiang learned from the best (his late father, “Sergeant” Kiang, a national treasure in Singapore), and the classic poached chicken rice, with a cup of sipping broth and jasmine rice, is a treat. (Note to Hell’s Kitchen: good for your protein macros, too.)

790 Ninth Avenue; unclerayschickenrice.com

Every restaurant in this group’s growing portfolio — Hart’s, the Fly, Eel Bar, Zig Zag — has its own time and place, but Cervo’s remains my overall favorite. Inspired by the coastal cuisines of Portugal and Spain (“Cervo’s Is a Seafood Restaurant,” as the tote bags have it), but not beholden to them, it has the feel of a glamorous seafaring vessel: Its narrow, wood-paneled galley always makes me feel like a stowaway on Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools. Mussels escabeche, whenever they appear, are a must; seabream grilled a la plancha’s a safe bet too. The gamy lamb burger is a mainstay here (I prefer mine without the add-on anchovies), and the restaurant’s Spanish insistence on the universal applicability of vermouth is to be commended.

43 Canal St.; cervosnyc.com

Many excellent new Indian spots focus on the country’s south. Angel — which opened in 2019 in a takeout shop and moved to a bigger space last year — heads north to Punjab where chef Amrit Pal Singh was born (and the region more familiar to many diners from its dominance in takeout joints). Saag paneer is soft crumbling clouds of fresh cheese in rich brown gravy strewn with actual greens, not a puree. Vegetarian dum biryani steams under its spiced dome of stretchy, crunchy bread. I loved an appetizer of tender lamb chops spackled with ginger paste, but I could have easily done without them: Much of the menu is vegetarian, a rare one where meat wouldn’t be missed.

75-18 37th Ave., Jackson Heights; angelindianrestaurantnyc.com

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It took me a while to warm up to Smithereens. Between the close-quartered, subterranean space, and handful of dishes that jangled between oddly delicious and just odd, the restaurant maintained a punk energy I admired but didn’t always love. Smithereens, I am happy to report, has gotten better and better. Any hesitations I had have vanished. Nick Tamburo’s maple-y chive-dusted buckwheat pancake is better than I remembered, a handkerchief tossed over creamy bluefish pâté. His entrees have matured, as well: tender hake with vin jaune sabayon, sweet corn and okra; batons of crisp skinned red amberjack with tomato and saffron. Nikita Malhotra’s wine list, a compulsory complement, is no longer dedicated to a single grape, even as she remains committed to its evangelist bent. (The current list is divided into “Riesling” and “Wines That Are Not Riesling.”)

414 E. 9th St.; smithereensnyc.com

Pascaline Lepeltier, a founding partner here, is one of the world’s most highly decorated sommeliers, a frequent spokesperson for wine’s virtues, and the author of the textbook-heavy One Thousand Vines. And somehow, tirelessly, she’s been on the floor of the restaurant every time I’ve been, rifling through her 90-page list, recalling her hundreds of producers by name, proselytizing for the wines she believes in, whether they’re popular or expensive or not. Under the stewardship of chef Jonathan Karis, the kitchen keeps up: There are sweetbreads for the gourmands, but I’m just as happy with a Heritage pork chop and the market-loving menu’s banquet of spinach, honeynut squash, shelling beans, and butterball potatoes.

94 Chambers St.; chambers.nyc

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Remember ramen? Back in the 2010s, newfangled noodle shops were popping up on every corner — R.I.P. Chuko of Vanderbilt Avenue, my own then-local — and a generation of young Americans learned to debate the merits of shio versus shoyu broths. Ramen’s still there for the finding, of course — newer spots like the breakfast-ramen counter Ramen by Ra bubble up now and again —but without the crest of the trend it’s easy to overlook the great ones hiding in plain sight. Yohei Ishida’s Ramen Ishida has been sitting on Ludlow Street for almost a decade now, its cauldrons bubbling, its broths excellent. Ishida, a veteran of ramen mini-empire Ippudo, branched out on his own in 2017, and while he added a fancier Chelsea location in 2024, my favorite is still his counter-only, one-room restaurant on the Lower East Side. Ishida himself is a bit of a cypher — “He’s not forthcoming at all about anything he does,” Sho Spaeth, author of Homemade Ramen, says — but his broths are magic, his noodle folds are beautiful, and if you don’t eat it quickly, the problem isn’t him, it’s you: “We might ask you to give up seat 20 min after ramen is served,” a note at every seat advises patrons.

122 Ludlow St.; ramenishida.com

The 2017 revival of The Four Seasons remains annoying to get into and painful to pay for, but the room, the room. It’s as powerful as ever, and the food is better now than it was during the last years of the Niccolini administration. The Grill goes big on theatrics — a duck press can be wheeled out on demand — but I come for the beef. A steakhouse, like a sucker, is born every minute in these parts, but I haven’t found one I’ve really loved in quite some time, and certainly none that none can shift my gaze from the prime-rib cart here, which displays its blood-red bounty with all due aplomb.

99 E. 52nd St.; thegrillnewyork.com

Deep in the Research-and-Surgery Quadrangle of Weill Cornell, NewYork-Presbyterian and the Rockefeller University’s campuses sits an uninspiring space — two parallel chambers, long and deep. I travel to this grim stretch of Lower Upper East Side — even without a doctor’s appointment — for some of the city’s best South Indian and Sri Lankan food. Lungi’s hoppers, bowl-shaped rice-flour and coconut milk pancakes, were solid, and the curries (chicken, good; goat, better) and sambols are superior still.

1136 First Ave.; lungirestaurant.com

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Michael White’s luxury Italian den doesn’t get talked about much in dining circles, yet whenever I go, ducking into its recessed entryway among the asset management towers near the MoMA, it’s always full, with a well-heeled, silver-haired crowd enjoying their open secret in its ersatz office environs. May they forgive me (I assume these people, collectively, hold a decent amount of power), I’m going to reveal it: Santi’s are the best pastas in town. White’s return to the kitchen is an occasion to celebrate, and while he could’ve rested on his laurels, he hasn’t: His truffled twirls of busiate may be the Platonic ideal of a vegetarian pasta, and I will never miss a chance to order his mortadella tortellini, nestled in parmesan cream. The latest addition is a bicameral ravioli, with two chambers and two fillings in one packet, a marvel of engineering.

11 E. 53rd St.; santinyc.com

When lower Second Avenue was still Jewish Broadway — the Yiddish theater walk of fame is still visible outside the old Second Avenue Deli on 10th Street — B&H was there. “Second Avenue had everything,” Abe Bergson (the B in B&H) recorded in his journal, not only the theaters but burlesque, movie houses, tuxedo shops, and restaurants. Ratner’s, Rappaport’s, Moskowitz & Lupowitz: Of them all, B&H alone is still here, and it’s still a well-patinated, not especially comfortable gangplank of counter and a few tables. There’s nowhere I’d rather have a tuna melt on thick-cut house-baked challah with a side of knish mit gravy and a can of Dr. Brown’s Diet Black Cherry.

127 Second Ave.; bandhdairykosher.com

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Though doctors have warned me that I must not engage with the term “third space,” lest — to borrow a joke — my eyes roll so hard my retinas detach, I must admit there are some restaurants that serve this function: neighborhood living-rooms-with-food, more or less, more than the sum of their entrees. Pierogi Boys (a full-blown offshoot of their DeKalb Market Hall stand) is one. Open daily for breakfast and lunch, near-daily for dinner, and with an attached shoppy shop that includes a cheese counter, produce and dry goods, Pierogi Boys is a living hub in a former funeral home. (They saged it.) Ridgewood is not the restaurant desert it semi-recently was, but even among competitive neighbors, it stands out. The cynic in me, he of the loose retinas, would like to grumble at the D.T.C.-style branding and décor, but the vibes are good, and so are the duck confit, the schnitzel, the borscht, and, of course, the pierogi. I relent.

57-34 Catalpa Ave., Ridgewood; pierogiboys.com

Dinner at this tasting counter starts with a sermon: “We’re a fermentation restaurant,” chef Hooni Kim announces. “You will be ingesting lots of probiotics tonight.” His aim at Meju is to exploit the stomach-soothing possibilities of Korea’s fermentation-centric cuisine, starting from its (essentially) mother sauces: doenjang (fermented soybean paste), gochujang (fermented chile paste), ganjang (fermented soy sauce). Tending to one’s own gut flora may be tediously fashionable, but Kim is a convincing proselytizer. The meal builds a slow delicious case — gochujang dotted on top of raw sea perch, pork belly with 15-month kimchee — until Kim dabs everyone’s hand with a precious taste of 130-year-old soy sauce. It’s rich and viscous, with a figgy sweetness and the mouthfeel of aged Amarone.

5-28 49th Ave., Long Island city; mejunyc.com

Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo were two decades into their restaurant partnership before they opened a slice shop next to their Frankie’s Spuntino flagship. They nailed it. Pies hit a kind of best-of-both-worlds middle ground between artisanal Neapolitan (blistered with thin-skinned charred bubbles and topped with Bianco tomatoes) and New York City’s own floppy folding-slice terroir. The shop proved so popular that the Franks retrofitted a next-door restaurant into an eat-in F&F restaurant, but for reasons unclear, the pizzas there are never quite as good as what you order at the counter or the pies they’ll dispatch to your door. The Partanna (with red onions and honey) gets a lot of love, and there’s a time and a place for sausage and broccoli rabe, but for my delivery dollar, the way to go is half-plain-half-pep, with a lavish but not overwhelming scattering of blistered little pepperoni cups. Their clam pie, with mozzarella, parm, bread crumbs, and parsley, isn’t Pepe’s New Haven classic, but it justifies its price if you’ve got $50 to spare, and arrives at your door with its own little cup of lemon wedges.

459 Court St., Carroll Gardens; fnfpizzeria.com

New
Peking duck is not a dish too many people make at home, and it’s crucial to know where you’re going to get yours when the craving strikes. Mine has historically been at Peking Duck House on Mott Street, but my allegiance has lately shifted to Juqi, a very stage-managed faux-hutong in the Tangram Mall in Flushing and an American outpost of a Beijing-based chain. Its ducks (as well as many of its other Beijing specialties) are presented with a pomp and circumstance befitting an erstwhile emperor. A full duck is rolled out with a traveling case that includes drawerfuls of accouterments and little skin-and-toast-point canapes dotted with caviar, but a half-duck, with much less ceremony, works just fine. Make yourself a packet as your server will instruct you, moistening the thin-enough-to-read-through pancake with hoisin sauce, then using your chopsticks to roll it around duck, scallions, and cucumber, and it’s a perfect bite: richness tempered, sweetness assertive but in control, meaty and dark. A carcass soup taken afterwards, milky looking and floating bones, is like a restorative sanitarium broth. It’ll brace you for a return to the mall which is its own flavorful, kinetic reward: The 10-year-old I was with, the child of a friend, thrilled to both the duck (which she surprised herself into liking) and a delirious half-hour at the claw-machine arcade and a brand-new Labubu called — what else? — “Serenity.”

133-36 37th Ave Flushing; instagram.com/juqi_ny

On the edge of Queens’s Little Egypt, food tourists jostle with locals to see what’s been brought back fresh from the Hunts Point fish market in the earliest hours of the morning. Wild bass, striped bass, red snapper, little whiting, and dorade plus calamari, and big shrimp that you’ll order from the counter before being given one simple choice: “Fried or grilled?” Big tendrils of octopus are fabulous, and my whole black bass arrived soldered to its sizzle platter in a sticky, smoky sauce — smoked pepper? Harissa? — stuffed with a paste of olives, herbs, maybe some tomato. What is it? A secret recipe. There’s no website, and the phone is answered, simply, “Seafood?” I wouldn’t trade any of it.

24-19 Steinway St., Astoria; 718-274-3474

New
There’s been no shortage of excellent regional-Indian restaurants these past few years, exploding the old, Punjabi-centric butter-chicken ubiquity many New Yorkers are familiar with for a richer variety of the subcontinent’s varied cuisines (see last year’s worthy list entry Kanyakumari, whose menu journeys widely through Southern India). Kidilum, which opened in February in a large, gilded space in Flatiron, focuses on the cuisine of Keralam, the spice basket of India (Tellicherry peppercorns, among many other aromatics, come from the area), a coastal region that was an important stop on the Spice Route. Chef Vinu Raveendran, who trained in two-Michelin-starred Mugaritz in San Sebastián, has made it his mission to elevate his native cuisine, and his recipe, and the restaurant’s, includes a fair amount of showmanship. Beef pepper comes topped with gold-flecked gelée and arrayed on what looks like a driftwood candelabra, sculpted by the chef himself. Lamb chops are set in a floral arrangement of cinnamon sticks and flowers. Luckily, the food lives up to the over-the-top presentation: The coconut and fennel-pollen-laced nanducurry, served in the actual nandu, or crab; an excellent pork rib sticky with a fermented tamarind, ginger, and jaggery and slow-cooked to perfect near-dissolution, a rib any Texas pitmaster could be proud of.

31 W. 21st St.; kidilumnyc.com

New
The recent, if not untimely, death of Donohue’s reminds us all: No New York institution lasts forever, and we need to celebrate them while they’re here. So I chide myself for overlooking The Knickerbocker Bar & Grill, whose pubby menu, and ivories waiting to be tickled, have stood since 1977. Founded by a Broadway producer, the Knickerbocker has long attracted a theater crowd, some of whom appear on the wall in their own Al Hirschfelds. Public Theater founder Joe Papp (who lived on this block of East 9th), Terrence McNally (his widower still comes often), Amy Sedaris and John Guare are all on-record fans. (“There used to be little dives you could go to and just get a simple dinner,” Guare told a historian in 2020. “There’s only one of those places around us now, the Knickerbocker.”) Steak remains a specialty, though I enjoyed chef Clara O’Marde’s roast chicken, on a fudgy bed of winter squash and gravy-bloated cherries. Unlike similar institutions, all of the food at the Knickerbocker is much better than it needs to be, even if not many people seem to have noticed: The lone accolade in its vestibule of fame is a “Best of Citysearch 2010” plaque.

33 University Pl.; knickerbockerbarandgrill.com