The 28 Best Restaurants in New York City
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The best restaurants in New York City run all the gamuts: there's the fine dining and the free-wheeling; the extravagantly expensive and the markedly less so (although very little is downright cheap in this city). We have just about every type of cuisine, presented both traditionally and in multiplying fusions that take the dining experience every which way. And don't even get us started on the best new restaurants in NYC, which so excel at keeping the industry on its toes that we had to make a separate article for the best and buzziest amongst them.
These, our picks for the best restaurants in New York City, aim to encompass the Big Apple's vast diversities of geography, tradition, and time. You'll find below a mix of storied institutions and buzzy hotspots, of French brasseries and Korean diners, of uptown and downtown and Brooklyn and Queens and everywhere in between. What do they have in common? Excellent food that you'd be wise to eat during your visit to this city. It's by no means conclusive, so consider it a jumping off point.
Read our complete New York City travel guide here, which includes:
This gallery has been updated with new information since its original publish date.
- Will Ellisrestaurant
Dhamaka
$$Restaurateur Roni Mazumdar and chef/partner Chintan Pandya have taken the city’s dining scene by storm with an array of restaurants that celebrate India’s diverse cuisines. Their Michelin-starred West Village spot, Semma, is often rightfully in the spotlight, but Dhamaka is the cool older sibling that has their own thing going on. Pandya and his team’s cooking looks deep into regional Indian culinary traditions to share dishes like the restaurant’s acclaimed rabbit dish from Rajasthan, which is marinated in spiced yogurt, slow-cooked for hours, and must be ordered 48 hours in advance. There’s also garlicky Goan crab cooked with Amul butter and crushed black pepper, and garam masala-spiced Kashmiri lamb loin. Some dishes, like the exceptional goat neck dum biryani, which is served in a pot that’s sealed with a thin flatbread, are larger, so check in with your server about the number of items to order.
- Evan Sungrestaurant
Dame
$$$What started as a pop-up is now a hit English-leaning seafood restaurant for golden-brown fish and chips plus broiled oysters with green chartreuse hollandaise, elegant squid and scallion skewers, blowfish tails with chili butter, and a creative wine list and cocktail menu. Patricia Howard and Ed Szymanski's tight menu looks to his U.K. roots for inspiration with dishes like kedgeree rice with grilled monkfish, “proper English chips,” as the team calls them, and desserts like sticky toffee pudding, but the theme isn’t so overt that you feel you’re dining in the British countryside. There are also elegant raw scallops with preserved lemon and nardello peppers, and tuna tartare on toast that’s topped with bottarga. Tables at Dame are coveted, so while the restaurant can seat parties as large as six, if you can't snag a reservation then it’s best to plan an evening with just one dining companion, or dine by yourself at the bar that looks into the kitchen.
- Ben Honrestaurant
Raku
$$Duck down Macdougal Street on the western edge of SoHo and look for a small white square sign with artfully drawn Japanese characters and Raku spelled out in small Roman letters below. If you elect to dine inside, you’ll be greeted by a calming and transportive dining room and some of the city’s best udon. The lengthy menu at Raku can be a touch overwhelming for a first-time visitor, so first decide if you want your udon warm or cold, then concentrate your efforts on that section. Raku is one of those rare New York restaurants that’s impressive, transportive, consistently excellent—and (most importantly and surprisingly) easy to get a reservation at.
- Armando Rafael/Frenarestaurant
Frena
$$While Hell’s Kitchen is definitely not one of New York’s most notable culinary hotspots, Frena is a Mediterranean haven that begs to differ. Chef Efi Naon opened the restaurant this past spring to pay homage to “the smells, spices, and recipes of [his] Moroccan-Israeli upbringing.” Naon was notably executive chef at the ever-popular Taboon, which tragically shut down after a fire a few years ago. He brought back its signature clay oven to Frena, which is integral in baking their fluffy homemade Frena Bread, brushed with olive oil, Maldon salt, wild dry za’atar, as well as their decadent Sambusak stuffed with feta cheese. Our meal kicked off with classic Israeli dips like baba ganoush and hummus, complemented by the crisp baby gem salad with root vegetables, and Jerusalem stone yogurt. As per our attentive waitress’s recommendation (the service was top notch), we ordered the butterflied branzino for our main, which was incredibly fresh and so simply delicious. Food aside, Frena’s florally-decorated interior paired with its impressive drinks program will transport you to a special place, and lends itself well to an aesthetically-pleasing girls' dinner or date night. The restaurant was buzzing on a Monday night, seemingly with plenty of locals and regulars, and we were more than glad to absorb some of that wholesome NYC energy. —Emily Adler, associate social media manager
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- Courtesy Terangarestaurant
Teranga
$$Teranga is run by the acclaimed Senegal-born chef and cookbook author Pierre Thiam. Offering a culinary lens into Africa through African-grown ingredients and flavors that date to pre-colonization, the restaurant is as much a place to dine as it is an integral part of The Africa Center, a cultural hub that hosts art exhibitions and lectures and screens independent films. In addition to build-your-own bowls featuring Jollof rice, spiced chicken, and ginger-moringa dressings, the casual spot serves black-eyed pea stews and salads, roasted Moroccan salmon, and bottled bissap, limeade, and ginger juice. The name Teranga translates to "good hospitality" in Senegalese, and although this is a fast-casual spot, the team here is indeed warm and welcoming.
- Nicole Franzen/Sailorrestaurant
Sailor
$$On the restaurant-rich stretch of DeKalb near Fort Greene park, the September-opened Sailor has already found its sea legs. The neighborhood bistro from restauranteur Gabriel Stulman (Joseph Leonard, Fairfax) and chef April Bloomfield (The Spotted Pig, The Breslin Bar) manages to pull off a refined nautical theme—clock the glass diorama with a sailboat in it behind the bar, and the framed portraits of sailors unknown on the wall—with dishes that trick you into thinking they're simple but will make your eyes go wide. There's a toast topped with an herbaceous 'green sauce' and fluffy grated parmesan ($10); roasted fennel with goat cheese that you'll text at least one person about ($14); mussels cooked in wine and served on toast with a fennel aoili ($16); plus an ode to Zuni Cafe's anchovy with celery and parmesan ($10). What also stands out is how many items clock in under $15 (and frankly, those small plates were my favorites), including the house wines at $9 a glass. It feels like the kind of place you could go once a week—if it weren't so hard to get in.—Megan Spurrell, associate director, articles
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- Gary Herestaurant
Cote
$$$Head 10 blocks south of New York’s Koreatown (see an itinerary of the neighborhood here), and you'll find Cote, a Korean steakhouse and one of the city’s best and buzziest restaurants. There’s no shortage of a la carte options, but the prix-fixe Butcher’s Feast is where diners should start. For $74 a person, you're treated to seasonal ban-chan, savory egg soufflé, two stews (including spicy kimchi stew), and the house selection of beef, including USDA Prime and Wagyu, cooked on the table with smokeless grills. The restaurant’s award-winning wine list features an impressive Champagne selection, and all by-the-glass pours come from Magnums, the large-format bottles that sommeliers say keeps wines younger and fresher.
- William Abranowiczrestaurant
Café Carmellini
$$$Tucked inside the new Fifth Avenue Hotel, a 19th-century mansion turned exuberantly designed bolthole, is Café Carmellini, courtesy Andrew Carmellini, the chef behind Downtown favorites like Locanda Verde, Lafayette, and the Dutch. Its interiors mirror the old-school elegance of the building: Blue velvet and mustard leather chairs and banquets sit strikingly against Art Deco mirrors, concentric-circle chandeliers with more bulbs that I could count, and two very large trees that stretch up to the double-storeyed ceiling. There are plenty of seats to pick from (I have my eye on the bar seats for oysters and martinis the next time I visit), but for prime vantage, sit on the upper level with its opera-style box seats. The menu here draws on various sources of inspiration: some of Carmellini’s dishes are more personal, like the Shrimp Colonnata, a nod to a village near his family’s hometown in Tuscany, and the Grapefruit Sorbetto, an ode to his nonna; others are classic Italian like the duck tortellini; and still others that are homages to other great chefs, like the Scallops Cardoz, a touching tribute to the late Floyd Cardoz, who Carmellini worked with in the ‘90s. An 1800-bottle-deep wine menu accompanies dinner service as does a tight list of classic cocktails, but you’d do well to leave room for a nightcap at the hotel’s wood-paneled Portrait Bar down the corridor.—Arati Menon, digital director
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- Cervo'srestaurant
Cervo's
$$Cervo’s has been around since long before Dimes Square's new dining buzz, and it continues to be one of the area's best restaurants. The kitchen looks toward the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula—but the vivacious, tightly-packed space and the seasonal outdoor seating on Canal Street feels distinctly New York. The regularly changing menu always leans heavily into seafood and vegetables with lots of bright and briny touches like spicy mussels escabeche, butterhead lettuce salads tossed with anchovies and Roquefort, and little Manila clams cooked in vinho verde. While there are larger plate options like a fried skate wing and a lamb burger, the best meals at Cervo’s are the ones made up of many small plates you can leisurely work your way through. Like the food menu, the wine offerings are inspired by Spain and Portugal, with a number of orange bottles and other natural options. There’s also a vermouth service with seven vermouths on offer, and an excellent spritz.
- Alex Lau/Kisarestaurant
Kisa
$$For years before we lived together, my current roommate lived on East Houston and Allen, and for years I’d emerge from the 2 Avenue station on that corner, en route to her apartment, and pass by the kitschy Cuban restaurant occupying the corner lot. That Cuban restaurant is gone, and what’s taken its place is so lived in and natural an addition to the neighborhood that at first I was surprised it was a new restaurant at all. This is Kisa, a traditional Korean joint emulating a kisa sikdang (taxi driver’s restaurant) from the people that opened C as in Charlie just north of Houston last year. Whereas the fare there is experimental (Korean fusion served tapas-style), Kisa is hearty and simple. Everyone walks in (no reservations!) and pays the same $32 (delicious shochu, Korean sake, comes at an additional $9+ a glass), and all you have to do is pick your protein: there’s bulgogi, spicy pork, spicy squid, and bori bibimbap for the vegetarians. This choice comes as the centerpiece of an enormous, stainless steel platter of seven or so banchan that might include housemade kimchi, cured shrimp, or seaweed. Soup and white rice are also included. It’s heavenly simple ordering, but the eating is anything but, as you mix and match flavors and textures in combinations of two and three. The dining room is straightforward, almost like an apartment, the service is glowingly friendly, and if you have a quarter there’s a clever machine by the door that will make you a mocha or hot chocolate to send you on your way. —Charlie Hobbs, associate editor
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- Albert Cheungrestaurant
Wildair
$$Peer into this narrow space, with tall stools, high tables and be forgiven for thinking, “All this excitement…for a wine bar?” It is, in a sense, but before visions of big bills and dreadful food dance in your head, know that Wildair’s menu is one of the best in a city with some of the best food in the world. Like a chart-topping album, several singles on this menu have their fans. There’s one man eating the little gem–pistachio salad and raving about it. A few stools down, a woman goes wild for clams with XO in an almond broth. And they'll bar the doors if you try to leave without trying the tartare.
- Atoboyrestaurant
Atoboy
$$Inspired by banchan, but far more voluptuous and filling, the refined food at this Korean eatery (not to be confused with LES food-free cocktail temple Attaboy) is made by a hotshot, Michelin-starred chef. Think: Korean pear with calamansi,shrimp with white kimchi and buerre blanc, pork belly and cauliflower, or fried chicken with addictive peanut sauce. Desserts tend to be bright, floral eye-openers for the night ahead. Wine is the focus of the drink menu here, with a tightly curated list that leaves room for experimentation alongside the classic Californian and French numbers.
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- restaurant
Che Li
$$With its elegant thatched-roof dining room, twinkling waterfalls, and sophisticated menu of dishes from China’s Jiangnan region, CheLi feels worlds away from the St. Marks madness teeming just beyond its front door. The atmosphere is festive—especially when larger groups of stylish locals or nostalgic expats fill the sleek, lantern-lit booths—but never too loud to not hear your dining companions. The expansive menu spans crowd-pleasers like pillowy, porky soup dumplings and stir-fried rice cakes as well as specialities like tender chicken or chilled crab cooked in Shaoxing wine. Plan to share everything you order with your dining companions, and don't be afraid to ask the polished servers for recommendations on portions, how to course your meal, or drinks pairings advice—the bar serves a short but thoughtfully curated list of beer and wine, plus sake, Chinese rice wine, teas, and non-alcoholic drinks.
- Noah Fecksrestaurant
Adda Indian Canteen
$$New York’s neighborhoods are dotted with Indian takeout spots that serve a rotation of standards like chicken tikka masala and saag paneer. Adda, in Long Island City, Queens is not part of this club. Run by Roni Mazumdar of Rahi and executive chef Chintan Pandya, Adda offers, as they say, “‘unapologetically’ authentic Indian food.” That includes the housemade paneer. There’s also junglee maas, or goat curry, and snacks that come with a fair warning on the menu: “highly addictive.”
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- Courtesy Raoul'srestaurant
Raoul's
$$$At this old-school SoHo institution, the white tablecloths, pressed tin ceilings, and $58 steak au poivre belie a long history of button-pushing and rule-flouting. The top item? The burger au poivre, available only on the brunch menu. Burger hounds obsess over it and its drippy, creamy St.-André cheese topping. For desserts, the banana coconut bread pudding has its devotees. Come here when you’re curious about old, hard-living New York—when the SNL cast would roll out for dinner at 1 a.m., and people might end up dancing on the tables—and to see a slightly more sedate version today.
- Courtesy Don Angierestaurant
Don Angie
$$$Italian-American food may seem a dime a dozen in New York City, but this is the sort of place you'll need to return to at least four or five times to eat everything on the menu you want to order. The husband-and-wife chefs, Scott Tacinelli and Angie Rito, have been cooking together for nearly a decade—before this they were at Quality Italian in midtown—and whip up an inventive menu of next-level Italian-American: Think a stuffed garlic flatbread starter, with cheese oozing out of every tear; a take on Chrysanthemum salad generous with grated Parmesan; and a garganelli giganti pasta, cooked in a salty, delicious guanciale and pecorino ragù that's basically the spaghetti and meatballs of your dreams. Drinks stand up, too: a Nonna's Little Nip, a blend of grapefruit, Campari, and prosecco, or a Pinky Ring, a swirl of rye, Carpano Antica, Galliano, and Campari, are just what you need to take the edge off.
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- Evan Sung/Tatianarestaurant
Tatiana
$$$Chef Kwame Onwuachi’s ode to New York City’s Black Caribbean cultures occupies a glass-walled space in Lincoln Center—diners dress up for the opportunity to share elegantly plated dishes in the mod, bustling dining room. It's one of Manhattan's most challenging reservations to secure, which, depending on your personal worldview, may in fact make tucking into the extraordinarily creative menu all the more satisfying. Portion sizes are large and there are too many good dishes to choose just one or two, so the best way to tackle the menu is to come with a group and share. Start the meal with crispy okra, Egusi dumplings, or elegant curried goat patties with mango chutney, then move onto mains like braised oxtails with rice and peas. If you have the appetite (and the bank account), it’s worth investing in the short rib pastrami suya, a glamorous reimagining of the delicatessen favorite made with Wagyu beef and served with velvety red cabbage.
- Courtesy Gage & Tollner/Lizzie Munrorestaurant
Gage & Tollner
$$$Gage & Tollner is more than 100 years old, but somehow manages to feel exactly like a Brooklyn restaurant of today should: inviting, thoughtful, and bustling—with a dose of history mixed in for good measure. It’s the type of restaurant that reminds guests why New York is a great city to dine in. The landmarked interior at Gage & Tollner is lined with mirrors and cherry wood arches and lit by brass chandeliers. It’s precisely the type of place to order a classic cocktail, like one of the seven martinis on offer or a Manhattan. The menu leans into steakhouse classics like New York strip steak and shrimp cocktail, but there are more modern touches here too like clams kimsino, made with bacon-kimchi butter, and crispy hen of the woods mushrooms with black garlic aioli and house Sriracha. No matter your dinner order, make sure you save room for the baked Alaska created by former pastry chef Caroline Schiff, who was named a Best New Chef by Food & Wine in 2022. Under a large singed meringue coat sits layers of fresh mint, dark chocolate, and amarena cherry ice cream and chocolate cookie crunch.
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- restaurant
Cafe Kashkar
$At the end of the B and Q subway lines sits Brighton Beach, one of the city’s most overlooked dining neighbors (its position at the very edge of the city is responsible for this unfortunate reality). When visitors do make it down here though, they can find their way to plates of perfect sour cherry vareniki at Varenichnaya, baklava shipped from Istanbul at Brighton Güllüoglu Baklava Cafe, and an endless array of prepared foods, including rich blintzes, at Brighton Bazaar. The first stop though should be Kashkar Café, serving Uzbeki-Uyghur food rich in cumin, lamb, beef, and noodles.
- Photo by William Hereford/Courtesy Le Bernardinrestaurant
Le Bernardin
$$$Long known as one of the best restaurants in New York City and the world, Le Bernardin has graced New Yorkers with its presence for decades. What you want to do here is go all in for superstar Eric Ripert's tasting menu. The fish that dominates his prix fixe is largely untouched, save for the best flourishes, so you put yourself in the very capable hands of his sauciers. And don’t skip dessert—not at a restaurant the New York Times has awarded four-stars consistently since it opened in 1986. The service is also what you'd expect from a restaurant of this reputation: Everyone is so attentive it can almost be daunting (in a good way, in a good way).
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- Photo by Evan Sungrestaurant
Lilia
$$$This Williamsburg paean to pasta is in a former garage with exposed-beam wooden ceilings. Chef-owner Missy Robbins is one of New York’s finest pasta chefs. People come here for all sorts of carby stuff: rigatoni diavola, gnocchi, and ravioli. Start, though, with some cacio e pepe fritelle, gorgeous fried balls decked out with salty cheese and pepper, and move on to seafood, another Robbins strong suit. Maybe today’s the day for grilled clams flecked with Calabrian chilies? Cured sardines with capers? It’s all good. But, the absolute must-order dish is the mafaldini, a rippled noodle spiked with pink peppercorns. Reservations are hard to come by (you may need to book a month in advance) but snagging one is well worth the constant refreshes of Resy.
- Evan Sungrestaurant
Lucali
$Henry Street in Carroll Gardens Brooklyn is home to Italian families who have lived here for generations, the stroller set that moved in more recently, and Lucali, one of the city’s best pizzerias. Dining here takes patience and planning. Every afternoon a line forms outside of Lucali for “the list.” The restaurant starts taking names at 4p, after which you can head to nearby bars like Brooklyn Social or Bar Great Harry for a drink while you wait for them to call to say your table is ready.” It might be an hour, it might be three: Lucali is worth surrendering an evening for.
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- restaurant
Win Son
$$There’s a lot on the menu at Taiwanese Win Son, and little of it disappoints. Start with garlicky marinated cucumbers plus the clams and basil served with a scallion pancake. Then move onto fried eggplant with black vinegar; pan-griddled pork buns; tofu stir-fried with garlic chives and yunlin black beans; and sesame noodles made with black sesame, mushrooms, snow pea leaves, and peanuts. For dessert, there’s just one option: tian miantuan, a fried doughnut with vanilla ice cream and condensed milk.
- Photo by Damien Lafarguerestaurant
The Four Horsemen
$$$A chirpy staff helps it feel cozy—as does the knowledge that James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem) runs the joint. This is the sort of place, though, where you may consider inverting your drinking and dining budgets. Maybe you throw down 70 bucks for wine and 14 on butter beans in ham broth, deciding to listen to both sides of whatever album they're spinning, drink the whole bottle, and grab a slice of pizza later. The place is co-owned by four wine geeks and you see it all over the ludicrously long menu: There’s a whole page of orange wines, for example, and five pages devoted to Champagne. The list shifts pretty much day to day, and the staff will alert to you to what’s just in and what’s almost gone—a real oenophile’s dream.
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- Eduardo Cerrutirestaurant
Via Carota
$$Sparsely decorated yet warm and inviting, with plenty of wood and exposed brick, Via Carota is the kind of place where you might run into celebrities, but where you’ll feel totally comfortable sitting next to them in jeans and a T-shirt. But they don't take reservations here, so the flip side of all that cool is that waits at peak times can push three hours. The menu is full of supremely delicious creations from Rita Sodi and Jody Williams, who between them run Buvette in NYC and Paris, I Sodi a couple blocks away, and Bar Pisellino across the street. Even the relatively straightforward vegetable dishes, like the carrots with yogurt and pistachios, are remarkable in their fresh simplicity.
- restaurant
Sylvia's Restaurant
Framed photos of decades of notable diners including Barack Obama and Muhammed Ali line the deep red and exposed brick walls of this Harlem soul food institution. Opened by Sylvia Woods, a South Carolina-born cook and culinary entrepreneur, in 1962, the restaurant remains a family affair, owned and operated by generations of Woodses. The skilled kitchen turns out extraordinary takes on soul food classics. Try the expertly fried chicken, whose crackling skin encases achingly tender meat, plus a side of tangy collard greens and mac and cheese so velvety it hardly seems real. The pace and tenor of the service varies based on how thronged the dining room is on any given day—and it can get awfully busy—but the warm, knowledgeable staff handles it all with aplomb.
- ShoppingA New Season of The White Lotus Just Dropped, Along With a Ton of CollaborationsParis Wilson
- Courtesy Buvetterestaurant
Buvette
$$$You're back in that one Paris café you particularly loved, right down to the tiny tables and soft lighting. Your most important move is to order the anchovies on warm toast slicked with cold butter. After that go for hearty mains like cassoulet or one of the croque monsieurs, and maybe skip the buzzed-about chocolate mousse—we found it not worth the hype—in favor of a sweet, flaky tarte tatin. Also, while there is a full bar serving classic cocktails, most people come here for the wine, in part because chef-owner Jody Williams takes a lot of pride in her list. Go for rosé with friends over brunch or open a well-priced bottle of something from the Loire Valley to sip with charcuterie in the evening.
- Photo by Molly Yehrestaurant
Katz's Delicatessen
$Tourist destinations in New York rarely make it into regular rotation with locals. Katz’s is an exception. What started as a deli called Iceland Brothers has been slicing exceptional pastrami, corned beef, and loaves of rye bread on the Lower East Side since 1888 (and made the famous “I'll have what she's having” cameo in When Harry Met Sally). While the menu offers tuna fish, burgers, and even a cheesesteak, stick to the deli classics like pastrami, corned beef, and beef tongue sandwiches. Round out your order with a knish, a bowl of matzo ball soup, or cheese blintzes.
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