The Best Places to Eat and Drink in New York

The chicken bastilla arrives dusted with powdered sugar and rose petals, which sounds precious until you taste it and understand why the New York Times critic put it on her favorites list. This is a modest, neighborhood Moroccan cafe in Astoria where the cooking is traditional and the prices are gentle. The pastry crackles, the filling runs sweet then savory, and the two never quite separate. A $12 dish that requires a hundred paper-thin layers to pull off.

1. The New York Times #78 · The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City
2. The Infatuation #12 · NYC’s Best New Restaurants
3. The New York Times 2025 · Chicken Bastilla · Our New York Restaurant Critic Names Her Favorite Dishes This Year

Dale Talde's Hong Kong-style restaurant sits inside a carriage house on a sprawling Hudson Valley estate, where the dining rooms look like someone inherited very good furniture and actually kept it. The menu runs kung pao wings alongside bao stuffed with crispy shrimp and daikon, the kind of cooking that's both nostalgic and quietly restless. Dressy-casual crowd, unhurried pace, and a setting that makes Tarrytown feel like a reasonable destination.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: New York State · Dale Talde

A reservation here is the kind of thing West Village regulars treat as a competitive sport, so walk-ins at odd hours are the move. Rita Sodi's cozy Italian neighborhood restaurant on Bleecker changes its daily specials with the seasons while holding certain signatures hostage in the best way. The bar handles a Negroni with conviction, and the room hums all night with the particular energy of a place where nobody looks like they're having a bad time.

1. The New York Times 2016 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Grub Street The 43 Best Restaurants in New York

The rooftop of the Hoxton Hotel in Williamsburg, with the Manhattan skyline doing its thing at sunset, is a solid place to eat skewers. This is Michael Solomonov's skewer house, and the format is pleasantly fixed: a spread of salatim to start, then meat and vegetable skewers over the coals, then soft-serve. Reservations are famously hard to land, which tells you something about how the room fills on a Tuesday.

1. The New York Times 2022 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. AAA Approved
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Soho

1. The New York Times 2014 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Eater The Best Classic Restaurants in NYC

1. The New York Times 2018 · 3 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Grub Street The 40 Best Restaurants for Kids (and Parents!)

The carved wooden panels and semi-private booths signal that this is not your average strip-mall Chinese restaurant, even if the exterior gives nothing away. A full-service Chinese dining room in Hartsdale drawing multigenerational families on weekend nights, it runs classics like garlic-pepper shrimp and slow-cooked Beijing duck with real kitchen discipline. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod, and the Michelin Guide has taken notice too.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: New York State · Eric Gao

A few steps from Union Square, Ribalta is a Neapolitan pizza spot that takes its dough seriously, the kind of light, well-leavened crust that makes the New York slice feel like a different food entirely. The room is spacious and lively without being loud, and the menu runs well beyond pizza into appetizers and mains. It landed at number eight on 50 Top Pizza USA, which the regulars packing the tables on a Tuesday probably already knew.

1. 50 Top Pizza #19 · 50 Top Pizza World
2. 50 Top Pizza #8 · 50 Top Pizza USA

Roman-style pizza by the slice is the draw here, baked in rectangular trays with a crust that's crispy on the bottom and genuinely airy inside. This is a counter-service slice shop near a hospital complex in Mineola, so the crowd skews commuters and med students who know what they're doing. Toppings lean contemporary, burrata and mortadella among them. It ranks on both 50 Top Pizza Slice USA and 50 Top Pizza World, which for a Long Island strip-mall counter is a fun fact to drop.

1. 50 Top Pizza #99 · 50 Top Pizza World
2. 50 Top Pizza #5 · 50 Top Pizza Slice USA

The house-made tortillas holding together the tacos here tell you what kind of place this is: a casual, all-day Mexican eatery in NoHo where the cooking is straightforward and the room stays bright and airy from morning through dinner. Larger plates are built for sharing, and the churros at the end feel less optional than the menu lets on. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks with the crowd that fills it without making a fuss about it.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The New York Times 2025 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. The New York Times 2013 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Time Out The 45 best restaurants in NYC right now

A tea bar up front handles quick orders while the real action unfolds at the long communal tables in back, which tells you everything about how Cha Kee operates. It's a Hong Kong bistro in the thick of Chinatown, with a menu that runs from wonton soup to beef chow fun to a dim sum list that could keep a table debating for twenty minutes. Portions are built for sharing, and the groups who pack those banquettes seem to know it.

1. The New York Times 2021 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Wolfgang Puck's steakhouse inside the Four Seasons Downtown plays against the Manhattan steakhouse template, swapping dark wood and power-broker gravity for modern art and a lounge soundtrack that makes the room feel closer to a dinner party than a boardroom. The menu runs USDA prime, Wagyu, and grass-fed Angus alongside Maine lobster and sashimi, which is either a refreshing detour or a distraction, depending on your theology.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. The New York Times 2016 · 1 star · Restaurant Review

The slices here are slender, which is a statement in a borough where bigger is considered better. F&F is a slice shop in Carroll Gardens running a quiet argument for restraint: a careful sauce-to-cheese ratio, toppings used sparingly and only when they add something. The New York Times put it on their short list of the city's best pizza places, and Grub Street agreed. Come hungry but not starving, because the line moves at its own pace.

1. Grub Street The 43 Best Restaurants in New York
2. The New York Times The 22 Best Pizza Places in New York Right Now

1. The New York Times 2015 · 2 stars · Restaurant Review
2. Grub Street The 40 Best Restaurants for Kids (and Parents!)

1. The New York Times 2012 · 3 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Grub Street The 40 Best Restaurants for Kids (and Parents!)

Freshly baked pita lands on the table almost before you've settled in, which is either a warning or a promise at this upmarket Lebanese restaurant in the Flatiron. The name means "tell me" in colloquial Arabic, and the format backs that up: sharing plates built around hot and cold meze, hummus in several moods, baba ghanoush, fattoush, falafel. Mains like seared lamb chops reward anyone who holds back.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The New York Times 2016 · 2 stars · Restaurant Review
2. Grub Street The 40 Best Restaurants for Kids (and Parents!)

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurant
2. The Infatuation Mole Poblano · 25 Iconic Dishes That Define New York

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. East

1. The New York Times 2021 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Esquire #35 · The Best New Restaurants in America
3. BagelUp #15 · The Definitive 30 Best Bagel Shops in New York City

1. Vogue The 25 Best Restaurants in Brooklyn, According to Vogue Staff
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. The New York Times 2018 · 1 star · Restaurant Review

The cerulean counter is handmade, the seafood is sustainably sourced, and the menu wanders freely from hand-roll culture to XO grits without apology. Rosella is a sushi shop on Avenue A that treats local, responsibly harvested fish with restraint and a little mischief. The wine list leans domestic, pulling from the North Fork and the West Coast. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and Esquire put it on their best new restaurants list.

1. The New York Times 2021 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Esquire #25 · The Best New Restaurants in America
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. The New York Times 2022 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: New York State · Helen Nguyen
3. Eater The Best Lower East Side Restaurants

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Best Chef: New York State · Ayesha Nurdjaja

Hip-hop plays over a 20-seat sushi bar, which sets the tone before the fish even arrives. Shuko is an omakase spot where the team, veterans of Masa, runs two tasting menus: a straight sushi and sashimi course, or a fuller kaiseki route with composed dishes alongside the nigiri. Both come with optional wine and sake pairings. The meal ends with apple pie, a quiet signal that the reverence for Tokyo tradition only goes so far.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The New York Times 2015 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review

No televisions anywhere, which tells you everything about the clientele. Swift is an Irish pub in NoHo named for the author of Gulliver's Travels, and the room looks like it's been quietly absorbing conversation since forever: long winding bar, exposed brick, reclaimed church pews, barstools worn in just right. Creative types fill it looking for somewhere to talk without shouting over a game. Civilised is the word.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A plate-glass window in the exposed-brick wall looks straight into a working still, which tells you everything about what kind of cocktail bar this is. The Shanty is the front room of New York Distilling Company, so the gin in your glass traveled about twenty feet to get there. It sits on a quiet warehouse block in Greenpoint, easy to miss, which seems to suit the regulars just fine.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The New York Times 2012 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review

Leather, iron, and glass fill the dining room at this upscale Japanese izakaya on Madison Avenue, where the sharing format means robata skewers and pristine sushi on shaved ice arrive at the table more or less continuously. The black cod wrapped in hoba leaf has become a signature across the brand's global outposts. Desserts, meanwhile, have their own Instagram following, which tells you something about the clientele and the lighting.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A small, family-run Italian trattoria a short walk from Carnegie Hall, where regulars get greeted by name and the menu shifts daily around house-made pastas and fresh grilled fish. The room has the kind of unhurried, personal energy that midtown Manhattan mostly stopped producing a generation ago. Prices stay reasonable, the service is warm without being performative, and some of the clientele treat it as an annual pilgrimage.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Jean-Georges Vongerichten's farm-to-table restaurant sits inside the ABC Carpet & Home store in the Flatiron, which is either charming or a bit much depending on your tolerance for browsing reclaimed furniture before dinner. The menu is strictly seasonal and organic, rotating through whole wheat pizzas, house-made pastas, and whatever the market decided that week. Brunch draws a crowd that takes their doughnuts very seriously.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. AAA Three Diamonds

The brick oven sits in full view of the dining room, which at a Neapolitan-leaning pizza restaurant in Flatiron is either a statement or a dare. Audace is the kind of place where the dough does the talking: light, well-leavened, the sort that doesn't leave you horizontal by dessert. The room is calm and low-key, the service attentive without hovering. It landed on 50 Top Pizza USA and took their Best Cocktail List award, which is not a thing most pizza spots can say.

1. 50 Top Pizza #14 · 50 Top Pizza USA
2. 50 Top Pizza 2026 · Best Cocktail List · 50 Top Pizza USA Special Awards

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

A backyard in Park Slope and a margherita built on proper ingredients make Brooklyn DOP an easy neighborhood slice shop to fall into. The dough is treated with care, the format stays classic New York, and the beverage list is calibrated accordingly. The orange olive oil cake quietly outperforms every other decision you'll make that afternoon. It landed at number six on the 50 Top Pizza Slice USA list, which checks out.

1. 50 Top Pizza #6 · 50 Top Pizza Slice USA

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

A whole-pie-only pizza shop in Little Italy where forty-minute waits after ordering are a known feature, not a glitch. The room is dark wood and minimal, with long counter seating facing the oven, and it moves with the focused calm of a place that has decided exactly what it is. Thin, crispy NY-style pies, no topping customization, no half-measures. The New York Times named it among the city's best pizza right now.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza USA Excellent Pizzerias
2. The New York Times The 22 Best Pizza Places in New York Right Now

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Dress code enforced, portions sized for sharing, and a dining room that leans into Old World Spanish formality with enough commitment to make Newark feel briefly far away. This is a long-running Spanish restaurant where seafood paella and shellfish casserole anchor a menu built around generous plates of fresh seafood and steak. The kind of place where the garlic shrimp arrives without irony and regulars know better than to show up in sneakers.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Inside Chelsea Market, Filaga runs a counter-service slice shop where the tray pizza arrives crispy, well-seasoned, and loaded with ingredients imported from Italy. The kitchen, oven, and prep are all in plain sight, and the whole setup is designed for the market's constant foot traffic rather than a leisurely lunch. Seating is shared and wherever you find a spot. It ranked eighth on the 50 Top Pizza Slice USA list, which is the kind of thing that draws a line.

1. 50 Top Pizza #8 · 50 Top Pizza Slice USA

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. The New York Times 2023 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Roadbook The best restaurants in Greenpoint, New York

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Inside Chelsea Market, this Italian pasta restaurant is built around a dramatic oval table that frames an open kitchen at its center. The format isn't casual folklore but something more deliberate: the menu treats pasta as the whole point, cycling through seasonal and traditional preparations with the focus of a tasting menu. The wine list leans into Campanian producers. It landed at #16 on the 50 Top Italy world list.

1. 50 Top Italy #16 · The Best Italian Restaurants In The World

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

The ceviche comes in two registers here: the traditional Peruvian citrus cure and a Nikkei version that folds in Japanese technique, and both are the reason Chef José Luis Chávez graduated from market stalls to a proper sit-down restaurant on the Upper East Side. The room is clean and modern without feeling cold, the wine list holds up, and the pisco sours lean creative. A Michelin Selected spot that earns its spot by keeping the focus tight.

1. The New York Times 2019 · 1 star, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. AAA Three Diamonds

A sushi bar on Prince Street with the kind of sleek, warm-toned room that wouldn't look out of place on South Beach. Momoya is a Manhattan mini-chain that somehow avoids feeling like one, with a menu that swings between approachable rolls and more creative territory without losing its way. The staff actually pays attention, which in SoHo feels like a small miracle. Good for a date, good for a Friday, good for both.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

The low-slung 19th-century building gets swallowed by Midtown towers on all sides, which somehow makes it feel more defiant. P.J. Clarke's is an old-school Manhattan pub, dark-paneled and unhurried, with a worn mahogany bar, a zinc oyster counter, and photos of former barkeeps watching over things. Nothing much has changed since the gaslight era, and the crowd at the rail seems to prefer it that way.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Midtown

The veal chop Milanese and baked clams here read like a syllabus for classic Italian-American cooking, and the menu is long enough that you could eat your way through Queens one visit at a time. This old-school Italian restaurant in Corona has been around forever, and the kitchen shows no interest in trends, which is exactly the point. Finish with tiramisu and limoncello and you'll feel like someone's grandmother is watching approvingly.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

A Neapolitan pizzeria a short walk from Barclays Center, Pizza Secret lands at number 15 on 50 Top Pizza USA, which is not the kind of thing a slice shop does quietly. The dough is well-leavened and light, the kind that doesn't sit heavy, and the fried appetizers are worth ordering before the pie arrives. The room is renovated and family-friendly without feeling like a chain, and the service knows when to disappear.

1. 50 Top Pizza #15 · 50 Top Pizza USA
2. 50 Top Pizza 2026 · Best Fried Food · 50 Top Pizza USA Special Awards

A narrow interior walkway leads you into what was once a carriage house, now a fine dining room with white-painted brick walls and wide plank floors that do most of the decorating. Alfred Portale, a name Chelsea regulars have followed for decades, runs an Italian menu that stays close to the Mediterranean without being precious about it. The primi, particularly the fresh pasta, tend to be where the kitchen is most at ease.

1. The New York Times 2020 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds