Trends in restaurants are like trends in art: cumulative, ambient, much more evident in retrospect than they are in the chaos of the present. If 2024 was the year that the French resurgence really took hold, bathing New York City in cream and caviar, maybe 2025 was the year of the scrappy, auteurish indie: restaurants with tight, potent, personal points of view (and tight, nearly impossible-to-get-into dining rooms). I’m thinking of places like Sunn’s, Ha’s Snack Bar, and Bong, where the relational experience of having a meal is less about being a person at a table and more about being a person in a room—being part of something, a moment, a place. For every timid, focus-grouped, over-designed brand expansion, there were half a dozen green shoots of passionate, community-facing, community-building dining rooms and takeout counters. On balance, this was an awfully good year for restaurants. I mean, yes, it was also a horrible one—beset by the chilling, wide-ranging effects of tariff uncertainty and vituperative ICE raids, and the rising costs of real estate, equipment, and ingredients—but the culinary world moved forward so relentlessly, so creatively nonetheless.
New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
But the following is a list of best dishes, not of best restaurants. Thinking about the year in terms of individual plates is always a challenge for me, and also a thrill. So much of one’s experience at a restaurant is contextual, dependent on the arc and flow of a meal, and singling out any one specific creation or sensory experience forces me to take stock in a more granular, almost animalistic way. Which dishes gave me a jolt of surprise? Which made me close my eyes with joy? Which lit up my synapses with sheer pleasure and satiety? No dish or bite can exist in a total vacuum: I think the very best single thing I put in my mouth all year was a regular old strawberry, raw and red, but so jewel-like, so sweet and flavorful that the flesh almost betrayed hints of vanilla and cream. The berry was part of a brunch-time fruit plate at Gjelina—though, importantly, it was the Gjelina in Venice Beach, where the restaurant is sun-drenched and low-slung, and not the new multistory location that opened in New York this year and almost immediately disappeared into the beige, luxe blandness of its ritzy NoHo block. I think, too, about the cucumber salad served at Golden Hof, the terrific new midtown Korean restaurant from the owners of downtown’s wonderful Golden Diner. The dish is a beautiful, arguably brilliant mess, like two salads in one, with crisp cukes dressed in a burned-sesame vinaigrette, and fresh cilantro tossed in a dressing made with puckery gochugaru, combined in a bowl with a shower of crispy fried garlic. Eaten on the restaurant’s main level, in the louder, more casual bar area, it’s one of the most raucous, exciting vegetable dishes I’ve had in recent memory. Unfortunately, the austerity and elegance of the downstairs dining room acts as a dampener, hushing the salad’s brashness and sapping much of the fun. All dishes, inevitably, are products of their environment.
Nevertheless! Here, in no particular order, are a dozen of the best dishes I ate this year, considered more or less on their own terms. (Respectably, for me, only three of them are sandwiches.)
Sable au Caviar Beurre Blanc at Chateau Royale
In a restaurant town flooded with Frenchness, Chateau Royale offers a welcome sense of cheeky self-awareness, with a backward-looking menu that embraces all the Gallic pomp and dairy fat of an earlier age. Like most other things on the menu, this dish, a piece of ultra-silky sablefish dressed with a caviar-studded butter sauce, isn’t original—indeed, Chateau Royale’s take is specifically inspired by a dish served at L’Ambroisie, in Paris—but it feels somehow shockingly fresh and modern. The edges of the fish fillet are crisp and golden, the sauce is glossy and feather-light. This is how old-fashioned opulence should feel: not heavy but illuminating, and joyous.
Peas & Carrots at the View
The view at the View, the reborn revolving restaurant atop the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, isn’t always terribly breathtaking—about a quarter of the time, your table is facing grids of windows from adjacent offices buildings—and getting up there, via the mega-hotel’s tiers of lobbies and sub-lobbies, is a real slog. But I haven’t stopped thinking about this unassuming side dish, a playful riff on the freezer-aisle cliché, featuring large, faceted hunks of orange carrot, and green peas as zippy and sweet as Pop Rocks, plus a hint of garlic and a sheen of butter. The only flourish is a tangle of gently sautéed pea shoots, which add dimension and a bit of sophisticated heft. It’s all so zippy and Technicolor that I honestly hope out-of-town friends will force me back to the View soon and give me an excuse to have it again.
Curry Goat at Kabawa
You’ve got to settle in for the full tasting menu at Kabawa if you want to try this dish, and that’s not a burden but a blessing. No restaurant made me feel as straight-up happy this year as Kabawa, where the chef Paul Carmichael’s lively, creative, technically adroit exploration of Caribbean flavors yields all hits, no skips. I could pick nearly any part of a meal there as a favorite, but the goat is an indisputable hero. Tender shredded goat meat, luscious and gently gamy, is formed into a tidy rectangle, then seared to a crackly crispness. The fiery sauce Creole spooned over top is dark, thick, complex, and alive with spices and a bit of fishy funk from dried scallops. The dish is crowned with a pile of glossy fried curry leaves, whose woodsy, otherworldly aroma eddies around your face as the dish is placed before you, a promise of imminent pleasure.
Chicken Parm at JR & Son
Two brilliant things are happening on this plate, a star dish at what I think might be one of the year’s most underappreciated new restaurants. The first is the tomato sauce, which blankets an enormous fried-chicken cutlet, and tastes so bright and fresh that I wondered if it was actually raw—it’s not, but it’s punched up with enough vinegar and gently hot Calabrian chile pepper that it activates all the summertime receptors in your brain. The second is the abundant scattering of sesame seeds, which is not a standard garnish for a chicken parm in its platter form, but which brilliantly evokes the seed-studded rolls that serve as the best vehicles for chicken-parm sandwiches. An entrée that’s too often a boring fallback for the unadventurous diner is transformed, here, into a clever, dazzling reward.
Bánh Mì Pate at Bánh Anh Em
Nearly every dish at this marvellous East Village restaurant is a kaleidoscope of flavors and textures, riotous with green herbs and vibrant pickles, but these sandwiches are unadorned, almost drab. They arrive as a pair, the small loaves, still warm from the oven, split lengthwise and stuffed with just two ingredients: a smear of spiced, unctuously meaty pate and a cloud of spun pork floss, airy and savory-sweet. Served with a cup of fermented hot sauce, for cutting through all the richness, it’s the best sandwich I’ve had all year: meticulously engineered minimalism at its most extravagant.
Whole Fried Fish at Bong
The fish—dorade, on my visits—arrives intact, glassy-eyed and gorgeous, its skin scored into diamonds and crispy as the top of a crème brûlée. Forget the utensils: this is hand food. Pluck off a piece of fish, place it in one of the leaves of lettuce that come alongside, then tuck in a sprig of coriander and maybe a sliver diếp cá (fish mint). There are two sauces for dipping, one a fermented hot sauce and the other a salty-sour tamarind sauce with a dusky depth. Pick and mix, play around, lick your fingers, kiss your dining partner, find a combo of flavors and textures and spice that works for you, then flip the fish over and start it all over again on the other side.
Huevos Fritos con Patatas y Gambas at Bartolo
I’m still not entirely sure why Bartolo, a new Madrid-inspired restaurant in a charming West Village basement, categorizes this dish as an appetizer. It’s enormous, enough to serve as a full meal for two, featuring several potatoes’ worth of French fries (airy, crispy, melty) tossed with a boatload of massive shrimp, plus sizzly garlic oil and a few gold-yolked fried eggs. The hulking size, the heartiness, and the rustic simplicity all feel slightly off-kilter on this chic spot’s otherwise refined menu, but it works, the way a sock to the jaw works—simple, effective, forceful.
Filet O’Tofu at Mommy Pai’s
You’re almost certainly coming to this Nolita takeout window for the chicken, and both in tenders form and in sandwiches the chicken is absolutely great. But what will keep you coming back is the tofu. As the name of this sandwich suggests, it bears some structural similarities to a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish, but only in the sense that we human beings share more than half our DNA with a banana. A soft bun cradles an impossibly crisp-outside-and-tender-inside slab of tofu, which is topped with mayo and a pleasing squish of melted American cheese. But the rocket-to-the-moon additions are fresh cilantro, sharp scallions and red onion, a pile of pickled cucumber, and a huge slather of Mommy Pai’s spicy, mega-garlicky nam prik noom sauce, which is neon-green with pounded chiles. Like all the best sandwiches, it’s a satisfying synthesis of nostalgia and audacious invention.
Pastasciutta at Zimmi’s
Chicken has never been one of the world’s optimal pasta meats, having been thoroughly eclipsed by more flavorful, more versatile options like beef and pork. Zimmi’s secret is to forget about the usual bits of the bird and focus on the parts that really pack a punch. In the Provençal-inflected pastiascutta, the chef Maxime Pradié dresses fresh, buttery-silky tagliatelle in a glorious ragout built out of chicken livers and a host of the bird’s other organ meats. It’s rich, resonant, and complex, with sparks of green herbs cutting through the rumblingly deep flavors. In my review of the restaurant, back in February, I described eating this dish as “like kissing God full on the mouth.” I don’t think I can put it any better than that.
The Cheesesteak at Danny & Coop’s
It’s the only thing on the menu. It’s brought to you by a movie star. And, yeah, it’s worth it. Get it with hot peppers, or with a mix of hot and sweet. Eat it as soon as you can, so that the cheese is still hot and oozy, and the beef is tender and yielding. Turn your head to the side, unhinge your jaw, and prepare for a glorious mouthful. Will you catch a glimpse of Bradley Cooper, who’s been known to occasionally work the line? Who cares. Don’t get distracted. Eat your sandwich. ♦
