My 50 Favorite Restaurants in NYC: 20-11
Win Son - 159 Graham Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11206 (East Williamsburg)
American chef Trigg Brown’s Taiwanese restaurant Win Son is designed, above all, to fill you up. Click on their all-lowercase website’s menu and feast your eyes on a casually relayed variety of the most savory and stick-to-your-ribs dishes from the island nation, and even some new inventions that seem designed to outpunch their more traditional counterparts. From the sautéed fatty pork layering national dish lu rou fan to the buttery bun and tofu mayo-slathered chicken breast (which was a thigh when the restaurant first opened—go figure) forming the bulk of the “big chicken bun,” Win Son nails the indulgent proteins and carbs bolstering its spin on a specifically heavy-hitting set of Taiwanese dishes. Consider, however, that that standout chicken “bun”—really a classic though indeed especially large fried chicken sandwich—might be of more questionable provenance than the questionably composed Keelung street food classic known as the “nutritious sandwich,” whose combination of mortadella, shrimp cake, and pineapple I’ve never been brave enough to try. This freedom with cultural staples seems somehow salutary rather than distracting, and the cute, stylish space and variety of creative cocktails on offer (try the delicious and utterly bizarre Breakfast of Champions, topped with coconut flakes) additionally help to reveal that Win Son, hip and respectful, isn’t after authenticity so much as a vibrant dinnertime experience and the satisfied pat of a stomach as one walks away from the restaurant.
A&A Bake and Doubles - 1337 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11216 (Bedford-Stuyvesant)
Open since 2002 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, first on Nostrand Avenue and then in a larger shop on Fulton, Trinidadian restaurant A&A Bake and Doubles serves renditions of the two titular dishes so good it generates a mix of all seven deadly sins within the consumer. Order their soft, luscious bake with saltfish, or perhaps corned beef for the real carnivores—either way, the fried flour is a perfect level of subtly resistant to the delectable filling, making the whole dish a veritable sensory overload. The doubles, made of curried chickpeas layered onto flatbreads, are equally masterful, and can be filled with your choice of three sauces, the tamarind option earning pride of place in a lot of customers’ hearts. A&A’s small menu hasn’t kept it from gaining a cultlike following, and has surely helped to keep the prices of its amazing baked and fried savory goods unusually low for a restaurant of its prominence.
White Bear - 135-02 Roosevelt Avenue, Flushing, NY 11354 (Flushing)
You see the same dish on every table inside Flushing’s White Bear, a tiny Chinese restaurant right off the 7 line’s terminus on the Queens neighborhood’s Main Street. That dish, often known as the “#6” due to its numerical listing on the surprisingly robust menu, is the wontons in chili oil, a spectacularly fluffy set of pork dumplings sluiced in a fiery orange oil with crunchy spoonfuls of preserved vegetables, though the vivid visuals end up as something of a red herring, providing no substantive kick to the dish. Indeed: New York’s best plate of wontons in chili oil is somewhat mild when all is said and done, seizing the tongue not with spice or a numbing sensation but with the potent sweetness of soy and sesame, the sharp green note of the vegetables, and the unbelievable softness of the floury wrapping. White Bear’s classic digs are the definition of casual, which somehow makes the deliciousness on your plate feel like the result of a miracle performed in secrecy.
Good Ol Days Diner - 212 Patchen Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11233 (Bedford-Stuyvesant)
Good Ol Days Diner, a small and spectacular soul music-themed eatery on Patchen Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, feels like a definition rather than a powerful example of a hidden gem, so delicious and so lovingly crafted its grub. Good Ol Days’ variety of filling options is familiar but not boilerplate, and the savory flavors are carefully assembled in each dish rather than layered in hedonistic piles or arranged ultra-meticulously to be photographable. In the cute backyard or the indoor space lined with vinyl records, feast on a grilled chicken, red pepper, and pesto sandwich known by the name of the diner that formerly occupied this space, “The Winfield,” and bear witness to perfectly cooked poultry sharpened by the burst of thick slices of pepper. Large plates of French toast come topped with fresh strawberries, and the balance between those flavors is likewise masterful, the subtle crunch of the sweet strawberry skins giving way to the soft interior of the eggy, pan-fried bread. Everything on Good Ol Days’ menu is a hit, and the people running the diner are incredibly warm and friendly. When it comes to Good Ol Days, a mere recommendation hardly seems like enough—really, what I’d like to do is live there.
Thai Diner - 186 Mott Street, New York, NY 10012 (SoHo)
With its radio system constantly bumping Sublime Frequencies compilations of traditional Thai pop music and its decor brandishing bamboo and wood and epoxy everywhere the eye can see, Thai Diner makes no bones about its “elevated” aesthetic, prizing an odd mix of hipness and tradition that might serve to conceptually disassemble both sides of the equation were the food not so good. Run by the couple who opened legendary Spring Street Thai restaurant Uncle Boons, where a papaya salad nearly made me cry in a good way, Thai Diner works as a more casual and inviting counterpart serving up a lot of the same dishes and certainly the same philosophy. On the first page of the menu, Thai twists on diner classics throw out a collective curveball, with dishes like a plate of soy-anise breakfast eggs or Thai tea French toast, but what you really want are the luscious and savory treats formerly perfected at Uncle Boons, including the famously unctuous crab fried rice and the very large coconut sundae. Thai Diner is warm and bright and inviting as a restaurant, which makes the experience of eating the luxurious food a bit more casual than it was at the perpetually dark Uncle Boons. But why continue to compare the two? Thai Diner is its own restaurant, and how: many restaurants have tried to upscale the diner experience and many more have tried to fuse Thai street cuisine with other nations’ casual snacks, but they’re usually not much fun at all. Thai Diner is the definition of fun—and its gem hasn’t dimmed a glint for being so visible.
Mission Chinese Food - 45 Mott Street, New York, NY 10013 (Chinatown)
Danny Bowien’s outrageous restaurant Mission Chinese Food, which has opened and closed more times than I can count, promises to be a party and is one: on social media and in local news coverage, see celebrities and wannabes alike gather around massive, elaborate plates of kung pao pastrami and Sichuan peppercorn-dusted fried chicken wings, alcohol flowing, red velvet walls (or sometimes, as with their Bushwick location, glowing fluorescent lights) dressing the whole scene in an atmosphere of anachronistic luxury. Bowien clearly doesn’t mind the flashiness of his chosen young-millennial milieu, and his absurd and mouthwatering dishes mean you should pretend not to, as well. Those chicken wings are nigh-on perfect for their full-hearted inquiry into the relationship between heat and taste—I’ve never had so much fun feeling my tongue go numb—and the beef and broccoli might be even better, with its masterful slathering of a fatty and delicious oyster sauce onto the plate entire, no apologies necessary. Mission Chinese, a Lower East Side fixture in the late 2010s, feels like it prefigured the whole Dimes Square aesthetic, which I barely want to get into, and I don’t see the restaurant’s resonant bauble, now hosted seasonally somewhere around Mott Street, as entirely without fault in helping to inspire one of the most uselessly bandied-about “cultural movements” it has ever been New York’s displeasure to host. But Mission Chinese Food is also goddamn delicious and a good time to boot—Bowien and crew are therefore not so much broken clocks as the genius progenitors of a wayward counterculture. Mission Chinese, above all, consistently manages to provide an unforgettable dining experience—I plan to be back very soon.
Mitchell’s Soul Food - 617A Vanderbilt Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11238 (Prospect Heights)
Mitchell’s Soul Food, in Prospect Heights, is quiet, humble, a bit slow, and always delicious. It is one of my favorite places to take a friend for lunch in Brooklyn; the aesthetic and environment, vaguely akin to being in someone else’s home, seem to encourage politeness and gratitude, and I enjoy being nudged into the best version of myself I can be. Plus, the food is delicious: cast your gaze upon perfectly crispy and juicy fried chicken placed on a plate alongside two dishes from their small menu of sides—okra with corn and tomatoes, yams, red beans with ham, and a few others—and rest assured that you’ve picked not just a hidden gem but the hidden gem designed to fill you up with pure warmth. The food at Mitchell’s comes out at a molasses pace, but anyone using their five senses would discern that pace to be a function of the care they put into their food. Plus, the affectionate and nostalgic vibe inside the restaurant means you won’t mind waiting—it might even mean you won’t want to leave.
Wah Fung No. 1 Fast Food - 79 Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002 (Chinatown)
Wah Fung No. 1 Fast Food is a small shop in Chinatown famous for its rendition of the sweet-and-savory barbecued pork dish, originating in the coastal province of Guangdong, known as char siu. Inside the tiny space, two chefs pick duck and pig legs off hooks hanging from the ceiling and have at them with huge cleavers slapping the tops of wooden cutting boards; the results are handed to you a mere minute or two later, and suddenly you’re on your way, likely to nearby Roosevelt Park, to chow down. (Wah Fung No. 1 Fast Food has no seating.) What makes Wah Fung’s odd process worth it, even though these days it often includes a line snaking outside the door, is the savory intensity of its pork, the greasy mix of the pork fat and rice, and its delicate, crunchy cabbage. To be fair, that’s just a list of the three ingredients incorporated into their most popular dish, but each is rendered so fully and unpretentiously as to launch Wah Fung above many fancier locations trying to provide the same umami kick. Though it’s not as cheap as it used to be, the small serving of char siu over rice, more than enough food for one person, is still one of the best food deals in all of New York City.
Ayada - 7708 Woodside Avenue, Elmhurst, NY (Elmhurst)
Elmhurst’s Ayada serves lip-smacking noodle dishes and beautiful and elaborate main courses that somehow feel a cut above even the many other acclaimed Thai restaurants in the area. Purveyor of a spectacular pad kee mao, a popular dish featuring bouncy broad rice noodles, colorful vegetables, and the spicy perennial known as holy basil, Ayada sluices many of its dishes in how-did-they-do-that-delicious renditions of fish and soy sauce, demonstrating that the finest restaurants often nail details on the smallest and hardest-to-detect of scales. Ayada is a beacon of consistency in a culinary atmosphere that periodically seeks to intervene on tradition and make what is putatively uncool cool again. Flavors as scrumptious as those on offer at Ayada will never be uncool, though, and it’s nice to have a reminder that certain bona fides cannot be surpassed by food-world sophistry—the application of ingredients, the quality of meats, the careful balance of divergent flavors. Ayada, for my money, is New York City’s most powerful embodiment of the classic taste profiles that have helped historically to define the spectacular cuisine of Thailand.
Superiority Burger - 119 Avenue A, New York, NY 10009 (East Village)
The East Village’s vegan diner Superiority Burger was once a very inexpensive burger shop and is now a bit of a wallet-buster of a sit-down restaurant, which kind of sucks, but nothing else about it does: this is still the best vegan/vegetarian restaurant in all of New York City, and it’s not particularly close. Their titular burger, apparently crafted of some ungodly mix of quinoa and chickpeas and carrots, is still a tantalizing morsel, striking a perfect balance between crunchy (which seems inevitable) and chewy (which is impressive), and their new-fangled cocktails are nearly as good. Try also the frizzled onions of the “Sloppy Dave,” and their impressive range of desserts, often placed in a rotating display case on the big bar in the back. Owner and chef Brooks Headley, who used to be a punk music drummer, has somehow performed the magical sleight-of-hand of transforming his notably “DIY” hype machine into a real-ass restaurant—one, it should be noted, that’s not just somewhat but rather extraordinarily fun to hang out in—without noticeably redirecting his community-based ethos. The original Superiority Burger, on its best nights, resonated with personality—a real, genuine personality, almost certainly Brooks’ in part but also incorporating those of the people he served and hung out with. Sure, it’s a little odd to see that personality dressed all fancy all of a sudden—but we shouldn’t judge Headley or really anyone else for having seized the material opportunity to be their best selves as long as that’s really what they’re trying to be. And indeed, judging by the newly revitalized classic delicacies and the ones he’s invented in the interim, his best self is exactly who Brooks Headley is trying to be. Quoth my high school students: let the man cook.
Top 10 next week.