My 50 Favorite Restaurants in NYC: 40-31
Taste of Guilin - 6003 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11220 (Sunset Park)
In 2017 or so there existed in New York City a craze for gluten-free rice noodle dishes inspired primarily by the cuisine of Yunnan, the southwesternmost province of China, bordering Myanmar. Esteemed restaurants like Sunset Park’s Yun Nan Flavour Garden and underrated ones like Division Street’s dearly departed Deng Ji Noodle House II made their name on the strength of these light, chewy, and thin morsels, often separating out the tasty chicken and pork broth into its own bowl and dumping tons of ingredients on top of the dry noodles, in a Yunnanese style known as “crossing the bridge noodles”. My favorite take on this dish can be found at the small, unassuming Taste of Guilin, nested within a tea shop on Sunset Park’s 7th Avenue. Different cuts of protein, from pork to what looks like beef tongue, are laid in strips atop the bouncy noodles, joined by fried peanuts and various greens, including the indelible freshness of cilantro. The place is small—practically invisible from the street, in fact—but shouldn’t be missed for its adventurous approach to gluten-free eating, as well as for the chance to explore the fascinating mixture of cultures and culinary traditions that is Sunset Park.
Margon - 136 West 46th Street, New York, NY 10036 (Midtown)
Not so much an old standby as a miracle, Cuban restaurant Margon, open in some form since 1970, provides an atmosphere of warmth and accessibility despite being located half a block east of the madness of Times Square. A wonderfully cramped railroad car of an eatery with somewhat limited seating, Margon serves up delectable renditions of classic dishes like pernil and roast chicken at prices that are beyond reasonable for the area. Margon opens at 7AM (except for Sundays, when it’s closed) and immediately fills up with a gratifyingly interesting and dynamic clientele, but its hearty and humble food offerings are what give the restaurant’s rootedness in a vibrant community a fundamental sense of buoyancy. The greatest of restaurants deliver to us something of the familiar and something of the spectacular, and Margon deserves all the accolades it can get for managing this balance all while burrowed deep in the heart of Manhattan’s chaos.
New York Pizza Suprema - 413 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10001 (Midtown)
This cozy pizza shop less than a block southwest of Penn Station, open since 1964, serves one of the best cheese slices in the city. It also feels like a prophetic institution, as its array of unique flavors and toppings on display calls forth images of the highly accomplished and ambitious slice shop Mama’s Too, near Columbia University, or of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Caribbean-inflected innovation/hype machine Cuts and Slices: at Suprema, feast your eyes not only on BBQ and buffalo chicken, but also chicken parmigiana, burrata, pepperoni fra diavolo, hot honey, even fig. Dare I say the high prices, pitched above the competition for years, even feel somehow “forward-thinking,” albeit perhaps in the wrong way? New York Pizza Suprema is an unlikely pleasure, rendering the process of choosing from their creative slices nearly as fun as watching the big game at MSG.
Supermoon Bakehouse - 120 Rivington Street, New York, NY 10002 (Lower East Side)
Supermoon Bakehouse, which lies right across the street from the commendable church-basement vibes of $2 PBR-purveyors Welcome to the Johnson’s, is a full-blown Instagram Bakery, loud and proud about its late-capitalist heritage, every detail designed to be photogenic and to generate FOMO in the hearts and minds of phone-users everywhere. Some of the offerings on display in the rainbow-drenched space feel weird to look at, somehow hyperreal, as if their various perfections serve to dissolve the perceptual boundaries between the work of man and that of machine. But most of what you can eat at Supermoon is wonderful, pleasurable to bite into and luxuriate in even if the food seems rooted less in any specific national baking tradition than in Freud’s concept of the uncanny. Try the unimaginably soft cookies, or the vividly spicy pepperoni focaccia.
Congee Village - 100 Allen Street, New York, NY 10002 (Lower East Side)
I distinctly remember the service at Congee Village, because it was terrible. We couldn’t get a word in edgewise, got hardly a glance from the waiters the entire night; the process soon became its own oddball inside joke, a kind of Seinfeld-ian bit in which the frisson between the collapse of propriety and the desire to secure some kind of treasured grand prize is the context of the humor. The grand prize of the huge and elaborately decorated Congee Village is not only the congee itself, a hearty creamy rice porridge filled with cuts of your chosen protein and topped with fresh green onions, but also an assortment of random and often surprising dishes dispersed throughout the menu—who knew that pan-fried minced pork could be so flavorful? Every time I’ve gone to Congee Village since that first, memorably cold encounter has been the same—cold, memorable. I’ve always been game to make excuses for a restaurant that brings a holistically transformative experience, though, and, I mean, they do seem busy and all.
Ciao, Gloria - 550 Vanderbilt Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11238 (Prospect Heights)
At the airy and colorful Ciao, Gloria, witness the gratifying spectacle of a perfect café menu executed perfectly. From a farro-centric “Autumn Grain Bowl” to an “elevated” take on the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich whose creamy deliciousness serves as justification for a troubled premise, Ciao, Gloria nails the balance between lavish flavors and accessible presentation. Exceedingly nice to work in but sometimes very busy, Ciao, Gloria is not singular in its ambitions, because its premier innovation is simply to nail the little things consistently. 21st-century culinary buzzwords abound—would you like “Calabrese aioli on house made brioche with everything seasoning” with your BEC?—but Ciao, Gloria’s food and vibe are never tiresome, never pompous. (And that aioli is something else.) Trendy at heart, the proprietors day by day divert those fingers on the pulse to fashion comfort food with admirable focus—and why shouldn’t everyone multitask so?
Okonomi - 150 Ainslie Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 (Williamsburg)
This Japanese restaurant, which serves traditional breakfast plates by day and ramen by night, is tucked away on a quiet street near South Williamsburg and only seats 12. As such, and also because the food is delicious, Okonomi feels mystical, like it possesses a sacred aura, a force field encircling it and protecting it from bad vibes. Sit at the bar and witness the chef carefully fashion a plate of flawless salmon sashimi, or a version of ramen without broth called mazemen topped with lightly cooked bacon stubs and a big, beautiful egg. The food’s delicious textures both assert their autonomy and seem unusually linked to the intimacy of the space itself—love is present at all scales of the operation. A nearby fish shop named Osakana that provides expensive sushi making workshops and a restaurant in Hawaii have rendered the Okonomi team’s culinary ventures into a Lucali-like project of upward and outward expansion, but the meticulous warmth emanating from the restaurant itself brings it all back home.
Luigi’s Pizza - 686 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215 (South Slope)
Open since 1973, this beautiful slice shop on a car-heavy thoroughfare south of Park Slope serves up a notable pepperoni slice, keeps its prices low with intention, and provides an exceedingly affable environment in which to dine, welcoming to neighborhood characters and outsiders alike. Tomatoes bright and crust crispy, the Luigi’s slice is improved rather than chipped away at by the addition of their delectable and fresh-tasting toppings. It’s a particular joy to eat that pepperoni slice somewhere near the street and watch the cars pass by, seemingly unaware of what they’re missing.
Nate’s Detroit Pizza - 220 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11201 (Boerum Hill)
Detroit pizza came to New York City in the form of restaurants like the Emily spinoff Emmy Squared and the retro arcade vibes proffered by Williamsburg’s Ace’s Perfect Pizza, but this recently opened pie shop, started by a former senior reporter for CNBC, instantly became the best of the bunch despite modest beginnings inside a now-defunct catering institution called “Cobblestone Foods”. Its crust is a particular marvel, tasting delicious with each bite, never losing its buttery tang, edible the whole way through—in contradistinction to many a prized New York slice, where you want to throw the thing away after a while. Not cheap, Nate’s Detroit Pizza earns every cent through its attention not simply to “detail” broadly defined but moreso to how the combination of those details can render the pizza eminently pleasurable as an experience—not just at the start of the meal, but all the way through to the end.
Emilio’s Ballato - 55 East Houston Street, New York, NY 10012 (NoHo)
Emilio’s Ballato is not for everyone. For one, Emilio himself tends to sit at a table near the entrance of the restaurant and stare down the clientele along with his 1-3 other beefy compatriots. On top of that, the portions are small: the spaghetti and meatballs comes outfitted with only two of the latter, and the pile of spaghetti in the middle at first appears a bit diminutive. Dare I mention that the menu isn’t even particularly affordable? But Emilio’s Ballato nonetheless conjures up an unbelievably convincing sense of unfettered immersion into Italian cuisine and culture, and the food is as painstakingly rendered as it is warm and, against all odds, filling. Whatever transportation metaphor you wish to deploy, Emilio’s Ballato gets the job done: it is supremely disorienting in a supremely pleasurable way to be in the midst of its bustle. Nearly as good as the red-sauce Italian classics on the menu one special night was a beer from the rare California brewery Alpine that I had the pleasure to sip while chowing down on my spaghetti. When I came back one day to ask what the name of the beer was, I couldn’t receive a straight answer; Emilio’s Ballato seems to pose with quiet but forceful irreverence the question of whether all that noise is what’s distracting us from forming a real community. I mean, goodness, my guy, are you gonna ask what farm your meatballs came from?
30-21 in a few days…