My 50 Favorite Restaurants in NYC: 30-21
Ichiran - multiple locations
Ichiran, with a fun location in a factory in East Williamsburg and a more cramped one near K-Town in Manhattan, is a high production-value import of a Japanese ramen chain that dedicated fans of Japanese ramen claim is considered just average in its home nation. Specialized knowledge be damned: Ichiran is the best ramen I’ve had in New York City, and the aesthetic pull of the experience is a nonpareil. Ichiran, warm and red and wooden all over, is made up of many little booths you can sit in, either alone and closed away from everyone else via wooden partitions, or in a group bar style with the partitions down (or you can choose, boringly, to sit at one of their tables). This is a delightful experience, especially as the small space for food delivery in front of you is soon populated with disembodied hands excitedly passing you hearty bowls of ramen and refills of kaedama (extra noodles) or pork chashu. The broth is rich and perfectly salty, and the toppings are unusually vivid, though the bowl’s base price is relatively hefty. The unfamiliar way of dining at a restaurant encouraged by Ichiran seems worth the cost, though, and perhaps salutary for its own sake, mixing the codes of social interaction with the tranquility of solitude in a refreshing manner.
Mama’s Too - multiple locations
Talking about my history with pizza shop Mama’s Too feels very esoteric: I’d have to start with all the hype over the famous “spicy pepperoni square” at Prince Street Pizza, my disappointment in 2017 at the lack of balance anywhere in that umami flavor bomb, and my failed subsequent efforts to find a better rendition of the delicious-looking slice at newcomers like Made in New York. Needless to say, when another new spot hawking the same product opened three blocks north of the excellent slice shop Sal & Carmine (#42), I was skeptical. But Mama’s Too somehow got the job done: the creativity of the pies is clearly borne of the same set of instincts as the meticulous cooking and seasoning of the toppings and basic ingredients, so that poached pear on your pizza somehow feels less like a gimmick and more like an inspired twist on Thanksgiving dessert. The restaurant’s crown jewel is indeed that spicy pepperoni slice, the tomato sauce collaborating with the cheese more than is standard for the genre, resulting in a mix of flavors that is tastier and less of a mess than found on the squares at other slice shops.
Atoboy - 43 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016 (NoMad)
Korean restaurant Atoboy isn’t the most distinguished or acclaimed three-course tasting meal in New York City or even close, and its “industrial-minimalist school cafeteria” aesthetic ensures it isn’t the prettiest, either. But its small menu of significant choices—will you go with the sweet shrimp or the blowfish? The oxtail or the pork belly? How about adding the famous fried chicken supplement?—somehow feels like a purer expression of the fun of loving food than even the most ambitious prix-fixe experiences around the city. The ingredients, often arranged blithely in a hypnotic spiral or encircling a pool of warm and delicious broth or sauce, are treated with such care and grace that the forking paths you missed on the menu, those dishes left unexplored, call out for you to revisit later. The chef behind Atoboy, Junghyun Park, has also opened a much more expensive tasting-menu spot named Atomix, and even Atoboy’s prices have crept up significantly over the years, to more than double what they were when I had my first meal there. Miraculously, the restaurant somehow retains its feeling of elated creativity and expertise to this day, finding pride of place at the very bottom of the menu for a signed copy of Chef Park’s confidently titled The Korean Cookbook.
Bobwhite Counter - multiple locations
Avenue C fried chicken spot Bobwhite Counter has the best chicken sandwich in New York City, if for no other reason than because all the other competitors seem to have forfeited. (Delaney Chicken! Wilma Jean! We miss you!) Bobwhite’s small variety of sandwiches—fried, spicy, buffalo, catfish, and that’s just about all—are unadulterated hits, each offering perfectly cooked meat (or fish), a reasonable portion that might even be more 90% a meal than 100%, and a sense of control as to how the dramatically flavorful ingredients are applied. Bobwhite, far away from everything except the other great food institutions on Avenue C, like hip cocktail bar The Wayland and the cash-only Cuban spot Casa Adela, is also straight-up an amazing place to hang out, cozy but somehow beachy in its all-white design. Their fried chicken plates are good, too, but stick to the sandwiches: they’re the dishes here that truly feel like collaborations with the eminently chill space, like casual experiments in luxury, or especially precise measuring devices for one’s own sense of pleasure. And don’t sleep on the buffalo!
Charles’ Pan Fried Chicken - multiple locations
Charles’ Pan Fried Chicken has a storied history: Charles, born 1947, who still presides over the roiling pans of juicy chicken, has had restaurants open in Harlem since 1990 and served chicken out of a food cart long before that, and his convivial culinary project as of late has covered a lot of ground, opening a limited-seating takeout spot near 72nd and Broadway and cropping up on multiple intersections in the heart of Harlem. I frequented Charles’ previous Harlem location, located just east of St. Nicholas Park on 132nd Street, during my college summers, often attended to by a friendly cat lounging outside the doors, and concluded that those who swear by the living legend are right to do so. Charles’ lovingly and meticulously pan-fried birds outclass the offerings of other, more expensive chicken joints, crunchy and luscious in flavor and texture; each cut is somehow perfectly pitched between pure indulgence and a reasonably balanced snack, albeit one that’s liable to turn into a meal or more if you don’t hold yourself accountable. Particularly dig into the “center breast” cut, the juiciest of them all, and be assured that you’re devouring not just delicious food but the tangible history of the love and labor of a true New Yorker.
25. Red Hook Tavern - 329 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231 (Red Hook)
Red Hook Tavern, owned by Billy Durney, the proprietor of nearby Hometown Bar-B-Que, has a deeply refined “elevated-pub” aesthetic and serves the best burger in New York City. I have never liked burgers much—most of them are a slog to get through, in my opinion. The plump and picturesque burger at Red Hook Tavern, however, is different. The flavors of the burger, juicy and salty and complex and perfect, are enhanced rather than overwhelmed by the presence of raw onions, and the whole sandwich is not just edible nor delicious but sublime. The rest of the menu looks equally masterful coming out of the kitchen, as well—Durney is clearly working overtime to perfect his nostalgic and utopian (and quite expensive) vision of pub fare. The draw of the absolutely immaculate lighting, location, decor, and architecture of Red Hook Tavern is only at all tempered by its placement close to the historical longshoreman hangout Sunny’s, one of the most perfectly decorated bars in all of New York City—so why not visit both?
L&B Spumoni Gardens - 2725 86th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11223 (Gravesend)
L&B Spumoni Gardens, nested deep in Gravesend, Brooklyn, some 15 blocks north of Coney Island, is a large restaurant and outdoor pizza garden—I can’t think of a better turn of phrase—that also serves the somewhat mysterious turn-of-the-20th-century Neapolitan ice cream treat called spumoni. I’d skip the icy spumoni, but the pizza is addictive, and possesses the virtue of standing out stylistically from most spots in its dense application of cheese and especially tomato sauce on a thick square slice. L&B Spumoni Gardens’ specialty is therefore not particularly Neapolitan nor New York-y, belying what seems to me like its true intentions, which are to provide a dining experience ripped straight from some sun-dappled childhood, perhaps mine, perhaps yours: eating a hefty, tomato-y slice of pizza on a soggy plate atop a thermoplastic table, little kids running around like crazed cartoon characters, the salty breeze of the sea a mere mile away. The perfection of L&B Spumoni Gardens, in short, lies in its invocation of an experience both mystical and familiar: viva la nostalgia!
Taqueria Sofia - 187 Suydam Street, Brooklyn, NY 11221 (Bushwick)
Taqueria Sofia, a tiny Mexican restaurant tucked away on a quiet corner of Suydam Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, feels authentic not necessarily by any measure of cultural fidelity in its cuisine but instead to some kind of vision of virtuous labor: sometimes there are canned goods stacked around the perimeter of the already diminutive space, and the warmth of the interactions between employees gives the place a more overtly “family-run” vibe than almost any other taqueria in the city, with lots of kids taking orders. The albañil (i.e., apparently, “bricklayer”) “super torta,” which mixes hearty chunks of tongue-tingling chorizo with cuts of juicy steak, is a particularly compelling manifestation of this homegrown vibe, and the joy of scarfing down the decadent sandwich in the ramshackle space with a small cup of herbaceous green sauce at your side operates at a scale that is hard to describe, so modest its glory. Feel free also to sample the picaditas, thick and soft corn tortilla pockets stuffed with meat and either that same green sauce or a breathlessly spicy red sauce, both providing a beautiful hue to the composition on the plate.
The Wayland - 700 East 9th Street, New York, NY 10009 (Alphabet City)
The Wayland, located a few blocks north of Bobwhite Counter (#27) on Avenue C, is not so much a restaurant as a cocktail bar with food, and is furthermore a veritable scene. Yet it earns a spot on this list for its rigorously conceived vibe, somewhere between fussy and rustic, somehow suturing the space shared by what seem like opposite aesthetic poles. Situated just on the precipice of the hyperreal aesthetic proffered by new-school enterprises like Supermoon Bakehouse (#37), The Wayland, which apparently replaced something called Banjo Jim’s, is worth the trip primarily for its mezcal drinks—the spicy “Smoked & Roasted” being my pick for best cocktail in the city—and its pernil Romero sandwich, which outclasses an also-excellent burger with its hint of orange in the marinade and lusciously aioli’d baguette. A treat whether consumed at one of the small tables or the oddly shaped bar, the sandwich serves as an immaculate bar snack to pair with their creative cocktails. Expensive oysters remain available for those who prefer their pub grub to be a bit lighter, or slimier.
Somtum Der - 85 Avenue A, New York, NY 10009 (Alphabet City)
Somtum Der on Avenue A is a workmanlike Thai restaurant, never too flashy nor too pricey, serving up excellent renditions of its specialties and heaps of other dishes from the region of Isan, Thailand’s largest. While no dish on Somtum Der’s lengthy menu should be overlooked in my experience, a few are especially notable for their bold taste and pleasing presentation. The titular somtum, a.k.a. papaya salad, is rich with the sharp flavors of unripe papaya and pungent garlic. The aromatic coconut sticky rice, arranged in puzzling little cylinders, turns out to be a perfect complement to these crunchy bites of acid and allicin. Best of all is the fried chicken, called sa poak kai tod der, cut into thick strips of thigh meat and buried underneath crunchy bits of garlic, served with a chili dipping sauce containing fish sauce and lime juice, called nam jim jaew. In addition, make sure not to miss the larb, a crumbly and sometimes surprisingly spicy salad best outfitted with either pork or duck. Really, you can’t go wrong here: the accessible and adventurous Somtum Der has hits everywhere on its menu.
More soon…