Hamburger America NYT Critic’s Pick2 starAmerican, Hamburgers$SoHoIt’s part fast-food restaurant, part shrine to roadside America, part art installation, part nostalgia immersion. The nostalgia is not some manufactured, soft-core exploitation; it’s more like an attempt to bring the past back to life by re-enacting it, one hamburger at a time.By Pete Wells
Shaw-naé’s House NYT Critic’s Pick2 starAmerican, Caribbean$$StapletonShaw-naé Dixon, the chef and owner, makes a from-scratch style of soul food not often seen in New York City. A self-taught cook, Ms. Dixon has freely adapted the old Southern standbys, lightening here, tightening there.By Pete Wells
Noksu2 starAmerican, Korean$$$$KoreatownThis is the first kitchen run by the chef Dae Kim. He’s full of talent, a star in the making. But his ideas need to be shaped and formed, and the setting he’s working in is so generic, in a luxe way, that it undercuts what’s distinctive in his cooking.By Pete Wells
Café Carmellini NYT Critic’s Pick2 starAmerican, French, Italian$$$$The grand old style of formal dining has come roaring back since 2022, nowhere more lavishly than at Café Carmellini.By Pete Wells
Eulalie NYT Critic’s Pick3 starAmerican, French, Southern$$$$TriBeCaChip Smith and Tina Vaughn’s small, elegant restaurant is blithely clueless about TikTok trends, plating trends, wine trends and just about any other trend you can think of.By Pete Wells
Port Sa’id NYT Critic’s Pick2 starMiddle Eastern$$Hudson SquarePort Sa’id is in effect a remix of the one in Tel Aviv, a 10-year-old collaboration between the Jerusalem-born chef Eyal Shani and an online radio station. It’s a nonstop festival of vinyl, where D.J.s choose from shelves and shelves of records to play over precisely tuned sound systems. The cooking, mostly inspired by the Tel Aviv location, is loose and the opposite of fussy.By Pete Wells
Sailor NYT Critic’s Pick3 starEnglish, French$$$Fort GreeneAt Sailor, owned by the restaurateur Gabriel Stulman, the chef April Bloomfield is in the kitchen. It’s the most grown-up restaurant of her career, and his, too.By Pete Wells
Bangkok Supper Club NYT Critic’s Pick2 starThai$$$$The Thai cooking at Bangkok Supper Club is both refined and rustic. The chef, Max Wittawat, a former pastry chef, composes his plates with an eye for color and contrast, then finishes them with garlic chips, flower petals and individual leaves of herbs.By Pete Wells
The Noortwyck NYT Critic’s Pick2 starAmerican$$$$Greenwich VillageThe chef, Andrew Quinn, met his partner in the Nortwyck, Cedric Nicaise, while they were working at Eleven Madison Park. They’ve planted their flag somewhere on the middle ground between its Michelin-bait grandeur and the everyday comfort of a local tavern.By Pete Wells
Hakka Cuisine NYT Critic’s Pick2 starChinese$$$ChinatownDishes from the repertory of the Hakka ethnic group help this very good restaurant stand out even more than it already would for its Cantonese banquet cuisine alone.By Pete Wells
