1. Bâtard
Markus Glocker’s elevated brand of Continental cooking is accessible without being stuffy, and at four courses for $75, there’s no better gourmet deal in town. If you have the funds, the wines from the famous Nieporent cellars are as impressive as ever.
2. Shuko
Thanks to a new big-money owner-slash-patron, the talented former Masa acolytes Jimmy Lau and Nick Kim now have a fancy new Union Square tasting room at their disposal and access to all sorts of top-line esoteric ingredients. The result is the best omakase menu of the New Year.
3. Take Root
This minuscule pop-up-style establishment in Carroll Gardens isn’t technically new (it’s actually two years old), but no chef has had a bigger year than Elise Kornack, and it pains this Manhattan-centric critic to admit that the current three-month-long wait for one of the tiny tables is worth it.
4. Ivan Ramen
Yes, Ivan Orkin’s time-tested ramen combinations are masterful, but it’s the non-ramen fusion creations that elevate this satisfying, infectiously pleasurable operation from a humble noodle joint into the elite, multi-star stratosphere.
5. Cosme
The reviews haven’t come in yet, and already the globe-trotting Mexican chef Enrique Olvera is being accused by persnickety New Yorkers of spending too much time out of town. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find a purer expression of the corn taco (or the blue-corn tostada) anywhere in this taco-mad city.
6. Marta
Danny Meyer and Nick Anderer put the Roman-style pie on the crowded New York pizza map. Add the lamb chops, the trout saltimbocca, and the blizzard of other wood-fired delicacies, and there’s no new restaurant that I’d rather have in my own neighborhood.
7. Dover
If Walker Stern and Joseph Ogrodnek’s refined, throwback establishment happened to be located in a trendy section of Manhattan, instead of among the bars and pizza shacks of Court Street, it would be mobbed night after night.
8. Little Park
Andrew Carmellini’s swank little seasonal restaurant in Tribeca hasn’t been open for long, but already people are saying it’s his most inspired work since the Daniel days. They just might be right.
9. Narcissa
Thanks to the two different, well-designed dining rooms, and to John Fraser’s polished but accessible cooking, this is that rare hotel restaurant that manages to feel both casual and elegant.
10. Gato
As often happens with a Bobby Flay operation, this canny, well-conceived restaurant turned into a scene so quickly that it’s easy to overlook his satisfying, innovative Mediterranean-accented cooking.
11. Cherche Midi
After dabbling, disastrously, in the realm of rustico pastas and wood-fired pizza pies, Keith McNally wisely returns to the kind of posh, crowd-pleasing beef-eater bistro cuisine he knows best.
12. Dirty French
Some of the dishes work better than others, but the room is festive, in that shouting Torrisi-boys way, the concept is inventive, and the best of the �dirty� French creations are worth a special trip.