Best New York Restaurants

Choosing a favorite restaurant in New York City is a fun task with endless options depending on the occasion, mood, and even the season. Despite their disparate qualities, your favorite dive, fine dining destination, and ‘any night’ type of place may all occupy top spots on your personal best list. Robo made a list of best New York restaurants. You must try all of them!

Gramercy Tavern

For more than 20 years, one of New York City’s most renowned restaurants, Gramercy Tavern, has welcomed visitors to savor its modern American cuisine, warm hospitality, and unmatched service. Chef Michael Anthony’s seasonal menu, which changes frequently, highlights the restaurant’s partnerships with nearby farms and purveyors.

Just north of Union Square, restaurateur Danny Meyer opened the restaurant in 1994. Since then, it has won nine James Beard Awards, including “Outstanding Restaurant” and “Outstanding Chef in America.”

Chef Michael Anthony’s fiercely seasonal menu features elegant dishes with a rustic twist that highlight the restaurant’s connections with local farms and purveyors.

The restaurant offers two distinct dining options: the Tavern and the Dining Room. In a casual, walk-in setting, The Tavern serves an à la carte menu. Fixed-price and tasting menus are available in the Dining Room.

Bentel & Bentel Architects, based in New York City, designed the restaurant. This was the company’s first venture into hospitality design. The neo-Colonial decor of the restaurant is both soothing and elegantly rustic. The restaurant seats 130 people, the bar seats 60 people, and the private dining room seats 12-22 people.

Ugly Baby

A Thai restaurant tucked away on a quiet stretch of Smith Street in Carroll Gardens will keep you coming back for more self-inflicted pain. Although it has not been scientifically proven, spicy food is addictive—particularly at Ugly Baby. Whether you order the “stay-away spicy Udon Thani’s duck salad” or the khao soi, the servers will repeatedly warn you to be cautious. You’ll ignore their advice and end up begging for more cooling cucumbers to keep cool.

You had to DM Ugly Baby on Instagram to reserve a table and place a preorder for your meal during the pandemic. They no longer use that strategy, though you still need to place your meal order in advance when making a reservation through Tock. If your party is three or fewer, you’ll need to order à la carte. Otherwise, you can select from a selection of carefully curated set menus (which vary depending on the size of your party) and add on dishes. We find it difficult to trust others to make decisions when it comes to ordering dinner, but Ugly Baby does a pretty good job doing it for you.

The Worldwide Local Tip: People who are picky eaters or have a low tolerance for spice shouldn’t go to Ugly Baby. Although many of the menu items don’t rely heavily on heat, those who aren’t willing to eat food laced with bird’s eye and green chilies will miss out on some of Ugly Baby’s most intriguing dishes.

Cadence

Cadence is a Southern-inspired plant-based restaurant. Shenarri Freeman, Executive Chef, draws on her Virginia upbringing and vegan ethos to highlight Southern foodways and Soul Food through the lens of health and sustainability. The kitchen is not only vegan, but also organic and free of soy.

With a gleaming marble bar, an emerald-green tiled floor, and shades of blue and bronze throughout, the interior of the narrow restaurant shines like precious stones. It’s like dining in a dainty music box if you get one of the 12 seats at its popular chef’s counter. There are also about 18 more seats available in the outdoor dining area on East 7th Street.

Elias Corner

Elias Corner can provide you with new gastronomic experiences. Do you want to experience the ocean’s delight? The chefs could prepare Mediterranean cuisine and fish here. Seafood has numerous benefits, including being a low-fat protein food high in vital nutrients, fiber, healthful long-chain omega-3 fats, and vitamins A, B, and D.

Don’t be surprised if tables start mingling with waiters because the dining room here will be packed with locals from their home states. However, if it’s your first visit, the staff will try to treat you just like a regular. Elias guarantees the same relaxed and comfortable meal even when the dining room is busy. Add a good bottle of white wine or a cold Greek beer, and you have a perfect evening. There are no menus, credit cards, or other frills—just fish.

Hometown Bar-B-Que

Hometown Bar-B-Que opened in September 2013 in Red Hook, Brooklyn. They specialize in authentic, pit-smoked meats prepared using the traditional Southern technique of oak wood smoking.

They serve walk-up service to our counter on a first-come, first-served basis—until they run out of that day’s specially cooked offerings. Chat with other diners, order drinks from the bar, and listen to live music on weekends to pass the time.

After nearly a decade of operation, Hometown is in top form. For ribs, pulled pork, towering sandwiches, and tasty sides, lines still form and stretch all the way out the door. It also has more seating than when it first opened, both inside the warehouse-sized dual dining areas (each with its own bar) and outside at a slew of picnic tables.