Expert Edition: NYC Restaurant Recommendations From The Most Iconic Restaurant Critic, Ruth Reichl
The Relisher is the place where the world’s top chefs reveal their favorite spots in their home cities. This week, in an Expert Edition, I spoke with
, the former restaurant critic of The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times for over two decades, and also the former Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet Magazine.Ruth, a 6-time James Beard Award winner, is also a best-selling author who has written over 9 books including her latest The Paris Novel, slated to come out next month. In addition to all of the above, the prolific writer writes
, widely regarded as one of the leading food newsletters. Below is the complete guide to NYC’s best restaurants according to the legendary restaurant critic.*At the end of the interview, there is a Google Map link and a summary with links and price ranges for all the mentioned places.
Fine Dining Restaurants: Iconic NYC Restaurants to High-End Korean Cuisine
I love Estela (one Michelin star), and I go as often as I can manage to. Ignacio Mattos is a remarkable chef, and I would recognize his food anywhere. It's unlike anybody else's as he combines flavors that other people don't think of.
A few of my favorite dishes here are his wonderful endive salad with walnuts, anchovy and blue cheese. To me, it's the apotheosis of salad — it's completely delicious and beautiful (his food creations are generally beautiful). He also makes these ricotta dumplings with mushrooms presented on an all black and white minimalist plate. You're just looking down at this white circle, and then the flavors suddenly burst at you. Then there's his black rice with squid, which is fantastic. Unlike his other dishes where the flavors tend to remain separated, in this one, they're all blended together in a blast of flavor.
Dan Barber, of the extraordinary Blue Hill at Stone Barns (two Michelin stars), has the most interesting mind in American food. You don't go there just to eat; you go there for an educational experience. Dan’s restless mind is constantly exploring new ways to utilize the ingredients (grown on his farm and picked that day) that nature provides him. So he might present you with something as simple as a freshly picked potato, roasted, and you realize that you've never truly tasted a potato before.
He grows his own wheat to bake bread, which tastes like no other bread you've had. He'll also offer you butter from two cows who graze on different grasses, allowing you to taste the difference an animal's diet can make. The food isn't merely delicious; it's revelatory.
I can't tell you what dishes I like there because it's always different. The other remarkable thing about Blue Hill is that there isn’t really a menu. Every table is eating something different. The waiters have this burden of trying to guess what the guests at the table want to eat. It's really special because you will eat there and look around, and there's different food on every table, yet nobody's ordered. It's a dialogue between the kitchen, the waiters, and the guests, and I think it's extraordinary. Note though that the meal is long — I could easily spend four hours at the table. I recommend spending time in the restaurant’s fields before you go in to actually eat.
As a restaurant critic, one of the things that you're always worried about is that you will tell someone to go to a restaurant and they will have a bad time — this will never happen at Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin (three Michelin stars).
When I was at Gourmet Magazine, I had one of my writers do a piece that we called 'Pocket Full of Dough', and the idea was that he would try to get a reservation for dinner for two at eight o'clock on a Saturday night, and they would say there were no tables. And then he would go at eight o'clock on a Saturday night and try to buy a table by offering to pay the maître d' (restaurant manager). My writer went to 10 restaurants, and the only restaurant where he couldn't buy a table was at Le Bernardin. The maître d' pushed the money back at him and said, "If you'll sit at the bar, I will do my best to get you a table."
Eric is an incredibly talented chef who runs a calm kitchen, and I love everything he makes. The dish that I especially love is his foie gras with the pounded tuna. It features a thin piece of toast, layered with foie gras, and a very thin pounded piece of tuna placed on top — and this combination of tuna, foie gras and the crunch of that cracker is one of the most satisfying bites you could ever have.
I was an early lover of Atomix (two Michelin stars), and I could not believe what they were doing. At that time, all we thought of as Korean food was meat on a grill with basically a lot of garlic. Atomix was an eye-opening experience about how exquisite and beautiful Korean cuisine could be.
With each course, they give you a little card that explains something about the history of the dish, or about the artist who made the plate the dish is served on, or some spice that you've never heard of that's in it. At the end of the meal, they wrap these 12 or so cards into a little package and give them to you to take home. The entire experience is beautifully orchestrated, leaving you with insights into the cuisine.
Casual Restaurants: An Eclectic Mix of Basque Cuisine, Italian, and a Chinatown Eatery
Txikito is a small, modest Basque tapas bar, which serves delicious, classic pincho tapas. One of my favorite dishes is the fried head-on shrimp. Yet what makes Txikito remarkable is that their food is unlike anyone else's and constantly surprising (and believe me, after 50 years of writing about food it’s hard to surprise me).
On my last visit, Alex Raij created a chicory salad consisting of a chicory leaf, shredded papaya, blue cheese, and a dressing that contained coffee. It was delicious, and I couldn't stop eating it — you wouldn't think those flavors would work together, but they were brilliant. While I love classic restaurants and bistro food, the real thrill for me is getting something entirely new to my palate.
Via Carota is a simple, seasonal Italian restaurant run by two women chefs, who make a fabulous green salad. I'll usually order the anchovies with bread and butter, sometimes the artichoke salad, or also the lemon risotto, but always the green salad. It's a huge heap of lettuce, and the dressing is a perfect vinaigrette — their secret is that they add a little water to the vinaigrette. Rita uses fantastic olive oil, really good vinegar, and a little bit of water, making it a perfectly balanced dressing on the salad.
I really love a place in Chinatown called Great N.Y. Noodle Town, which was one of the first places I reviewed when I worked for The New York Times. All of the roast meats are fantastic, but the baby roast pig is particularly delicious. A few other highlights are their wonton soup, fried soft-shell crabs in the spring, and the very plain poached chicken with ginger-scallion sauce — this sauce has been widely copied by many big-time French chefs.
The Best Meal of The Year
I went on one of the coldest nights of the year to April Bloomfield's new restaurant, Sailor, which ended up being probably the best meal I had in the past year.
I have always loved April's cooking, but I feel like she is cooking the best food of her life right now. Everything about this restaurant just feels right — it's cozy, you feel like everybody is happy to be there, and all of the food she makes is delicious and satisfying. Every single thing I had was wonderful, from the veal sweetbreads with lemon and capers to the profiteroles dessert with the great caramel sauce on top.
Also, at a time when everyone in New York is serving $35 hamburgers, she's made this Coulotte steak served with blue cheese butter. In a way, she's turned her famous hamburger from The Spotted Pig (April’s previous restaurant) into a steak, and she's selling it for $29 with a heap of french fries on top of it. And so you think to yourself, "I can't believe I'm eating this great food, and I'm not having to pay hundreds of dollars for it."
The meal was really delicious, but it was more than that, it was being in a happy place.
The City's Newest Eateries That I’m Excited About
I’ve been to Café Carmellini, which opened in November, twice in the last month because I enjoyed it so much. I've always liked Andrew Carmellini's cooking, but part of the pleasure of this restaurant is that here he's doing something you don't see very often in New York — he's creating both French and Italian food on the same menu.
This is a very grown-up restaurant (but not stuffy) at a time when most restaurants in New York feel too loud and too hip. I literally loved everything I ate, from the oysters with green apple, which is not a combination you would think of, to the wonderful risotto and the chicken for two. It's as perfect as chicken can get: its skin is crisp, and the breast meat is completely silky, while the dark meat is really dark and flavorful. I also experienced here the most delicious pistachio ice cream I've ever had in my life — it tasted like pure pistachio.
Their wine list is clearly intended for very rich people. It's an expensive restaurant, but they also have good bottles on the list (around $65-$70), which is something that I think not enough restaurants pay attention to.
The two restaurants that are currently on my list are:
COQODAQ, a high-end Korean fried chicken restaurant, and Jean-Georges new restaurant, Four Twenty Five that opened a few weeks ago. Jonathan Benno, who was the longtime Chef De Cuisine (traditional French term, meaning "chief of the kitchen”) at Per Se, is in charge there, and I'm sure the food is wonderful.
The Italian Speciality Store That Feeds My Soul
I have been going my whole life to Di Palo’s Fine Food, an Italian grocery store that has been in what used to be Little Italy for more than a hundred years.
I love being in this store so much; you walk in and it smells wonderful. The products, mostly imported from Italy, are fantastic, and the prices are great. They make their own Mozzarella, and they never refrigerate it. They have the best Parmigiano Reggiano — Lou Di Palo, the owner, will let you taste all four seasons of the Parmesan and explain to you why the spring Parmesan tastes different than the fall Parmesan. This is a store you want to spend time in, and should go to when you’re not in a hurry.
Three Favorite Restaurants in The World
Chez Panisse in Berkeley, is an Alice Waters' restaurant. I could eat Alice's food every day, but more importantly, she changed the food landscape in America. Her philosophy is that the food should be based on the product itself. She was a pioneer in the 1970s, directly sourcing ingredients from local farmers, fishermen, and other purveyors.
Sushisho Masa, a seven-seat sushi bar in a basement somewhere in Tokyo, changed my idea of what sushi could be forever. The fish was spectacularly delicious, but it was more than that — as the chef cut each piece of fish he explained where it was from, why he was slicing it this particular way, or why he had aged it for a certain number of days. I felt as if he understood the soul of each fish. It's very much like Jiro, except that Jiro's meal is 15 minutes, and Masa's is about three hours.
Le Mirazur, situated in Menton on the French Riviera, is surrounded by gardens. The restaurant exclusively uses produce from their gardens and local suppliers, following regenerative practices. The chef, Mauro Collagreco, is from Argentina, and is the only non-French three-Michelin-star chef in France. When you observe him, a profound gratitude radiates from his presence, as if he truly believes himself to be the luckiest man on Earth — and that's really a nice quality when people appreciate their lives.
P.S. If you’re looking for more amazing NYC recommendations, check out
coolstuff.nyc Substack
SUMMARY
HERE is the Google Map link with all of the places mentioned.
CASUAL
Txikito $$
Via Carota $$
Sailor $$
FINE DINING
NEW RESTAURANT OPENINGS
Café Carmellini $$$
Four Twenty Five $$$
COQODAQ $$$
ITALIAN SPECIALTY SHOP
Di Palo’s Fine Food $$