Anthony Sasso, the chef de cuisine, has led the Casa Mono kitchen into cooking that a Catalan tapas-bar proprietor might squint at before deciding that tapas do not always need to be interpreted with a strict-constructionist approach. By PETE WELLSGotham Bar and Grill (Greenwich Village) American
Founded in 1984, and under the same chef from 1985 until 2019, Gotham Bar and Grill is now trying to expand its audience. By PETE WELLS
Llama San (Greenwich Village) Japanese, Latin American
The starting point of Erik Ramirez’s menu is Nikkei cuisine, the hybrid style forged by Japanese cooks living in Peru, but Mr. Ramirez hasn’t let himself get tied down by it. Certain Llama San dishes have clear Nikkei roots, but have sprouted into something new. By PETE WELLS
Shuko (Greenwich Village) Japanese
Jimmy Lau and Nick Kim, the chefs and owners, rose to the top of Masa Takayama’s restaurant group. What’s impressive about their own restaurant, Shuko, is how many times the chefs ring the bells without resorting to clichéd indulgences. By PETE WELLS
Blue Hill (Greenwich Village) New American 
The chef Dan Barber is a dirt poet and kitchen philosopher whose time with the pigs and the beans has had a deep, lasting effect on the way he cooks; New York City does not afford the time or space for the leisurely unfurling of Mr. Barber’s complete vision, but Blue Hill is still an exceptional restaurant. By PETE WELLS
Carbone (Greenwich Village) American, Italian
Carbone is a fancy red-sauce joint as directed by Quentin Tarantino. By PETE WELLS
Minetta Tavern (Greenwich Village) French
In freshening up Minetta Tavern, Keith McNally did as expected, figuring out what to buff and what to leave be. But he did something unexpected as well: he fashioned the best steakhouse in the city. By FRANK BRUNI
The Grill (Midtown) American
In what used to be the Grill Room of the Four Seasons, The Grill comes very close to being the kind of restaurant many New Yorkers imagined in this space all along. The Grill is confident, theatrical, retro, unsentimental, sharp and New Yorky. By PETE WELLS
Empellón (Midtown) American, Mexican
Empellón is the flashiest, fanciest and newest of Alex Stupak’s restaurants, and the one that provides the fullest expression of his dreamscape vision of Mexican food. He doesn’t reproduce or translate the cuisine; he builds a fantasy version of it, coupling deep technical skills with imagination to create a slightly unreal version of reality, the way the best animated movies do. By PETE WELLS
Gabriel Kreuther (Midtown) French Gabriel Kreuther named his new restaurant on 42nd Street after himself, but it could just as easily be called the Modern in Exile, as he took along that restaurant's pastry chef and replicated its two-in-one structure. By PETE WELLS
Le Rock (Midtown) French
Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson expand to Rockefeller Center, keeping the culinary spirit — brawny but precise — that makes their downtown restaurant, Frenchette, so appealing. Le Rock cherry-picks elements from the bistros, brasseries and grand cafes of France. By PETE WELLS
Marea (Midtown) Italian, Seafood
The latest jewel in the crown of Chris Cannon and chef Michael White, Marea has a menu probably best described as coastal. By SAM SIFTON
Naro (Midtown)
Naro is owned by the group behind Atomix, and is similar to that restaurant in ambition and refinement. The executive chef, Nate Kuester, dives into traditional Korean foods, starting with favorites like bibimbap and seafood jeon and reaching back to recipes that predate the 20th century, in ways that make them seem full of unexplored potential. By PETE WELLS
Aquavit (Midtown East) Scandinavian Aquavit's kitchen is soaring, with Emma Bengtsson, the chef, cooking modern Scandinavian cuisine without aping the fashionable Nordic tropes. By PETE WELLS
The Dining Room at the Modern (Midtown East) New American
Of Danny Meyer’s two restaurants on the ground floor of the Museum of Modern Art, the casual Bar Room is more fun, but the Dining Room has the view of the sculpture garden and a dining experience that goes from one delight to another. By PETE WELLS
Sushi Yasuda (Midtown East) Japanese, Sushi Sushi Yasuda sets the standard in New York for the pure expression of sushi culture. By ERIC ASIMOV
La Grenouille (Midtown East) French
Gorgeous flowers, fine service, rich people and a menu written entirely in French. By SAM SIFTON
Bar Room at the Modern (Midtown East) New American
The bar area of the restaurant the Modern may not have the dining room's sculpture-garden view, but it does have a more accessible, straightforward menu of dishes so satisfying that the trade-off is worth it. By FRANK BRUNI
Ai Fiori (Midtown South) French, Italian
Turning an Italian lens on haute French cooking, Ai Fiori is a winning defense of fine dining in New York City from the chef Michael White. By SAM SIFTON
Atomix (Murray Hill) Korean Tasting menus can be arid and sterile when a chef doesn’t have much to say. The format comes to life when a restaurant is overflowing with ideas, like Atomix. In Junghyun and Ellia Park’s thoughtful, modern tasting-menu restaurant, dishes of wonderful intricacy, sophistication and beauty are used to reveal, one after another, new facets of Korean cuisine and culture. By PETE WELLS
Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria (NoHo) Italian
This sibling to the original Il Buco, on Bond Street, is the city’s most complete realization so far of a powerful myth: the simple and convivial restaurant that tastes just like Italy. By PETE WELLS
Torrisi Bar & Restaurant (NoLIta) Italian Torrisi Bar & Restaurant can resemble a film set for the hottest restaurant in New York in a movie made by non-New Yorkers. But the cooking is some of the most evocative and subtle of Rich Torrisi’s career. The restaurant’s great and somewhat covert theme is immigration in Lower Manhattan, from Little Italy to Chinatown to the Lower East Side. By PETE WELLS
Koloman (NoMad) Austrian, French
Markus Glocker’s French and Austrian cuisine is painstakingly formal, but focused on pleasure; the service is several degrees more casual, but nobody seems to mind much. By PETE WELLS
Le Coucou (SoHo) French At Daniel Rose’s first restaurant in New York, the cooking is informed by old-school traditions, focuses on animal parts, and revolves around glossy, spoon-coating, cream- and butter-reinforced sauces. By PETE WELLS
701West (Times Square) American
The Times Square Edition hotel built 701West for people who think a leisurely, three-course dinner, with a few of the customary niceties, is worth spending money on. By PETE WELLS
Shoji at 69 Leonard Street (TriBeCa) Japanese The chef, Derek Wilcox, has firmly placed Shoji at 69 Leonard Street in the top tier of the city’s Japanese restaurants. On the basis of sushi alone, it has few plausible rivals, and for sushi served embedded within a longer, kaiseki-derived menu, it has no parallel. By PETE WELLS
Frenchette (TriBeCa) French
Since 1997, Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson have cooked side by side, building a kind of brasserie-steakhouse hybrid out of standards from both genres. At Frenchette, their first place of their own, they take some liberties with the formula. The menu rambles. But once you sort it out, it’s full of dishes worth planning a night around. By PETE WELLS
Atera (TriBeCa) American In the open kitchen at this intimate tasting room, Matthew Lightner is matching foraged ingredients together with technical sleight of hand to summon up moments of genuine beauty. By PETE WELLS
Corton (TriBeCa) French, New American
At Corton, the chef Paul Liebrandt, calms down and wises up, accepting that an evening in a restaurant shouldn’t be like a visit to a fringe art gallery: geared to the intellect, reliant on provocation. By FRANK BRUNI
Daniel (Upper East Side) French Daniel serves exquisitely sensitive, profoundly seasonal, fundamentally French cooking. By PETE WELLS
Jo Jo (Upper East Side) French
Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Jo Jo has shown, with extraordinary grace, how a restaurant can age without looking old. By WILLIAM GRIMES
Masa (Upper East Side) Japanese, Sushi The food at this excellent Japanese restaurant in the Time Warner Center is exceptional, offering tastes and preparations that can be unforgettable. By SAM SIFTON
Tatiana (Upper West Side) American, Caribbean, Creole
Kwame Onwuachi, the chef and an owner, has drawn many of the dishes from episodes in his own, 33-year-old life. He’s able to connect his autobiography with great themes of Black life in the United States, and in doing so steps right into the cultural moment. By PETE WELLS
Sushi Nakazawa (West Village) Japanese, Sushi Sushi Nakazawa changed the omakase landscape in New York City when it opened in 2013. Since then it has leaned into its success, trying to share its wares with as many people as possible. It is now more accessible than ever. At the same time, some of the qualities that made it so exciting when it was new have been tossed overboard. By PETE WELLS
Perry St. (West Village) Asian, French
At Perry St., Jean-Georges Vongerichten gives his doubters, who had grown legion, reason to believe. By FRANK BRUNI
Bronx (1)
La Piraña Lechonera (Woodstock)
Piraña is the nickname of Angel Jimenez, who runs a remarkable one-man operation in which he recreates the cuisine and approximates the atmosphere of a lechonera in the hills outside San Juan from a trailer parked in the South Bronx. By PETE WELLS
Brooklyn (6)
Brooklyn Fare (Boerum Hill) American, Seafood
There are but 18 seats at this exquisite little restaurant attached to a grocery store on Schermerhorn Street in downtown Brooklyn. By SAM SIFTON
Blanca (Bushwick) American
Carlo Mirarchi, the chef and owner of Blanca and its sprawling mothership, Roberta’s, is a rigorous miniaturist, combining a few ingredients at a time into two or three-bite compositions that are utterly complete, even if they leave you wanting more; over the years he has steadily refined his marathon tastings, and nearly everything served is remarkable in one way or another. By PETE WELLS
Le Crocodile (Williamsburg) French
The menu at Jake Leiber and Aidan O’Neal’s second restaurant is long, with so many dishes you’re not quite sure at first whether two chefs whose best-known creation is a pancake will be able to keep up. They do that and then some. By PETE WELLS
Misi (Williamsburg) Italian
Next to the dining room is a separate, glassed-in workshop where the temperature and humidity are kept at consistent dough-friendly levels and where the 10 or so shapes of pasta are rolled out and cut. Pasta tends to steal the show, but the other half of the menu is devoted to vegetables. By PETE WELLS
Aska (Williamsburg) Scandinavian Over the past several years, few chefs have grown into their ambitions as dramatically and successfully as Aska’s, Fredrik Berselius. Aska, beneath the ribs of the Williamsburg Bridge in July, is his third restaurant; with each fresh incarnation, his modern Scandinavian, nature-boy cooking has taken a leap forward. By PETE WELLS
Lilia (Williamsburg) Italian
Missy Robbins’s first restaurant as an owner and the chef specializes in exceptional pasta and grilled Italian seafood. By PETE WELLS
Zaab Zaab (Elmhurst) Thai
The rise of Isan cuisine in New York has reached a new high point with the arrival of Zaab Zaab. The chef, Aniwat Khotsopa, was raised in the Isan city Udon Thani and is a gifted manipulator of his home region’s textural depth and contrapuntal flavors. By PETE WELLS
Guan Fu Sichuan (Flushing) Chinese
Guan Fu is a new kind of Sichuan restaurant for New York, one where the formality and the richness of interior detail is matched by excellent ingredients and nuanced cooking that shows the rich variety of the cuisine. By PETE WELLS
Escono
Del Posto (Chelsea) Italian
Summary Melissa Rodriguez has been the executive chef since 2017; as part of the restructuring that left Mario Batali without an ownership stake, she was made a partner as well, along with Jeff Katz, the general manager. A new pastry chef, Georgia Wodder, has been appointed. By PETE WELLS
Esca (Clinton) Italian
Is Dave Pasternack a fish whisperer? On the evidence of Esca, the answer seems to be yes. By FRANK BRUNI
Agern (Midtown East) Scandinavian
Agern feels like a quiet harbor away from the eddies and currents of Grand Central Terminal. In the modern Scandinavian dining room, pale wood, charcoal seat cushions and wall tiles in mossy Grand Central green create a calming mood. Buying food raised around New York, Agern treats the city as another Scandinavian capital: Oslo-on-Hudson. By PETE WELLS
Felidia (Midtown East) Italian
The enduringly splendid Istrian and northern Italian food at Felidia shows that Lidia Bastianich isn't neglecting her roots. By FRANK BRUNI
Benno (NoMad) French, Italian
Benno is the third of three dining operations that the chef Jonathan Benno has opened in the Evelyn Hotel. It is the one where the prices, and presumably the stakes, are highest. When you eat there, it’s as if the past 15 years in food never happened, which will make it a tough sell for younger diners. By PETE WELLS
The NoMad (NoMad) American
The NoMad in the NoMad Hotel is operated by the same duo who run Eleven Madison Park in New York, and with this restaurant, they have done something rather novel and wonderful. By PETE WELLS
Bâtard (TriBeCa) Modernist
There are high spirits in Bâtard’s dining room, which hums, and at times roars, with the sound of people having a fine night on the town. By PETE WELLS
The Simone (Upper East Side) American, French
A classic Manhattan restaurant that seems to have emerged fully formed out of a time capsule sealed in the last century, the Simone has the kind of warmth that has become rare in Manhattan’s increasingly corporatized restaurant scene. By PETE WELLS
Cafe Boulud (Upper East Side) French
The former Daniel became casual and turned into a cafe — but what a cafe. By FRANK BRUNI
