Pete Wells Top 10 NYC Restaurants in 2018

Pete Wells is the restaurant critic for the New York Times and usually right on in his evaluations.  I saved his recent article as much for me as for my readers.  I always forget what new place I want to try, with all the choices in NYC, so it makes it easy for me to just open my own website and choose!  I have dined at a few of these and added my comments in italics.

Atomix

A restaurant isn’t a particularly good medium for expressing philosophical concepts, but it’s ideal for expressing a whole culture. Atomix seizes this opportunity to open our eyes to South Korea over the span of a $175, 10-course tasting menu. The architecture, uniforms, ceramics, glassware, woodworking and menu art blend tradition and innovation to present a living, modern view of Korean aesthetics. Junghyun Park, the chef, builds dazzling, unexpected dishes out of things like white soy and an exhilarating tangerine vinegar from the island of Jeju. The dishes are elaborate, with upward of 20 ingredients on some plates, but they never go out of focus. The whole restaurant is like that.

104 East 30th Street (Park Avenue South), Murray Hill; no phone; atomixnyc.com.

 Frenchette

The chefs, Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, are veterans of the pseudo-brasserie scene who have finally opened their own restaurant after 20 years of cooking together in someone else’s. Their menu is a skillful and refined homage to the heart-stopping food served at a few old-time places around Les Halles in Paris; it includes snails, brains, tripe, tongue and other things that don’t exactly sell themselves in the United States. This might cause trouble with the chefs’ boss it if they had one, but they don’t, and they know just what they’re doing. The organ meats are beautifully handled. So are less confrontational items like duck breast with paradigmatic fries and roast chicken served over planks of baguette laden with rotisserie drippings. Frenchette also happens to have one of the broadest and most drinkable collections of natural wine in the city. The wines taste idiosyncratic and unbridled, just the thing for food that is a celebration of sticking around long enough to do what you want.

Very difficult to get reservations as it is extremely “hot” but worth the wait to book out whenever you can snag one.

241 West Broadway (North Moore Street), TriBeCa; 212-334-3883; frenchettenyc.com.

Shoji at 69 Leonard Street

New York is filling up with omakase sushi meals so quickly it’s hard to keep them straight, but 69 Leonard Street is one address to write on the back of your hand. The first half of the menu (available at three different lengths costing $190, $252 and $295) weaves some local ingredients into dishes that roughly follow the kaiseki format. This is a chance for the chef, Derek Wilcox, to freestyle a bit within that tradition’s prescribed boundaries, resulting in memorable hybrids like a late-summer chawan mushi made with East Coast lobster. The second half is a sequence of exceptional sushi, sliced and seasoned in the gimmick-free Edo manner. Either the sushi or kaiseki segments alone would be among the best of their type in the city, but the only place that does both this well is Shoji.

69 Leonard Street (Church Street), TriBeCa; 212-404-4600; 69leonardstreet.com.

Misi

Missy Robbins has become the city’s leading practitioner of the bright, energetic, produce-centered branch of Italian cooking. Even in the winter, her food tastes like the afternoon sun beating down on a tomato patch. Misi is Missy (get it?) pared down to the things that show her skill off to greatest advantage, pasta and vegetables. The noodles, made on site, are a catalog of shapes, from long strangozzi with pork ragù to round, flat corzetti with cherry tomatoes warmed just enough to break their skins. For dessert there are six flavors of gelato, all with the same intensity and immediacy as the rest of the meal.

Love Missy Robbins and have been a fan of hers since her days at A Voce in my hood.  She is the queen of pasta and vegetables (though all her other dishes are wonderful also).

329 Kent Avenue (South Fourth Street), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; 347-566-3262; misinewyork.com.

The Bar at Momofuku Ko

Officially, it’s just the bar for Ko, David Chang’s attempt to storm the palace of fine dining. It’s also the most experimental thing he has tried, a laboratory where Ko’s chef, Sean Gray, can give cooks a chance to learn new skills like making the gorgeous puff pastry for the formidable pork pie or to work out oddball ideas. “Animal sausage” is ground meat stuffed into a chicken neck that still has the head at one end; it looks like a Pez dispenser made by a serial-killer butcher. This may not be the safest place for a first date, but it is ideal for nights when you want to roll the dice.

So creative and delicious.  A great night out with an adventurous friend.  

8 Extra Place (First Street), East Village; 212-203-8095; ko.momofuku.com.

La Mercerie

The only rough patch at this breakfast-through-dinner cafe comes at the beginning, when your server informs you that every piece of tableware can be purchased at the adjoining shop. After that it’s all as smooth as the melted butter in the pans where the crisp, savory buckwheat crepes are sizzled. Marie-Aude Rose, the chef, applies classical precision to eggs, salads, bouillon, boeuf bourguignon and other French cafe standards, which is more than you can say for some cafes in France.

53 Howard Street (Mercer Street), SoHo; 212-852-9097; lamerceriecafe.com.

Shabu Shabu Macoron

Mako Okano, the chef of this little Japanese hide-out on Delancey Street, loves shabu shabu so much that she decided to open a restaurant where she would cook it for every customer. Normally, it’s a do-it-yourself affair, but Ms. Okano’s evident pleasure in taking care of people brings a touching intimacy to the simple process of dunking meat and vegetables into hot broth. The shabu shabu meats are superb, from Wagyu beef crammed with fat streaks to exquisite chicken meatballs. But she has a lovely touch at the stove, too, whipping up an airy omelet before you notice her back is turned, or skimming swatches of yuba from hot soy milk to serve as a warm bed for a tongue or two of sea urchin.

61 Delancey Street (Allen Street), Lower East Side; 212-925-5220; shabushabumacoron.com.

Adda Indian Canteen

Chintan Pandya’s cooking is nothing if not energetic. At Rahi, in Greenwich Village, his plates are a whirlwind of local produce, Indian spices and gonzo notions. At Adda, the recipes are traditional, and all of Mr. Pandya’s ebullience goes into the seasoning. This is forcefully spiced food, although chiles aren’t always prominent in the mix. (When they are, buckle up.) The kaleji masala, or stewed chicken livers, employs a garam masala almost symphonic in its complexity. Cumin and cracked coriander make up the crust on the crunchy, twice-marinated bhatti da murgh. Adda may have been meant as a pit stop for students at LaGuardia Community College across the street, but those spices call out so loudly you can almost hear them in Manhattan.

31-31 Thomson Avenue (Van Dam Street), Long Island City, Queens; 718-433-3888; addanyc.com.

Henry at Life Hotel

The theme of Joseph Johnson’s menu is Africa, not just the many cuisines eaten on the continent but also those of diasporic African communities around the world. Salmon noodles are inspired by Vietnamese immigrants in Senegal; Mr. Johnson came up with his transporting “Harlem curry” after reading Vivek Bald’s history of the Bengalis who settled in that neighborhood a century ago. This material is so rich and so underexplored that Henry is now one of the most fascinating restaurants in New York. It’s a remarkable about-face for a business that had closed two months before Mr. Johnson arrived.

19 West 31st Street (Fifth Avenue), Midtown; 212-615-9910; henrynomad.com.

Claro