My Top 10 New York City Restaurant Meals of 2025 🗽
Plus: Stuffed Cabbage, Coconut Macaroon Cake, and Latkes.
Hey everyone,
On Monday I gave you The Best Things That I Cooked in 2025, and now I’m here to share my Top 10 New York City Restaurant Meals of 2025.
It was a great year for eating out in New York. Though I returned to many of my favorites from last year’s list — including Torrisi, Barbuto, and S&P — I also discovered many a beloved new spot, some of which opened this year, some of which opened last year but I didn’t get there in time.
Before we get to the list, I have some new Hanukkah posts to share with you. On Sunday night (the first night of Hanukkah) I cooked up a unique take on Stuffed Cabbage for my pals Chris, John, and Stephen:
This recipe, which comes from the Shaya cookbook by Alon Shaya, features the kind of big flavors you’d expect from a Jewish chef based out of New Orleans: lots of coriander, paprika, Allspice, and, my favorite addition: pomegranate molasses. You can get the whole recipe here (plus there’s a video on my Instagram):
On a similar Hanukkah-theme, I decided to avoid the jelly donuts (too much after latkes!) and give this coconut macaroon cake from Michael Solomonov’s cookbook a whirl:
The cake, which is a cinch to make, is a really study in texture. On the base layer you have a traditional yellow cake, then on top a marshmallow-y meringue layer that gets crisper higher up. It reminded me less of a coconut macaroon and more of a Hostess Sno-Ball, which is the highest compliment. Here’s the recipe:
I also made latkes at this dinner party and did a little Instagram video about it:
It was nice to make twenty latkes this year instead of three hundred. Though I do miss our annual latke party.
Okay, are you ready for the big list? And away we go…
My Top 10 New York City Restaurant Meals of 2025 🗽
Chez Ma Tante (Greenpoint, Brooklyn)
Every so often there’s a restaurant that’s so winning, so charming, you’re jealous of anyone who lives in close proximity. That’s how it is with Chez Ma Tante in Greenpoint: the place oozes warmth and welcome. This year, we went for dinner on a cold winter’s night and it was the coziest, most gleeful entry into a restaurant you can imagine.
The food was excellent, but the best time to go is on a Sunday morning (if you can get a reservation) for their famous pancakes, which more than live up to the hype. I went with vegans who couldn’t share them with me and at first I was mad that I’d have to eat all of these pancakes by myself and then, midway through, I realized I was the luckiest pancake-eater in the world.
Borgo (Flatiron District)
When a friend asked what I thought of Borgo, Andrew Tarlow’s new restaurant in the Flatiron District, I said: “It tastes like the kind of food that I make at home, only better.” And that’s my best way of describing it. You won’t find foam on the plate at Borgo and you won’t find anything you can’t pronounce. Instead, you’ll find a hearty house-made sausage on a big plate of perfectly-cooked lentils:
If unpretentious, nourishing, and thoughtful food is what you crave, Borgo is your spot. I can’t wait to go back.
8. The Met Dining Room (Upper East Side).
Go ahead: call me a rube, call me a tourist, say I look like I just fell off the turnip truck, but this year on my birthday I was shocked and disappointed to learn that Café Sabarsky, one of my favorite places in all of New York, was closed on Tuesdays. I quickly scrambled and discovered that The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a formal dining room squirreled away upstairs where you can make a reservation online. I nabbed a table for two and we had the most glorious view of Central Park, ate a surprisingly fresh and well-made salad with perfectly seared salmon, and felt like we were characters in a New Yorker cartoon. In other words: the perfect birthday lunch.
F&F Restaurant and Bar (Carroll Gardens)
If you ask me on a given night where I’d like to go to dinner in my neighborhood, there’s a very good chance I’ll say, “F&F!” It’s a pizza spot, true, but that’s like saying MOMA is a gift shop. Beyond the pizza there are splendors to behold: from the fava bean salad in spring (our favorite) to their heirloom tomato salads in the summer to more elaborate preparations like scallops with vegetables or brasato of beef with gnocchi. But then, of course, there’s the pizza which is always top notch:
That’s a mushroom pie but we’ve had more elaborate pies there too like their Jimmy Nardello Pie or their Guanciale and Leek pie. It’s the kind of easy neighborhood dinner you dream about when you fantasize about living in New York. Here in Brooklyn, a few blocks from F&F, that fantasy is my reality.
The View (Midtown)
When I was a kid, my parents would bring us to New York to stay at the Marriott Marquis in midtown and when we were riding up the soaring glass elevators (better than a ride at Disney), I’d always see an ad for the rotating restaurant on the top floor and think that looked like the coolest, most amazing concept for a restaurant where I might, one day, be able to go on my own dime. Well that time has come and now that restaurant, The View, has been refurbished by Danny Meyer and it’s enough of a culinary destination to make Helen Rosner’s list of The Best Things That She Ate in 2025 in The New Yorker. She loved the peas and carrots. I loved (though felt slightly sick after eating) the chocolate cake:
But to have a secret hideaway in midtown with decent food and sweeping views to visit before seeing a Broadway show? And it rotates?! That’s enough to make this the #6 pick on my list.
