Every year of eating has its highlights, and they sometimes come when you least expect them. Did we know that a plate of sliced onions and chewy tendon would be the appetizer we’d never forget? Or that a dessert we’ve seen a zillion times before would suddenly get a bunch of new looks all over Williamsburg? These are nearly two dozen bites (and a few sips) that took us by surprise.
A Totally New Taco
Within each Santo Taco, the trompo is stacked with slices of sirloin and New York strip instead of the usual marinated pork. The steak is shaved off to order and cradled into a warm corn tortilla with a splash of avocado salsa. It’s gone in like three bites, each deeply beefy in a way that makes you want more. The good news: It’s $7, and two Santo Taco outposts have opened this year alone.
An Entire Block of Delicious Food
Maxi Lau brought Flushing’s best wontons — oversize, heavy on the shrimp — to Manhattan at Maxi’s Noodle 3. It’s just one of several places that turned a single block of Mott Street into a Restaurant Row. Noodle Village relocated next door, with its great claypot rice and curry oxtail. Wonton Noodle opened down the block. And a bit further up, there’s a new location of 1915 Lanzhou Hand-Pulled Noodles. And while Malaysia Beef Jerky is technically across the street, its dried meat is worth the walk.
A Wonderful Wheat- and Dairy-Free Cinnamon Roll
The cinnamon rolls at Bub’s Bakery manage to outclass a crowded field as much for what they offer — edges so crisp you’d swear they were fried, a pillowy-soft chew, perfectly calibrated levels of sweetness and spice — as what they do not. The rolls are free of wheat, dairy, and other common allergens. The secret, baker Melissa Weller says, is a mix of relatively new products such as Tourlami plant butter and her own yearslong devotion to perfecting laminated dough: “It’s something I’m passionate about!”
Fresh Pasta We Could Eat in Our Kitchen
Silvia Barban refuses to call Tortelli a restaurant — even if it serves a menu of antipasti and amply sauced spaghetti — but that’s fine with us, since the highlights are the hand-rolled pastas, including the cheese-filled namesake, which are packed up and ready to be finished in a pan of hot butter at home.
A Gorgeous Pickle Platter
The new cult of celtuce starts at Lei (which is one of our picks for the year’s best new restaurants, too. Here, the rooty lettuce’s thick stem is sliced into thin rectangles that are cold, crisp, and crunchy. Stacked tightly together into a square and plopped in the middle of the plate, it’s served with a nest of fried shallots, slippery kombu jelly hiding between the slices, and a whole lot of red-rice vinegar that’s mellow in acidity but striking in its color, an eye-popping contrast to the verdant vegetable.
A Corn Cocktail That Demanded a Second Round
After years working the semi-hidden service bar at PDT, Euclides “Victor” Lopez is in the spotlight at Mixteca. In addition to the $8 happy-hour margaritas, Lopez and his bartenders have come up with a host of finely tuned cocktails that make smart, enjoyable use of mezcal and tequila. Take the Masa Hero, served over ice. There’s masa-infused bourbon in there, but what really makes it is a one-two of reposado tequila and nutty, savory amontillado sherry. They get chummy real fast, especially with some help from lemon and honey.
Fries Like No Other
It’s difficult for even the most golden of French fries to stand out in a city so full of superior frites, which is probably why Bartolo lists this appetizer as “huevos fritos con patatas.” Don’t be fooled: It’s mostly potatoes, thick and blond and salty, served in a giant bowl with garlicky shrimp and three of the top-billed fried eggs on top. It’s huge, and a server arrives to slice the vivid-orange yolks open over the whole before gently mixing it together until it resembles some kind of Iberian poutine.
Chicken Fingers That Caused a Fuss
The lines have died down some at Mommy Pai’s, the streetside fast-casual counter from Thai Diner, but Matt Danzer and Ann Redding are still turning out the city’s most popular new chicken fingers. Four styles (spicy, lemongrass, coconut, and “Muay Thai”), two preparations (fried or grilled), and nine sauces make for dozens of possible combinations, though we were surprised when they swapped out high-flavor thigh meat for more common tenders, owing to customer feedback. But we’ve tried the new version, too — and they’re still good!
Once-a-Week Doughnuts
It’s easy to drum up an excuse for visiting Elbow Bread — the knishes, the extravagant little sandwich of black bread with walnut butter. Baker Zoë Kanan’s weekends-only cake doughnuts are among the best reasons to get out of bed early. The end of summer brought a sublime cornbread option enriched with honey butter, which returned twice due to popular demand. But every flavor has been eye-opening, whether it’s tart and luscious passionfruit ricotta or an exceptional buttermilk with honey-pickled sour cherries. Trust that whatever the doughnut, it will deliver.
Red Meat Done Right
Another cart? We thought we couldn’t take one more martini-mobile or duck press on wheels. And then the La Tête d’Or prime-rib trolley wheeled its way into our hearts. There’s all manner of steak at Daniel Boulud’s expense-account playground, and this cart is TikTok bait we’d hate if the meat itself weren’t so damn good. The restaurant slow-roasts Texan rib for eight hours so the fat remains jellied and the meat pink. A steep $130 for a ten-ounce slab is no bargain, but the cart also disgorges wine-rich Bordelaise, pommes purées, creamed spinach, and a Wiffle-ball-size popover.
A Niche Salad
“Onions with offal” might inspire orders among the Liverwurst Generation, but I Cavallini wisely half-disguises it on the menu as “nervetti with onion salad” for maximal millennial buy-in. It’s worth it. Nervetti (beef tendons) are boiled to slippery suppleness and served with sweet onions pickled in chive-blossom vinegar. Their lissome chompiness gets more enjoyable with each heavy bite.
A Not-Simple Ham Sandwich
The classic jambon-beurre is everywhere, but Brooklyn Granary & Mill constructs a masterful version from the grains on up: The sweet, crackly baguette is made from a blend of Finger Lakes spelt and four whole wheats, all ground into flour fresh on the premises. Cream from High Lawn Farm in Massachusetts is cultured overnight and churned into salted butter, while soft slices of Italian lomo — cured pork loin that’s aged for four months — comes from Ends Meat in Sunset Park. All of this care, talent, and time goes into making a sandwich that costs a mere $10, less than you’d spend for lunch at Chipotle.
Great Late Night, at Last
There’s no going back to the wee-hour glory days of old New York, but night owls can at least head to Tal, a third-floor K-town hideout, open until 1 a.m. on weekdays, and accessed via a shaky elevator with mugs of beer, airy battered chicken tenders, and meal sets — such as a trio of raw seafood salad, chunky scallion pancakes, and acorn jelly — paired with bottles of sparkling, cloudy Korean rice wine or soju.
Patties That Showed Up Everywhere
Two celebrity chefs gave the beloved Caribbean meat pies their due this year — curried chicken on coco bread at Kwame Onwuachi’s three Patty Palace stalls, eight different varieties (including a $14 short-rib-conch-and-bone-marrow number) at Paul Carmichael’s Bar Kabawa — but our favorites were the simple golden-yellow beef pastries at Juici Patties, a Jamaican import that had lines out the door the day it opened in Brooklyn.
A Whole Menu Perfect for Basics
Even if we’re weary of shrimp cocktails and au poivre’d steaks, we can still appreciate the skill required to make the best versions of basic food. The Snail has proved itself able to provide exactly what diners expect while updating everything just enough — like adding bitter radicchio and a mountaintop of snowy Pecorino to the Caesar salads that land on nearly every table — to make sure everyone goes home happier than they thought they’d be. It’s a perfect formula, in other words, for Hinge-date eating over one-too-many martinis and a Marcona-almond-topped “Spanish” sundae for dessert.
Pizza That’s Worth the Arduous Wait
Once word got out that two Eleven Madison Park vets were baking sturdy-crusted, ’nduja-topped sourdough pizza at Ceres, crowds were inevitable. But a wave of glowing press soon presented a how-do-we-handle-all-this-business logistics problem. The solution: a line that starts before noon to make a reservation for one of the pies (which can cost up to $76 each) sometime within the next few hours. Shockingly, the pizzas really are that good.
A Hype Pastry With No Gimmicks
There is only one thing to get at Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop: Hot scones, baked in constant batches so they’re always fresh, split and sandwiched with house blackberry preserves and a thick slice of cold Irish butter.
Coffee for Snobs and Laypeople Alike
Just a few months after the L.A. roaster Maru opened a Williamsburg branch, its short coffee cups have started to populate the Domino Park riviera. The key to its universal appeal is the way it applies real expertise to suit every coffee drinker’s commitment level: Automatic drip is rebrewed every 30 minutes so cups taken to-go are never stale, while connoisseurs can sidle up to the wood-grained counter for single-origin coffee-and-espresso “sets” designed to highlight the best attributes of Maru’s deeply cared-for beans.
The Most Comforting Bowl of Tagliatelle
For a dish that never leaves the otherwise-seasonal menu, Maxime Pradié’s chicken ragout at Zimmi’s is stunningly humble. The sage-and-liver-accented sauce sits like a blanket on a warm bed of eggy tagliatelle. In its plain white bowl, this mix of brown and beige is an open challenge to anyone who would dare try to Instagram it. It tastes unpretentious, too, which is just what makes it so unforgettable.
Sourdough With Staying Power
The high-priced ceramics and bottles of olive oil get most of the attention at Flynn McGarry’s Gem Home, but we’re partial to the $10 sourdough boules, which get their dark crumb from a blend of wheat, spelt, and a rye-based starter. The bread is baked until the crust is nice and chewy, which may be the secret to prolonging its freshness — we’ve known this bread to last up to a week sealed inside a plastic bag, though anyone in their right mind will eat it much sooner than that.
And Finally, a Whole Lot of Tiramisu
This was the year some Brooklyn chefs decided the creamy mix of ladyfingers, espresso and marsala wine was due for a makeover. JR & Son doses its blocks with artichoke amaro and flakes of orange zest. At The Snail, a layer of ladyfingers and cream top a round of dark chocolate cake. And I Cavallini builds its version as a plate of cocoa-dusted cream orbs. As chef Nick Curtola told us earlier this year, with “something like tiramisu, it’s really hard to stand out — if we’re gonna do it, it’s gotta be slightly different.”
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