2013's Best New Restaurant winner astonishes with its all-in pursuit of luxury: radishes dipped like bonbons in shells of butter & roasted chicken w/ foie gras & truffles tucked beneath its skin. Read more.
This pasta lover's dream won the 2013 Best New Italian Spot award. From an open kitchen, Chef Toscano dispatches blackened tentacles of meaty octopus and gorgeous pastas woven around cockscombs. Read more.
This new-world delicatessen, a Noho spin-off of the Brooklyn flagship, won the title of Best Sandwich Shop in 2013. Read more.
Beer store with a bar? Beer bar with a store? Whatever the hell it is, this erudite yet unpretentious ode to all things ale beguiled wide-eyed beer novices and grizzled hops nerds alike. Read more.
Lines wind out the door at 2013's Best New Bakery winner for skillfully balanced bites like fudgy date-cocoa Montego Bay bars and a killer chocolate-chip cookie teeming with gooey nubs. Read more.
This downtown-meets-Chinatown den pleases both Instagram-happy young’uns and Mandarin-fluent grannies. Winner of the 2013 Best Second Act award, as the sophomore effort from Xi’an Famous Foods. Read more.
This lively eatery pulls in Brooklynites looking for both homey abuela standbys (rich, cilantro-nipped guac; fragrant pozole verde) and palate-expanding fare (tongue tacos, duck-leg tamales). Read more.
This prettily appointed joint has feel-good vibes with gorgeous cocktails (the Iron Lady, a tart, rose-infused gin sipper) and hearty fare (a fat, juicy pork chop glazed in a bacon-fig vinaigrette). Read more.
There are flawless standards here—a strapping Manhattan, a tingly champagne cocktail fizzing w/ sugar & Angostura bitters—but big-swinging bar talents really come out to play w/ their original drinks. Read more.
NYers keep turning out in droves at this nondescript storefront, dabbing their sweat-beaded brows & fanning their overheated mouths for relief from chili-oil-soaked peanut noodles & peppered pickles. Read more.
Blanca, winner of the Best Big-Pimpin' Brooklyn award, serves some of New York’s priciest high-concept cooking to just 12 flush diners a night in 20-odd courses of tweezer-plated perfection. Read more.
The New Nordic Wonder award winner's tasting menu turned the forest’s prickly underbelly—all hairy roots, funky fungi & fallen leaves—into some of the most stunning plates of 2013. Read more.
NY’s new Pok Pok is even better than the West Coast original. The wait-time for a taste of garlicky muu kham waan & incendiary duck laap can be interminable. Bangkok, though, is a 25-hr flight away. Read more.
Proletariat is a much-deserved look into no-holds-barred beer geekdom, blissfully free of TVs, generic pub grub & high-fiving mooks. It holds only 12 stools & its menus have been replaced w/ a QR code Read more.
This PS1 revival has the same over-the-top spirit as the spectacular Queens diner original. The menu, which changes daily, runs to veal brains, blood pudding and big, seared slabs of foie gras. Read more.
A wood-fueled smoker from Austin’s Franklin Barbecue produces gloriously pink slices of beef burnished with black pepper and smoke-infused lacings of fat in the popular Pat LaFrieda brisket. Read more.
Here, the Jammer is the pièce de résistance—a streusel-wreathed, preserve-dotted concoction that fittingly came to baker Dorie Greenspan in her sleep. These sweets are what dreams are really made of. Read more.
This Korean joomak delivers exactly what NYC's nocturnal gastronauts crave most: a new & exciting way to drink & eat at the same time. Order a fiery communal bowl of the late-night-only Korean ramen. Read more.
The slim restaurant’s sardine-can-size kitchen sends out wild riffs on sushi, like pork-belly or chopped-beef-with-uni & more gluttonous dishes like a grilled cheese sandwich oozing melted foie gras. Read more.
Executive Chef Daniel Humm (also of NoMad) earned top honors as our 2013 Chef of the Year, in part due to the reinvented tasting menu here—a hymn for Gotham’s dining history. Read more.
