Kabawa, where the chef Paul Carmichael presents his vision of Caribbean food.Credit...Janice Chung for The New York Times
Here are the new kids on the block our critics loved most this year.
- Dec. 8, 2025
New York is where the algorithm dies. Ours is a city supremely confident in its status as the center of the universe. It is singular, as are its often prickly inhabitants, scrappers and squabblers whose biggest secret may be that we’re actually kind (if not necessarily nice), who’ll give a fumbling stranger a swipe on the subway without breaking stride, and whose wild ambitions and daily struggles make this heaving, bursting-at-the-seams city the most exciting place to live — and eat.
Our fav…
Kabawa, where the chef Paul Carmichael presents his vision of Caribbean food.Credit...Janice Chung for The New York Times
Here are the new kids on the block our critics loved most this year.
- Dec. 8, 2025
New York is where the algorithm dies. Ours is a city supremely confident in its status as the center of the universe. It is singular, as are its often prickly inhabitants, scrappers and squabblers whose biggest secret may be that we’re actually kind (if not necessarily nice), who’ll give a fumbling stranger a swipe on the subway without breaking stride, and whose wild ambitions and daily struggles make this heaving, bursting-at-the-seams city the most exciting place to live — and eat.
Our favorite new restaurants are wholly true to New York. Let others have their wide-open spaces, their palatial boredom. These spots — all opened in the past year and a half and listed here in alphabetical order — make small, even cramped rooms feel expansive. Their chefs, like the New Yorkers they serve, have roots around the country and the world. They came here to cook for us. How lucky we are. LIGAYA MISHAN
Bánh Anh Em
**
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Credit...Yuvraj Khanna for The New York Times
An hour before opening, there’s already a line down the sidewalk. Rightfully so: This no-reservations spot serves some of the best Vietnamese food in town. The chef, Nhu Ton, embraces the breadth of the country, honoring regional traditions. “Whatever food I make here, it’s very important for me to understand where it came from,” she told me — be it bún chả from a street vendor under a bridge in Hanoi or bánh uớt chồng, a stack of delicate gooey rice-flour crepes that are a specialty of the Central Highlands. Hot sauces are fermented in-house, and crackly golden loaves for bánh mì pop out of the oven all day long. The restaurant is clamorous, verging on chaos and thoroughly alive. LIGAYA MISHAN
99 Third Avenue (East 13th Street), East Village; 833-674-5878; banhanhem.com
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Credit...Marissa Alper for The New York Times
In a sun-filled space in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, the chef Nico Russell has successfully translated his cerebral, hyper-seasonal cooking from the tasting menu he used to serve at Oxalis to a casual, all-day menu that resonates with his neighbors. Now, the room buzzes with families with small children supping on Caesar salad and skinny, herb-speckled fries, and couples lingering over housemade cocktails and nonalcoholic elixirs that reflect the farmers’ market. More adventuresome eaters will be pleased to find Mr. Russell’s refined yet unorthodox sensibility in dishes such as farfalle with girolles and bone marrow and a thoughtful, evanescent array of vegetable dishes, all of which can turn a simple Wednesday dinner into a special night out. MELISSA CLARK
791 Washington Avenue (St. Johns Place), Prospect Heights, Brooklyn; 347-627-8298; cafemadonyc.com
Cocina Consuelo
**
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Credit...Marissa Alper for The New York Times
There is no dining room quite like the cozy, primary-colored parlor that is Cocina Consuelo. The restaurant started as a pandemic-era Mexican pop-up by the married couple Karina Garcia and Eduardo Rodriguez, and its home-cooking ethos belies a cunning complexity. Masa pancakes are made with heirloom corn and basted with honey butter until the stack smells like a beehive. Birria simmers overnight and is draped over rich bone marrow, the whole thing dribbled with salsa roja and pickled onions. Families tumble in on weekends for lazy breakfasts, children plunking the keys of the piano at the front of the dining room. In the evenings, solo diners linger over a glass of Mexican natural wine and duck mole at the bar. The couple has brought the energy and ease of Mexican cafe culture to Harlem. Whatever ails you, Cocina Consuelo, it seems, has the remedy. PRIYA KRISHNA
130 Hamilton Place (West 143rd Street), Harlem; 646-250-7172; cocinaconsuelonyc.com
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Credit...Colin Clark for The New York Times
The French Vietnamese-ish cooking of Anthony Ha and Sadie Mae Burns-Ha is unexpected and unforgettable. Here in this tiny bistro with a handful of stools, a barely there kitchen and a chalkboard menu, the couple are churning out one excellent idea after another. Those can range from a simple, puckering lemon meringue pie to a rich black pudding topped with pickled kumquats and Thai chiles. Even the drinks selection feels fresh but never snobbish — a glass of vermouth that makes you rethink vermouth, a bottle of bubbles from a small producer you won’t find in a wine shop. Mr. Ha and Ms. Burns-Ha belong to a new generation of chefs cooking deeply personal food that defies trends or genres. And they’re just getting started — a bigger restaurant is already in the works. PRIYA KRISHNA
297 Broome Street (Eldridge Street), Lower East Side; no phone; instagram.com/has_dac_biet
Hellbender
**
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Credit...Janice Chung for The New York Times
When the chef Yara Herrera revamped her Ridgewood, Queens, bar into a full restaurant, she wanted to maintain its exuberant sense of fun. So she kept the playlist of reggaeton, bachata and mariachi, and her most popular bar snacks: the airy fried Oaxacan cheese with its heady tomatillo salsa; the Clamato-spiked shrimp cocktail with pico de gallo. But with an expanded menu, diners can also get a taste of Ms. Herrera’s fine-dining background in seasonal, ingredient-driven dishes that reflect her Mexican American heritage. Plates of kanpachi in a guajillo-imbued carrot juice speckled with peanuts, and crispy lamb shoulder with arbol salsa show off her assured technique, while the ever-changing Jell-O of the day is a wobbly reminder of the delightful whimsy underpinning it all. MELISSA CLARK
68-22 Forest Avenue (68th Road), Ridgewood, Queens; no phone; hellbendernyc.com
Kabawa
***
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Credit...Janice Chung for The New York Times
Kabawa is exuberant proof that fine dining needn’t be stiff or twee. The chef Paul Carmichael, who grew up in Barbados, has ambition to burn, but there’s joy in his cooking, too, and a sense of a hand outstretched: Come see my world. His vision of Caribbean food is expansive, making room for the traditional — “I just want to be in the conversation for best in class,” he says of his buoyant cassava dumplings and monumental chuletas can-can — alongside flights of imagination, presenting pepper shrimp, a staple of roadside shacks in Jamaica, raw and scarlet with hibiscus powder, surrounded by tiny emulsions of raging fermented Scotch bonnets. The prix-fixe menu is three courses and an abundance. “Fill yuh belly,” the menu says, and you do. LIGAYA MISHAN
8 Extra Place (East First Street), East Village; 646-790-8747; kabawa.com
Kappo Sono
Not yet reviewed
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Credit...Emon Hassan for The New York Times
The chef Chikara Sono doesn’t pander to crowds. He cooked for more than a decade at Kyo Ya, a subterranean Japanese restaurant in the East Village that had something of a cult following and was tricky to find. His new kaiseki spot, which opened in July 2024, is even more hidden, at the top of a commercial building off Union Square. You’re met on the ground floor by a host who shepherds you upstairs in the elevator, and you arrive in what could be a chic penthouse bar in Tokyo. The city glitters through the windows, and the mood is as relaxed and chummy as the courses are elaborate and intensely detailed. At the end, the pastry chef, Norie Uematsu, steps to the fore; an autumn meal concluded with a charming wagashi of a bunny facing away from the guest, long ears flung back, gazing at the moon. LIGAYA MISHAN
39 East 13th Street (University Place), Sixth Floor, East Village; 646-899-5891; kapposono.com
Smithereens
***
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Credit...Yuvraj Khanna for The New York Times
It feels right to have to descend into this dark basement restaurant devoted to New England’s rugged coast. Its spirit is closer to the ocean’s mysterious depths than the sparkle of summer sun. The chef Nicholas Tamburo grew up on the South Shore of Massachusetts and knows things about lobsters that outsiders never will. Seaweed is everywhere, in the butter that comes with the cornmeal-and-molasses anadama bread and the gorgeously delicate crudos; in the giddily strange mille-feuille at dessert; and even in the martini, whose base gin is infused with dulse, a red marine lettuce. None of this feels overly clever or purely poetic. The mission is still pleasure, and plate after plate delivers, from ruffles of abalone to a pâté of bluefish haunted by maple, to a cider doughnut that actually tastes, astoundingly, of apple. LIGAYA MISHAN
414 East Ninth Street (First Avenue), East Village; no phone; smithereensnyc.com
Sunn’s
**
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Credit...Yuvraj Khanna for The New York Times
All hail tiny, scrappy restaurants like Sunn’s, where the menu is brief by necessity, yet somehow there is a sense of plenty. In an exceedingly narrow kitchen, the chef Sunny Lee fills plates until they nearly brim over. Great sprawls of vegetables and fruit, meant to be eaten with your hands, are so profuse and messy, they improbably turn salad into an adventure. Oversize dak mandu get a thrilling ooze of schmaltz and half-spill when pierced, like xiao long bao. Texture is championed, with plush tuna set against cloud-ear mushrooms that crunch and spring. A whole meal could consist only of the ever changing banchan, little dishes that draw from Ms. Lee’s Korean heritage but also showcase her whimsy and willingness to dare. There’s not much space for guests, either, but you won’t mind. LIGAYA MISHAN
139 Division Street (Canal Street), Chinatown; 917-540-0884 (texting only); sunnsnyc.com
Yamada
****
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Credit...Yuvraj Khanna for The New York Times
Japan counts 72 microseasons, each lasting a matter of days, and the chef Isao Yamada honors that tradition at this serene kaiseki counter, where the crush and heave of the city recedes. Every course embodies a particular moment in time, not with fuss, sentimentality or false grandeur, but with close attention to the world around us. The menu shifts as ingredients emerge, peak and fade, acknowledging the possibility of beauty at every stage. Mr. Yamada works quietly, almost shyly, making each plate for each guest. The space is simple and hushed, but warmly welcoming, and there’s no need to fear using the wrong utensil or failing to observe some unknown ritual: Here the guest is paramount, and the servers have a remarkable ability to anticipate and interpret what you want and need, and to know that the two aren’t always the same. LIGAYA MISHAN
16 Elizabeth Street (Canal Street), Chinatown; 646-429-8759; yamadanewyork.com
Ligaya Mishan is a chief restaurant critic for The Times.
Priya Krishna is a reporter in the Food section of The Times.
Melissa Clark has been writing her column, A Good Appetite, for The Times’s Food section since 2007. She creates recipes for New York Times Cooking, makes videos and reports on food trends. She is the author of 45 cookbooks, and counting.
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