NYT: The 100 best restaurants in New York City in 2024 (feat. Aquavit, Dhamaka, Semma)
I should have seen it coming last year when my editors put the following headline on my attempt to name the city’s greatest places to eat: “The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City 2023.”
That “2023” implies doing it again in 2024. Still, when they told me that’s exactly what they wanted, my first reaction was surprise. This was followed by the realization that I had a lot of eating to do.
Twenty-two places in this edition of “The 100 Best Restaurants in NYC” are new. I’ve eaten at all 100 in the past 12 months, except for La Piraña Lechonera and the Queens Night Market, both of which are currently closed for the season. (I don’t accept free meals from restaurants I write about.)
New York is a big city, and I tried to find 100 restaurants that represent its neighborhoods, its people and the rewards it has in store for hungry, curious eaters. The list is a tour. If you take it, you’ll see all five boroughs and a wide array of cooking and serving styles.
There are hushed counters where fewer than 10 people at a time enjoy the marvels a great sushi master can conjure, and open-air stalls where jerk chicken soaks up the smoke of hardwood charcoal. And quite a few restaurants in between.
Not many people will eat at all of them. But if you read about them, I hope you will start to see New York the way I see it whenever I look at my options and ask myself where I am going to eat next.
— Pete Wells
#47
#69 in 2023
Aquavit
Photo credit: Sasha Maslov for The New York Times
Photo credit: Sasha Maslov for The New York Times
Aquavit was gently pushing Swedish food and drink before anyone put the words “New Nordic cuisine” together, and has outlived several exponents of that style. Emma Bengtsson’s kitchen has kept its grip on the old ways — at lunch, the Swedish meatballs and the herring platter are still hard to equal. The rest of the menu is modern, although it avoids the avant-primitivism of Noma in favor of gentle harmonies like salmon with a saffron-tinted swirl of lobster bisque.
#54
#74 in 2023
Dhamaka
Photo credit: Emon Hassan for The New York Times
Photo credit: Jenny Huang for The New York Times
A year ago, Dhamaka replaced most of its original menu with new dishes, not the move you’d expect from a place that is turning away diners every night. I’m sure some customers are still mourning their old favorites, and there were many things on the starting lineup that you simply couldn’t find anywhere else in Manhattan. But the truth is that in its first years Dhamaka focused very heavily on chile-laden meats, to the point of redundancy. It’s easier now to put together a meal that has a little rhythm and variety, and you can still arrange to finish with the Champaran meat, a mutton curry so fiery it could light a cigar.
#7
#12 in 2023
Semma
Photo credit: Karsten Moran for The New York Times
The city hasn’t quite caught up with Semma yet. To some extent we can blame the Unapologetic Foods group, which opens restaurants faster than Guided by Voices puts out albums. But the real issue is that we haven’t seen anything like Vijay Kumar’s interpretations of South Indian food before. Mr. Kumar doesn’t just toy with the distinction between refined and rustic; he obliterates it. The North Fork snails he sautées with tomatoes and tamarind would be cooked over a campfire in the rice paddies of Tamil Nadu, yet they get along with a glass of Pouilly-Fuissé from the Mâconnais as readily as any Burgundian escargot.