Where to Eat: The 10 very best restaurants in N.Y.C.
The full list of the 100 best restaurants in the city is here.
Where to Eat
May 12, 2026

Welcome to Where to Eat, the restaurant newsletter that orders two shrimp cocktails so everyone can get at least one shrimp. Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

  • Our 2026 list of the 100 best restaurants in New York City is finally complete, with the top 10 out now. We’ve also got a ton of amuse-bouche to enjoy with the main dish.
  • You can now save restaurants in the New York Times app!
  • Dirty soda has officially escaped its containment pod (Utah)
  • Make the biscuits that Edna Lewis served at Café Nicholson
A bright yellow table is filled with breakfast dishes, including pancakes, eggs and a pastry. Several people are dining, and one holds a red Tabasco hot sauce bottle.
Karsten Moran for The New York Times

FROM OUR CHIEF CRITICS

The 100 best restaurants in New York City

For the fourth year in a row, The Times tasked our restaurant critic with naming the best restaurants in the city that never stops eating. It was a daunting assignment for our co-chief critic Ligaya Mishan, but she managed to pull it off with aplomb.

Yesterday, No. 11 through No. 100 dropped, and today the top 10 are out. Feel free to (respectfully) debate the rankings in the comments.

This list could stand on its own, but what fun would that be? To whet your appetite for the fine art of eating, Ligaya also wrote about the trends she spotted over her 10 months of scouting (Royal Red is the hot new shrimp variety) and the five New York City neighborhoods that overdelivered on excellent restaurants.

Pete Wells profiled the completists, the people dedicated to trying all the restaurants on the lists that have become the “lingua franca of food media.” But if you’re the practical type, we also broke our 100 list down into 12 entertaining user guides, so you can eat through the parts of the list that appeal the most to you.

And finally, we have a Google Map so you can save all the restaurants and create your own future eating adventures. See the full list of the 100 best restaurants in New York City

A screenshot of the desktop version of the On Your List feature of The New York Times. It features images, different restaurants and their locations.
The New York Times

WHERE TO EAT

Restaurants: Now in your You tab!

For a while now, users of The Times’s app have been able to save books, movies and TV shows to the “On Your List” section of the app’s You tab. This week, restaurants join the fray! You’ll find any restaurants you saved from last year’s list of the 100 best, as well as those saved from this year’s list. Keep an eye out as we deploy this feature across more of our restaurant coverage!

THE OTHER SECTIONS

Dirty soda is dirty in name only

If you’re just now hearing about dirty soda — a do-as-you-please blend of soda, flavored syrup and creamer, served over pebble ice — then you’re already at least five years too late. But so is everyone outside the Mountain West, where dirty sodas have long reigned supreme thanks to the Swig chain. Now, it’s officially peaking, as Gabriella Gershenson recently reported for the Style desk, joining the menus at McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and other national chains. Read the story

Three golden-brown biscuits on a light gray plate on a textured fabric surface. One biscuit is open, topped with red jam, yellow butter and honey.
Romulo Yanes for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Vivian Lui.

RESTAURANT AT HOME

Edna Lewis’s biscuits

Edna Lewis was one of the most renowned Southern chefs in American history. Accordingly, her famous biscuits have had a life beyond Café Nicholson, where she served them to homesick Southerners like Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams and other New Yorkers until she left that job in the mid-1950s. Departing gave her time to start writing her seminal cookbook, “The Taste of Country Cooking,” which turns 50 this year and just got a brand-new edition in case your bookshelf is missing that tome. See the recipe

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