New York is in the middle of one of its best restaurant runs in years. The old guard is getting fresh energy. Meanwhile, London and L.A. keep sending their best exports our way. And A24 has apparently decided hospitality is its next great extension of the brand. So here’s where to eat right now, whether you’re chasing a decades-old power lunch or the reservation everyone’s currently fighting over.
The Restaurant: The Eighty Six
The Neighborhood: West Village
The Eighty Six occupies the storied Prohibition-era home of Chumley’s at 86 Bedford Street. It was once a hideout for Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck, back when literary types drank in speakeasies instead of arguing on group chats. Chef Michael Vignola, also behind the wildly popular The Corner Store, has turned the address into an intimate 35-seat steakhouse. Instead of the usual big beef suppliers, he’s sourcing from small, independent ranches. The room plays it moody and clubby, but the real theater happens at the bar. There, Employees Only alum Dev Johnson and CHG beverage director Lucas Robinson use cryovac, sous vide, rotary evaporation, and in-house carbonation to build cocktails that read more like lab work than happy hour. Many named it New York’s hottest fall restaurant of 2025. A year later, the hype still hasn’t cooled off.
What to Order: The dry-aged strip steak, a cocktail off the “technique” menu, and whatever the bar team is currently milk-washing.
The Restaurant: Polo Bar
The Neighborhood: Midtown
Ralph Lauren’s clubby restaurant on East 55th Street remains one of the rare places you’ll spot A-listers dining above 14th Street without blinking. Wood paneling, hunting-lodge portraits, and a genuine equestrian pedigree set the mood. In fact, you half expect Ralph himself to pull up a chair. Reservations are still a fight. Still, regulars will tell you it’s worth the wait for a menu that plays the hits: a crispy chopped salad, a corned beef sandwich that could start an argument in a deli, and a burger people cross town for. It isn’t reinventing anything. Instead, it’s simply doing “classic New York” better than the restaurants racing after the next trend.
What to Order: The Polo Bar burger, Ralph’s corned beef sandwich, Dover sole.
The Restaurant: Monkey Bar
The Neighborhood: Midtown East
Monkey Bar has been a fixture since 1936. Its current chapter, though, began in 2009, when Graydon Carter and hotelier Jeff Klein restored the space. They also commissioned artist Ed Sorel to paint the mural that still anchors the back wall: sixty Jazz Age icons, from Dorothy Parker to Duke Ellington, presiding over dinner. The room does old New York glamour without irony: a raw bar, handmade pastas, Prime steaks, and a cocktail list that includes the Monkey Gland (gin, pomegranate molasses, absinthe) for anyone who likes a drink with some history attached. In short, it’s the kind of place that reminds you some rooms are simply built to outlast every trend that tries to replace them.
What to Order: The raw bar tower, a Prime steak, and a Savoy Graydon.
The Restaurant: Bar Chimera
The Neighborhood: Midtown East
The newest arrival at 550 Madison Avenue comes from the Gracious Hospitality team behind Cote. True to form, it doesn’t do anything by half measures. Bar Chimera is built around a towering pine tree — a nod to Korean symbolism — ringed by three separate bar programs devoted to martinis, whiskey, and wine. There’s also a 1,400-bottle cellar that would make most sommeliers weak in the knees. The brasserie menu backing it all up leans playful without losing its nerve. Crispy Octopus and “Foie Gras Home-Run Balls” share space with the 550 Burger, which has already built its own following since the room opened this spring.
What to Order: A dirty martini from the martini bar, the 550 Burger, Crispy Octopus.
The Restaurant: Torrisi
The Neighborhood: Nolita
Set inside the landmarked Puck Building, Torrisi is Major Food Group’s love letter to the city it’s named for. It’s Italian on the menu, but it’s built from the DNA of red-sauce joints, Jewish delis, Chinatown kitchens, and West Indian patty shops — the flavors that actually make New York’s food scene what it is. The room doesn’t do subtle, either: vaulted ceilings, geometric marble floors, aquamarine velvet booths, an open kitchen lit like a Broadway set, and menus that look like wedding invitations. It’s expensive, and it knows it. Still, it’s the kind of expensive where you can taste exactly where the money went.
What to Order: Whatever pasta the kitchen is spotlighting that night, and anything that nods to the city’s immigrant food history.
The Restaurant: Ambassadors Clubhouse
The Neighborhood: NoMad
London’s JKS Restaurants — the team behind Gymkhana — picked NoMad for its New York debut. The restaurant landed on the ground floor of A24’s headquarters at 1245 Broadway. Ambassadors Clubhouse spans two maximalist floors, inspired by the founders’ grandfather, a former Indian ambassador, and the “party mansions” of his era. Leading the kitchen is Chef Karan Mittal, who trained at Indian Accent, Coi, and Le Gavroche, with a focus on the rich, aromatic Punjabi cooking of northern India. Overall, it’s a full sensory experience, design included, and one of the most confident restaurant debuts New York has seen from an international import in years.
What to Order: Anything from the tandoor, and let your server steer the curries.
The Restaurant: Wild Cherry
The Neighborhood: West Village
A24 didn’t just restore the historic Cherry Lane Theatre, it opened a restaurant inside it, too. Wild Cherry comes from Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, the James Beard-winning duo behind Frenchette and Le Rock. The 45-seat room plays it appropriately cinematic: red-checkered floors, forest-green booths, and a horseshoe-shaped bar that feels lifted straight out of Mad Men. It’s part restaurant, part post-show hideaway, and currently one of the hardest reservations in the city. Tables open at midnight for the following two weeks, and they disappear fast.
What to Order: Whatever’s coming out of the open kitchen that night, a martini at the horseshoe bar before you sit down, and, of course, dessert.
The Restaurant: The Corner Store
The Neighborhood: SoHo
Whether you’ve been in person, waited in line, or waited on Resy, it’s safe to say the entirety of New York City knows why The Corner Store is making this list. Catch Hospitality Group’s ode to old-school New York dining landed in SoHo. It immediately became one of the toughest tables in the city. Culinary director Michael Vignola (also behind The Eighty Six) and executive chef Paul Castro built a menu that plays with nostalgia without ever coasting on it, a mixture of comfort-food instincts executed with real technique. Within its first month, it made regulars out of Taylor Swift and Gigi Hadid. But the reason it’s stayed hard to book isn’t the celebrity traffic. It’s that the food actually holds up.
What to Order: Whatever’s on the “classics” section of the menu, and don’t skip dessert.
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FAQs
Q: How hard is it to get a reservation at The Eighty Six?
A: Very. The 35-seat West Village steakhouse has been one of the toughest tables in the city since it opened in September 2025, so book as far in advance as your app allows.
Q: Is Ambassadors Clubhouse the New York location of Gymkhana?
A: Not exactly. It’s the New York debut of Gymkhana’s parent company, JKS Restaurants, but Ambassadors Clubhouse is its own concept, focused on Punjabi cuisine rather than the broader Indian menu Gymkhana is known for.
Q: What’s inside the Cherry Lane Theatre now that Wild Cherry has opened?
A: The historic West Village theater still operates as a working venue. Wild Cherry is the 45-seat restaurant A24 built inside it, open Tuesday through Sunday for dinner and post-show drinks.
