Firstly, welcome back, New York. We know that you enjoyed your time in St. Tropez, sitting next to Victoria and David at Cherry at lunch. And Ibiza was everything this summer, because Jondal doesn’t ever disappoint. But no matter how epic your vacations were, there’s one place you call home, and that’s New York City. Even if you don’t live here, New York is a place that seems to adopt everyone. So, in honor of our annual New York issue, this is where to be on the dining scene now. We’ve included the classics, the next gen icons, and a few new restaurants that are defining New York now. This is where you want to be when it’s back to school this September.
Restaurants are Better than Ever
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: Graciela
The Neighborhood: West Village
Graciela is chef Pablo Rivero’s first venture outside Buenos Aires, and it’s easily one of the best openings New York has seen all year. Rivero built his name on Don Julio, the Buenos Aires institution that’s practically a pilgrimage site for steak obsessives, and Graciela (named for his mother) is its own concept, not a spinoff, at 81 Greenwich Avenue. An open kitchen anchored by a charcoal-burning parilla, reclaimed wood, worn stone, and the same ceremonial hospitality that made the original famous: you get a welcome drink before you’ve even finished introductions. The ribeye, imported straight from Argentina, is some of the best beef in the city right now.
What to Order: The ribeye, the branzino out of the wood-burning oven, and the fries, which might be the best in New York right now.
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.
The Restaurant: Oriana
The Neighborhood: Nolita
Oriana is the follow-up from the team behind The Noortwyck, and it’s a much bigger swing. Chef Andy Quinn and sommelier Cedric Nicaise, both Eleven Madison Park alumni, moved from their West Village neighborhood spot to 174 Mott Street with a grander idea entirely: marble-topped tables, high ceilings, real space between seats, and wood-fire cooking executed at Michelin-star caliber. It’s more polished and more grown-up than most of what Nolita usually serves up. The wine list alone, with roughly 25 pours by the glass and three Selosse Champagnes on it, is worth the trip on its own.
What to Order: The whole grilled snapper, the hanger steak with bone marrow and coal-fired potato, and the wood-fired bread with chive oil butter to start.
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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: What’s the price range at Oriana?
A: On the higher end. Wood-fire cooking with Michelin pedigree behind it isn’t cheap, and the wine list will push the bill further if you let it.
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.
