Trends in restaurants are like trends in art: cumulative, ambient, much more obvious in retrospect than in the chaos of the present. If 2024 truly was the year of France's renaissance, dipping New York into cream and caviar, then perhaps 2025 was the year of the messy, auteur indie: restaurants with a gritty, powerful, personal point of view (and limited ones that are nearly impossible to get into the dining rooms). I think about places like Sunn's, Ha's DinerAnd bongwhere the relational experience of eating is less about being the person at the table and more about being the person in the room—being part of something, a moment, a place. For every timid, focused, over-thought-out brand extension, there have been a half-dozen green shoots of passionate, community-focused, community-building eateries and takeout counters. Overall, it was a very good year for restaurants. I mean, yes, it was also a terrible event, plagued by the frightening, widespread consequences of tariff uncertainty and offensive ICE raidsand rising prices for real estate, equipment and ingredients – but the culinary world nevertheless moved forward so steadily and so creatively.
New Yorker writers reflect on the year's highs and lows.
But below is a list of the best dishes, not the best restaurants. Thinking about the year in terms of individual records is always a challenge and a thrill for me. Much of the restaurant experience is contextual, dependent on the story and progression of the meal, and highlighting any particular creation or sensory experience forces me to summarize in a more nuanced, almost animalistic way. What dishes surprised me? What made me close my eyes in joy? What lit up my synapses with pure pleasure and satiety? No meal or snack can exist in a complete vacuum: I think the best thing I put into my mouth all year was just plain old strawberries, raw and red, but so jewel-like, so sweet and flavorful that the flesh almost showed hints of vanilla and cream. The berry was part of the fruit platter at brunch at Gelina's – although, importantly, it was Gelina's in Venice Beach, where the restaurant is sun-drenched and low-slung, not new multi-storey location which opened in New York this year and almost immediately disappeared into the beige, luxurious blandness of its posh NoHo neighborhood. I'm also thinking about the cucumber salad served at Golden Hof, a fabulous new Korean restaurant downtown from the owners of wonderful downtown. Golden Snack. The dish is a beautiful and perhaps brilliant mishmash, like two salads in one, with crisp cucumbers dressed in a charred sesame vinaigrette and fresh cilantro dressed in a shriveled dressing. gochugarumixed in a bowl with a dash of crispy fried garlic. This is one of the most raucous and exciting vegetable dishes I've eaten in a long time, eaten on the main floor of the restaurant, in the louder, more casual bar area. Unfortunately, the formality and elegance of the dining room downstairs acts as a muffler, drowning out the boldness of the salad and taking away much of the fun. All dishes are inevitably products of the environment.
Nevertheless! Here, in no particular order, are a dozen of the best dishes I've eaten this year, viewed more or less in their own way. (Which is decent, for me only three of them are sandwiches.)
