Top New York Restaurants of 2015 (Published 2015) (2024)

The new restaurants I reviewed this year gave me a very deep bench from which to pick this year-end list. Ruthlessly, this ranking of my favorites was capped at 10, but I could have stretched it to 15 without any noticeable drop-off in quality.

Two places that made the cut, Momof*cku Ko and Mission Chinese Food, were transferred from their original sites. They are new restaurants in my book because they have almost nothing in common with their first incarnations. But had I rejected them, I could have made room at the end of the list for, say, Houseman or Rebelle or Untitled at the Whitney or the Clocktower or Chomp Chomp, all places I’ll return to if I ever get a free night.

This is a sign of real strength. Before winding down into a disappointingly meager fall season, it was an excellent year for New York restaurants. I suspect that we’ll look back on 2015 as the high-water mark in postrecession dining.

Sluggish economies breed cautious restaurants. This year’s crew is anything but. Cosme dared New York to see Mexican food in new ways. (We took the dare.) Momof*cku Ko and Mission Chinese Food stretched far beyond anything they’d achieved at their prior addresses. The chef Gabriel Kreuther gambled that his exacting and generous cooking could still lure crowds without the imprimatur of Danny Meyer. Wildair’s owners guessed that the city was ready for a modern wine bar like Manfreds in Copenhagen. Superiority Burger doubled down on the idea that the whiff of Birkenstocks could be expunged from veggie burgers and other crunchy hippie food. Its prices — nothing over $10 — are recession-friendly, but its risk-taking spirit is pure 2015.

1. Cosme

Mexican food in the city finally graduated from chips and guac when Enrique Olvera opened Cosme, his first restaurant in New York. (The menu has guacamole off to one side in its own column, which may as well be called Are We Still Doing This?) Mr. Olvera built a restaurant that instantly made passé our salt-rimmed preconceptions about his native cuisine. The large dining room is spare, not exotic, cosmopolitan and still a bit of a scene more than a year in. Yana Volfson’s lists of wine and other drinks display a global curiosity, although her bar is one of the best places around to plumb the smoky mysteries of mezcal. But the cooking is why reservations are hard to come by: subtle, sensitive and smart-looking explorations of Mexican tastes and traditions. Like the cobia, rubbed with pineapple and chiles and meant to be eaten in a taco. Steamy tortillas come on the side. Taste them, and you realize that most tortillas in New York are corn-based coasters. Three stars; 35 East 21st Street, Flatiron; 212-913-9659; cosmenyc.com.

2. Momof*cku Ko

Apart from the name and one dish (the feathery mound of shaved foie gras over riesling jelly) that made David Chang’s original Ko famous, everything is different. The servers are graceful and intuitive. The tall leather-backed chairs are so comfortable that you never want to hop down. The wine glasses are things of beauty, and the stuff in them is seriously good, too. Most of all, the kitchen, under Sean Gray, has a high degree of finesse. The long tasting menus including some argument-ending dishes, like the boxed sushi or the uni with chickpeas. Mr. Chang’s relentless drive to serve food the likes of which you’ve never seen anywhere else is finally backed, in these refined quarters, by a fully modern form of luxury. Three stars; 8 Extra Place (East First Street), East Village; 212-203-8095; momof*cku.com/new-york/ko/.