#Nytimes chinese restaurants free

Mexican food in the city finally graduated from chips and guac when Enrique Olvera opened Cosme, his first restaurant in New York. Its prices - nothing over $10 - are recession-friendly, but its risk-taking spirit is pure 2015. Superiority Burger doubled down on the idea that the whiff of Birkenstocks could be expunged from veggie burgers and other crunchy hippie food. Wildair’s owners guessed that the city was ready for a modern wine bar like Manfreds in Copenhagen. The chef Gabriel Kreuther gambled that his exacting and generous cooking could still lure crowds without the imprimatur of Danny Meyer.

(We took the dare.) Momofuku Ko and Mission Chinese Food stretched far beyond anything they’d achieved at their prior addresses. Cosme dared New York to see Mexican food in new ways. Sluggish economies breed cautious restaurants. I suspect that we’ll look back on 2015 as the high-water mark in postrecession dining. Before winding down into a disappointingly meager fall season, it was an excellent year for New York restaurants.

#Nytimes chinese restaurants free

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. They are new restaurants in my book because they have almost nothing in common with their first incarnations.

Two places that made the cut, Momofuku Ko and Mission Chinese Food, were transferred from their original sites. 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. The new restaurants I reviewed this year gave me a very deep bench from which to pick this year-end list.