The best American restaurants in NYC

Everybody loves Afro-Caribbean restaurant Tatiana—and for good reason. While reservations might seem nearly impossible to come by, it’s worth the wait to try chef Kwame Onwuachi’s take on New American food. Share curried goat patties, crispy okra and piri piri salad, then order the tender, decadent short rib pastrami that has become a fixture on the menu, though its preparation frequently changes. For dessert, there’s the “Bodega Special,” which combines a take on the classic Cosmic Brownie with powdered sugar donut ice cream and fresh Sorrel. What could be more American than that? 

The loss of James Kent, the chef behind Crown Shy, was a heartbreaking hit to the culinary world. His restaurant, hidden in an unassuming office tower, remains a revelation. Not too fancy but certainly celebratory, it serves up tantalizing dishes listed only by their ingredients, like “Mafaldine, Sungold, Calabrian Chili,” and “Scallop, Honeydew, Cucumbers.” A meal there is as transcendent as one at Eleven Madison Park, of which Kent was an alum, although Crown Shy is significantly more approachable. Don’t skip the satsuma orange ice cream, which is served with toasted marshmallow and demands to be eaten if you haven’t saved room.

Swiss chef Daniel Humm mans the plant-based kitchen at this vast Art Deco jewel, which began life as a brasserie before evolving into one of the city’s most rarefied and progressive eateries. The service is famously mannered, and the room is among the city’s most grand. But the heady, epic tasting menus are the true heart of Eleven Madison Park, a format that spotlights Humm’s auteur instincts and way with vegetables.

Here you are at 8pm on a Monday, in a packed restaurant with an hour-and-a-half wait. The familiar decor belies the talents of Ignacio Mattos, the imaginative Uruguayan-born chef cooking in this Mediterranean-tinged spot. Mattos has reined in his modernist tendencies at Estela, which serves an ever-changing, mostly small-plates menu that bridges the gap between the now-closed space-age Isa and the homey Italian he cooked at Il Buco.

While plenty of New York restaurants make sustainability a priority—sourcing their ingredients locally and crafting dining rooms from salvaged materials—none have done so with quite as much visual and gastronomic panache as chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s ABC Kitchen. The chef’s “hippie” restaurant, as he’s taken to calling it, is a stunner, as artfully merchandised as the shop that surrounds it. Everything, including the antique armoires, reclaimed-wood tables and chandeliers, is gathered from area artisans. Though the restaurant’s sustainable ethos is outlined on the back of the menu, the cooking, based on ingredients from up and down the East Coast, delivers one message above all: Food that’s good for the planet needn’t be any less opulent, flavorful or stunning to look at.

Gramercy is the restaurant that transformed Danny Meyer from a one-shop restaurateur to a full-blown impresario, made Tom Colicchio a star and launched a citywide proliferation of casual yet upscale American eateries.

Like the diverse crowd, the food—from virtuoso Andrew Carmellini—is eclectic: His rollicking menu reflects our increasingly free-form eating habits with loving homages to Chinatown, the barrio, Little Italy and the full range of midtown, from its oyster bars and old chophouses to its taquerias and noodle-shop dives. To showcase this multicultural fare, design firm Roman and Williams divided the old Cub Room space into a cozy warren of intimate rooms with brass fixtures, cream brick walls and dark wooden beams on the ceilings. The various areas are buzzy, not deafening, with conversations evaporating out of the big picture windows.

Buzzing with urban-farming fund-raisers, local brewers pouring their ales and food-world luminaries fresh off Heritage Radio interviews, this sprawling hangout has become the unofficial meeting place for Brooklyn's sustainable-food movement. Opened in 2008 by Chris Parachini, Brandon Hoy and Carlo Mirarchi, Roberta's features its own rooftop garden, a food-focused Internet-radio station and a kitchen that turns out excellent, locally sourced dishes, like marinated cucumbers with spicy seeds or oxtail lasagna made with horseradish. The pizzas—like the Cheesus Christ, topped with mozzarella, Taleggio, Parmesan, black pepper and cream—are among the borough's best.

More than a mere crusader for sustainability, Dan Barber is also one of the most talented cooks in town. He builds his menuless, shared plate “family meal” experience around whatever’s at its peak on his Westchester farm. Once among the most sedate little restaurants in the Village, this cramped subterranean jewel box has become one of the most raucous.

Olmsted’s focus on hyperfresh produce should come as no surprise, given chef Greg Baxtrom’s résumé. Before opening this seasonal Prospect Heights spot, the chef put in kitchen time at renowned ingredient-driven restaurants like Chicago’s Alinea, Blue Hill at Stone Barns and Atera. At Atera, Baxtrom met horticulturist Ian Rothman, and they partnered for this white-brick 50-seat dining room, which sports high ceilings, a chef’s counter and butcher-block tables, as well as the backyard garden, equipped with produce beds growing vegetables, flowers and herbs.