The 10 best fine dining restaurants in NYC

Atomix chicly joined NYC’s fine dining scene in 2018, and parties must still make a wish (or join the waitlist) for a shot at a spot at its chef’s counter. There, it costs $395 for a tour of ten courses like Spanish mackerel, tilefish and Wagyu striploin in the intimate, subterranean space. A $270 bar tasting menu is served upstairs. 

It wasn’t too long after this cozy, picture perfect brownstone Brooklyn tasting destination first opened for the second time (it had a brief run at the inauspicious end of 2019) in 2022 that it began collecting accolades. First, five stars in these pages, followed by Michelin recognition for the restaurant and the guide’s young chef award for co-owner/chef Charlie Mitchell. Previous hits from the $305, seasonally updated menu include aguachile, crimini mushroom and truffle-stuffed fluke, chicken with a light touch of foie gras and lobster and terrific desserts across about a half-dozen courses. 

Celebrity chef Daniel Boulud has spots near and far (including Le Gratin, one of 2022’s best new restaurants), and this singularly-monikered NYC locale first opened in 1993. Its grand space beneath high ceilings serves a seven course menu with items like Nantucket bay scallops, venison and a pear gâteau for $275. Unlike a lot of similarly categorized spots, Daniel also offers à la carte options in its lounge area, where the venison, for example, is priced at $74.

Handsome Gramercy Tavern is a New York City classic that’s undergone a few changes since it opened in 1994. Up front, the tavern section serves a wide variety of à la carte selections like roasted oysters, beef tartare, grilled pork shoulder, burgers and duck meatloaf for $27-$36. In the back, the dining room serves a seasonal menu for $168 that presently includes Montauk scallops, pan-seared skate, Elysian Fields lamb and chocolate cream pie. 

Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten is attached to restaurants all over town and beyond, and the NYC operation emblazoned with his famed name dates back to 1997. Mostly French and as seasonal as the best of ‘em, its $368 ten-course “omnivore” option includes preparations like winter mushroom ravioli, Maine lobster, foie gras and duck breast in a space whose color scheme recalls a cuddlier Apple store. 

Locally lightening wallets and heightening Amex balances since 1986, this multi-award winner first began in France. Today, there are a few, still expensive, ways into its warmly wood-lined, honey-hued space for dinner. The chef’s tasting is $315 for eight seafood-forward plates, and the vegetarian variety is $250. Le Bernardin’s lounge also lists salmon rillettes with toast for $28 and a $54 lobster roll on a black truffle bun.

This is one of a few august institutions whose very name evokes the highest echelons of the fine dining genre in and of itself. Its fourth floor location in the big mall at Columbus Circle lends it some lovely views, plus the convenience of being able to nab a new going out top should you drip a morsel from the $390, nine-course tasting menu on your own attire. This moment’s menus were awaiting update at press time, but butter-poached Maine lobster, duck foie gras and all manner of caviar interpretations have been known to appear over Per Se’s past nine years in business. 

A relative newcomer to fine dining in NYC, Saga opened across two dining rooms and several terraces on the 63rd floor of a beautiful Art Deco building downtown in 2021. Its seasonal tasting menu is $298 per person, and its views are worth wherever you value social media engagement, but ultimately, objectively breathtaking. Previous favorites from the ever-updating menu included fluke five ways, black bass with bits of lobster, clams and scallops, two preparations of dry-aged duck and a darling candy dish from among nine courses. 

Chef Daisuke Nakazawa's eponymous restaurant was a tough booking when it first opened in 2013, and still requires some advance planning today. This endurance can be attributed to its ongoing excellence, and its (highly relative) affordability on NYC’s omakase landscape doesn’t hurt, either. Twenty-ish courses run $150 in the quietly elegant dining room and $180 at the counter. Even with the optional $100 sake pairing, it can still amount to hundreds less than some of its spendier contemporaries. 

The Museum of Modern Art’s The Modern, which opened in 2005, is certainly tops among museum spots, but it’d be just as highly regarded at any address in town. Its dining room skews a bit austere, but it has a lovely lookout on the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. Dinner is $250 per person and might include lobster, striped bass and duck, and a $150 lunch option is available, too.