The best new restaurants in NYC in September

The team behind Los Tacos No. 1 already dishes out one of New York’s greatest tacos from its Chelsea Market taqueria stall. But it’s expanding beyond the tortilla for a seafood-focused follow-up, also located inside the urban food court. Influenced by Mexican fish restaurants found in Tijuana, Ensenada and the rest of the Baja region—where seafood and meat tacos are routinely sold from separate street carts—the modern-day marisquería offers a variety of tacos, ceviches and aguachiles (red or green shrimp, scallop), as well as a raw bar stocked with clams, oysters and oyster shooters.

The NYC outpost of Wolfgang Puck’s steakhouse chain, located inside Tribeca’s Four Seasons, is one of firsts: It’s not only the first stateside CUT to serve three meals a day, but it’s also the celebutoque’s first Manhattan restaurant ever. The Gotham menu includes meaty dinner items (bone-marrow flan with mushroom marmalade, lamb chops with cilantro-mint raita) as well as daytime numbers like blueberry pancakes with salted maple butter.

Purdy’s Farmer & the Fish, which debuted inside a North Salem, New York, farmhouse in 2012, helped turn Westchester County into a dining destination. Now co-owners Edward Taylor and chef-farmer Michael Kaphan are bringing a bit of North Salem to Gramercy with this city sibling: More than three quarters of the produce used at the restaurant is harvested at the team’s five-acre Hudson Valley farm. Inside the 150-seat dining room—decorated with whitewashed shiplap panels, black-and-white photographs depicting farm life and rotating bookcases lined with tomes dedicated to fishing and agriculture—Kaphan serves seasonal plates like bone-in, house-smoked pork belly with fried green tomatoes, and a monkfish milanese served with bitter farm greens and sun gold tomatoes. 

New York has its go-to comforts—a pastrami sandwich with pickles on the side, a bagel with lox and schmear. But down South, few meals are more warming than the meat and three: At low-key luncheonettes and steam-table cafeterias below the Mason-Dixon line, customers can choose one meat (anything from fried chicken to country ham) and three gut-sticking sides, commonly rounded out with corn bread and sweet tea. Harold Moore takes on the tradition with this souped-up Southern-inspired dining room inside the Arlo Hotel Hudson Square, designed like an old-school cafeteria. Spacious banquettes and wooden tables line the 110-seat venue, where you can tuck into mains like whole-roasted lobster, pork ribs and beer-can chicken, plus a plethora of side options including burned-garlic broccoli and basil fried rice.

Restaurateur Yuan Lee is keeping it all in the family with this East Village dumpling parlor. The executive chef is his mother, Qihui Guan, who put in kitchen time at soup-dumpling icon Joe’s Shanghai. The xiao long bao on offer here run the gamut from classic (pork or crab meat, both served in a pork-bone broth) to the grandiose (extra-large scallop-shrimp dumplings in a chicken-bone broth). Along with the soup dumplings, diners can expect a quartet of jiaozi (pot stickers)—pork with bacon and mixed nuts, chicken with truffle oil and cashews, shrimp with seasonal vegetables, and vegetarian with tofu, spinach and clear noodles—and also buns, from savory (steamed pork with scallions) to sweet (red bean with local honey). 

Named after the Asian delicacy, this seafood-forward Thai newcomer is as family-style as it is family-run. Brothers Chat and Ohm Suansilphong (the latter is an alum of Bangkok’s acclaimed Nahm) act as co-chefs, bringing kitchen chops honed under their restaurateur parents in Thailand to the former Le Philosophe space in Noho. At the 58-seat comfort-food spot—designed with colorful scalloped tiles and a shingled outside awning that emulates fish scales—you’ll find dishes like coconut crab curry in a hand-crushed red-curry paste, and clam strips with chili jam and basil. Beverage director Dev Johnson, of Employees Only fame, slings Thai-influenced cocktails behind the bar.

After shuttering their popular Greenpoint restaurant River Styx in August, owners Sydney Silver and Homer Murray—yes, Bill’s son—have flipped the space into a more upscale seasonal spot, helmed by chef Sean Telo (Extra Fancy, Atlanta’s Miller Union). The room has been freshened up with a new bar that has a mirrored back wall, sectioned-off nooks decorated with vintage wallpaper and a wood-burning oven surrounded by circular shelves toting cookbooks, jars of preserved vegetables and excess firewood. From the open kitchen, Telo plates raw porgy with blush plum and fish skin and Hudson Valley foie gras fried rice with linguiça sausage and two eggs. 

After a century on the Upper East Side, the old-world European bakery is finally expanding. Helmed by owner Keith Cohen, the new 1,200-square-foot Upper West Side outpost features a 24-seat sidewalk café and an 18-seat indoor dining area outfitted with expansive, street-facing quartz countertops, polished concrete floors and LED lighting. Along with breads (New York rye, Swiss health), pastries (rainbow cookies, jelly doughnuts) and coffee, the location is branching out with sourdough bagels, sandwiches (turkey with aged cheddar, prosciutto with arugula) and salads (classic caprese, kale with lemon vinaigrette).

There's more to Welsh food than cheese-clogged rarebit, a fact owner Illtyd Barrett holds dear to at this Cobble Hill spot, named for Wales’ folk legend of the sunken kingdom of Cantre’r Gwaelod. Partnering with his brother Dominic and executive chef Tom Coughlan (Txikito, La Vara, Seamstress), the proud Welshman touts his home country by placing mythological artwork and photos of a petrified Welsh forest throughout the 50-seat pub, which also sports a Wales-specific lending library. In the kitchen, Coughlan borrows and tweaks recipes from Barretts’ mother, such as steamed mussels with brandy-soaked pork belly, roasted hake in a tomato-butter sauce, and meatballs with peas in onion gravy.

The team behind a pair of Korean upstarts—soul-food spot Her Name is Han and banchan-focused Atoboy—venture into Japanese territory with this Greenwich Village ramen-ya, a collaboration with chef Hiroshi Hiraoka of Japan’s Q Ramen. Five bowls are on offer, ranging from a chicken shoyu tangled with pork chashu and marinated snow peas, to a miso-vegetable broth topped with seasonal vegetables and sesame. Roughly hewn tables and wooden plateware give a rough feel to the space, offset by the more modern appeal of a DJ booth and a knickknack-strewn chef’s counter, which offers sundry sakes (served both hot and cold), Sapporo on draft and imported bottles like an Echigo stout and Ozeno Yukidoke IPA.

She already impressed New York’s meat-free masses with her veggie burgers at by CHLOE. Now, Chloe Coscarelli is getting into baked goods with a stand-alone vegan bakery next to her flagship with partner Samantha Wasser. Inside the bright, pink-pepped shop, you’ll find three-layer cakes in flavors like banana-pineapple and mocha-almond-fudge, a wide array of cupcakes (banana-chocolate, mint cookies and cream) and individual-size pies in classic varieties like apple and coconut cream. Perk up your a.m. order of a cinnamon roll or a slice of matcha babka with Devocion coffee or twee bottles of flavored almond milk (vanilla, strawberry). Beyond the baked stuff, the bakery also has vegan ice creams from Alchemy Creamery in push-pop form in flavors like caramel banana bread.