New York restaurants A to Z: Listings and reviews

Enjoy an elevated brunch spread crafted with care at 1803. You'll find a diverse selection of culinary offerings and their speakeasy, Bon Courage, a hidden gem where you can enjoy the charm of the prohibition era with handcrafted cocktails infused with the soulful spirit of New Orleans. Live music performances from a talented rotation of musicians enhance the dining experience not only during weekend brunch, but five days a week. With soulful melodies and a vibrant atmosphere, every visit to 1803 is a memorable experience sure to keep you coming back for more.

This modern Taiwanese restaurant specializes in izakaya (informal comfort fare) but with a funky twist. Chow down on playful eats, like a black-pepper steak sandwich or homemade pork sausage with cured duck yolk, in a space decked out in neon-accented decor and a multiwall mural.

A few years ago, I came close to succumbing to shared plates fatigue. Like ubiquitous marble-topped bars and reclaimed something somewhere, it seemed as though a secret hospitality consortium had authored an oath mandating every menu item be divisible by party size, regardless of how unsatisfying the outcome might be.  I had made a reservation for four at an intriguing new restaurant which, on paper, seemed to be one of the only recently opened spots where I could order and eat my own duck confit. So when that familiar phrase “family style” eventually pierced the air, followed by the suggestion that four adult people, from two seprate households, might wish to share the soup, my skeleton turned to dust. It simply did not make sense.  Everything at 8282 makes sense. The second restaurant from the pair behind now-closed Pado opened on Stanton Street in November. Billed as modern Korean, selections from 8282’s banju menu are prepared and presented to effectively share, and its anju options can easily act as apps or sides.  The boneless K.F.C. ($14) is the star of the smaller plate section. Four chunky cuts of chicken thigh splattered with soy garlic sauce are pleasantly jagged on the outside with juicy interiors. The larger, kitchen-sliced skirt steak with roasted potatoes ($26) rivals steakhouse classics, successfully grilled to the dedicated carnivore’s target mauve and tender beyond expectation. The accompanying mushroom purée is subtle enough that serious fungi...

Peripatetic chef Ryan Skeen rises from the ashes yet again to head this 40-seat restaurant, decorated with handcrafted tiles on the walls and zinc-covered tables. Look out for carnivorous dishes like pig's-head-and-lobster terrine, as well as the five-seat chef's counter. Renowned sommelier Jean-Luc Le Du is behind the wine list.

When Scott Hart and Bruce Horowytz moved to Hell’s Kitchen 15 years ago, they couldn’t find a fun bar nearby, so they opened Xth Ave Lounge. Later, they thought the neighborhood lacked fine dining, so they built 44 & X. You can guess what happened this year when they wanted a local café: It’s called 44. Like 44 proper, the space is bright and modern. You can grab a seat at the bar and down a breakfast pastry or a chocolate-and-caramel tart with malted-milk-ball ice cream, or fill up on a lunch of a roasted garlic-glazed chicken breast with Swiss chard and home fries. When warmer weather arrives, you can dine in a tranquil Japanese garden.

Aangan serves Indian cuisine.

This café offers a variety of Mediterranean and Turkish dishes.

You’re sitting at a cramped communal table—the half-eaten beef-slider taco before you long soggy and uncleared—as you stare wistfully at the restaurant where you wish you were eating. Where you are is ABC Cocina, the seasonal tapas-cum-tacos spot from Jean-Georges Vongerichten and executive chef Dan Kluger; where you’d rather be is ABC Kitchen, the duo’s farm-to-table restaurant that shares a glass wall. The ABCs—both located inside ABC Carpet & Home—are the latest additions to a Jean-Georges restaurant empire as varied in cuisine as it is in execution. It includes faultless high-end French at Vongerichten’s celebrated flagship, Jean Georges; Japanese without staying power at the now-closed soba temple Matsugen; and New American that can be whimsical and deft at Perry St., but underwhelming at the sleek and snobby Mercer Kitchen. With ABC Cocina, Vongerichten has meandered out of his wheelhouse to Latin America and Spain, straying unnervingly far from the standard of excellent seasonal cooking that he and Kluger established next door. This is his Spice Market of Latin cuisine, a boisterous fun house of culture designed to please the Meatpacking crowd in a different locale. The clamorous room’s splashes of colored light, striking chandeliers and dangling woven chains smack of a G-rated bordello. Unless you snag a reservation or a table on grimy 19th Street, be prepared to wait among those drinking at and around the bar, a young crowd of tanned legs and short white dresses à...

A juice and smoothie extension to Jean-Georges Vongerichten's market-driven restaurant ABC Kitchen has opened, with a similar focus on organic, seasonal produce, much of it purchased from the nearby Union Square Greenmarket. The philosophy couldn't be clearer than in a drink called the Local (pear, apple, carrot, beet, lemon, ginger and local bee pollen); other concoctions are a little more flexible in their sourcing, such as a smoothie made with hemp protein, Thai coconut meat, pineapple, agave, lime, cilantro, kale and avocado. Baked goods from the restaurant's pastry chef, Cindy Bearman, include muffins, scones and biscotti.

While plenty of New York restaurants have lately made the environment 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. Everything, including the antique armoires, reclaimed-wood tables, porcelain plates and chandeliers entwined with flowering vines is gathered from area artisans. Though the restaurant’s sustainable ethos is outlined on the back of the menu like an Al Gore polemic, the cooking, based on the most gorgeous 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. It’s haute green cuisine. In step with fashion, the menu is a sprawling collection of small and large shareable plates—but unlike so many, it features reasonable pricing and dishes that all seem to work well together. After passing around pastas, salads, maybe a bowl of fried calamari—beautifully encrusted with crushed Martin’s Pretzels, lending an extra-crispy saline crunch—you might covet an entree all for yourself. A supremely buttery arctic char fillet, featuring skin that’s as crisp as a kettle-fried chip and nutty florets of roasted Romanesco, is certainly worth hoarding. As is a flattened golden roasted half chicken, its juicy flesh bathed in a vinegary glaze with wilted escarole and heady, butter-sopped potato puree....