Editor's Picks: Best Restaurants

367 Grand St, New York, NY 10002 (map)

Though our bagel winner is better known for its old-world cousin, the bialy, the bagels (and pletzels) are also fantastic and a throwback to the days before bagels became unnaturally enlarged and over-sweetened.

30 W 26th St, New York, NY 10010 (map)

The Hill Country experience, with its live music, boisterous atmosphere, and Texas trappings, puts the Flatiron meat temple over the top. A close second is the equally skillful RUB--the two restaurants are among the best in the country.

54 E 1st St, New York, NY 10003 (map)

For a meal usually marked by a backup line cook churning out soggy French toast, Prune produces imaginative, rich, intelligent food that makes a hangover worthwhile.

1 Central Park W, New York, NY 10023 (map)

Jean Georges Vongerichten's place among culinary deities is unchallenged; but what makes his restaurant our pick is the availability of a lunch reservation, and the city's most affordable four-star meal, on most weekdays.

380 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10003 (map)

Flushing's Spicy & Tasty or a more seemingly "authentic" pick might seem more appropriate, but Chinatown Brasserie's Joe Ng makes what many consider the best dim sum on the East Coast, every day, by hand. And his Cantonese dinner specialties are pretty good, too.

120 Essex St, New York, NY 10002 (map)

His personality isn't going to comfort anyone, but no one cares more about the execution of American diner standards than the profane, gray-maned guru of the Essex Street Market. Kenny Shopsin is the Daniel Boulud of pancakes and meat loaf.

43 W 55th Street, New York, NY 10019 (map)

Only the most tortured definition could call the Shake Shack "fast"; Five Guys, contrarily, is nobody's idea of a destination meal--just an optimal burger experience, one with fresh meat, pressed once into a flattop griddle and served with paper bags filled with fluffy, clean-tasting French fries.

155 W 51st St, New York, NY 10019 (map)

This is the Judgment of Paris all over again--you can hardly go wrong when choosing between Daniel, Per Se, Jean Georges, et al. But Le Bernardin is our favorite for its fanatical devotion to perfect seafood, cooked in the most restrained and thoughtful imaginable manner. The wine service by Aldo Sohm and desserts by Michael Laskonis helped the decision too.

54 Carmine St, New York, NY 10014 (map)

Mikey Price at Market Table and Joey Campanaro at Little Owl collaborated to produce the perfect French fry, starting from a potato, the GPOD 50 Idaho, that has the perfect mix of starch and sugar, and then blanching it first in hot water and then in 250 degree oil before its final fry. It?s dusted with a little Old Bay seasoning and presented daily in both restaurants to a grateful potato public.

Madison Square Park, New York, NY 10010 (map)

Some may find cause to complain about the potato bun, and others the long wait, but these are quibbles: This quarter-pound patty of custom-blended La Frieda beef is the standard by which the city's other burgers are judged, especially when taken with perfectly ripe, fresh tomatoes, good lettuce, and a Shack Sauce that does no harm to the burger's basic greatness.

11 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022 (map)

Michael White's tribute to Northern Italy is the city's most successful effort to date that takes the true spirit and flavor of Italian food and raises it to the most rarefied heights of haute cuisine--or, as here, alta cucina. The agnolotti del plin are alone worth the (steep) price of admission, and the veal chop is the city's best, but the big surprise is the excellence of the seafood, which is handled as adroitly as any of the place's French rivals.

205 E Houston St, New York, NY 10002 (map)

The city's greatest delicatessen needs no praise from us. Its slogan says it simply: "Katz's--That's All."

311 W 17th St, New York, NY 10011 (map)

The greatest Mexican cooking in New York is likely to be found in various secret, semi-legal hideaways in Jackson Heights and Sunset Park, but Sue Torres' tribute to the cooking of Mexico channels those flavors through the sensibility of one of the city's most talented chefs.

321 W 46th St, New York, NY 10036 (map)

What year is this? Am I dead? How long has this place been here? Barbetta's back garden is possibly too timeless, and beautiful to the point that visitors often suspect that they have unknowingly passed into the afterlife.

16 Bank St, New York, NY 10014 (map)

We would have said the Spotted Pig, except that Super Mario and the other stars are frequently hidden away in the private room upstairs. So it's the Waverly Inn, where the power elite go to remind themselves that they still matter.

1424 Avenue J, Brooklyn, NY 11230 (map)

There?s a reason New Yorkers schlep out to Midwood to stand for an hour waiting for the Master to notice they are there. Dom De Marco, the Saint of Avenue J, produces a pizza in his ancient gas oven that is three times better than its closest rival.

53 W 19th St, New York, NY 10011 (map)

The tapas craze has now extended across nearly every kind of cuisine, but it started in Spain, and Boqueria still does it best, concentrating flavors down to their most elemental, and knowing when to step away from a perfect piece of ossabaw chorizo, say, or a marinated olive that needs no embellishment.

10 Columbus Cir, 4th Fl, New York, NY 10019 (map)

Porter House New York is the rare steakhouse that cooks (and more importantly, is sourced) to the standards of a fine-dining restaurant. The meat program, drawing on the rich, mellow, and sweet beef produced by the Brandt ranch in California, is superb, and so is the four-star service.

10 Columbus Cir, 4th Fl, New York, NY 10019 (map)

Purists, many Japanese gastronomes among them, prefer the classical simplicity of Sushi Zen or Yasuda; but if we are going to have one major sushi meal in a year, it's going to be the omakase at Masa, served by the hand of the Master himself.