New Yorkers have no shortage of restaurant lists to argue about. The latest gives us a manageable number of tables to debate: four NYC spots made The New York Times’ The Restaurant List 2026, detailed the publication’s 50 favorite restaurants in America.
The local picks are Bistrot Ha, Meju, Yamada and Zoli. They range from a lively French-Vietnamese bistro to a seafood restaurant where even the cheesecake takes a surprising turn. (And before anyone starts claiming a top finish, the Times’ list is unranked.) The paper’s 16 reporters and editors traveled around the country for this year’s edition and restaurants featured in previous years were excluded.
Bistrot Ha is the newer, roomier sibling of the tiny Ha’s Snack Bar, though “roomier” is relative in New York. Chefs Sadie Mae Burns and Anthony Ha draw on French bistro cooking and Ha’s Vietnamese heritage. That means leeks vinaigrette get a hit of Maggi, escargot arrive with lemongrass and a Pavlova takes inspiration from Vietnamese iced coffee.
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At Meju, chef Hooni Kim makes fermentation the main event. Tucked behind a banchan shop, the intimate restaurant looks to traditional Korean methods at a time when plenty of the city’s high-end Korean dining pushes in more experimental directions. Kim talks diners through the food himself, giving the meal a sense of connection to the person preparing it.
Yamada offers another kind of close-up experience. Chef Isao Yamada serves kaiseki, the seasonal Japanese progression of carefully composed dishes, at a minimalist counter. The Times praised his attention to subtle shifts in flavor and to the life of individual ingredients. If you want dinner with flashing lights and a grand reveal, this probably isn’t your table. If you want to see what a chef can do with close attention, it might be.
Then there’s Zoli, chef Ned Baldwin’s seafood spot, where the menu veers from surf clam aguachile and red shrimp tartare with kimchi dust to charred squid and mussels. Dessert keeps the surprises coming: Basque cheesecake gets taleggio, while black garlic deepens a chocolate cake.
Four restaurants, four very different reasons to make a reservation—or at least start checking the apps.
