Scroll down for my annual list of the city’s best dishes, so far, but first…
Rotisserie chicken, reviewed!!!
Like Grub Street’s Tammie Teclemariam, I’m an avowed fan of Pio Pio, the Peruvian pollo a la brasa chain that serves achingly tender chicken with elastic, bronzed skin. And while quality can vary from day to day, Pio Pio will send you home, on a good night, with the type of masterful poultry you almost wish you could find at fancier restaurants. Except here, you can eat well for under twenty bucks.
And that green sauce is legit!!!
But like my colleague Luke Fortney, I also realize that rotisserie chicken is a beloved albeit undervalued foodstuff — something that Costco and supermarkets frequently undercut the competition on with deep discounts — distorting our collective sense of what a fair price is.
And even though New Yorkers are resigned to paying top dollar for something very different — crispy oven-roasted birds at fine dining institutions — I’ve always preferred slow-cooked rotisserie poultry, with its silkier meat and floppier, more gelatinous skin. It’s one of those culinary cases where technical brilliance and subjective deliciousness — for me at least — finds more overlap at our city’s affordable takeout spots.
So! That’s the backdrop against which New York Times co-contributing critics Mahira Rivers and Ryan Sutton (that’s me!) examine something that’s decidedly more rare: posh neighborhood rotisseries. The $40 chicken (with potatoes) at Gigi’s raised a few eyebrows when it opened — like, does everything need to be upscaled? — but Rivers makes a compelling case for her starred rating.
Just the same, I awarded a star yesterday to Cleo in the West Village, where Juliana Latif gives us something even more unique: a bird slathered in a warming riff on Levantine seven-spice (I say “riff” because Aleppo pepper and garlic take the place of the more traditional allspice and sweet cinnamon). Latif charges $32 for her half-birds, a lower price than Gigi’s, but adding on fries pushes things up to $44.
And here’s a nice touch: In deference to New York’s more approachable rotisserie zeitgeist, Cleo has a takeout program where half chickens start at just $20.
The 17 Best Dishes of the Year, So Far!
Scroll past the paywall for amazing dishes at Bistro Ha, Zoli, Stars, Frijoleros, Dean’s, Cleo, Kiko, Falansai, and elsewhere. You’ll also find some thoughts about the state of dining in 2026.