These Are New York's 19 Best Dishes of 2023
These Are New York's 19 Best Dishes of 2023
The carbonara at Roscioli, the cheeseburger at Hamburger America, and the cavatelli at Torrisi rank among the year's top dishes, according to critic Ryan Sutton
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It was a tough year for me — tougher than I could’ve ever imagined — but in spite of everything, I still managed to eat spectacularly well in the greatest city in the world. And I found a way to keep doing what I love, to keep writing about restaurants.
For that I am so incredibly grateful. Thank you, all of you.
Earlier this week, I published my first list annual list of the city’s best new restaurants — alongside an essay on the boom in creatively minded gastronomy. Today, I’m going to keep things simpler.
I’m just going to tell you about some of the best dishes I ate in 2023.
I’m half-inclined to preface this with a few thoughts about menu trends I’ve seen over the past year — fairly priced steaks, budget omakases, chicken as an object of desire, tinned fish madness, non-alcoholic beverages getting incredibly good (and expensive) — and maybe I’ll write about all that at some point.
But right now, on this “holiday” Friday, let’s focus on all the delicious food out there. Think of this list as a preliminary restaurant guide for 2024.
You’ll recognize some of these items from my weekly columns, but quite a few are dishes I haven’t written about yet, from venues like Roscioli, Hamburger America, Noz Market, Torrisi, Chalong, and Saint Julivert. I’ve never been a fan of year-end lists that simply repackage stuff from earlier in the year, so I really hope you find some new things to try here — or that you get some new perspectives on dishes you’ve already sampled. Okay….here we go!
Three Modern Pastas: The LO Times Dishes of the Year
One of the joys of eating out in 2023 was watching Italian and Italian American restaurants do very cool and innovative things with pasta. It’s a particularly energizing trend in a city where classically fancy and rustic spots dominate the Italian scene.
The Veal Tortellini at Foul Witch
Trying this dish jolted me in a deep way, sort of like the first time I saw Picasso’s asymmetric still life — with angular limes depicted in all their weird, there-must-be-a-glitch-in-the-Matrix glory.
Little golden dumplings sit in a dark, shallow jus. Okay, this must be a riff on tortellini en brodo, right? Well, maybe. That pasta, you see, is stuffed with psychadically creamy sweetbreads. And that sauce is a viscous, amaretto-spiked jus. It is sweet, almondy, and savory. Is it tortellini en brodo reimagined as….an offal dish crossed with an amaro nightcap? Who knows, but chef Carlo Mirarchi has given us something supremely delicious. 15 Avenue A, East Village
The Chicken Scarpariello Rigatoni at Bad Roman
The name of this pasta…sounds like something you’d encounter at an Applebees or a Times Square theme restaurant. But damn, the chefs find a way to make it work. A hot pepper sauce enrobes the al dente rigatoni, flaunting a complex garden aroma. And the chicken sausage boasts layers of savory flavor. A new Italian American classic, for sure. 10 Columbus Circle, Third Floor, Columbus Circle
The Jamaican Beef Cavatelli at Torrisi
It’s a sad fact of life that the city’s fanciest French and Italian restaurants don’t lean too hard into spicy, gelatinous flavors. Torrisi is an outlier in this regard….
Behind the paywall:
Why the Torrisi ragu is so crazy delicious
The best piece of (expensive) sushi I had this year
The pasta you totally need to order at Roscioli
The best two burgers of 2023
The best bloody steak