The Very Best Restaurants of 2024
Corima, Carnitas Ramirez, Penny, and New York's 14 other top new restaurants. Plus: What next year could look like for dining out
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Most of our year-end coverage is paywalled. Soon, we’ll also publish our annual “best dishes” guide, and other fun, service-y columns.
Enjoy today’s essays on Modern Mexican fare and the next Trump presidency. Then, scroll past the paywall for our long guide to the city’s best new restaurants.
This was a spectacular year for eating out.
So enjoy these next few weeks.
And then, be prepared for what comes our way in January.
If Trump levies his tariffs on Mexico and Canada, cash-strapped Americans will have to pay even more for avocados, shrimp, tomatoes, and other groceries.
If Trump goes forward with mass deportations, scores of mixed-status families could be separated. And countless restaurants could lose the friendly faces that keep so many dining rooms running.
And if media execs continue to lay off more journalists, too many of these local stories could go overlooked. In New York, we have big and small papers documenting how the city has been cracking down on the immigrant street vendors who feed us hot, delicious meals for fair prices. But I worry that other cities don’t have the same bench of smaller publications, like The City and Hell Gate, to cover these stories throughout the year.
We all have different politics. Some of us voted for Harris. Some of us voted for Trump. Whatever the case, next year could look very different for restaurants, for eating, for living. For all of us.
Modern Mexican Food Is New York Food
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Diego Rivera.
The Mexican-born muralist was one of the defining artists of the 20th century.
He painted migrant laborers tending to almond trees in California. He painted an indigenous woman selling flowers while nursing a newborn.
He painted autoworkers toiling away in Detroit and he satirized New York’s stratified metropolis, portraying a crowded shelter sitting atop a roomy bank vault. Rivera imbued his frescoes with complex themes of labor strife and blue collar struggles — themes that feel as relevant now as they did during the depths of the Depression. And yet, he did this all in such an intuitive way that looking at his public murals sometimes feels like reading a smart comic strip.
But the artist also did things that were less accessible.
During the 1910s, he painted in the style of Cubism, creating visual jigsaw puzzles for the viewers to reconstruct. You need to spend time with these works to figure out what’s going on.
A few of these avant-garde Riveras are on display at MoMA’s new “Cubist Salon,” right next to a bunch of Picassos. Though you’d never mistake these for Picassos. Rivera placed crooked bottles of absinthe next to Latin landscapes. And he deconstructed humans into triangles while dressing them in the colors of his native flag.
“My Cubist paintings,” Rivera famously said, “are my most Mexican.”
Lately, I’ve also been thinking about Modern Mexican restaurants. They’re some of the defining New York restaurants of the year — and maybe of the 21st century so far.
Sometimes, you know what to expect at these amazing venues: thoughtful mezcal lists, branzino alla talla in the style of Contramar, and main courses that almost always come with tortillas.
And sometimes, like the Cubist works of Rivera, these restaurants don’t want to be as scrutable as their peers. They strive to push past expectations of what Mexican fare should be. And what it should cost.
Consider the case of Corima. It offers a tasting menu, sometimes with the types of uni, caviar, and truffles you’d find elsewhere. But the bread course is a tortilla course. Actually wait, it’s a Sonoran flour tortilla…modeled after a Chinese scallion pancake. And then, you taste an XO sauce made with chicatana ants, a foam laced with veal brains, and a salsa macha made with shrimp heads. You’d never mistake these funky, layered elixirs as something from a polite, European fine dining spot.
Or take Quique Crudo. The prices are closer to what you’d find at a rarefied small plates place than a typical mariscos spot. And yet, you’d never confuse Quique for one of the city’s infinite American or Japanese raw bars. Chef Cosme Aguilar places a whole chilled lobster atop a down comforter of coconut milk, ginger, and salsa macha. It’s part mariscos, part tom yum. And he attracts a crowd that includes curious gourmands, Colombians from Miami, and, alas, loud bros who want to drink and hobnob with the chef.
I could also go on about Ensenada, with its “Japanese curry moles” or Aldama (it’s still open!), with its fried slabs of cecina that look like Boccioni sculptures.
This growing culinary movement borrows from Europe and Asia, but perhaps more than most other styles of fine dining, it’s forging its own creative path. Like good art, it isn’t afraid to challenge the mainstream — or the bros. And it isn’t shy about putting tripe tacos that look like flying saucers on tasting menus. The movement is distinctly modern and intensely global, yet unquestionably, uncompromisingly Mexican.
The Best Restaurants of 2024: Corima and Carnitas Ramirez
Plus, the 15 other top restaurants of the year, including:
The city’s top new raw bars
The best new wood-fired spot
The top new sushi bar and steak restaurant
New York’s best new cocktail bar, Basque restaurants, and more…