Restaurants, 2025
Best new restaurants, best new sushi restaurants, best new bars and wine bars, best new neighborhood spots, MORE
It’s been quite the year of dining, drinking, and general good times on the restaurant and bar beat at FOUND. Today, for paid subscribers, we reveal our 2025 Restaurants of the Year, along with five fresh sets of new restaurant and bar Nines for your ease-of-booking pleasure:
Top 9 new restaurants
9 more new restaurants that intrigued us
New bars & wine bars
New restaurants, sushi
New neighborhood notables
Thanks for hanging with us this year, and we’ll see you back here in 2026 to tackle the best restaurant city in the world anew.
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RESTAURANTS • First Person
Restaurants of the Year 2025
When we’re writing up new restaurants — which is more or less every week for FOUND — there’s one litmus test we typically use to distinguish the good-new from the great-new: How soon (if ever) am I coming back here?
I’ll start with a place that wasn’t my top restaurant of the year, but one that’s definitely up there. After I dined at Kabawa for the first time last spring with my FOUND colleague Foster Kamer, I rushed home and told my wife that we need to have dinner there, immediately. A week later, I was back, and now she too was falling in love with chef Paul Carmichael’s nightly Caribbean party, from the roti with dipping sauces that opens every meal — the best starting course in the city right now, hands down — to the chilled bowl of tamarind beans that follows the main course. It’s a special restaurant with a unique point of view, held back only slightly by its tasting counter digs.
Maybe I’m showing my age, but the comfort factor of a restaurant matters to me. I seem to be the only person in the city who didn’t love Ha’s Snack Bar, and our microscopic perch in the diminutive non-dining room definitely played a role in that.
So it makes sense that my NYC restaurant of the year for 2025 is a place that I felt comfortable from the first time I sat down, at a two-top in the secluded back corner of the dining room at the Greenwich Village newcomer Le Chêne (above). The constant presence of the French restaurant’s co-owners, husband-and-wife team Alexis Duchêne and Ronan Duchêne Le Ma, sets the tone, from Ronan’s greeting at the door on each visit to Alexis’s intensity manning the pass in back.
The cooking is a dream, some of the most exciting in NYC right now. For a meal with the in-laws earlier this month, we were enthralled by a starter of Japanese toro that our waiter conspiratorially told us they’d put aside just for us. Slightly seared on one side and served in tomato water, the toro had a subtle, smoky note that complemented the fish, precisely so. Spectacular. For mains, the veal chop came out pre-sliced in mushroom sauce with the bone displayed on the plate (MP $180 per), just insanely delicious. And then, once again, the pithivier terre et mer, one of the top dishes of the year in NYC.
On my first visit to Le Chêne, it felt to me like a restaurant in Paris. But on this December visit, I realized it’s very much a restaurant of and for the New York City of right now: warm, personal, with a strong, unique point of view and playful side. As our meal wrapped up, a giant bottle of dessert wine appeared on our table and several pours were proffered, a perfect gesture of hospitality, and the perfect close to a year of great city dining. –Lockhart Steele
Gotta say: I, too, loved Le Chêne, surprisingly so, as someone for whom that profile of restaurant is a last-choice for me. It’s expensive, the average patron looks like they carry a passport to go south of 14th, and I take moral issue with a blue-chip art collection like theirs (Basquiat, Warhol, et al) being reserved exclusively for people whose heads would roll first in the tribunaux révolutionnaires.
But like most people who love great food, I’ve got a weak spot for the occasional safari deep into the world of some formal gourmand French — you haven’t eaten in Paris until you’ve had your pockets picked clean by Le Duc — and Le Chêne scratches that itch, in style. It’s a New York gem, a beautiful restaurant, with beautiful cooking, and potentially a new classic in the making. Viva, to wife-and-husband owners Alexia Duchêne and Ronan Duchêne Le May: I hope it lives a long life.
Smithereens may prove to be too weird for this world, but I deeply enjoyed the meal I had there. Restaurants should take more risks. Alas, the new restaurant I have returned to more than any other this year is Bánh Anh Em, the sequel to uptown spot Bánh — I challenge anyone to show me a better straight-up Vietnamese menu in the city. It’s the restaurant I don’t just wanna go back to, but go back to with friends, and order the entire menu.
But the restaurant that takes the cake this year, for me, is, Ha’s Snack Bar. The long-waited first brick-and-mortar from Sadie May Burns and Anthony Ha is small, not exactly comfortable, and a vibe — one that’s fun for me, but if it’s tradition and plush comfort you’re after, might not be yours.
Then again, it sounds very much like the original Momofuku Noodle Bar. And Ko. And the original Torrisi. And Superiority Burger. Ha’s debut reminded me of the once-enfant terrible of NYC restaurants which have gone on to global acclaim and game-changing effect. The cooking — French classics from steak tartare to escargots to vol au vent, rewritten with Vietnamese ingredients (freaked by fish sauce) — reads like an inverted history of conquering, and might be.
Is it a surprise that the early word on Ha’s Snack Bar sequel Bistrot Ha, is also wide-eyed excitement? It shouldn’t be. And so what if it’s impossible to get into? The nouvelle vague of spectacularly exciting New York cooking is here. Maybe it should be. –Foster Kamer
RESTAURANTS • The Nines
New restaurants, FOUND’s top 9 of 2025
Le Chêne (Greenwich Village), gutsy, personal Parisian cooking in art-filled dining room, intel, reserve
Kabawa (East Village), Momofuku vet Paul Carmichael’s 3-course Caribbean party, intel, reserve
Adda (East Village), Unapologetic Foods original relocates from Long Island City, amazing butter chicken experience, intel, reserve
Wild Cherry (West Village), Le Rock’s Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson’s very fun new restaurant at Cherry Lane Theater, intel, reserve
Ha’s Snack Bar (Lower East Side), French food freaked with fish sauce from the couple behind beloved pop-up Ha’s Đặc Biệt, intel, reserve
Yamada (Chinatown), extremely precise 10-course kasieki at 10-seat counter from Kono team, $300 per, intel, reserve
Seahorse (Union Square), restaurateur John McDonald’s lively, upscale seafood brasserie at remade W Hotel Union Square, intel, reserve
Cafe Commerce (Upper East Side), chef Harold Moore revives his shuttered West Village favorite uptown to very good result, intel, reserve
I Cavallini (Williamsburg), compact Italian restaurant from the Four Horsemen team, order the chef’s pastas, intel, reserve
RESTAURANTS • The Nines
New restaurants, 9 more that intrigued us
Howoo (Koreatown), top-notch Korean BBQ that’s Cote without the clubiness, intel, reserve
The View (Times Square), restaurateur Danny Meyer delightfully reimagines rotating restaurant atop Marriott Marquis, intel, reserve
Saint Urban (Flatiron), wine lover’s dream relocated from Syracuse, intel, reserve
Teruko (Chelsea), sexy new sushi den and Japanese restaurant in basement of Hotel Chelsea, intel, reserve
Cafe Zaffri (Union Square), Raf’s team cooking Lebanese cuisine in private club The Twenty Two (restaurant open to public), intel, reserve
Crevette (Greenwich Village), coastal Mediterranean seafood spot from Lord’s and Dame team, intel, reserve
Chateau Royale (Greenwich Village), polished yet playful fancy French restaurant from Libertine team, intel, reserve
Bartolo (Greenwich Village), vibrant, slightly subterranean Spanish taverna from the Ernesto’s crew, intel, reserve
Cove (Tribeca), chef Flynn McGarry’s new spot for 8-course tasting menu ($210 per) or à la carte, reserve
BARS • The Nines
New bars & wine bars
Lei (Chinatown), knockout Chinese small plates from a King cofounder, intel, reserve
Bar Kabawa (East Village), next door to Kabawa for Caribbean-infused party of rum drinks and small plates, intel, reserve
Bar Bianchi (East Village), Nines/Acme/Elvis debut Milan-style cocktail bar on Avenue A, reserve
Bar Tizio (West Village), wine bar adjacent to Barbuto serving rather substantial menu of Barbutoesque bites, intel, reserve
Dandelion (West Village), just-opened bar from Zero Bond & White Horse Tavern crew w/ small bites, reserve
Stars (East Village), cozy new wine bar w/ short menu from Claud and Penny team, walk-ins only
Quick Eternity (South Street Seaport), worthy new two-level escape from canyons of Wall Street, intel, reserve
Folk (Park Slope), brand new bar w/ inventive small plates from Lore team, reserve
Golden Ratio (Clinton Hill), new cocktail bar from the Place des Fêtes/Cafe Mado crew, reserve
THE NINES • Restaurants
New restaurants, sushi
YūGIN (Midtown), creative, ultra-luxe omakase by former Masa chef Eugeniu ‘Yūgin’ Zubco in private members club, $475 per, intel, reserve
Kansha (Upper East Side), Japanese‑Peruvian nikkei omakase, à la carte, reserve
Mitsuru (Greenwich Village), wine-focused sushi engagements from longtime Sushi Yasuda chef in vintage-furniture-bedecked space, $175/$275 per, intel, reserve
Sushi Aozora (Union Square), moderately priced, high-quality omakase in the old 15 East space, $165 per, reserve
Sushidokoro Mekumi NY (Tribeca), second location of Kanazawa’s lauded counter and an experience that will transport you straight to Japan, $400 per, intel, reserve
Shirokuro (East Village), affordable modern omakase served in black-and-white space that looks like a comic book, $60/$90 per and à la carte, reserve
Next Door at Wegmans (Noho), premium ingredient-serving, golden hued, marble topped sushi counter inside Wegmans, $85 per and à la carte, reserve
Enso Omakase (Williamsburg), 10‑seat omakase counter (with an Asian ingredient cocktail bar) hinged on Edomae sushi, $195 per, reserve
Luya Omakase & Wine Bar (Park Slope), intimate, ultra-affordable omakase paired with natural wine, $59 per, reserve
RESTAURANTS • The Nines
New restaurants, neighborhood notables
Marlow East (Upper East Side), UWS’s Marlow Bistro expands to UES, cooking Southern cuisine, intel, reserve
Unglo (Upper West Side), Thai barbecue in former Picholine space, reserve
Fedora (West Village), reborn neighborhood classic now in hands of St. Jardim team, intel, reserve
Dell’Anima (Greenwich Village), West Village Italian favorite that relocated Uptown comes back downtown to Cornelia St., reserve
Ziggy’s Roman Cafe (Dumbo), thin-crust pizza and ice cold martinis at a restaurant tuned for kids and parents alike, intel, reserve
Pitt’s (Red Hook), fun Southern-infused cooking from Agi’s Table team, intel, reserve
Il Leone (Park Slope), pizza forged on an island in Maine comes to Brooklyn, reserve
Jr & Sons (Williamsburg), Vintage Brooklyn bar revived as redsauce Italian, intel, reserve
Il Gigante (Ridgewood), homey Italian cooking in unpretentious digs, reserve
ASK FOUND
To close out the year, three PROMPTS for which we request your immediate attention:
What gyms are you eyeing as you plan your resolutions?
Where are you booking for a ski trip in 2026?
Tell us an offseason Hamptons or North Fork secret!
Hit reply or email found@foundny.com with more answers or questions.