The Best NYC Restaurants of 2012

How do you translate a year of exciting new restaurants into one, short “Best Of” list?  It’s hard not to want to give a shout-out to all of the places that gave us a memorable dining experience this year, whether it was Ootoya for their homemade tofu or PeteZaaz and their baked potato pie (oh my god, that pie!)  But it all comes down to remembering the restaurants that remind us why we continue to spend our hard-earned money dining out in NYC, instead of hunkering down with a bowl of instant ramen at home.  They remind us why accomplished chefs and restaurateurs continue to lay down stakes here (Floyd Cardoz, Gabe Stulman), or inevitably migrate in from the outside (Danny Bowien, Mads Refslund).

In particular, Talde showed us that, in the hands of a talented chef, Asian fusion food actually isn’t so bad, while Pok Pok Ny reminded us that unapologetically authentic eats are still really, really good.  NoMad and Atera ushered in the return of the splashy Manhattan big spender, while Battersby emerged as the standard bearer of Brooklyn’s intimate, local/seasonal trend.  And most of all, these 10 restaurants made the grade as our best of the year because, invariably, their names were on our lips (and their food in our stomachs), for the better part of 2012.