The Best Restaurants of 2024 — So Far
Six months in, these eight places stand out during an already-strong year for openings.
Six months into the year, some stocktaking is in order. Our restaurant critic and “Underground Gourmet” columnist have each gone back through their Notes apps and blurry, surreptitiously snapped reference photos to see how the city’s newest restaurants are shaping up. These are the eight spots they’ve loved most up to now.
The Neighborhood Joint
Daphne’s
299 Halsey St., Bed-Stuy
Every week brings a new Italian restaurant named after someone’s aunt or nonna specializing in negronis, natural wine, and pasta. Daphne’s (named in part for the Frasier character, oddly) is the strongest possible expression of this idea, straddling the line between fashionable and familiar. The menu changes frequently, featuring plates of thin-crusted saffron arancini, oyster toast with ’nduja, floppy ribbons of reginetti with razor clams, and a pesto-painted half-chicken that’s seared until it’s dark brown and served on top of a platter of fries. —T.T.
Destination Indian
Kanyakumari
20 E. 17th St.
At this six-month-old restaurant off Union Square, the décor is a little tacky and a few typos have slipped onto the menu. “This really heightens the authenticity,” an Indian friend said happily. “I feel like I’m in India now.” It’s not the Indian restaurant with the most buzz at the moment (that’s Bungalow, in the East Village, run by MasterChef India judge Vikas Khanna), but it’s the best. The dishes, organized geographically, range all over the subcontinent, emphasizing the southern coast and offering variety I haven’t seen elsewhere. Beef on an Indian menu? Fatty rib chunks fall off the bone, sweetened with coconut, onions, and chiles for slow-building heat. A whitefish, “from Kozhikode” on the Keralan coast, meanwhile, is spackled with charred curry paste and served with a demitasse of cooling rice water. —M.S.
Hidden Japanese
Kin Gin
107 Rivington St.
This grand Japanese restaurant is hiding behind the tiny lobby of Hotel on Rivington. It’s worth seeking out for both the raw seafood — such as amberjack in a bath of blood-orange dashi — and cooked dishes like lacquered quail and egg yolk for dipping or grilled, dry-aged mackerel with crisp skin and a glaze of caramelized miso aïoli. (As great as the food is, it would be better if there were more people inside.) —T.T.
The Raw Bar
Penny
90 E. 10th St.
In the battle to claim summer 2024 — Brat Summer, Match My Freak Summer — the restaurant world’s entrant is Seafood Summer. The oyster counters are spawning; many are terrific. Of all the restaurants I’ve reviewed this year, Penny is the place where I’m most likely to return on a night off for the sweet, smoky red heat of Joshua Pinsky’s little squids, filled with tuna, or puffy-headed sesame loaves, which appear first as appetizers and then, deliciously, as the buttresses of ice-cream sandwiches. I like Claud, Pinsky and co-owner Chase Sinzer’s downstairs bistro; I love Penny. It favors walk-ins so go early, go solo, go with God. —M.S.
A Levantine Bistro
Sawa
75 Fifth Ave., Park Slope
I could be satisfied only with Sawa’s just-baked pita and hummus topped with pine nuts and cubes of stewed Wagyu cheeks. But then I’d miss out on the salty, crunchy Little Gem salad tangled with crumbles of halloumi and slivered almonds as well as a compact, concentrated serving of kibbeh nayeh, where gamy raw lamb meets its match in a coating of sumac and a pile of sharp shredded scallions. And then there are the meat pie, fried potatoes, muhammara, and kafta. There’s always next time–even if it means enduring a 60-minute wait for a bar seat. —T.T.
Somewhat Affordable Omakase
Shota
50 S. 3rd St., Williamsburg
You could eat out every night in this town, and never stray from omakase dinners. You’d soon go bankrupt, but you could. It was a plugged-in friend with toro taste and raising-two-kids-in-Brooklyn pockets who clued me in to this under-the-radar omakase counter: “Better than Noz and half the price.” We’ll leave Sushi Noz out of it, but Shota nails the balance between quality and cost ($195 before tax and any drinks). Chef and owner Cheng Lin (an alum of Blue Ribbon and Ito) serves edomae-style sushi, cured in a variety of soys and vinegars — smoked, soy-cured king salmon with kombu salt and wasabi that’s soft but toothy; tuna belly so rich it’s basically cheesecake — and he’ll tell you about each from his place behind the bar. —M.S.
Southern Seafood
Strange Delight
63 Lafayette Ave., Fort Greene
In the run-up to this opening, chef Ham El-Waylly called his menu “New Orleans inspired” seafood. The vibe leans toward Brooklyn wine bar, but El-Waylly and his partners — Anoop Pillarisetti and Michael Tuiach — have retained NOLA’s messy charm; smoky, spicy, cocoaish barbecued shrimp necessitated a mid-meal hand-wash and napkin swap. A PizzaMaster oven cranks up to 850 degrees for a variety of broiled oysters and roasted fish, while swordfish gets a classic Big Easy blackening. Unlike most of the charred seafood of the ’80s (apologies to Paul Prudhomme), this one is less a cindery slip of whitefish and more a study in textural contrasts: crusty as a steak outside, soft and yielding within. Most of the early attention has gone to the squishy white-bread sandwiches filled with fried oysters or shrimp. I’ll be back for those. —M.S.
Standout Thai
Sukh
723 Fulton St., Fort Greene
Just around the corner from Strange Delight is the most attractive restaurant to open this year with a room completely encased in warm polished wood and curtains that evoke a private car on a luxury train. Sukh’s menu winds all over Thailand, and anything identified as a house special is usually spectacular, like a starter of tender-set green-curry custard, flavored with lemongrass and chile and flecked with fish, topped with knobs of crab. The kitchen even makes the ubiquitous whole-branzino special stand out, fried until crunchy and served with two diametrically opposite dips — one sweet and fishy, the other fiery and fresh. Sukh’s early success is all the more impressive considering the restaurant has yet to secure a liquor license. —T.T.
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