NYC Eateries Among Esquire's Best New Restaurants For 2019

NEW YORK CITY — In a city teeming with great places to eat, some newcomers are being recognized among the best in the country.

Esquire magazine's list of the 22 best new restaurants in America for 2019 includes five in the city.

Esquire's food and drinks editor Jeff Gordinier crisscrossed the country for the past year searching for the best eats and the best drinks. According to Gordinier, Seven Reasons, a Latin restaurant in Washington, D.C., ranks as the very best. But some little known eateries in NYC made the list.

Flatiron's Rezdôra tops the city's entries at number 7 on the national list. The Italian spot on East 20th Street specializes in the country's Emilia-Romagna region.

"Proceeding through each of the five courses of chef Stefano Secchi’s pasta tasting menu at Rezdôra ... gripped me with such noodle euphoria that I morphed into Meg Ryan during that climax in 'When Harry Met Sally,'" said Gordinier.

The magazine doesn't say how new a restaurant needs to be to qualify for contention.

The other NYC restaurants that made the list are:

#12 - Kawi, 20 Hudson Yards

What Gordinier said:

"In the 15 years since he gave the American restaurant scene a hard elbow to the sternum with the arrival of Momofuku Noodle Bar, David Chang had never opened a restaurant that wholeheartedly bear-hugged his Korean heritage—until Kāwi, that is. By offering the Seoul-born fine-dining veteran Eunjo Park carte blanche in the kitchen, Chang is treating Manhattan to an unfiltered dose of fire and funk, which is all the more surprising when you realize that Kāwi is serving yesterday’s stinky soybean stew (that’s what it’s called) and bowls of raw clams in the sterile, Stanley Kubrickian hallways of the Hudson Yards shopping mall. Toto, we’re not in a food court anymore: Pay attention to the way the foie gras segues into the rice in the kimbap; tune in to that sustained power chord of heat hovering behind the raw fish in the hwedupbap. Park’s Wagyu ragù—with long semi-scissored rice cakes flooded with a sweet, meaty Bolognese—might be my favorite dish of 2019. "

#14 - Odo, 17 W 20th St.

What Gordinier said:

At Odo, chef Hiroki Odo prepares a kaiseki meal—with sushi by Seong Cheol Byun midway through, as a sort of symphonic movement with a guest soloist—that delivers one seasonal surprise after another.

#16 - Wayan, 20 Spring Street

What Gordinier said:

Wayan is like a round of love texts that ping back and forth between Cédric Vongerichten (son of French-born global gastro-deity Jean-Georges) and his wife, Ochi, who grew up in Indonesia. She’s the one you meet when you walk in and who can school you on the significance (both cultural and personal) of nasi goreng and corn fritters, lobster noodles and clams Jimbaran-style, which are so packed with flavor you might as well be biting into oceanic truffles. But you’re not incorrect to detect a Vongerichtenish touch (bold flavor being something of a family heirloom) in the way the mango plays with the mint. It’s fusion with a heart—and without any bitter colonialist aftertaste.

#19 - Red Hook Tavern, 329 Van Brunt St

What Gordinier said:

Allison Plumer is cooking what you want to eat when it’s Friday night and you’d prefer not to ruin your appetite with overthinking. The burger is very good, but what I kept daydreaming about after visiting Billy Durney’s ode to the old New York were the croquettes (which tasted like ham and cheese and rye from a corner bodega by way of Barcelona), and the wedge salad with a rasher of bacon as big as a baseball bat, and the confidence of the Hemingway daiquiri—as though the bartender understands that this is a tavern, damn it, and the cocktails matter.

See Esquire's complete list.