New NYC Restaurants Worth Trying in 2023

Here are the New York City openings to keep an eye on: a subway-station tasting counter, a Louisiana-style oyster bar, the return of Café Boulud and more.

At Nōksu, scheduled to open in September in a former barbershop in the Herald Square subway station, the chef Dae Kim plated a mackerel dish. Credit...Lisa Corson for The New York Times

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By Florence Fabricant

New restaurants open all year round in New York City, but fall arrives with the snap of fresh tablecloths, napkins and menus — and this year, several familiar names. Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Andrew Carmellini and Marcus Samuelsson are among the star chefs with significant projects at hand. But a number of newcomers will also be worth checking out. In particular, autumn will usher in a compelling array of noteworthy Asian restaurants. Here are the openings I’m most excited about:

The name is the Park Avenue address of a new, 47-story office tower designed by Norman Foster. But Mr. Vongerichten and his partners hope to evoke another Park Avenue landmark: the former Four Seasons restaurant, the celebrity magnet that closed in 2019. This new place checks many of the same boxes: Its art-filled, architecturally dramatic bar and the plush formal dining room above it — furnished by the architect in gray and burgundy — are tailor-made for a corporate clientele. Jonathan Benno, whose résumé includes Lincoln Ristorante, will run the kitchen, as culinary director. He is working with Mr. Vongerichten on a menu that will showcase French, American, Italian and Asian flavors and techniques.

425 Park Avenue (56th Street). Late October.

In 10 years on the Upper East Side, the Simone won many admirers for its old-school charms — including the Times’s restaurant critic, Pete Wells, who praised “the kind of textured, lived-in, analog warmth that has become rare.” Tina Vaughn and her husband, the chef Chip Smith, lost their lease last year, but will open this place in the space once occupied by Montrachet, the pioneering TriBeCa restaurant, and later Bâtard. The room, with sage-green walls, has a more traditional look and fewer seats than before, but Mr. Smith’s country French food and Ms. Vaughn’s handwritten menu will be familiar to Simonistes, as will her deep and thoughtful wine list.

239 West Broadway (White Street). Late September.

If you confuse this with the venerable Nom Wah Tea Parlor in Chinatown, you’re forgiven. It’s the work of Wilson Tang, who owns the Nom Wah brand (though no longer the Chinatown restaurant), and Mandy Zhang, a partner in Blue Willow. They were drawn to NoMad as a young, happening neighborhood. They’ll offer dim sum, familiar Chinese American fare, and tea and cocktail service in a spacious setting.

244 Fifth Avenue (28th Street). November.

After time spent on various pop-up projects, Mads Refslund, a founder of Noma in Copenhagen, will carry his Nordic approach forward at his restaurant whose name means fire and ice in Danish. In a former warehouse in Brooklyn, carts bearing fresh produce and seafood will patrol the dining room so guests can select ingredients to be prepared raw or grilled over wood. Sustainable buffalo and venison are the only four-legged creatures on the menu.

150 Green Street (Manhattan Avenue), Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Early October.

The chef Daniel Boulud’s elegant Upper East Side outpost, which closed during the pandemic, will move several blocks south into another see-and-be-seen room of similar dimensions, designed by Jeffrey Beers, in the former Vaucluse space. The new menu will resemble the original, with categories like “Tradition” and “Seasons,” and French, American and global influences. The executive chef, Romain Paumier, has worked with Mr. Boulud for many years. Adjoining the restaurant will be Maison Barnes, a complex of rooms for high-end French dining and special events, operated by Mr. Boulud and his new partner, Barnes International, a Paris company with real estate, travel and art connections. Maison Barnes, run by Georgette Farkas, is set to open early next year.

100 East 63rd Street. November.

Lose a trim, gain a tasting. A former barbershop and newsstand in the Herald Square subway station will become a 12-seat counter with a small private dining room for 16 creative courses — Korean with American accents — at $225 a head. The Koreatown restaurateurs Bobby Kwak and Joseph Ko have enlisted the chef Dae Kim, who plans dishes like abalone in a sea lettuce shell, madai with mountain yam and saffron, and grits with squid.

49 West 32nd Street. September.

Unapologetic Foods, the local restaurant group known for its inventive takes on Indian cuisine, is turning to Filipino cooking. The man in charge will be Eric Valdez, now the chef de cuisine at the group’s Dhamaka, who grew up in the Philippines. There’ll be a menu of à la carte dishes and a prix-fixe family-style spread of traditional fare like suckling pig and scallops with garlic and cheese.

201 First Avenue (12th Street). September.

Simon Kim, the restaurateur behind Cote, an elaborate Korean steakhouse in the Flatiron district (and Miami), will take on chicken — Korean-style fried chicken with American touches. Small plates, notably pickled foods, will be served. The space, designed by the Rockwell Group, is dramatic, bronzed like the fried chicken, with a series of lighted arches defining seating areas.

12 East 22nd Street. November.

What started as a vegan ghost kitchen in Sunnyside, Queens, specializing in the Dominican and Trinidadian fare of the chef and owner Yesenia Ramdass’s family is now a 30-seat spot in Williamsburg. The meaty-sounding name is an acronym for Healthy as a Motha. The all-vegan menu includes tofu curry and a sweet plantain boat.

234 Union Avenue (Meserole Street), East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Early October.

Bolun Yao is opening a luxury Chinese restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen to fill a need in New York, as he sees it, for Chinese food in the mold of Michelin-starred restaurants, using upmarket ingredients, French techniques and smaller portions. “Too much Chinese food is family-style; I admire Korean fine-dining tasting menus,” said Mr. Yao, who co-founded a hydroponic vegetable company in his native Xi’an, China. His eight-course menu inspired by the recipes of his grandmother, for whom the restaurant is named, may feature red-cooked Wagyu beef and a savory soufflé with caviar. The executive chef, Jakub Baster, has worked abroad and in New York.

805 Ninth Avenue (54th Street). October.

The restaurateur Gabriel Stulman has recruited April Bloomfield as chef and co-owner of her first restaurant since the closing of the Spotted Pig, the West Village restaurant where employees said she did nothing to stop sexual harassment and verbal abuse by her business partner Ken Friedman. Sailor is a bistro, with nods to groundbreaking restaurants like Septime in Paris and St. John and the River Cafe in London. Dishes under consideration include pâté en croùte and sweetbreads with parsley, lemon and capers. The designer, Alfredo Paredes, known for Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar, has given the intimate room a polished tavern look with nautical references.

228 DeKalb Avenue (Clermont Avenue), Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Mid-September.

Mr. Samuelsson ran the American Table Cafe, a casual canteen in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. But his next cultural-center assignment is more ambitious: a glowing lobby restaurant in the new Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center. Mr. Samuelsson plans an eclectic American menu filled with New York references, including “Flushing-style oysters” with XO sauce and shiso. His team includes the executive chef Ed Tinoco, from the Alinea Group in Chicago.

251 Fulton Street (Greenwich Street). October.

A Brooklyn oyster bar with Louisiana on its mind will serve the bivalves, most of them harvested from local waters, raw, chargrilled and prepared Rockefeller-style. Shrimp rémoulade and a fried shrimp loaf will also be on the menu. The restaurant, which has been doing pop-ups, is settling down with a bar and counter seating up front and a dining room beyond fitted with a small bar and skylights.

63 Lafayette Avenue (Fulton Street), Fort Greene, Brooklyn. November.

Since leaving Café Boulud in 2005, Andrew Carmellini and his partners have built a collection of New York restaurants. Now he is finally putting his name on a marquee at the new Fifth Avenue Hotel, in a 1907 bank building by McKim, Mead & White. Italian and French dishes will be served in a lavishly appointed dining room with tablecloths and an open kitchen. “I’m going to make this my culinary home,” he said. His lobster cannelloni with caviar just might become his signature. Mr. Carmellini’s group, NoHo Hospitality, will also run the bar and room service.

250 Fifth Avenue (28th Street). October.

Aki Miyazono, who designed this soba restaurant for the chef Shuichi Kotani, also studied buckwheat-noodle making with him. The space is spare and serene, with a counter and tables for a menu that will feature buckwheat, not just as noodles but also in tofu and ice cream.

95 Guernsey Street (Norman Street), Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Early September.

In the 1970s and ’80s Hoexter’s Market, a restaurant on East 82nd Street near Third Avenue, was a neighborhood magnet for steaks delivered from the Hoexter’s butcher shop on Lexington Avenue. Now Alexandra Shapiro, whose father, Robert Shapiro, was the original owner, is reviving the restaurant nearby, with a contemporary menu that goes beyond the steakhouse, in a room richly upholstered in leather banquettes that doesn’t.

174 East 82nd Street. October.

For his new flagship, Mr. Forgione, the chef and restaurateur, echoes the rustic look of his original location a few blocks away rather than replicating the gilded details of Danube and the Zen-like restraint of Brushstroke, the space’s previous occupants. He’ll serve seasonal American cuisine, the style that his father, Larry Forgione, was instrumental in fostering decades ago.

30 Hudson Street (Duane Street). Late fall.

In this subdued sibling of Fish Cheeks, the chef Max Wittawat, a native of Bangkok, plans to reinterpret Thai cuisine. At a centerpiece charcoal grill in the open kitchen, he’ll prepare grilled beef tongue, Chilean sea bass with curry and sea beans, and fried chicken wings stuffed with sticky rice.

641 Hudson Street (Gansevoort Street). September.

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Florence Fabricant is a food and wine writer. She writes the weekly Front Burner and Off the Menu columns, as well as the Pairings column, which appears alongside the monthly wine reviews. She has also written 12 cookbooks. More about Florence Fabricant

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