Specimen №— · The latestMarble Dessert Bar
A dessert-bar favorite — now closed.
A dessert-bar favorite — now closed.
Read the full report →We eat anonymously, on our own dime, twice if the kitchen warrants it. Every review scores five axes from zero to ten and writes the rest down.
How we score, in plain terms.
§ The rubric · v.2.1Kitchen
Food, on its own terms. Technique, sourcing, the cooking under the styling.
Room
Light, sound, seating, the slow facts of a space that change a meal.
Service
Hospitality measured in attention, not theatrics. The unasked-for water.
Value
What you give versus what you get. Not cheap — calibrated.
Conviction
Does the place know what it is? Will it still be that thing in a year?
Every restaurant, plotted.
13 restaurants · 1 cities · 1 countriesThe Index
The Index.
12 of 12 shown
Lysée
Our best dessert spot.
Anita
Our pick for gelato.
Myka Greek Frozen Yogurt
Our pick for fro-yo.
Torrisi
Our pick for Italian.
Sichuan Mountain House
Our pick for Sichuan.
L'industrie
Our pick for pizza.
Rubirosa
Our pick for pizza.
Jo's
Our pick for kaiseki.
Chong Qing Lao Zhao
Our pick for hot pot.
Raku
Our pick for udon.
Sushi Saikou
Our pick for omakase.
072The Auger
A West Village trattoria that knows what it is — and intends to stay that way.
Places we mean to go.
Tip-line, reader requests, restaurants that have moved on the prior score. Fifteen open at last count; we clear about two a week.
Re-tested, this season.
Every review gets revisited within twelve months. Sometimes a kitchen has found its footing. Sometimes a chef has left. Here's the delta.
On these reviews
6 questions · answeredHow the column works, how the scores are built, and the editorial policy in plain terms.
Half intuition, half tip-line. I follow a single rule: every place gets at least two visits before it's scored, and I never review a restaurant on its first month open. The shortlist is in the hundreds; the published list is, deliberately, in the dozens.