The Best Bites The Taste Bud Tasted in NYC 2024

From new restaurants to neighborhood spots to award-winning stalwarts, I ate well this year. Here’s what stuck with me.

A lot goes into a restaurant meal: the service, the ambiance, and obviously, the food. Here at The Taste Bud, we love a vibe; I have occasionally enjoyed a spot with less-than-astounding food because of a great ambiance, or left a restaurant with a bad taste in my mouth due to something other than food. But as Helen Rosner (a hero of mine) wrote in her recent Best Restaurant Dishes of 2024 listicle for The New Yorker, “there’s a certain clarity in a plate of food taken simply as a plate of food, divorced from such hand-wavy factors as vibe or mood or service.” Indeed, there is much merit to be found in forgetting about those “hand-wavy factors,” going back to basics, and thinking only about the food itself. So that’s what I’m going to do here.

While many of my favorite dishes of the year were served at new restaurants, others have been around longer; what unites the items on this list is simply that I tried them for the first time in 2024 and loved them. Without further ado, here are the best individual dishes The Taste Bud tried in NYC this year, some of which made appearances in my reviews and some of which did not.

Scottsdale Wrap at Edith’s Sandwich Counter

Edith’s has been in Williamsburg for a couple years. Though I very much enjoy this very New York Jewish breakfast and lunch spot, I rarely made it there — until they trekked across the river and opened one in my neighborhood. Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi flavors share space on their deli- and bodega-inspired menu. People line up for their tahini coffee slushie, and I do recommend trying it, but there is one item on the menu I actually crave: the Scottsdale wrap. Soft scrambled eggs with Cooper Sharp American cheese (no relation, unfortunately), avocado, their proprietary totkes, and spicy zhug are wrapped in a flaky malawach. (What are totkes, you ask? Exactly what they sound like: an unholy union of the Hanukkah food and the American snack.) It’s greasy and savory and fantastic, it’s one of the most interesting egg and cheese sandwiches in town, and it’s officially my favorite hangover breakfast.

Tuna Carpaccio at Penny

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: I’m a slut for raw tuna. If you read this newsletter even occasionally, you know this. It doesn’t take much to make a great raw tuna dish, and Penny takes this to heart with their beautifully simple carpaccio, which consists of thinly sliced tuna, olive oil, slivered cipollini onion, and castelvetrano olives. The key here is the freshness of the tuna and the quality of the ingredients: you could easily make this at home, if only you had access to ultra-fresh sushi-grade tuna and excellent olive oil.

Chicken Burrito at Son del North

The Sonoran style burritos at this Lower East Side burrito shop are in a league of their own. They are defiantly riceless, and I promise you won’t miss the extra starch; the flour tortillas, which are flown in from Sonora, are thin and chewy and deserve to shine by themselves, and their mayacoba refried beans are a hearty and delicious filling. My favorite is the pollo asado, which includes guacamole, poblano peppers, salsa verde, and a creamy Serrano sauce on the side, all of which pack a punch of subtle heat—of the green variety. It’s an incredibly satisfying blend of flavors and textures, and I’m no longer interested in getting burritos elsewhere; Son Del North is that good.

Green Beans at Bangkok Supper Club

The side of green beans stood out at this excellent creative Thai restaurant as one of the best dishes on the menu and one of the best vegetable dishes I’ve had in recent memory. The perfectly charred green beans were paired with sweet peas, and the fresh vegetal flavors were balanced by the savory richness of tofu cream, garlic chili oil, and crispy shallots. As I wrote in my review, it is so good that it “makes you forget you’re eating a vegetable at the same time as everything about it celebrates the very idea of vegetables.”

Epaulettes at Ai Fiori

Ai Fiori is not new. It is not cool. It is an expensive restaurant in Midtown. But it is extremely good. The menu takes inspiration from the flavors of the French and Italian Riviera, and it’s a great spot for a date night or a special occasion, with some seriously excellent pastas. The epaulettes are a doppio ravioli: half smooth veal breast, half creamy reblochon cheese, 100% savory deliciousness. If that doesn’t sound indulgent enough for you, the pasta is served in a butter sauce, with some hazelnuts and black truffle for a bit of nuttiness and umami on top of all the richness. It’s divine.

Lobster Roll at Smithereens

Until this fall, I would have told a New Englander looking for a good lobster roll in New York City to go back home. But that was before the Claud chef de cuisine opened a subterranean temple to New England seafood. The lobster roll is the star of the menu. It’s a little cheffed up: the mayo in the lobster salad is infused with lobster and bonito. But Chef Nick Tamburo throws a bone to purists by serving it on a Martin’s potato roll — why mess with success? Tamburo has managed a rare feat: innovating a well-loved classic while still preserving its essential, and delicious, qualities.

Caviar Hot Dogs at The Bar Room at the Modern

2024 was my—and every trendy, upscale NYC restaurant’s—year of caviar, and you probably know by now that I’m an embarrassingly easy target for the “let’s put a dollop of caviar on some bar bites and charge $30 a piece for it” trap (see also: Coqodaq, Chelsea Living Room, The Corner Store...) But The Bar Room at the Modern does it best, by far. Caviar and hot dogs are the perfect high-low pairing, but there’s nothing low quality about these cute all-beef franks, which are snappy and greasy and perfectly salty. Add aioli, dill, pickled shallots, buttery brioche, and of course, caviar, and it’s the perfect decadent bite.

Île Flottante at Le Veau D’Or

Le Veau D’Or has shown up on a few year-end lists, including my own. While I enjoyed the overall experience more than any particular savory dish, one bite did blow me away: the île flottante. I’m a vanilla truther; if you assert that vanilla is boring, I will assert that you are an idiot. Just kidding; I will gently suggest that perhaps you have not yet sampled a truly excellent dessert featuring high quality vanilla. This “floating island” of soft piped meringue and slivered almonds in a vanilla bean crème anglaise moat is just that. It’s an absolute delight for the senses, and its subtle flavors and sumptuous textures catapulted it to the top of the list of best desserts I tried this year.

Electric Chicken at Sip & Guzzle

When Sip & Guzzle, the New York offshoot of my favorite cocktail bar in Tokyo, opened in my neighborhood, it seemed too good to be true. I feared that it wouldn’t live up to the memory of my perfect Tokyo night out. But everything from the incredible tomato cocktail (straight from the original SG Club) to the bar bites exceeded expectations — and you can absolutely make a meal of it. If you do so, don’t skip the Electric Chicken. It’s quite a production — it arrives with a pair of rubber gloves and a pair of scissors — and it is one of the most delicious pieces of fried chicken I’ve ever had. Sip & Guzzle’s Electric Chicken has a subtle, almost floral spiciness that is reminiscent of the Szechuan peppercorn-spiked fried chicken at Pecking House, and it’s perfectly juicy and crispy. It may be bar food, but make no mistake; it’s executed with the same precision and vision as their legendary cocktails — which is no surprise given that Chef Mike Bagale, formerly of Alinea, is helming the kitchen.

Comté Tart at Bridges

Have you ever eaten a piece of cheesecake and thought “I wish this tasted more like cheese?” No? Well, if not, you don’t know what you’ve been missing. The savory cheesecake at Bridges is the standout at the recently opened restaurant from a former Estela chef. It’s smooth and creamy with a buttery malted barley crust, 24-month aged comté (my all-time favorite mild cheese), and chanterelles on top. I’m not a quiche fan; to call this dish a quiche almost feels like an insult. It’s so much more.

Lobster Triangoli at San Sabino

This is not the first time The Taste Bud has waxed poetic about San Sabino’s heavenly lobster triangoli, and I can’t promise it will be the last. Perfectly cooked pasta is filled with buttery, subtly spicy, tender lobster — not at all paste-like, something I frequently notice about lobster ravioli that made me generally dislike it until trying this dish — and then drenched in white vodka sauce and dusted with black garlic. Don Angie and San Sabino are expert at pasta; among several good seafood pasta options on the San Sabino menu, this is the best one.