A few years ago, I plotted on a map the top 100 restaurants noted by the former NYT food critic Pete Wells in 2023 and 2024 here. He’s since stepped down and there’s a new set of food critics at the Times. Someone online asked if I could update my map to reflect the top 100 for 2026. I decided to go for it and also include the top 100 for 2025.
I’ve added the new notes and restaurants on top of the existing map, while keeping the restaurants from 2023 and 2024. I’ve tried to make it clear what year each note was for. Hope this map leads you to some excellent meals.
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Adding these restaurants was a reminder of why NYC is the greatest food city in the world. The diversity of cuisine, the high quality, and the density of establishments are second to none.
I no longer live in NYC, but I spent the first 30 years of my life on the Lower East Side. In my 20s, I aggressively food-blogged to try and learn about the city and its people. I saved none of my paycheck, met with strangers over dinner, and regularly had two dinners a night. I doubt I could do that now in my mid-30s. As delusional as it was at the time, a part of me felt like I could canvas the city and someday say that I’ve tried everywhere I wanted to go. This crash course in the dining scene ended up helping me tremendously when I traveled later in life. I already knew how to order and eat tsukemen when in Tokyo and knew what to expect with my first sip of grappa after meals in the Dolomites.
I made this map so that I can easily find a great meal in New York, no matter where I happened to be when I visited friends and family. There are multiple lifetimes of good meals here, but there are even more lifetimes of mediocre and downright bad meals (just like any other city). Life is too short to eat a mediocre meal, and also too expensive, so I made a map of the hits according to the NYT. Hopefully it helps you too!
In this map you’ll find:
All of the recommendations from 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026. I’ve removed places that are permanently closed.
The ranking and the corresponding note for the year it was represented in a list.
Duplicate listings with the same note if a restaurant has multiple locations.
To set the map to appear on your default view:
Go to the map and sign in with whatever Google account you normally use.
Click Follow.
Wait some amount of time and it should start appearing on your personal map. I’ve seen it take a full day.
I initially didn’t plan to update the map (since I live on the other side of the country), but many strangers now benefit from it; their notes of gratitude encouraged me to keep updating it every year. Right now it’s a lot of manual copy/paste, no AI.
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If you have thoughts or feedback, leave a comment below, especially if there’s an error you catch. Reach out to me directly or follow @rajawashere.