Chef Eric Ripert’s restaurant, Le Bernardin, has once again claimed the top spot in Zagat’s freshly released guide to NYC’s best restaurants.
Despite a change in the scoring system – with a simpler ranking scale of one to five rather than one to 30 – the Zagat guide continues to celebrate New York’s French cuisine in its 2017 edition. With a score of 4.9, Le Bernardin hangs on to the top spot as best restaurant in the Big Apple once again this year. The news will come as no surprise to foodies, since the seafood eatery has held the title since 2010. Le Bernardin also came top for service for the second year running. For the full experience, Zagat recommends ordering the sautéed langoustine or the foie gras and toasted baguette.
The top four restaurants in Zagat’s New York list all serve cuisine inspired by French gastronomy. David Bouley’s TriBeCa restaurant Bouley, in second place, serves a Porcini flan with Dungeness crab and black-truffle dashi, for example. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, originally from France’s Alsace region, comes in third place with his Jean-Georges eatery, ahead of his counterpart Daniel Boulud’s Daniel. Other French restaurants in the ranking include Gabriel Kreuther (seventh), Tocequeville (eighth), La Grenouille (11th), Café Boulud (17th) and Nougatine at Jean-Georges (17th).
Although internationally acclaimed by food critics, Thomas Keller’s Per Se restaurant only makes 33rd place in the list of 50 best restaurants.
Unlike food guides based on the opinion of expert inspectors, such as the Michelin Guide, Zagat is based on customer feedback. Ratings from 30,961 local foodies were used to get an overview of what’s hot on the New York food scene right now. Most reviewers (58%) said they were sick of seeing kale salads on the city’s menus, as well as expensive roast chicken (55%) and lobster mac & cheese (52%). What’s more, despite the popularity of food photos on Instagram, 58% of reviewers said that they refrain from taking pictures of their food to share on social media.
