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Cititour.com’s Top 45 NYC Restaurants of 2021
December 24, 2021, 12:59.53 pm ET

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Cititour Top 45 Restaurants 2021, Le Pavillon
Le Pavillon/Thomas Shauer

Even while in the grips of a pandemic, New York City restaurants opened up in force in 2021 and managed to wow us in the process. The list we’ve compiled includes not only restaurants that opened amid all of the uncertainty, they thrived, earning more than 4 stars from at least two of the following at the time of this writing: Yelp, Google, Resy or OpenTable.

They includ high-end places such as Chef Daniel Boulud’s Le Pavillon which opened with plenty of fanfare at One Vanderbilt in eyeshot of the Chrysler Building and relying on a bounty of local vegetables and New England seafood.

Cititour Top 45 Restaurants 2021, Gage & Tollner
Photo: Gage & Tollner

Gage and Tollner, the beautifully restored oyster house in Downtown Brooklyn whose opening was delayed by the pandemic, delighted us with old school dishes like Oysters Rockefeller, Pork Pot Pie and Baked Alaska.

Cititour Top 45 Restaurants 2021, Jibs Fish Shack
Photo: Jibs/Cititour.com

Little did we know that a year-round fish shack would be reeling them in. But Jibs Fish Shack at Hudson Yards managed to do it with its bustling bar, river views and dishes like Baked Clams, Grilled Lobster and a Blueberry Buckle dessert.

Cititour Top 45 Restaurants 2021, Hawksmoor
Photo: Hawksmoor

There were crowning achievements likes Hawksmoor Steakhouse and Cocktail Bar, a British import housed in the landmarked United Charities Building where civic pioneers such as Jane Addams once delivered speeches. The British invasion continued with Dame, which got its start as a pop-up only to return as a full-fledged restaurant with its signature Fish & Chips and Head-On Prawns with chili-butter.

Cititour Top 45 Restaurants 2021, Zou Zou's
Photo: Zou Zou's/Melissa Hom

Other well thought out and stylish restaurants included Zou Zou’s, which had a solid opening toward the end of the year, Sweetbriar, The Mary Lane, Momofuko Ssam Bar, Benno and Jack & Charlie’s No. 118. We were also enamored with delicious bites at Evil Katsu with its classic Katsu sandwiches, Xilonen’s lively Mexican and we were lining up for burgers at Smashed.

Below we wanted to give a shout out to all 45 restaurants that made this year’s list. We wish them well and hope they will continue to prosper in 2022!

-The Cititour Team

1) Bar Benno

2) Bar Blondeau

3) Casa Limone

4) Coby Club

5) Contento

6) Dame

7) Dowling’s at The Carlyle

8) Brooklyn Dumpling Shop

9) Em Vietnamese Bistro

10) Evil Katsu

11) Gage & Tollner

12) Hawksmoor

13) Howm Cocina

14) Jack & Charlie’s No. 118

15) Jib’s Fish Shack

16) Joe’s Home of the Soup Dumpling

17) Kuxé

18) La Devozione

19) Le Pavillon

20) LittleMad

21) Loreto Italian Kitchen

22) Momofuku Ssam Bar

23) Mother Duck

24) Native Noodles

25) Noi Due Cafe

26) One White Street

27) Panorama Room

28) Rolo’s

29) Saint Theo’s

30) Sami + Susu

31) Sarashina Horii

32) Sereneco

33) Sixty Three Clinton

34) Skorpios

35) Smashed

36) Sweetbriar

37) Tagmo

38) Tiny’s Cantina

39) The Mary Lane

40) Unregular Pizza

41) Victor

42) Willow

43) Xilonen

44) Yuco

45) Zou Zou’s

Keep up with New York at Cititour.com

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