10 Best New Restaurants of 2007

[Fat Guy]

Frank Bruni offered up his list of 2007's 10 best new restaurants today in the New York Times. It is:

1. MOMOFUKU SSAM BAR

2. SOTO

3. (TIE) ANTHOS

4. INSIEME

5. PARK AVENUE WINTER/SPRING/SUMMER/AUTUMN

6. RESTO

7. 15 EAST

8. ALLEN & DELANCEY

9. PAMPLONA

10. MAI HOUSE

The list is prefaced by the caveat that some of the restaurants opened in 2006 but were reviewed in 2007. Which means it's not a list of the 10 best new restaurants of 2007. But no matter.

I've got to say, while I haven't dined at every restaurant on the list (not even close), I think Bruni has missed out on several of the best openings of 2007. The issue, I think, is that -- as Bruni himself notes in his year-end roundup piece -- the action in 2007 was at the middle of the price spectrum. In other words, this was the year of restaurants on the border between Frank Bruni's territory and Peter Meehan's "$25 and Under" territory. How ironic, then, that this was also the year "$25 and Under" got cut to every other week. So, in a year when we needed them most, we had the fewest serious reviews of the restaurants where the real 2007 action was.

Crave Ceviche Bar. Kampuchea. Graffiti. Toloache. These restaurants have been either ignored or relegated to "Dining Briefs" treatment. The Times didn't need to reach back to 2006 for the best new restaurants of 2007. Rather, it needed more serious treatment of the "$25 and Under" category as well as a more coherent dividing line between the territories of the two critics. And there needed to be year-end roundups from both critics.

[Pan]

I recognized all the names on the list but Mai House. There's no thread on Mai House, which appears to be an expensive Vietnamese restaurant. Is it actually a really good place worth paying in the mid to high 20s for entrees?

[Nathan]

I was underwhelmed by Pamplona. but other than that, I can't say that Graffiti (which I really liked) or Kampuchea (which I liked), definitely belonged on that list ahead of the others.

[raji]

I felt like he reviewed 15 East as better than Soto...either way I'm kind of surprised to see it ahead of some of the others.

[Fat Guy]

I'm trying to make three points here:

1. Ssam Bar and 15 East didn't open in 2007. So even a McDonald's that opened in 2007 has more right to be on the list than those places. Certainly, Graffiti does.

2. It's not just that the list is screwed up. It's that the system underlying the list is screwed up. Crave Ceviche Bar and Kampuchea: never reviewed. Graffiti and Toloache: only covered in "Dining Briefs," and not well -- evidencing the limitations of that form. How can we expect Bruni to include Graffiti in his top ten when it was reviewed by Meehan? There has always been a troublesome crossover zone between the fine-dining reviews and the "$25 and Under" territory, but this is the year that the crossover is happening at the exact spot where the most interest is. And, this is the year that "$25 and Under" only ran every other week.

3. On the one hand, Bruni writes a gigantic article that essentially translates to: "The innovative, inexpensive, interesting newcomers are the best restaurants of 2007." Then, he does a top 10 list that largely ignores that conclusion. And I get the impression he hasn't even dined at all the relevant places, otherwise he'd at least have mentioned them in the big piece.

[Nathan]

he mentions Graffiti in the essay.

Crave was briefly covered here:

http://events.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/nyreg...rest.html?fta=y

(I'll agree that barely counts)

[Fat Guy]

He mentions Graffiti. But I'm really curious to know whether the statement "And of Graffiti, in the East Village and even more intimate, where the pastry chef Jehangir Mehta also brings a dessert man’s perspective to the rest of the meal" is based on Bruni actually eating there. We should give him the benefit of the doubt on that, but it seems pretty carefully worded either to avoid a qualitative food judgment or to avoid stepping on Meehan's toes (or both).

All those restaurants' openings are covered in "Off the Menu" and some are mentioned in various other places. But not one of the four was given a real review (two got nothing at all, two got "Dining Briefs"), and in the case of Graffiti you have the problem of Meehan writing the "Dining Briefs" entry and clearly not liking the place very much, so that preempts Bruni from giving it the royal treatment.

[Fat Guy]

I forgot to add: Kitchen Counter at Beacon. It seems to me that if you're going to stretch the definitions to allow 2006 restaurants on the 2007 list, it's a lot less of a stretch to add a totally new restaurant-within-a-restaurant concept like the Kitchen Counter. And that is without a doubt one of the 10 best new restaurant happenings of actual 2007, and perhaps the best. The print-media conspiracy of silence on the Kitchen Counter is just nutty.

[Fat Guy]

So I'm working on a draft list of my 2007 favorites.

Ssam Bar would of course be on my list, but it didn't open in 2007. Neither did 15 East, nor does anything Bruni says about sushi have much credibility.

The one unequivocally correct inclusion on Bruni's list, in my opinion, is Anthos.

Allen & Delancey is an inclusion I take seriously, but I haven't been so I can't say.

Soto, Insieme, the Park Avenue X place, Resto, Pamplona and Mai House all strike me as questionable. Having not dined at all of them, though, there's only so far I can take that argument.

Tailor is one where the lack of inclusion seems most glaring, and it's particularly hard to believe that places like Pamplona and Mai House could rank ahead of Tailor. But again, not enough first-hand experience to holler.

Others I'd look at as arguably better than several of Bruni's top-10 inclusions:

Kitchen Counter at Beacon

Graffiti

Crave Ceviche Bar

Kampuchea

Toloache

Hill Country

Inn LW12

[bpearis]

In Bruni's defense... 15 East was barely -- barely -- open in 2006. Like second week of December. And Ssam didn't really become Ssam until the dinner menu started... which was when, January? (EDIT: Answered my own question by reading through the Ssam thread... September 2006... so I'll give you that one.) But technically, and that's all that matters to you lawyers, you are correct. But both feel like 2007 places to me.

1. Ssam Bar and 15 East didn't open in 2007. So even a McDonald's that opened in 2007 has more right to be on the list than those places. Certainly, Graffiti does.

Edited December 27, 2007 by bpearis (log)

[oakapple]

Sorry in advance for the rambling response....

Yes, the correct title of the essay would be "The 10 best new restaurants that I reviewed this year." I'm not terribly fussed that some of them actually opened in late 2006. For it to be a "true" 2007 list, Bruni would have to wait till about April, so that worthy candidates that opened in November or December would have time to get reviewed. Somehow, a "Best of..." retrospective doesn't make sense in April.

I'm also not fussed that Bruni excluded restaurants in Meehan's territory. He can only write about what he knows. And besides, the $25-and-under concept has now shrunk to near insignificance. Nowadays, Bruni can review whatever he wants (Sripraphai, Franny's, Resto, Max Brenner, Katz's Deli, Freemans), with Meehan left to pick up the scraps Bruni doesn't care about.

I dined at eight of the 10 restaurants on his list (all but Resto and 15 East). It's not a bad list, given Bruni's limitations. He did not award three or four stars to any new restaurant this year. He should have awarded three to Anthos and Gordon Ramsay, and had he done so, then they would have headed the list—as they should. I would also rank Soto and Insieme higher than Ssam Bar, which would be no higher than fifth on my list.

The only restaurant on Bruni's list that I didn't like at all was Park Avenue Summer. I must have caught it on a bad night.

I was happy to see Mai House on the list, as it was one of my personal favorites of 2007. However, I can see why it would surprise some people, because it was well off the radar (it is still not full most evenings). I also liked Pamplona, though I realize not everyone liked it as much as Bruni and I did.

Hill Country was one of my favorites of 2007, and if it wasn't for the $25-and-under split, I suspect it would be one of Bruni's too.

Lastly, I would add Rosanjin, another restaurant Bruni tossed into the two-star scrum, but which clearly deserved three.

Toloache got the Dining Briefs treatment because that's all Bruni thought it deserved. (It wasn't in my top-10 either.) BLT Market is arguably as good as some of the entrants on his list, but it too got the Dining Briefs treatment.

The exclusion of Tailor isn't glaring at all, because Bruni hated the place. Offhand, I cannot recall any professional critic that especially liked it. Although I think Tailor will survive, Mason opened with the wrong menu, and by the time he started fixing it, the review cycle was over.

As for the Kitchen Counter at Beacon, the meal that FG is so excited about is served only one night a week. Whatever its merits, a "restaurant" that serves dinner only on Thursdays is simply not in the same category as all of these others. In any case, the "reconceptualization" of an existing restaurant, however exciting, is not the same as a new restaurant. He has another list called "Impressive Transformations", which is where the Kitchen Counter would have belonged, assuming it belonged at all. If the Kitchen Counter is that good, it will be discovered eventually.

I agree with Eater's comment:

Bruni's bigger, less explicitly stated, point is that 2007 was dull. Ssam Bar is 2007-eligible on a technicality: the menu overhaul heard 'round the world happened days into 2007, a full three months after the restaurant opened.... With all due respect to sweet goodness that is Ssäm Bar, if better restaurants had opened in 2007, and a Best crutch was not needed, it would have been relegated to the ranks of 2006.

It must be stated again: there was not one new restaurant in 2007 that Bruni found worthy of the top two ratings on his scale.

Edited December 27, 2007 by oakapple (log)

[Fat Guy]

The argument for Ssam Bar as a 2007 place is that it opened in mid 2006 and started serving the late-night dinner menu in late 2006 but didn't implement the whole dinner menu at non-vampire hours until the beginning of 2007. Which is exactly why Ssam Bar belongs on the "Impressive Transformations" list not "The 10 Best New Restaurants." The argument for including Kitchen Counter at Beacon (which appears on no list) on the new-restaurants list is stronger than the argument for including Ssam Bar, because at least the Kitchen Counter is an actual new physical and conceptual creation: a restaurant within a restaurant somewhat akin to Minibar in Washington, DC. Yes, it has limited seating, but so does every restaurant -- where does one draw the line? The folks at the Times, New York Magazine, etc., are well aware of what's going on at the Kitchen Counter but they've willfully ignored it.

You don't have to be a lawyer to think that a 2007 retrospective should only include restaurants that opened in 2007. If the Times wants to make different rules, it should just make those rules, for example "opened 1 December 2006 through 1 December 2007." But as a matter of good journalism there should be a consistent rule applied each year without exception. Otherwise the temptation for the reviewer to manipulate the process in furtherance of a desired outcome is too great, as we see with this list.

Opening things up to late 2006 openings also creates all sorts of other questions: Gordon Ramsay? Dennis Foy? It's pretty hard to argue that Pamplona is better than those places.

[Nathan]

I forgot to add: Kitchen Counter at Beacon. It seems to me that if you're going to stretch the definitions to allow 2006 restaurants on the 2007 list, it's a lot less of a stretch to add a totally new restaurant-within-a-restaurant concept like the Kitchen Counter. And that is without a doubt one of the 10 best new restaurant happenings of actual 2007, and perhaps the best. The print-media conspiracy of silence on the Kitchen Counter is just nutty.

←

that's a strong overstatement.

with that said, there was also a writeup of existing restaurants that had made wholesale changes.

[Nathan]

I can't fathom the InnLW12 making anyone's top ten list. and it's going to close soon anyway.....it's dead most nights (I walk past it every evening).

as noted above, Ssam Bar didn't start serving dinner before 10 until January. Tailor is to me the major omission. Soto has receive rave reviews from everyone so I fail to see how it could be knocked off. Hill Country is certainly a possible but I'm not sure which restaurant on the top 10 I would remove for it. (Bruni did have good things to say about Hill Country in his essay.)

there's no question that one could come up with an excellent top 15...but to make that into a top 10 that's drastically different (in inclusion, not necessarily in order) from Bruni's seems difficult.

[Jesikka]

In Bruni's defense... 15 East was barely -- barely -- open in 2006. Like second week of December. And Ssam didn't really become Ssam until the dinner menu started... which was when, January? (EDIT: Answered my own question by reading through the Ssam thread... September 2006... so I'll give you that one.) But technically, and that's all that matters to you lawyers, you are correct. But both feel like 2007 places to me.

1. Ssam Bar and 15 East didn't open in 2007. So even a McDonald's that opened in 2007 has more right to be on the list than those places. Certainly, Graffiti does.

←

If Ssam Bar feels like a 2007 place to you, it's simply because you weren't eating there early on. They've been serving the late night menu since the summer of 2006 and many of us have been eating there and at noodlebar for years. Calling it the best restaurant of 2007 is as silly as giving David Chang the best new chef James Beard Award.

I thought Graffiti was mediocre at best, and I sampled much of the menu. It's just an east village neighborhood place. What did you eat there that you found impressive?

[Nathan]

I'm incredulous that anyone would call Graffiti "just an east village neighborhood place"...there's almost nothing on that menu like anything that anyone else is serving in the EV.

[Fat Guy]

I thought Graffiti was mediocre at best, and I sampled much of the menu.  It's just an east village neighborhood place.  What did you eat there that you found impressive?

←

Lots. Whole topic on Graffiti here.

[Dave H]

If Ssam Bar feels like a 2007 place to you, it's simply because you weren't eating there early on.  They've been serving the late night menu since the summer of 2006 and many of us have been eating there and at noodlebar for years.

The late-night menu was first served Sep. 18, 2006. It wasn't available before 10:30pm (i.e. at dinner time) until January, 2007. Just because we had been there 10 times before the end of the year doesn't mean anyone else had, or could reasonably be expected to have had.

Put it this way: obviously Ssam Bar deserves to be awarded Best New Restaurant of some year. It's pretty difficult to make the case that the Times should have awarded it in December, 2006, when the food they were serving during actual meal times was mediocre, and there was no indication they would ever serve the good food at a time normal people eat. (Yes, it seems obvious in hindsight, but the official line at the time was that they really liked the "upscale Chipotle" concept and were sticking to it.)

[Dave H]

I'm incredulous that anyone would call Graffiti "just an east village neighborhood place"...there's almost nothing on that menu like anything that anyone else is serving in the EV.

←

There's almost nothing on the menu at Itzocan Cafe like anything anyone else is serving in the EV. But it's still absolutely a quintessential East Village neighborhood restaurant.

Because it's tiny, cheap, and bad.

[Fat Guy]

obviously Ssam Bar deserves to be awarded Best New Restaurant of some year.

←

When your opening concept is a failure and, later on, you retool and have great success, you deserve to be celebrated. But you don't deserve to be called the best new restaurant of a year during which you didn't open. That's what the "Impressive Transformations" list is for.

[Dave H]

obviously Ssam Bar deserves to be awarded Best New Restaurant of some year.

←

When your opening concept is a failure and, later on, you retool and have great success, you deserve to be celebrated. But you don't deserve to be called the best new restaurant of a year during which you didn't open. That's what the "Impressive Transformations" list is for.

←

I mean, there's a fair argument to make for that point of view. But the lists as the Times published them were based on when the initial review was published, and I think there's a lot to recommend that approach. Of the seven places noted for "Impressive Transformations", I believe six had been reviewed in previous years, five of them as starred reviews. And, again, six of them had been open since at least 2005, most of them much earlier. So Ssam Bar, which was not and would not have been granted a starred review in its initial guise, doesn't really fit in with that group.

The one exception is Sfoglia, and, yes, its profile is pretty close to Ssam Bar's: opened in mid-2006, reviewed in Spring 2007, due to it becoming (according to Frank) much better as time went on. Perhaps Frank's excuse is that Ssam Bar completely changed form in 2007 (late 2006 for us midnight eaters), whereas Sfoglia merely overcame some initial inconsistency. In reality it's a pretty tenuous distinction and was presumably made because Frank wanted to highlight Ssam Bar as the best of 2007, and that doesn't happen if it's stuck in the "Impressive Transformations" sidebar.

[Nathan]

I'm incredulous that anyone would call Graffiti "just an east village neighborhood place"...there's almost nothing on that menu like anything that anyone else is serving in the EV.

←

There's almost nothing on the menu at Itzocan Cafe like anything anyone else is serving in the EV. But it's still absolutely a quintessential East Village neighborhood restaurant.

Because it's tiny, cheap, and bad.

←

well, Graffiti is good...(at least the night I was there...and as the relevant thread shows...I'm not the only one to have eaten there).

I wouldn't call Itzocan an EV neighborhood restaurant either.

Flea Market, Casimir, 26 Seats, Paul's, Belcourt.....those are "EV neighborhood restaurants".

[Pan]

I'm incredulous that anyone would call Graffiti "just an east village neighborhood place"...there's almost nothing on that menu like anything that anyone else is serving in the EV.

←

There's almost nothing on the menu at Itzocan Cafe like anything anyone else is serving in the EV. But it's still absolutely a quintessential East Village neighborhood restaurant.

Because it's tiny, cheap, and bad.

←

I had a very GOOD meal there during the summertime. How many times did you go there before concluding it's bad? Once, I'm guessing? Perhaps I lucked out, but given how many positive comments I've read about the place (mostly on Chowhound, I guess), I think it's more likely that you had bad luck.

[Jesikka]

I'm incredulous that anyone would call Graffiti "just an east village neighborhood place"...there's almost nothing on that menu like anything that anyone else is serving in the EV.

←

I think that is one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever heard. Granted, I have only been to Graffiti once (due to finding it entirely unimpressive), but a watermelon and feta salad and heirloom tomato salad (both served completely out of season and tasting of it) are hardly unlike anything anyone is serving in the EV. The only dish I had that was remotely unique were the spicy dumplings, which I thought were the best thing we tried. The ingredient quality is simply not that high and there wasn't anything about the way the dishes were put together that made me want to return. I think the only way you can find Graffiti impressive is if you're completely blown away by how cheap it is.

[Nathan]

edit: here was my meal:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=107961#3

I'd suggest going back and ordering something other than salads.

Edited December 28, 2007 by Nathan (log)