New York Times's 2023 list of the 50 best restaurants in the United States
For the third annual New York Times Restaurant List, we sent a dozen reporters, editors and critics to hundreds of places across the United States — from Rattlesnake Point in Florida to the Arts District in Los Angeles — to find our favorites. Half of this year’s selections — marked as New — have opened since the 2022 list was published, but plenty of others have been around for years and are still sending out exceptional dishes. Despite the upheavals in recent years, this is an expansive moment for independent restaurants. We can’t help but feel that cities and towns in the United States are better to eat in today than they have ever been. It wasn’t easy to narrow it down, but here are the 50 restaurants that excite us most right now.
Southern cooking in New York City has always been a bit spotty. Sure, there are pockets where one can find great examples — primarily in neighborhoods like Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant — but outside those areas, things get shaky. Enter Cafe Camellia, a surprisingly ambitious restaurant in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, from a comedian-turned-chef that drips with authenticity. That means prawns and grits appropriately drowned in butter with a gumbo jus, fried pickled green tomatoes and an impossible-to-put-down take on red beans and rice that involves frying the rice beforehand. For dessert, the best banana pudding tart you may ever have — outside of the Deep South.
