Lists

Here Are the 10 ‘Best’ Restaurants From Zagat’s 2016 Restaurant Guide

A dish from Le Bernardin, which scored highest in the annual guide's food ranking.
A dish from Le Bernardin, which scored highest in the annual guide’s food ranking. Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev

Zagat, the restaurant-ranking staple that’s now owned by Google, released its annual list of crowd-sourced restaurant reviews Tuesday morning (the printed guide, if that’s your thing, comes out next week), and the list of places that scored best is — as you might expect — a collection of NYC-restaurant-world heavy hitters.

For the unfamiliar, Zagat ranks restaurants’ food and décor on a scale that goes to 30, and the rankings below are based on which restaurants scored most highly in the food category:

1. Le Bernardin (food: 29; décor: 28)
2. Bouley (food: 29; décor: 28)
3. Daniel (food: 29; décor: 28)
4. Jean-Georges (food: 29; décor: 28)
5. Gotham Bar and Grill (food: 28; décor: 26)
6. Peter Luger Steak House (food: 28; décor: 17)
7. Eleven Madison Park (food: 28; décor: 28)
8. Blue Hill (food: 28; décor: 23)
9. Per Se (food: 28; décor: 27)
10. Gramercy Tavern (food: 28; décor: 26)

Also of note is that Jehangir Mehta’s Graffiti comes in as the somewhat surprising 11th pick on this year’s list, which also includes spots like the Nougatine front room at Jean-Georges (15), L’Artusi (17), and Anita Lo’s Annisa (18).

Some things, however, remain the same. The blurbs, which always pull quotes from those surveyed, are as charmingly goofy now as they were 20 years ago:

[Zagat]

Here Are the 10 ‘Best’ Restaurants From Zagat’s 2016