Let's talk about this Le Veau d'Or vs. NYT thing

What's a best-of list without one of the consensus favorites?

Strong reactions to lists is a sucker’s game. I spent the first six years of my career overseeing NBA lists specifically designed to contain a blend of:

1. High-quality analysis

2. Framing that converted hundreds of paid subscribers

3. Bold claims talking heads would yap about wildly on First Take

When done well, a good list exposes you to new ideas, new experiences, new ways of thinking. In exchange, the creator behind the list is rewarded with an increase in subscriptions or eyeballs on an attached brand partnership, since the only thing that reliably performs better than lists are paywalled divorce diaries.

A bad list inverts that list of priorities, starting with what will outrage and backing into the content. But we consume far fewer bad lists with bad intentions than we do ethics-based complaints about lists people simply disagree with. Here’s a good example via chef Tom Colicchio, commenting on an IG post promoting New York Times critic Ligaya Mishan’s 100 best restaurants list:

“Wondering why you call this list the best and not your favorite”

This is disingenuous. It’s labeled a best-of list for business reasons that Colicchio understands well. Colicchio’s comment will carry more weight when he’s judging Bravo’s Last Cook Standing As Determined By A Series Of Clock-Crazed High-Wire-Acts And Increasingly Inelegant Brand Integrations rather than … Top Chef. Words have meaning. That meaning doesn’t trump click-through rate for anyone trying to make a living.

And yet! This NYT list and the plugged-in food insider aversion to its high-profile exclusions is fascinating. Everyone from J Lee to Helen Rosner to Alison Roman has side-eyed this thing. Let’s dive into it:

• The NYT, as the monolith, consensus-building, travel-itinerary-influencing, and market-moving paper of record in New York dining, can reasonably be held to a different standard than, say, me, or even The Infatuation. If I use a dumb little points system for my top 25 rankings or The Infatuation baddha konasanas the definition of “best new restaurants” to mean “newly opened, popular and good for our SEO traffic monster” … I say fair play. To not understand the art of the dance here is to opt out of being a critical consumer of modern media. If you’re smart enough to identify the accuracy disparity and make the critique, you’re also smart enough not to need to be pandered to with literalism in headlines and SEO slugs.

• Does the Times have a responsibility to prioritize objective greatness on a best-of list? Probably not. Restaurant quality is rooted in a deeply personal alchemy of variables that go far beyond the cooking of the food itself. Any attempt at a universal scoring system would be both misguided and boring. Mishan landed on these criteria, which is entirely defensible: “I considered imagination, ambience, service, technique, passion, commitment and sheer deliciousness — but also, and most important, New York-iness.”

• Which brings us to Le Veau d’Or, a place I’ve gushed about over and over that Mishan chose to exclude. It is ranked No. 1 on The Infatuation’s own list. It is quite difficult to book for dinner without effort or connections. It has a universal greatness approval rating among both casual and seasoned diners — on service, vibes, only-in-New-Yorkiness, food, and all the rest — unmatched by its competition.

• LVD does not need recognition on this list. None of the food influencers you know are up in arms about this because they want LVD to become even more popular. This is not irrational stan culture outrage. It’s just … startling?

• Excluding Bong and Bridges is a (questionable) matter of taste reserved for the critic’s discretion. I know the Bridges Shrug well, the it’s-fine-but-I’ve-had-better malaise some diners feel after their journey through chef Sam Lawrence’s heady, esoteric small plates. Even if I disagree, I can oblige it fairly. I do not know of responses to Le Veau from living, breathing humans that fall short of elation.

• (By the way, how wrong do you have to be to rally a dissenting consensus around expensive, uptown, French food produced by some of the most successful restaurateurs in the business?)

• Food rarely has direct comps to sports like this, but a scroll through the NYT list feels like ESPN producing a best basketball players of the century ranking that leaves off LeBron James because, like, vibes? Consider the recent NYT Styles package listing the 30 greatest living American songwriters. Sports doesn’t have an objective measure of greatness, but the statistical and achievement oriented outcomes make it a more linear vertical to judge than food or music. In a podcast dissecting that songwriters list, the responsible critics said they spent very little time discussing a few obvious inclusions like Jay-Z, Taylor Swift and Bob Dylan. To not include them would upend the idea of the list, the credibility of their grasp on greatness, the clear magnitude of the artists’ excellence. In New York dining right now, that shortlist at least includes Kabawa (No. 1 on the 2026 list), Torrisi (No. 3), Semma (No. 9), Tatiana (No. 12), Penny (No. 35) and Le Veau (unranked). A bloodless list fills its entire top five with this group. But what’s the value in a list that goes 100 deep while quietly ignoring one entirely?

• Restaurants are extremely personal. A best of LA list excluding Baby Bistro is one I would begrudge yet understand. It’s not for everyone, it’s just very, very much for the people to whom it appeals. That’s part of its charm. It’s more Cameron Winter (excluded from the NYT songwriters list) than Stevie Wonder (included, of course). To nix a Stevie-level restaurant like LVD incites conspiratorial questions about quiet, long-simmering beef, fair or not.

• I’m all about solutions, so here’s what I propose: Simply address this directly with more content. I devoured that NYT music podcast. For the first time in eight years that LeBron didn’t finish No. 1 in our NBA players rankings at ESPN, we had a full week of meetings about it, which led to an entire package of pieces. If Mishan has commented on the Le Veau exclusion, kindly send it my way. I haven’t seen it. I have an enormous amount of respect and appreciation for her writing and critical sensibility. Making these kinds of lists is one part of a good critic’s job. But more than that, being able to find the big stories, put them into context and shift our perception of what they mean is what any art obsessive is really looking for from the best writers in the field. Every smart food person I trust thinks LVD is a top 100 restaurant in New York. The critic with the biggest platform does not. Cool. That’s a big story. Let’s chat about it.