The 100 best restaurant dishes I ate this year
2025's top bites, ranked
I’m not an instinctually simple cook. I grab for one ingredient too many, I consider what will impress just a hair above what will be satisfying, I put one or two too many things on a dinner party menu. It’s annoying, and it gets in my head.
That’s probably why so many of my favorite bites from the year are stars due to their simplicity. Fewer things on the plate, considered sourcing, cooked perfectly or not cooked at all, rarely a buzz-worthy combination that travels far on a vertical scroll. We love what we lack the most.
Read on for my top 100 restaurant dishes in 2025. The only rule I followed in making this list was that there are no repeats from last year’s edition. Otherwise, anything goes. The top 10 is open for everyone, and the other 90 are for paid subscribers only.
Top 100 restaurant dishes
Squid, cucumbers & yuzu kosho | Baby Bistro | LA
Last year, I just knew the confit oyster from Penny had to be No. 1. It was a knockout on first bite that never relented on repeat visits. A perfect blend of restraint, creativity, peak ingredient and texture. For the second year in a row, there was no real competition.
This is the dish that made me fall in love with Baby Bistro. It became infamous in my texts, developing its own whisper campaign. Miles Thompson takes segments of aged squid and pairs them with matching smashed cucumbers, dressing both in a bright combo of citrus, soy and Japanese spice. You alternate between spurts of “wow” and “what the fuck” as the bowl disappears sooner than you’d like.
More of Miles’ dishes show up on this list. He’ll certainly have new creations here next year, too. But for now this is the one, the little slice of brilliance that transcends into something else. He takes a known nigiri reference point and lets weird, instinctual interpretation take over. There’s a wine description on the Baby Bistro menu right now for a French cab that reads “quiet voice with quite a lot to say.” That’s Miles on a plate, here and everywhere.Sweet shrimp sashimi | Anjumaeul | Seoul
In the morning, these shrimp travel from the sea between Korea and Japan to an unassuming shop on a Seoul side street. They’re sweet, yes, but they’re also pristine. You taste the precious few hours from departure to arrival.
The amount of shrimp on the plate feel egregious when it lands. The idea of ever eating any other shrimp feels even more ludicrous minutes later.Dad’s sardines | Bar Kabawa | NYC
Chef Paul Carmichael pulls from one his father’s reliable post-work snack growing up to deliver this showstopper. On the plate there are tinned sardines, avocado, shallots, oil and a pepper sauce Carmichael has been messing with for years. Build up a bite on a cracker and follow it with a boozy daiquiri. Order a second round of each. Leave the world behind.
Duck and cherries | Le Veau d’Or | NYC
Here’s a nightmare scenario multiple poor diners have recounted to me. They finally get into Le Veau d’Or. It’s sexy and dark and fun. The cocktails are flowing, the first course is a delight, and then the entrees come. They devour a beautiful lobster or chicken or lamb. And they watch as someone else takes down this impeccably spiced duck solo. Sucker shit.
announced to the table you don’t turn French food like this into a small plates, sharing experience. I said, respectfully, no.
My best LVD meal came over the summer, when my guy
There’s this moment that happens with the right group at LVD. You’re passing big plates of mains around a four top that barely holds all of them on one table. The third person to receive the duck leaves just enough for the final turn, an act of grace when selfish gluttony might otherwise be forgiven. Palms exchange now-dilapidated proteins like hand-me-down Christmas gifts, criss-crossing friends and dates, new and old, indulging in one of New York’s greatest displays of love.Iceberg + mimolette | Penny | NYC
The best dish at the city’s premier seafood counter starts with a wedge of iceberg face up on a plate. Next comes thick squiggles of a mustard dressing that leans way closer to balance than it does a flavor bomb. It needs to, because a true mountain of mimolette cheese is coming next.
This is the salad of my dreams. Yes, there’s something to be said for Jody Williams’ bright, fresh, herby acidity or the secret, layered complexity of Ignacio Mattos. I’m here for all of that. But Joshua Pinsky had a burst of “fuck it” on this one that’s admirable. Lettuce. Dressing. Cheese. When it’s done this well, just let it shine.Beef noodles | Kato | LA
Okay, I’m going to try to recall what I know about this dish. Jon Yao takes inspiration from the niu rou mian he grew up eating in the San Gabriel Valley, a Taiwanese beef noodle soup that screams comfort. He incorporates American wagyu beef cheek from a New Mexican cow that I’ve been assured is quite special. I don’t know. By the time this bowl arrives at the Kato bar, I’m at least three drinks deep and merely nodding along to the spiel. This dish inspires a “let me at it” sensation. They’re the country’s best version of takeout noodles, elevated by a singular Los Angeles talent.
Bansang | Baroo | LA
The entree course of Baroo’s vegetarian tasting menu is Kwang Uh’s time to cook. Yes, your carnivorous dining companion will be treated to a luscious pork chop or beef short rib. Steal a bite if you can. But you’ve made the right choice. On one visit, the bansang platter read: dried radish leaf soup, baby corn, artichoke mushroom, burdock perilla pancake, dooboojang.
This is head-spinning stuff. Each small dish is served in baroo, the titular Buddhist bowls behind this LA gem. Monks dispel material possessions, yet they’re allowed baroo as a vessel for meals.
I don’t find food to be a spiritual experience. Inspiring, invigorating, communal, emotional, yes, but I draw the line somewhere. I left a March birthday dinner at Baroo among the happiest I’d been all year. Plastered, I ignored the card they slipped me on the way out. The next morning, I finally opened it. The header read, “Yang Earth Yin Water” and featured a translation of a Korean poem:
The will of earth is to maintain balance among the elements
The nature of water is to sprout life
Like soil with ample waters, One can grow
Something immense from something small
And, you know, fuck. Fine. They got me.Lady Edison ham with Asian pear | Lei | NYC
Once a year I eat something and think, “Oh, yeah, I’m blatantly stealing this.” This salty as hell cured ham is paired with sweet, crunchy Asian pear. Does the kitchen do anything else before sending it you? Do they need to? I didn’t ask or think about it. This is charcuterie at its finest, from a delicate little corner in Chinatown and now on my table at home.
Bangers & mash | Wilde’s | LA
Wilde’s could do excellent business on B+ food given its A+ vibe in what has turned out to be an irrationally ravenous Los Feliz location for this kind of crowd pleaser. Natasha Price isn’t bothering with that. This sausage. My god. Natasha cranks up the sweetness just to the point of you wondering, like, is it too much? It’s not. The complementary notes of funk and umami round out what has quickly settled into drop everything, destination dining.
Steak tartare | Here’s Looking At You | LA
Here’s Looking At You was a fighter. It survived, over and over again, until it was finally time. On a dreary night in June, I stopped in for my final HLAY meal. It’s a rare, disorienting experience, knowing you’re eating dishes for the last time. I’d ordered this steak tartare with regularity for nearly a decade. It was a constant as I decided to move to LA, then leave, then return. It was the truest example of a global, small plates approach that went on to proliferate across America. You’d catch little nods, both knowing and subconscious, at Jonathan Whitener’s masterpiece in Austin and Portland and Atlanta. But then you’d come back to this weird dining room in Koreatown and find that, yeah, this is it.
Midway through that June meal, the tartare hit the table, alongside the tomato bagna cauda classic. Owner Lien Ta stopped by to check in and I choked up. I couldn’t find any of the right words. It’s just food, right? It’s just a space, it’s just another passed app. There are millions of these. That’s what I told myself, trying to shake out of it while Lien put her hand on my shoulder. Because no, in brief moments when a few wild, crazy, creative people push hard enough on their vision because they can’t imagine doing anything else, this is my favorite thing in the world.
The words hit me eventually. It was all simpler than my brain would let me believe. I realized I just needed to say thank you.Silken tofu salad | Flavourtown | Seoul
