An UWS Restaurant Is The Best In NYC, According To The NYT

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Three Upper West Side haunts are among the New York Times' 100 Best Restaurants of 2023—and one of them was given the number one spot.

Taking the 91st spot on the recently-released list is the Barney Greengrass deli and diner, and coming in at number 13 is French restaurant Jean-Georges. But topping the list and beating out all other 99 restuarants, according to critic Pete Wells, is Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi, which serves American, Caribbean, and Creole cuisine.

Located at the Lincoln Center, Tatiana's menu boasts small plates from crispy okra to curried goat patties, large plates from curried snow crab to braised oxtails, and desserts from strawberry shortcake to Harlem Chocolate Factory white chocolate cheesecake.

On its website, the restaurant describes itself as arising from the intersection of family and food, with Onwuachi writing that it's a "love letter to New York" that was "written with the flavors, aromas and textures of my childhood, inspired by my culinary muse (and beloved sister) Tatiana."

"We needed Tatiana," Wells writes in the Times article. "We needed a kitchen that puts Caribbean and African and Black American cooking, too often kept in the city's margins, right at center stage. And after quarantines and masks and distancing and sunry social traumas, we needed a party. We needed a reason to get dressed up, to drunk rum cocktails with spicy food, to stay out past 9 'o'clock,' to look around a dining room and see a new, heterogeneous vision of New York and to feel home for its future."

Tatiana is open for dinner Monday through Wednesday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m and Thursday through Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., with Late Night dinner running from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Read the full list at The New York Times.