For the fourth year in a row, readers of crowd-sourced restaurant guide Zagat have named the food at Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin the best in New York City.
The annual restaurant ranking by the burgundy guide comes the same week Michelin released its 2013 guide, which this year added nine newcomers to the one-star category and one more two-starred eatery.
This year, more than 44,300 New York diners voted in Zagat’s 2013 New York City Restaurants survey, crowning Ripert’s seafood-based restaurant the best in the city, followed by Thomas Keller’s Per Se and David Bouley’s Bouley.
Rounding out the top five addresses in the Big Apple are Daniel Boulud’s Daniel and Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park.
Last year, Le Bernardin shut its doors to undergo a complete restaurant makeover, its first in 25 years. The centrepiece includes a 24-foot triptych painting depicting a stormy sea.
For the most part, Ripert’s cuisine attracts a heap of effusive praise from Zagat members, one of whom called a meal at the restaurant a “religious experience” that puts his cooking “atop the pantheon of exquisite dining in the 21st century.”
A US$125 (RM400) prix fixe dinner menu could include a warm lobster carpaccio with red grapefruit, heart of palm and verjus sabayon, as well as a bread-crusted red snapper with saffron, fideos (thin, vermicelli-like noodle) and a smoked sweet paprika sauce.
Le Bernardin was also voted Most Popular restaurant. Per Se was named the NYC restaurant with the best service, while Danny Meyer’s North End Grill was voted the Top Newcomer to the city’s dining scene. Asiate in the Mandarin Oriental hotel took the prize for Top Décor.
Here are the top 10 New York City restaurants according to Zagat readers for 2013:
1. Le Bernardin
2. Per Se
3. Bouley
4. Daniel
5. Eleven Madison Park
6. Jean-Georges
7. La Grenouille
8. Mas Farmhouse
9. Sushi Yasuda
10. Sushi Seki