http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/dining/nyc-best-new-restaurants-2014.html 2014-12-26 14:40:36 The 10 Best New Restaurants of 2014 From Bâtard to Russ and Daughters Cafe, the restaurants that brought a fresh perspective to the dining scene this year. === From the foxhole where I attempt to pin stars on restaurants, the view is limited. Mostly, I can see the establishment I’m writing about that week. I may glance at its competitors, to see if Slugburger Deluxe is performing up to the high standards set by Slugburger 5000 at the Trump Galaxy. But the question I’m trying to answer, above others, is how close Slugburger Deluxe comes to succeeding on its own terms. As I sift through a full year’s reviews, though, trying to choose the 10 new places I feel most strongly about, other questions loom into sight. Could I say, without my notes and the barrel of a deadline pressed against my temple, what makes the restaurant distinctive? Does it offer something the city was missing, or suggest a fresh approach that deserves to catch on? Did I recommend the place to friends after the review was published? Have I gone back, or wished I could? When I think about the menu, do I find myself wondering if there’s time, before my 8 p.m. reservation at the hot place that just opened, for a quick double slugburger with miso-sriracha slug sauce? Still, readers who regard the stars with my reviews as the final word may find it unnerving that my list of my favorite restaurants of 2014 includes a one-star restaurant, while a number of two-stars don’t chart at all. And just to make things more illogical, in one case I’ve ranked a two-star (Russ & Daughters) above a three-star (the Simone). As an example of my nonlinear thinking, a little one-star place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, called Delaware and Hudson makes my year-end cut. Down in my foxhole, the memory of a few dishes that didn’t quite get up and dance was still fresh and seemed to require some kind of warning in the star rating. But when I look back at the restaurants that brought a fresh perspective to the dining scene this year, a few wobbly courses seem less important than Delaware & Hudson’s revival of forgotten mid-Atlantic recipes, its extraordinarily well-priced $48 set menus with their profusion of memorable tastes, and its fantastic warm pretzel rolls. Other restaurants were more consistent, but few were as original. So while I stand by the weekly star ratings, this annual list gives more weight to other things, like value and a strong, clear point of view. Of the new restaurants I reviewed in 2014, these are the ones I remember most vividly and fondly. All 10 strike me as standing out from a pack of other new places where you can also get a good meal. Now if you need me, look for me in my foxhole. Just follow the trail of pretzel crumbs. 1. For New Yorkers who’ve been eating and drinking at this address since the Montrachet era, Bâtard reads like a new chapter in downtown dining. It makes a clean break with the style of the last restaurant in this space, 2. A sit-down branch of the century-old Russ & Daughters appetizing business finally arrived this year, and not a minute too soon. As the 3. With its menus written in cursive, its sedate townhouse dining room on the Upper East Side and its waiters in vests and tightly knotted neckties, the Simone is easily the year’s least trendy restaurant. But trends aren’t always interesting, and the Simone’s retro ideas aren’t stale. They honestly express the sensibilities of the owners, Chip Smith, Tina Vaughn and Robert Margolis, who believe that the old-fashioned niceties are still relevant. While you’re at the Simone, you believe it, too. This extends to Mr. Smith’s cooking, which is classically French in technique but feels timeless and natural in his hands. Ms. Vaughn, his wife, has a talent for finding the right wine, and she’ll tell you why with a minimum of wine-speak but a winning level of enthusiasm. Like the restaurant, there’s nothing starchy about her. 4. Keith McNally says he builds the kind of restaurants where he’d like to eat. Anyone seeing how well Cherche Midi has turned out will wonder why all other restaurateurs don’t do the same. The music plays so quietly that you register it subliminally, if at all. The service is free of pretense and amateurism. The menu requires no introductory speechifying, although it helps to be familiar with premodern French totems like frogs’ legs in parsley sauce, steamed mussels, crêpes suzette and îles flottantes. The star is that banquet war horse, prime rib, elevated to heroic stature. Very little about Cherche Midi is new, but there is plenty to lure you, and presumably Mr. McNally, again and again. 5. The name may be a mistake. Certainly it doesn’t give the full picture. Like 6. Patti Jackson’s $48 menus at Delaware and Hudson are some of the best deals in the city. Officially, you get four courses, but the first one includes three or four small appetizers, and the last one is a pair of desserts and a plate of mignardise that Ms. Jackson delivers herself, shyly taking a curtain call. Ms. Jackson is a generous chef, one who puts pleasure and flavor above Instagram-ready aesthetics. The value, in other words, goes beyond quality-for-dollar mathematics. Drawing on homey mid-Atlantic recipes and the pasta skills she learned in Italian kitchens, Ms. Jackson cooks as if the only point of running a restaurant is to make people happy. 7. The great achievement of Contra is that it’s both highly ambitious and resolutely accessible. The chefs (Jeremiah Stone handles the savory courses, while Fabian von Hauske is in charge of desserts and bread) cook expressively, gently, with an eye toward nature and an aversion for easy effects. Every dish, from monkfish with onion jam and a froth made from smoked trout to the popcorn mousse with tangerine granita, rewards curiosity with quiet surprises. This is the kind of serious cooking that often goes with marathon tasting menus and high prices, but Contra is content with five well-considered courses and a very humane price of $55. Bread is $3 extra, but worth more. 8. Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone 9. Too often, the reward we get for treating our chefs like celebrities is a menu that seems to have been texted from a first-class lounge at the Aspen airport. 10. Contemporary Israeli food is the idea, which means a multiethnic mix of seasonings that the chef,