This is where New York wants to eat. Not the hardest tables, which have their own list, and not a ranking of the cooking. These are the twenty-five rooms people choose when they are going out: for the room, the crowd, the drinks, one dish, or the night the whole thing turns into. Some you cannot get into at all; Rao's ten tables have belonged to the same regulars for decades. Some you can walk into on a Tuesday and will not get near on a Friday.
Beside every entry is its editorial score, the five-dimension number from the review, and it will not always agree with the order — it is not meant to. Tatiana tops the list at 8.5, Via Carota sits fourth at 8.7, and the two STK rooms close it out in the sevens, because a Friday at either one is exactly what the people booking it came for. The score tells you what the review found. The list tells you where the night is.
For the tables ranked on nothing but how hard they are to book, see The 25 Hardest Tables in New York City.
