This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to New York City
There is a whole constellation of New York restaurants that thrives after 10pm. You won’t find them on “best of” lists. They mostly don’t have PR teams or impossible wait times, and they aren’t charging $12 for radishes or buttered bread. But the chefs who do run the city’s “best” restaurants — folks with excellent taste and terrible hours — know them well. These are the restaurants where they actually eat.
I should know. Alongside a career writing “best of” lists, I have the glorious misfortune of dating a chef — meaning, I reap the “good taste” rewards and suffer the “bad hours” penalties. I’m no stranger to midnight dinners, many of which involve splitting a burger (but not splitting a martini) at Blue Ribbon Brasserie — where we may run into Ed Szymanski (the chef and co-owner of Lord’s, Crevette and Dame) with a glass of white Burgundy after a taxing shift. On other nights, at Sake Bar Asoko, we’ll find half the team from the neighbouring Corima sipping sake and chatting with the bar’s owners.
New York chefs have excellent dining advice because they have trustworthy palates, and — at the risk of overgeneralising — a great sense of the city. They reserve equal affection for bar wings and caviar. They respect quality. And after long nights spent feeding other people, they show up to dinner hungry. So in post-pandemic New York, where late-night dining is increasingly rare, I reached out to 21 of the city’s most talked-about chefs with an important question: where do they eat after their shifts end?
