In today’s digital era, online reviews are the modern word-of-mouth—a direct line for potential customers to discover your restaurant. When leveraged strategically, they become a powerful marketing tool that builds trust and drives sales.
“You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together”
I was pretty sure I’d never set foot in Jean’s, a sizzling NoHo clubstaurant with an unabashedly eighties-glam dining room, where even the red velvet is printed with zebras. The place is beloved of the tanned and long-limbed TikTok, Bravo, and fashion-influencer sets, and I am but a blobby Brooklyn mom with streaks of gray in my hair. Still, I kept hearing how great the food was, often with the addendum “Especially for a place like that!” A backhanded compliment? A damning insult? What I saw on Instagram did look shockingly good: elegant bistro-ish fare, plated with care and respect, plus pile after pile of incredibly gorgeous-looking french fries, thin and glittery as the restaurant’s clientele, glowing golden even in the restaurant’s red-tinged lighting. I finally went in for a meal—it was really good, especially for a place like that!—and the fries lived up to the hype, and then some. Jaunty, crisp, hot, salty, they’re like McDonald’s fries but somehow even better, which in my book is the greatest compliment any french fry can hope for.Somewhat nontraditionally, instead of being served with soft pita, it’s accompanied by crackly pita chips, made fresh from the bread baked in the restaurant’s cheerful tiled oven, which fills the establishment with its yeasty aromas.
The downtown restaurant Mắm, which opened a couple years ago after a period as an itinerant pop-up, is one of my favorite warm-weather spots. Outside the tiny storefront, the sidewalk (and often a fair bit of the street) is crowded with diners perched on low plastic stools set around low plastic tables, gustily eating some of the best, most electrifying Vietnamese food in the city. As the weather become colder and wetter, I’ve become enamored of Lai Rai, a few doors down, operated by the Mắm team (in collaboration with the Greenpoint restaurant Đi Ăn Đi). Where Mắm is scrappy and exuberant, Lai Rai is quiet, self-contained, thoughtfully composed—it’s more a wine bar than a full restaurant, with a deep list of natural-production bottles, and a short, tight list of Vietnamese-inflected bar snacks. One of the loveliest moments of my year was spent gossiping with a friend at the marble bar, each of us sipping something minerally and white, pausing to eat slivers of an enormous surf clam, just barely cooked and chewy-tender, served in its shell under a creamy coconut broth drizzled with a bright-green oil made from shiso, basil, and spicy-floral rice paddy herb. The dish is subtle, gentle, and electrifying, all in one.
Tuna, too, has had a banner year, though unlike swordfish it never really went out of style. At Penny, the pert and polished East Village seafood bar, the ruby-fleshed fish is served as a carpaccio: laid out in large, thin, near-translucent petals and dressed simply, with a swizzle of olive oil, a few curls of white onion, and salty bits of supple green olives. The presentation is restrained and reverent, but the flavors play together with dynamically on the tongue.
At the Otter, the chef Alex Stupak’s latest restaurant, in Soho’s new Manner hotel, the fish gets a more classic tartare presentation, finely cut into tiny cubes, but it’s dressed in an punchy relish of anchovy, pickled peppers, and again—tuna’s new best friend?—green olives, inspired by the chic little Basque skewered tapa known as a gilda. It’s a little puttanesca, a little off-kilter, totally wild.
Love is the food of life,
travel is the dessert.
Restaurant Food & Trucks
Those of us in the admittedly absurd position of eating for a living come to learn, after some time on the job, that, on balance, most food tends to be pretty good. Of the hundreds of restaurant dishes I’ve had in the past twelve months, the vast majority were quite enjoyable, a portion were forgettably pleasant, and fewer than a dozen rated as actually bad. But only a small selection were terrific in a revelatory way, offering moments of exceptional sensory surprise or sheer experiential pleasure.
The dishes here range from the special occasion (an ultra-high-end pasta punched up with foie gras) to the everyday (a grab-and-go sandwich I’ve had for lunch half a dozen times in recent months). Happiness—at least, of the gustatory kind—comes in all forms, and at all price points.
Nearly everything on the menu at this colorful, pocket-size Hamilton Heights restaurant is a little bit of a revelation.
Coffee & Brunch
Whether you’re running a cosy little suburban cafe or a busy city centre coffee shop, staying on top of your opening and closing routines is absolutely crucial. Here at Trail, we love a checklist to keep things in order. Our customers are passionate about smooth, efficient service, so we devised a cafe management system with clear, efficient, digital cafe opening and closing checklists.
Real Food
We asked thousands of locals all about eating out in their cities to rank the world’s culinary capitals in 2025