Pete Wells, the restaurant critic of The New York Times, returns to Le Bernardin for this week’s review, and awards it four stars. The Midtown Manhattan seafood restaurant has held that rating, the Times’ highest, since it opened in 1986.
That year, the Times critic Bryan Miller bestowed four stars. Three of his successors did the same: Ruth Reichl in 1995, Frank Bruni in 2005 and Wells in 2012.
Three other New York City restaurants received four stars in their last starred reviews by Times critics. Here are the others:
Eleven Madison Park
Last given a starred review in 2015.
The Flatiron district restaurant founded by Danny Meyer was first given four stars in 2009 by the Times critic Frank Bruni.
Wells also awarded four stars in a 2015 review, four years after Meyer sold Eleven Madison Park to its chef, Daniel Humm, and restaurateur Will Guidara. “The restaurant tries as hard as any I know to bring delight to the table with every course,” Wells wrote. “It succeeds so often that only the most determinedly grumpy souls could resist.”
Humm is now running the restaurant without Guidara, whose share he bought out in 2019. Last year, Humm removed meat and other animal products from his menu, and in a subsequent review, Wells wrote that the new vegan dishes didn’t measure up to their predecessors:
“Almost none of the main ingredients taste quite like themselves in the 10-course, $335 menu the restaurant unwrapped this June after a 15-month pandemic hiatus. Some are so obviously standing in for meat or fish that you almost feel sorry for them.”
But the review did not include a star rating. The Times did not award stars while restaurants were dealing with the disruption of the pandemic’s worst months. Wells resumed his starred reviews last June.
Jean-Georges
Last reviewed in 2014.
Not long after Jean-Georges Vongerichten opened his flagship on Columbus Circle in 1997, Ruth Reichl gave it four stars. Wells went back in 2014 and found that the chef continued to innovate there.
“Jean-Georges glides like a Mercedes sedan, but Mr. Vongerichten takes the curves like a Formula One driver,” Wells wrote in his review. “Consider the squab dish that just popped up on the menu. It comes on like jerk chicken, coated in a blackened rub, and while the seasonings are Middle Eastern, the searing heat is almost Jamaican. And here comes the creative leap that separates Mr. Vongerichten from other spice-peddlers: a hot sauce has been splashed around this charred squab, and it is made from flowers. A bright-orange blend of lime, fresh red chiles and peppery nasturtium petals, it makes the already fiery squab into what may be the spiciest dish ever served in a French restaurant.”
Yoshino
Reviewed in 2022.
Tadashi Yoshida closed his restaurant in Nagoya, Japan, Sushi no Yoshino, to open this New York sushi restaurant in 2021. Wells found the 10-seat dining room on the Bowery offered nonstop thrills from the moment diners are seated at the hinoki counter, from a vichysoisse garnished with caviar and lumps of Hokkaido hairy crab to mackerel sushi seared with glowing charcoal to tamago that feels almost like crème brûlée.
“Of course, other sushi chefs have mixed outside ideas into this essentially Japanese idiom,” Wells wrote. “But Mr. Yoshida does it in a natural, unforced way that is very rare. A meal in his restaurant glides like a sliding door in its groove.” — NYT
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