Voice Critic Sietsema Sums up a Decade of Eating, Trends

At the beginning of the month New York critic Adam Platt filed on his decade of professional dining, noting that New York has finally found its own unique cuisine. The Voice's longtime critic, and one of the city's most adventurous, Robert Sietsema now pens his requisite goodbye to the aughts, focusing on the best dining trends that have arisen since 2000. On Sietsema's list: the rise of Naples style pizza, ramen, and Thai restaurants, the Chinese noodle and dumpling infiltration of Manhattan, the growing popularity of super local brews, and a new ever-present love for chilies. He also touches upon mixologists, the changing landscape in Flushing, coffee bars, and of course, celebrity chefs:

With the pressure to perform on the rise, chefs are turning out better food than ever before, and the food itself is becoming more diverse. Accompanying this canonization has come a relaxed definition of what a chef is, adding a democratizing trend to the job category that may eventually result in more racial and sexual diversification. Nowadays, even the guy who fixes your sandwich or flips your pancakes considers himself a chef.