Batard Tops Pete Wells' List of Best New Restaurants, Followed by a Few Curveballs

Pete Wells dropped his list of the year's top 10 best new restaurants on Friday, noting that these are the standout restaurants, the ones that he "remember[s] most vividly and fondly," but not necessarily the ones that earned the most stars. Batard, Drew Nieporent's replacement of Corton, tops the list, in large part for chef Markus Glocker's "attempt to bring the sanity back to high style dining."

Russ & Daughters Cafe comes in at number two, while The Simone, the Upper East Side restaurant hardly anyone had heard of until Wells gave it three stars, lands at number three.

The rest of the list is largely the usual suspects (Dirty French, Cherche Midi), but Wells does also call out Delaware and Hudson, Patti Jackson's mid-Atlantic-leaning, prix fixe-only restaurant in Williamsburg, despite having only given it one star.