In one of the most highly anticipated debuts of the year, Charles Gabriel’s legendary fried chicken is back. The decades-old Harlem icon — which also opened a location on the Upper West Side in February — is known for its lesser-seen approach to frying chicken, crisping the bird in a giant skillet instead of vats of bubbling oil. The impressive result has gained the restaurant legions of followers. Customers line up for Charles’ crunchy chicken, creamy mac and cheese, and lima beans that Eater critic Robert Sietsema says will convert even the staunchest lima bean doubter. Barbecued ribs, pulled pork, and smothered chicken are also on the menu.

Le Rock is the latest in a series of high-profile restaurant openings at Rockefeller Center — and possibly the best of the bunch so far. Similar to this team’s sibling restaurant Frenchette in Tribeca, the focus is on French bistro fare that’s been dialed up in price and quality. Half of the menu is made up of seasonal seafood while the other half is anchored in modern classics like escargot served out of ceramic cups and leeks vinaigrette that come wrapped in their leaves.

Cafe China, an acclaimed Sichuan restaurant that held a Michelin star for seven years, temporarily shuttered for five months in 2021. It has now has been reborn in a three-story brick building in Midtown. The chic restaurant, run by Xian Zhang and Yiming Wang, marries old menu favorites like cumin lamb and tea-smoked duck with new-guard entries like a whole steamed fish with cayenne and tabasco peppers, plus dim sum and other regional Chinese dishes.

The initial step in the next chapter at 85 10th Avenue — the former home of lauded-yet-troubled Italian destination Del Posto — was an upscale pizza parlor that bills itself as the more relaxed counterpart to next-door fine-dining newcomer Al Coro. Executive chef Melissa Rodriguez is running the show at Mel’s, a weeknight hangout with wood-fired pizza, grilled steaks, and some outstanding sundaes.

Add Oiji Mi to the running list of restaurants offering tasting menus for around $100. The one served here — priced at $135 for five courses — highlights modern Korean inventions like foie gras with bokbunja (a Korean fruit wine) and deconstructed bo ssam with oysters and pork belly. Despite the early buzz, there’s plenty of reservations at this 80-seat Flatiron restaurant, which comes from the team that formerly ran acclaimed modern Korean restaurant Oiji, in the East Village.

Possibly one of the most talked-about openings of the year, HAGS — a reference to both witches and the quintessential high-school yearbook inscription — is a queer-led fine dining restaurant that is thinking differently about equity for both staffers and diners participating in the experience of dining out. Chef and co-owner Telly Justice leads a $155, four-course tasting menu (or $145 for the vegan version) that includes plenty of joyful moments, and on Sundays, that menu is set aside in favor of a rotating lineup of pay-what-you-wish meals that are first come, first served.

The hotshots behind one of America’s best new restaurants of 2021 are not slowing down. In their latest debut, restaurateur Roni Mazumdar and chef Chintan Pandya are frying up crunchy, spicy fried chicken commonly seen in Indian street stalls and transplanting it to the East Village. The tiny shop is churning out fried chicken at three different spice levels, plus chicken sandwiches with scallion yogurt and mint chutney, and sides including crispy eggplant or potato pakoras and masala corn. For vegetarians, the snack-sized vado pao — a spiced potato patty with mint and tamarind chutney on a buttered pao roll — is an equally spicy hit.

A trio of Momofuku alums — Jeff Kim, Matthew Lee, and Victor Xia — started Nudibranch as a pop-up, a place where they could cook dishes that drew upon their collective experiences working at the David Chang restaurant group and other restaurants across town. They’ve now found a permanent home for their cooking in the East Village, where the $75 prix fixe menu leans heavily on traditional Asian ingredients in dishes like soba showered with shavings of bottarga; cauliflower paired with a Vietnamese dipping sauce and Chinese sausage; and fried frog legs topped with a medley of herbs like lemongrass and galangal.

Offering a playful take on Chinese American food, Potluck Club recently opened in a remote corner of Chinatown. The premises looks like a movie theater, with a marquee that reads, “Here For A Good Time Not A Long Time.” The relatively brief menu embroiders on dishes that might have been found in an old-fashioned Cantonese banquet hall, including salt-and-pepper chicken served anomalously with biscuits, and short ribs braised with kabocha squash. Partners include Cory Ng, Kimberly Ho, Justin Siu, Tommy Leong, Ricky Nguyen, and chef Zhan Chen.

Located in the recently opened Nine Orchard Hotel, Corner Bar is the new restaurant from Ignacio Mattos. Ignore the divey name — stools march along a marble bar and booths look out upon Allen Street, for a little Lower East Side flavor. Hot as it may be outside, the food is cool, fresh, and delicate, from the pristine oyster service to the heirloom tomato salad, which is irresistible. The menu is simple, running to entrees you don’t have to think about too much — spaghetti pomodoro, mussels, and roast chicken. This is hotel food at its best, unfussy yet elegant, just the thing for a weary traveler.

The name’s kind of a joke, right? But Jon Neidich’s new establishment, a compact corner spot radiating lively tables outdoors, is diehard French: from the winelist, full of Gallic vintages (no Finger Lakes here) to menu classics like an entire artichoke steamed and drizzled with olive oil and sea salt, a steak tartare with capers and cornichons, and a tuna Nicoise with spuds and haricots vert in an acidic shallot vinaigrette. The French fries are perfect, shoestrings to be poked in a dense aioli, which customers demolish as their heads swivel to check out the other patrons as they arrive.