The best new restaurants in NYC that opened in June 2017

The Flatiron District is becoming a veritable culinary destination: In addition to the nabe’s high-profile restaurants from Danny Meyer (Gramercy Tavern), Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park) and Enrique Olvera (Cosme), Simon Kim opens a follow-up restaurant to his Michelin-starred Piora. The Korean-style steakhouse serves chophouse classics like shrimp cocktail, thick-cut bacon and prime steaks alongside traditional Korean plates like stone-pot bibimbap and pajun (green-onion pancakes filled with seafood). The prix-fixe butcher’s feast supplies diners with banchan sides and presliced cuts to grill right on the soapstone-topped tables.

Smorgasburg better sleep with one eye open. At 60,000 square feet, this Downtown Brooklyn operation is slated to be one of the largest food halls in the country, with 40 vendors—including none other than Lower East Side legend Katz’s Delicatessen stacking its signature deli sandwiches. Other names may look familiar: Ample Hills Creamery, Arepa Lady and Bunker all made the lineup. But also be on the lookout for purveyors debuting their first brick-and-mortar outposts, with poke at Wiki Wiki, bakery treats at Pop Cake Shop and Chinese street food at Jianbing. The massive space also hosts daily entertainment and programming, with a custom show kitchen and a stage for live concerts.

In case you’ve been wondering what those well-heeled hobnobbers eat behind closed doors at the exclusive Soho House, it’s spaghetti, apparently. The team behind the private members’ club debuts its first public restaurant in New York, a Northern Italian number that already boasts locations in Miami, Istanbul and Barcelona. The brasserie-style interior blends ornate Venetian touches (glass chandeliers, arched windows) with industrial designs like exposed-brick walls, and a large outdoor terrace offers waterfront views. In the kitchen, Riccardo Bilotta (the Lambs Club, A Voce Columbus Circle) and Andrea Cavaliere oversee the menu, which features wood-fired pizzas, handmade pastas and entrées like veal chop milanese.

Matt and Emily Hyland hit it out of the park when they opened their thin-crust, wood-fired pizza spot, Emily, in Clinton Hill in 2014. Three years later, the couple is opening their first Manhattan location, taking over the former Blue Ribbon Bakery space in the West Village. Here, the Hylands focus on Detroit-style grandma pies, which are pan-cooked in a convection oven to create a thin, crisp base and crunchy cheese on top. Other pies on the menu include New York and New Haven styles, fired in a century-old wood-burning oven.

Celebrity chef Anne Burrell—she of Food Network and Cool Whip hairdo fame—makes her return to a restaurant kitchen with this Cobble Hill eatery. (Burrell has stayed firmly in the TV game since leaving Centro Vinoteca in 2008.) Partnering with Daddy-O owner Phil Casaceli, Burrell offers grazeworthy Mediterranean dishes like roasted cauliflower steak with mushroom ragù and grilled pizzetta with Stracchino cheese. But while the food skews Italian, the decor takes cues from all-American rock & roll; the room is covered in wallpaper adorned with guitar illustrations.

A few blocks down from their restaurant Vinegar Hill House, owner Sam Buffa and chef-owner Jean Adamson launch this casual all-day offshoot of the Dumbo stalwart inside the Empire Stores space. Breakfast and lunch goods from Adamson—house-made chocolate and smoked ricotta bread, spaghetti frittata, loaded hot dogs—are doled out over the counter, while table service takes over at night, with dinner options like brined-and-roasted tofu, smoked chicken and a fish of the day. For beverages, Blue Bottle’s Grace Lowman and Mission Chinese barman Sam Anderson have created seasonal coffee drinks like a nonalcoholic mai tai iced latte and cascara “vermouth.” The restaurant has outdoor seating overlooking the East River, but if you would rather go to the park for the view, by-the-pound meats are available to go for an impromptu picnic.

The Brooklyn seafood café already made its mark in Gowanus and Greenpoint, and now the team opens its biggest location yet in—where else?—Williamsburg. The airy space from owners Aaron Lefkove and Andy Curtin will look familiar to Littleneck frequenters, with white wall wainscoting, white marble tabletops and rustic wood seating. The menu from the chain’s executive chef Nick Williams is padded with similar fare like lobster rolls and raw-bar items but also includes new additions such as clam toast with salsa verde and garlic chips, and a smoked fish plate with pickled vegetables.

The Seaport District kicks into culinary overdrive this summer with several food- and drink-focused programs popping up for the season. The headliner is the Seaport Food Lab, a bi-level restaurant hosting chefs from all over the country for two-week residencies. It starts on Monday 19 with Paul Kahan, Erling Wu-Bower and Cosmo Goss from Chicago’s Pacific Standard Time: Dishes include oven-roasted black cod with plums and a watermelon salad with Sun Gold tomatoes and burnt chili. James Beard Award winner Alon Shaya of New Orleans’ Shaya serves his modern Israeli cuisine from July 29 to August 12, and prolific NYC chef Dale Talde (Talde, Massoni) takes over the kitchen from September 9 through 23.

Pizzerias may be the most oversaturated market in New York’s food scene, but a Washington, D.C., chain is giving it a whirl with this conveyor-belt pie shop. Baked in less than two minutes, the oblong personal pizzas come with your choice of unlimited toppings (spicy chickpea, vegan beef, pineapple) or as preselected combos like the American Honey (spicy tomato sauce, bocconcini, pepperoni, arugula, hot-honey drizzle) and the Moonstruck (truffle mushrooms, garlic ricotta, grilled onion, mozzarella, goat cheese and fig balsamic). The pizzas are ushered into a conveyor-belt oven and cooked for 90 seconds. The black-and-white restaurant is decked out with custom subway tiling, LED lights and exposed steel columns.

Nao Minami is making sure her South Slope, Brooklyn, restaurant lives up to its name: Christened after the hulking, historic elm tree in Prospect Park, the rustic eatery features a salvaged-wood bar, butcher-block tabletops and a platinum-printed photograph of the eponymous plant by Richard Rethemeyer. The menu from chef Brad Willits (Agern, Aldea) skews New American: charcoal-grilled, koji-cured cucumbers with smoked buttermilk and coriander flowers; grilled asparagus with miso-sunflower puree; and charred confit octopus topped with tomatillo sofrito, smoked potato and morcilla sausage.

Ariel Arce has some experience with fizz, jumping from Birds & Bubbles to the champagne-focused Riddling Widow. Now she’s going all in on her first solo project: The bubbly-based restaurant is meant to seem like a dinner party, with a full menu of elevated hors d’oeuvres—smoked-trout profiteroles dressed with dill, garlic prawns slathered in garam masala and brown butter, and caviar service complete with crème fraîche and sea-salt potato chips—served alongside affordable glasses and less-than-$50 bottles of champagne.