The best new restaurants in NYC that opened in November

Joining Fowler & Wells inside the Beekman Hotel is another long-anticipated restaurant from a similarly high-profile source: Bistro big-gun Keith McNally (Balthazar, Minetta Tavern). The 90-seat French number features many signatures of the influential restaurateur—vintage mirrors, Art Nouveau tiles, glistening leather banquettes and globe-light fixtures—as does the menu: Cherche Midi co-chefs Shane McBride and Daniel Parilla serve updated brasserie staples like salt-baked oysters with Pernod butter; a soufflé au fromage loaded with Gruyère and Parmesan; and halibut en cocotte with black truffle and lobster jus.

A butcher shop is a natural progression for April Bloomfield—much of the Michelin-starred chef’s success is tied to the masterful way she manipulates meat into some of New York’s most formidable burgers at the Spotted Pig and the Breslin. At this butchery-cum-restaurant on the Upper West Side—named after butcher slang for the fat on a good cut of meat—the marble counters are overseen by butchers Erika Nakamura and Jocelyn Guest, who break down meat for purchase and the restaurant’s kitchen. In the display cases, find stuff like house-made deli meats, sausages and pâtés. From the kitchen, expect daytime sandwiches (an egg sandwich with house bacon, a Harlem-repping chopped-cheese sammie) and meat-heavy fare for dinner: smoked beef cheeks, lamb ribs and rotisserie chicken with green sauce.

It’s the return of Tom Colicchio—not that he really ever went away. The celebrity chef still has an empire of Craft restaurants and a lead-judge seat on the Top Chef panel to keep him busy, but this restaurant inside the Financial District’s Beekman Hotel is his first New York project in six years. Nodding to the historic space—the hotel resides in an 1833 landmark building, and the restaurant takes its name from a pair of phrenologists who once practiced in the space—the menu throws back to retro New York. Colicchio and executive chef Bryan Hunt serve American plates like oysters Rockefeller, chicory salad with pear and candied walnuts, and a lamb loin with niçoise olives and Swiss chard inside the dining room, an 88-seat stretch decorated with mohair velvet banquettes, leather armchairs, dark timber floors and stained-glass windows.

Beautifully glossy chocolates served in fresh cocoa pods are already a hallmark of a meal at his eponymous Michelin-starred dining room, but now acclaimed Alsatian chef Gabriel Kreuther is launching a next-door shop specifically devoted to the stuff. Helmed by pastry chef Marc Aumont, the 15-seat upmarket confectionery showcases freshly made chocolates available in flavors like bananas Foster, salted butter caramel, and peanut butter with cassis and pretzel crunch.

Out with the old, in with the new—it’s a sentiment that the Three Kings Restaurant Group (chef Dale Talde and partners David Massoni and John Bush) seems to be sticking to these days. On the heels of the news that Three Kings closed Brooklyn honky-tonk Pork Slope and nearby gastropub Thistle Hill Tavern, they’re opening three food-and-drink spaces inside the new Arlo Nomad micro hotel, including this 58-seat “Italian-ish” dining room, fitted with pine chevron floors, weathered leather booths and walls covered in Italian travel advertisements. Expect fusion-fancy in the form of arancini built with biryani rice and served with cilantro-chili yogurt; malfade pasta with uni, Serrano chilies and smoked-onion dashi; and a trio of savory cannoli (cacio e pepe with honey; eggplant caponata with cocoa nibs; and beef tartare with pistachio).

Jared Sippel—who gained acclaim for his work at San Francisco’s double-Michelin-starred Quince and Boulder, Colorado critical favorite Frasca Food and Wine—moved to New York in 2013 to helm the Manhattan outpost of Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare. When that project didn’t come to fruition (it still hasn’t opened, FYI), Sippel instead started work on this Chelsea restaurant, split into a casual à la carte tavern up front and a tasting-menu dining room in back, decorated with leather banquettes, a Carrara marble salumi bar and pendant light fixtures made from vintage wine carafes. The chef’s menu traverses northern Italy and the south of France (Italienne is the French word for Italian): Dishes include a carne cruda with coriander flower and pine-bud syrup; triangoli with guinea hen and Madeira sauce; and duck with faro verde, fennel mostarda and huckleberry jus.

Kazunori Nozawa helped shape Los Angeles sushi culture with his 25-year-old omakase den Sushi Nozawa in Studio City (it shuttered in 2012), hand-roll bar KazuNori and high-quality sushi chain Sugarfish, which the raw-fish legend and his business partner, Jerry Greenberg, bring to New York with this Flatiron location. In the bi-level restaurant, you’ll find Sugarfish signatures like a set menu comprised of sashimi, nigiri (snapper, yellowtail) and hand rolls (toro, blue crab) but with the addition of local catch to the usual West Coast lineup.

Your days limited to scarfing down last-minute Wagamama noodles at Heathrow Airport are over. After 24 years and more than 150 global locations, the Britain-born Japanese food chain makes its New York debut with this minimalist, 7,400-square-foot Nomad location, offering a familiar setup of teppanyaki (meat, seafood and vegetables cooked over an iron griddle), donburi (rice bowls), ramen and curries, as well as the brand’s first cocktail program.

The Nordic train chugs on—this 65-seat East Village spot is the New York debut of accomplished Swedish chef Gabriel Hedlund, who previously worked in Copenhagen’s Michelin-starred restaurant Kokkeriet and, like many Scandinavian upstarts before him, at Noma under René Redzepi. In the minimalist room—sparsely decorated with lightwood communal tables, gray armless seats and potted kale—Hedlund employs traditional Nordic techniques (smoking, pickling and the like) in dishes such as rehydrated beets with blackberry and pine, fried squid “noodles” with egg yolk and seaweed, and lamb tartare with buckwheat and chives.

There are some serious restaurant chops behind this Mediterranean-breezed Bed-Stuy spot: chef Nick Perkins is a veteran of Andrew Tarlow’s Williamsburg empire (Diner, Marlow & Sons), and co-owner and beverage director Nialls Fallon was previously a proprietor of the tinned-fish favorite Maiden Lane. In a 30-seat dining room (marbled-topped bar, cushioned banquettes) designed by Perkins’s brother, Russell, the toque turns out coastal plates including clam toast with pancetta, pork milanese with pickled peppers, and a lamb burger heaped with arugula salad.

After running a pop-up at Brooklyn venues like Berg’n and Threes Brewing, brothers Max and Eli Sussman give their Mediterranean concept a permanent home in Williamsburg. Nodding to the shawarma stands of their native Southeast Michigan, the pint-size market-restaurant hybrid serves, from a counter, chicken shawarma, braised lamb, zucchini fritters and fish kofta as pita wraps or composed plates with rice and salad, along with a selection of dips including carrot romesco and avocado hummus. A retail area up front offers sweets (fruit rolls, licorice) and bottled sauces (fish sauce, Palestinian olive oil).

Marco Canora brought brodo, or bone broth, into the mainstream food lexicon in late 2014 with a stock-ladling takeout window attached to his East Village restaurant, Hearth. Now the broth operation gets its own brick-and-mortar space with this 350-square-foot West Village storefront, where warmth seekers can sip broths that have been steamed with “nutrient-dense” fats (bone marrow, coconut oil) and emulsified in an immersion blender for cappuccino-like froth. You can do a pick-and-choose cup, with options like chicken, beef and the bespoke Hearth stock (made with chicken, turkey and grass-fed beef) and add-ins like wild Atlantic seaweed, Calabrian chili oil and Moroccan spiced butter. You can also go for combinations such as the Salt of the Sea (chicken broth with smoked dulse, kelp and ginger).