The best restaurants to book for NYC Winter Restaurant Week, 2022

This is about as fine dining-adjacent as Restaurant Week gets. The Bar Room at the Modern, literally adjacent to the super-fancy Modern will serve $39 lunch and $59 dinners from January 18-30. Entrees like The Bar Room’s charred octopus and its hand-cut tagliatelle with black truffles typically run from $32 to $49. 

Prix-fixe dinners at modern French restaurant Bâtard typically run from $75 to $95 for two to four courses, so its $59 dinner option is a clear deal. Beef tartare, foie gras terrine, coq au vin and branzino are all on the standard menus in its chic dining room. 

The Ethiopian and Mediterranean-inspired plates that top tables in Tsion Cafe’s cozy, brick-lined space are excellent options for vegans, vegetarians and carnivores alike. Its $59 dinner prix-fixe includes selections like lentil or chicken sambusa, doro tibs and halva for dessert. 

Fabulous Fish Cheeks has been a Time Out New York favorite since it first opened in Noho in 2016. It’s still terrific six years later, with snacks like fried chicken wings and grilled pork cheeks marinated in fish sauce and shareable plates like coconut crab curry and Isan-style grilled chicken. Fish Cheeks also has a happy hour from noon to 3:15pm and 5-6pm each day when you can get $6 beer, $10 wine and $11 specialty cocktails. 

You can spot Wayan’s lovely facade a mile away and its verdant bar-adjacent seating area and ornately appointed back dining room are just as pretty. Some of its also photogenic and delicious bites include satays, lobster noodles and fan-favorite corn fritters. 

The $158 tasting menu in 28 year-old Gramercy Tavern’s dining room is a splurge to be sure, so Restaurant Week’s a fine time to give it a try for a little less cash. It has a somewhat more affordable à la carte menu in its tavern area, but mains like the $32 burger, $34 swordfish, and $34 duck meatloaf are still a little spendy the rest of the year. 

The sibling to Bensonhurst’s Em Vietnamese Kitchen opened this Vietnamese tapas-style spot just last year and introduced booze even more recently. Opening items like ngheu hap xa (clams in lemongrass broth), chao so diep (scallop rice porridge with garlic, butter, scallion and cilantro) and banh xeo (turmeric rice crepe with shrimp, pork belly, calamari, bean sprouts and scallions) are all still among its standard offerings. 

If Bemelmans, one of the best bars in NYC, is too much of ‘a thing’ at the moment, consider Dowling’s, also at the august Carlyle hotel. The newer of the two, which opened last year, is also pretty fancy, and absent those pesky Gen Zs youthing up the place with their well-established love of shrimp cocktail and wedge salads. 

Mediterranean restaurant Iris opened in a sprawling space in midtown west last year. On a typical evening, the beach-y, beige spot boasts robust mezze platters with hummus, roasted eggplant and whipped sheep milk feta and entrees like moussaka, swordfish kebab and mastic marinated lamb chops. Iris also has a special dry January drink list with half-a-dozen booze-free sips like a cucumber dill spritz and melon lemonade. 

It is not every day that one of NYC’s best vegetarian restaurants offers deals for multiple days, but that’s why NYC Restaurant Week is such a celebratory time of year. HanGawi’s largely plant-based menu changes seasonally, and you can expect plates like maitake mushroom fritters, dumpling varieties and “fritters galore” in its elegant environment. 

Restaurant Week staple Hearth is frequented year-round for its seasonal menus featuring pear and pecorino salad, beef and ricotta meatballs, and olive oil cake. Fortunately, each of those items are among the items on its $39 prix-fixe this season. 

La Grande Boucherie has dramatic outdoor seating fit for . . . someone in Paris, by way of Manhattan’s semi-obscured Sixth-and-a-half Avenue. Its day-to-day menus feature escargot, croque madame and monsieur, steak frites, duck confit and coq au vin. It has a $39 lunch for Restaurant Week, but only from January 18-February 6.

Noreetuh modern Hawaiian restaurant has $39 dinners all Restaurant Week Long. Choose from some of its best plates like bigeye tuna poke, berkshire pork cutlet, mentaiko tagliatelle and four desserts. 

Danji is one of the best restaurants near Times Square, but its chic, intimate interior betrays its chaos-adjacent location. It’s offering a $59, three-course dinner for NYC Restaurant Week this winter, with your choice of items like wild yellowtail sashimi, bulgogi beef sliders and sizzling bibimbap with beef or veggies. 

Two of Han Dynasty’s four NYC locations are participating in Restaurant Week this season. Head to its Upper West Side and Downtown Brooklyn outposts for $29 lunch and $39 dinner deals from their Szechuan menus. 

This essential NYC restaurant first opened in 1962. It remains an institution for restaurant-lovers from near and far who flock for the soul food destination’s famed fried chicken, short ribs, collard greens and grits. Sylvia’s also has live music on Wednesdays and Sundays. 

Chocobar Cortés is new to both Restaurant Week and NYC, having just opened its South Bronx location after establishing its first spot in San Juan in 2013. Its everyday menu incorporates chocolate into all manner of items, like the Chocobar salad bowl with chocolate vinaigrette, the grilled cheese with cheddar and chocolate butter and the chocolate-laced pancakes, waffles and French toast. It has $29 lunch and $59 dinner options for Restaurant Week's duration. 

One of NYC’s best brunch spots also does a great dinner service that includes recipes “from somewhere in the Mediterranean.” You’ll find shakshuka, frittatas and flatbreads during those fine weekend hours and chicken liver mousse, pan-roasted scallops and dry-aged beef kebabs most nights. 

Even after a few iterations, seasonal American restaurant Tavern on the Green is known the world over. Its lovely Central Park surroundings can skew G-rated romantic, tourist-friendly and even a little ‘Old New York,’ depending on your mood. It’s offering a three-course $39 lunch and a three-course $59 dinner for the throughout this season’s Restaurant Week. An optional wine pairing is $20. 

Rice-based dishes abound at FieldTrip, which first opened in Harlem in 2019. You’ll find it in bowls filled with veggies, brisket, fish and fried chicken alongside salads, quinoa bao buns and sweet treats like rice milk hibiscus/raspberry soft serve. Beer, wine and sake are also available in the casual, brick-lined space. FieldTrip has $29 lunch and dinner options throughout Restaurant Week.