As The New York Times’s restaurant critic for the last dozen years, Pete Wells has reported from the dining-room trenches on a changing industry. When he started the job in late 2011, old-guard restaurants like Le Cirque and the Four Seasons were still humming, with the help of expense-account diners. The #MeToo movement and the pandemic, which reshaped restaurant kitchens, were years away.
Pete has explored the five boroughs and far beyond, as the Food desk’s coverage of restaurants widened its scope. He noted the rise in food halls in New York, and the city’s vast wealth of Chinese restaurants. He is on a seemingly endless quest for ceviche. (If you’re curious about his process, listen to him on this episode of “The Daily” and learn why he always packs a notebook.)
Here are 21 pieces that show the sweep and depth of his criticism.
Wong, ★★, 2012
His first column as restaurant critic took him to an Asian fusion restaurant from the chef Simpson Wong, where the duck-fat ice cream and duck-tongue meatballs brought smiles of pleasant surprise.
Forever Jerk, multiple locations, 2021
Pete followed the flavor, often to Queens, for long-simmered West African delights, Egyptian specialty sandwiches and roasted cold noodles. To find Forever Jerk, he stalked a smoke trail to a stretch of Flatlands Avenue, where Oneil Reid, the chef and owner, has set up one of three Forever Jerk stands in the city. (Pete gave no stars to restaurants he reviewed during the pandemic. “Formerly,” he told readers, “I tried to make the stars reflect how close any given restaurant came to being an ideal version of itself. But in the pandemic, there were no ideal restaurants, only places that were making it up as they went along.”)
Lakruwana, ★, 2013
Lakruwana began its life in Times Square, but a fire drove it to Staten Island, where the Sunday buffet has become one of legend. “Lakruwana may be New York’s most elaborate realization of the immigrant restaurateur’s dream: a shrine to another culture that can soothe homesickness in some patrons and kindle a thrilling sense of discovery in others.”
Hamburger America, ★★, 2024
Have burger, will travel. Over the years, Pete has reviewed many a restaurant with a hamburger on the menu, from stupendous offerings (Red Hook Tavern) to fair (Shake Shack) and middling (Locol). A recent favorite is the fried-onion burger at the burger scholar George Motz’s SoHo restaurant.
Sushi Nakazawa, ★★★★, 2013
The chef Daisuke Nakazawa, probably best known as an apprentice to Jiro Ono in the 2011 film “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” opened his New York restaurant in 2013. “No restaurant in town does as much with sushi, and sushi alone, as Nakazawa,” Pete wrote. The restaurant helped ignite the omakase boom the city has experienced in recent years. In 2020, Pete returned, and downgraded Sushi Nakazawa to three stars.
These are the four-star restaurants as chosen by The New York Times’s restaurant critic.
Randazzo’s Clam Bar, ★, 2013
A through-line of Pete’s coverage of is an enduring love of Old New York: Don Peppe, Tavern on the Green, Chumley’s and Gage & Tollner, to name a handful. After Hurricane Sandy, Pete ventured deep into Brooklyn to check up on Randazzo’s Clam Bar and get a taste of its secret weapon: “A pure distillation of Italian American cuisine, the Sauce tastes as if a chemical analysis would reveal the blueprint for every great dish in every red-sauce joint in the country.”
Keeping Tabs on New York’s Most Inventive Chefs
Part of the critic’s job is to chart the movements of chefs. Pete has followed the trajectories of many, among them Missy Robbins, Danny Bowien, Alex Raij, Anita Lo, Jody Williams and Rita Sodi. Pete charted Floyd Cardoz’s career from North End Grill to Paowalla. When Mr. Cardoz died of Covid in 2020, Pete wrote an appraisal of his work.
Señor Frog’s, Fair, 2015
For a brief, shining moment, Times Square boasted an outpost of the Spring Breaker’s paradise, Señor Frog’s. And while the food may not have hit the right notes — “getting just half of what you order at Señor Frog’s can be a blessing if it’s the right half” — the atmosphere certainly did.
Razza, ★★★, 2017
In this piece, Pete wondered aloud if the best pizza in New York was actually across the Hudson in Jersey City. “I’ve been waiting a long time for a review like this,” one reader wrote. “More stars than dollar signs.” Pete followed up with a list of his favorite New York slices, circa 2018.
Kappo Masa, Satisfactory, 2015
Price has always had some sway in Pete’s restaurant reviews. If the dish is costly but not worth it, readers have a right to know. So it was at Kappo Masa, a restaurant from the chef Masayoshi Takayama below a Gagosian Gallery on the Upper East Side that offered a truffly fried rice for $120. At the time, Masa, another of Mr. Takayama’s restaurants, held the title for the city’s most expensive meal.
Per Se, ★★, 2016
Five years after a four-star review from his predecessor, Sam Sifton, Pete returned to give its nine-course meal another look. “With each fresh review, a restaurant has to earn its stars again,” he wrote. “In its current form and at its current price, Per Se struggled and failed to do this, ranging from respectably dull at best to disappointingly flat-footed at worst.” Readers found much to say about his assessment.
Peter Luger Steak House, Satisfactory, 2019
Price played heavily in the Per Se review, and the check was a consideration when Pete reviewed Peter Luger in 2019. “After I’ve paid, there is the unshakable sense that I’ve been scammed.” Again, readers weighed in.
Pete Wells does not include a decibel level with his reviews. But readers have long complained about the noise levels in dining rooms. He looked into why, and the answer was obvious. “Restaurants are loud because we’re loud. With a few exceptions, when we complain about the noise, we’re complaining about ourselves.”
The pandemic brought everything to a halt. A few months in, Pete ventured out to make sense of the changes restaurateurs were making. He detailed their experiments with outdoor dining sheds as the city struggled to regulate them.
Eleven Madison Park, 2021
Slowly, high-end restaurants came back online. After Daniel Humm, an exacting chef whose reputation some viewers have seen reflected in “The Bear,” reworked his menu to be plant-based, Pete wrote that something had gotten lost in translation.
The Bedford by Martha Stewart, Las Vegas, 2022
When Martha Stewart lent her name for the first time to a restaurant, at the Paris Las Vegas hotel and casino, it was only a matter of time before our critic tried the baked potato prepared tableside. He found a tale of two Marthas,: Martha the Powerful and Martha the Tasteful. “To eat at the Bedford is to realize, again and again, that Martha the Powerful has put her name on a restaurant whose details would never meet the approval of Martha the Tasteful.”
La Piraña Lechonera, ★★★, 2022
For his first starred review after his pandemic pause on the practice, Pete Wells chose this trailer in the Bronx where Angel Jimenez, known as Piraña, wields his machete before the roast pork. It’s a place that “packs more joy into two days than most restaurants do into a week.”
Le Bernardin, ★★★★, 2023
Pete first reviewed Eric Ripert and Maguy Le Coze’s cathedral to seafood in 2012, when it retained its four stars, first awarded in 1986. The restaurant emerged from the pandemic with those stars intact. “A great restaurant can be a sort of cultural preserve, a place where rare skills are passed on from one pair of hands to the next,” he wrote. “Even formal restaurant service is built on careful study of human behavior, if it’s done right.”
Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi, ★★★, 2023
The chef Kwame Onwuachi tells stories of the African culinary diaspora at this, his first New York restaurant. But it’s celebratory, rather than didactic, with takes on the Little Debbie Cosmic Brownie and a bodega original, the chopped cheese. At Tatiana, “the dish has an ambiguity that we’re more used to finding in art,” Pete wrote of this version, made with aged rib-eye, brioche, smoked mozzarella, taleggio and shaved black truffles. “It’s also unambiguously delicious.”
What Pete began in 2023 as a “composite portrait” of the city’s dining landscape, he updated in 2024 with 22 new entries. He urged readers to think of it as a tour: “If you take it, you’ll see all five boroughs and a wide array of cooking and serving styles.”
Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, Poor, 2012
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