Hot Restaurants Come and Go, But Impeccable Vibes Are Forever
When the reservation rat race is too much, check out these local favorite, long-standing gems instead.
The tagliatelle al ragu at Al Di Là, my favorite restaurant in Brooklyn.
Source: Al Di La
Hi, I’m Liz Angell, an editor here at Pursuits. I’m new to the team and one of the first stories I worked on was Kate Krader’s excellent investigation in Bloomberg Businessweek of what makes a restaurant not just popular, but scorching hot. Kate, now based in London and currently traversing Seoul and Taipei, has eaten everywhere, and she knows what that top tier of impossible-to-get-into restaurants—places such as Torrisi, the Corner Store, Coqodaq and Carbone in New York, for example—all have in common.
First, of course, is a waitlist that can top thousands of people on any given night. (“You may have an Amex black card, or a big J.P. Morgan account. But nothing screams ‘I have social clout’ like an 8 p.m. table,” Simon Kim, founder of Gracious Hospitality Management, told Kate. “It’s never been harder to get reservations in New York City.”)