America's 'Essential' Restaurants — See Which Ones Are In NYC

SOHO, NY — The "most essential" restaurants in America have been named – and three NYC joints have made the cut.

Eater's food critic Bill Addison spends most of his days roaming the country and trying restaurants to find the best places to eat. This year, after 500 meals in 36 cities, he's compiled the list of 38 essential restaurant's in America.

Here are the three in New York City that made Eater's list:

• Le Coucou, 138 Lafayette St., Soho: Le Coucou, a relatively new addition to the NYC dining scene, was said to bringing a new twist to traditional French cuisine. "With our recent captivations with regional American and far-flung global cuisines, it was only a matter of time before once-pervasive grand French returned to our restaurant lives. Stephen Starr’s Gallic fairytale Le Coucou...leads the French revival that’s currently surging across the country," Addison writes. The Soho restaurant, which opened in 2016, serves dishes like duck served with figs and foie gras and, if you're hungry, a complete rabbit.
• Prune, 54 E. First St., East Village: This longtime East Village restaurant was opened by chef and owner Gabrielle Hamilton in 1999. Addison includes Prune in his list because it serves a great meal in a great atmosphere, he says. "Gabrielle Hamilton has influenced a generation by cultivating a clear sense of self," Addison writes. "Her diary-like menus express her appetites, memories, fantasies, and curiosities." The restaurant is famous for its brunch menu, which includes ten different varieties of Bloody Marys.
• Dumpling Galaxy, 42-35 Main St., Flushing: This Queens restaurant serves the best soup dumplings in NYC, according to Addison. The restaurant, from chef Helen You, specializes in every type of dumpling you can imagine. "In Helen You’s spicy beef dumplings, grated ginger isn’t just a flavor — it’s a deliberate physical sensation, its juicy crunch a bolded exclamation point against the highly seasoned meat," Addison writes. "You doesn’t compress the fillings, so the elements blend but never quite lose their distinctiveness; she knows ingredient textures the way Van Gogh knew the feel of spreading paint across a canvas with his fingers." The restaurant's considerable offerings even include dessert dumplings, made with fruit and nuts.

Image credit: Jason Kempin / Getty Images. Caption: A waiter with drinks inside Le Coucou.