100 favorite restaurants of 2025- according to the Crumbs of NYC community
Who even needs the NYT Top 100 list
2025 was the year I started writing on Substack. And truthfully, it was the greatest decision I’ve ever made. I feel like you could paste the exact line I just wrote in the Substack search bar and see at least 20 other writers who used those exact words, but guys…the ability to build real community on this digital platform has singlehandedly changed my entire life.
There have been many learnings for me this year, about myself and about my relationship with Mrs. Substack, to include:
The writing: Being consistent with writing is hard as hell, even if you love every second of it. When life pulled me in many directions this year, the act of grounding myself to put pen to paper felt really really hard at times. I started out strong by writing almost one new piece a week, and when I skipped weeks, sometimes even months at times, the one underlying sad and guilty feeling I had in the back of my head was that I was losing all of my discipline with writing. I’ve de-prioritized other things that weren’t serving me to make space for frequent writing again, but I have a deep appreciation and admiration for writers who manage to get a piece out weekly. I also have an appreciation for my subscribers who were still patient with me in my valleys of producing little writing during pockets of 2025.
The chat: My subscriber chat is the community I always dreamed of building. We share daily personal restaurant recommendations, we’ve talked (live) about first dates, and I even now know where to get my paints tailored in the West Village, all thanks to my subscriber chat. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I was always so interested in apps like Waze or even Yelp that run solely on crowdsourced recommendations and insights. Me, being the restaurant and city exploratoré (I just made this word up) that I am, spun on this idea of creating another app (eyeroll) or piece of technology where people could be doing exactly what they’re doing in my subscriber chat. Truthfully, when I started my chat, I thought it would be active for like a week and then die out. Not a day has gone by in 2025 without a thread from a subscriber asking for a recommendation without another subscriber, purely out of the goodness of their own heart, responding with a personal recommendation. Substack, we need to talk here! I simply need to know if you have another chat as active as the Crumbs chat! And this chat is what this entire article is built on, 100 favorite restaurants of 2025, from over 100 subscribers, all within one thread.
Some of my favorite, highly niche threads:
The community: I (very nervously) attempted taking things a step further this year and started hosting events in real life for my paid subscriber community- Club Crumbs. I wanted Club Crumbs to feel like ‘the next level’ of my subscriber chat. Like, ok cool, we all love recommending restaurants to each other here, but what if all of us foodies met for dinner in real life and befriended one another? Meeting friends in New York is hard as hell, and it was inspiring to me to see so many of my subscribers chatting daily online, so I wanted those subscribers to have the option to continue the conversation around a real, physical table. I have now met over 100 of my subscribers, in real life, which feels like another dream come true. But more on that in a separate article.
And without futher a-do, I’ll shut up and stop reflecting, but just wanted to tell my subscriber community in the best words that I possibly can…that they’ve changed my life. It isn’t about the restaurants or the places anymore, it’s about the people and their willingness to share so much with us outside of just reading along.
Crumbs Community Top 100 Restaurants
But first…some awards:
The most mentioned in the community…aka our “winner”
#1. Rosella:
Rosella also happens to be in my top 5 favorite restaurants, as well, and has been for the past 3 years. The music, the nigiri, the colors, the natural wine…the foggy windows…the pieces that build our favorite restaurant go on and on. I couldn’t recommend Rosella more, and hope everyone reading this has a chance to try their caviar french toast dessert in 2026.
My most favorite restaurant of 2025
Kabawa
I knew the second I saw a coconut water martini on the menu that this was going to top the charts for me. Bold Caribbean flavors written in limey, raw shrimp and textures of cassava dumplings in a texture I have never sensed or tasted in any other format ever in my life. Do I usually opt for goat? No, but this goat was the best dish of 2025, celebrated with the coconut loaf birthday cake that’s given with a candle, to anyone, on any day of the year. Pure genius.
And runners up:
Musaafer- I was absolutely blown away but every single dish and every corner I turned at Musaafer. Other than the jaw dropping mirrored interior, favorites were the lychee crudo, butter chicken experience, sea bass curry, and shortrib cashew curry. Their fiery cocktail bar downstairs is also the perfect winter hideaway for a snack and thoughtful drink.
Adda- Another restaurant with a butter chicken experience that is so different than Musaafer’s butter chicken experience, but somehow also one of the most memorable bites I’ve had this year. The cheesy and peppery lobster tail is also so notable, and I admittedly was slightly tipsy eating this meal and knocked over an entire glass of wine, but the staff was so kind and funny despite the little mishap and chatted with us extensively. Loved every second of it.
Bartolo- Have written about Bartolo a few times here. The combination of their salty martini and blue cheese cheesecake is the best flavoring pairing I’ve had to date. Yes, better than ‘olive oil on ice cream’. Can we stop doing that in 2026?
And now for the big list of Crumbs community’s #1 restaurants
(categorized by geographic locations):
New York City
Mexico City
France
London
Italy
St. Moritz
Montreal
Japan
Amsterdam
Philly
New Orleans
Maine
Thank you all again, so so much for supporting and reading Crumbs. Let’s keep the conversation about your most memorable spots going in the comments! I would love to hear more:
This crowd-sourced approach to restaurant lists is way more useful than the usual critic-driven rankings. What stands out most is how community-built recommendations cut through the noise of PR-heavy openings and algorithmic feeds. I've found some of my best spots through similar grassroots type channels rather than the big name guides. That subscriber chat sounds like it's become a real asset for restuarant discovery beyond just NYC, honestly kinda wish more cities had something like this running.
soooo good and i’ll be eternally grateful to whoever builds the Google map version 🥲🥲🥲