NEW YORK

FROM ICONS TO EDGY INNOVATORS, THE BIG APPLE HAS IT ALL.

- CAROLINE HATCHETT

NEW YORK CITY restaurants are a sport for the bold—one that rewards chefs brave enough to sign leases in the most expensive city in the country, as well as the diners who surrender to those chefs' visions. It's that tension, the crackle of will-I-love-it risk and reward, that fuels America's best food city. Sure, Los Angeles has superior produce, Houston matches its diversity, and New Orleans speaks its own delicious patois, but when it comes to edge and evolution, baby, it's New York, New York.

The city's newest restaurants innovate with swagger, even when they allude to the classics. The reenvisioned Le Veau d'Or (ludnyc.com) may have a retro-chic, linoleum-lined dining room, but its finely calibrated martini (with a sherry vermouth highball on the side), gravity-defying fried potatoes, and lusty offal dishes remind diners how much verve we should demand from French cooking. Just as Penny (penny-nyc.com), a downtown seafood counter, demonstrates how astonishing a perfect shrimp cocktail and a whole lobster with brown butter and all its glorious tomalley can be. Then there’s Hamburger America (hamburgeramerica.com), a greasy-spoon temple to America’s greatest food, and San Sabino (sansabinonyc.com), where someone has (finally!) updated that underloved red-sauce stalwart, shrimp parm.