Two Upper East Side restaurants — one a longtime fine-dining heavyweight, the other a Sri Lankan and South Indian relative newcomer making its first-ever appearance on the list — earned spots on The New York Times’ 2026 ranking of New York City’s 100 best restaurants, which dropped on Sunday. They are the neighborhood’s lone representatives on this year’s edition, and a UES inclusion from the 2025 list is notably absent from the new one.
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Ligaya Mishan, who stepped into the Times’ co-chief critic role last summer, put together this year’s ranking after roughly ten months of eating her way through the five boroughs. The criteria she leaned on, per her introduction: imagination, ambience, service, technique, passion, commitment, sheer deliciousness — and, above all, what she calls “New York-iness.” This year’s edition restores numbered placements from No. 100 down to No. 1, after a 2025 list that ranked only the top 10 and slotted the rest alphabetically. Per Time Out, roughly a third of the 2026 lineup is first-time additions.Topping the new ranking is Kabawa, chef Paul Carmichael’s Caribbean tasting restaurant in the East Village — knocking off last year’s No. 1, the Greenwich Village Indian restaurant Semma, which now sits at No. 7.
The first Upper East Side restaurant on the 2026 list is Daniel, chef Daniel Boulud’s Michelin-starred French fine-dining destination at 60 East 65th Street (between Park and Madison avenues). The Lenox Hill institution sits at No. 56 on this year’s edition. Daniel has been a steady presence on the Times’ annual ranking — including a spot on the 2024 list under former chief critic Pete Wells — and remains one of the longest-running members of the Upper East Side’s fine-dining old guard.
The second Upper East Side restaurant on the list is Lungi, the South Indian and Sri Lankan restaurant at 1136 First Avenue (between East 62nd and East 63rd streets), which checks in at No. 59 — its first-ever appearance on the Times’ ranking. Lungi opened in September 2024 in the space formerly occupied by Imli Urban Indian Food, a seven-year UES staple that the same ownership group closed the prior month to make way for the new concept. Chef and co-owner Albin Vincent — who grew up in Kanyakumari, the southernmost city in mainland India, and has deep family roots in Sri Lanka — told Eater at the time of the opening that he “wanted to do something from my childhood.” As East Side Feed reported when Lungi earned a spot in the Michelin Guide back in 2024, Vincent learned to cook from his grandmother, and the menu draws on traditional Sri Lankan and Southern Indian dishes — including pan-fried spicy kingfish served on a banana leaf with fried makrut lime leaves, kothu roti, dosas, hoppers, and a Sunday banana-leaf thali. The restaurant has held a Michelin Bib Gourmand designation for both 2024 and 2025.
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One Upper East Side restaurant that appeared on the 2025 list did not make this year’s cut: Le Veau d’Or, the 1937 French bistro at 129 East 60th Street that was revived in 2024 by the Frenchette team of chefs Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson.A handful of other Michelin-starred UES restaurants also did not make this year’s list, including the two-Michelin-star Sushi Noz at 181 East 78th Street.
