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Last week, the New York Times released its annual list of the city’s hundred best restaurants, selected by Ligaya Mishan, the paper’s co–chief restaurant critic. Mishan has been reviewing the city’s dining scene for nearly two decades, contributing to previous iterations of the Top 100 list and, from 2012 until 2020, writing the “Hungry City” column, which focused on “New York’s great unsung restaurants.” Making a list, as she acknowledges, can mean inviting controversy—though, as she told me, “I actually love that.” She does not use objective criteria: ”When I first started, I tried assigning points in different categories,” she said. “But I’m not sure that it’s all completely measurable.” Her past endeavors in remote corners of the city influence her choices. Ultimately, a restaurant’s placement in the ranking comes down to a single mysterious criterion: New Yorkiness. 

Recently, I spoke with Mishan about the value of food reviews in the age of Instagram, comparing Jimi Hendrix with Jimmy Page, and how her work fits into a shifting reality for criticism more broadly, as many news organizations eliminate jobs or sections altogether. “What’s interesting about food is that it can feel more populist,” she said, “and in some ways, we’re all food critics now.” Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

ILN: Criticism is having a hard time as part of a declining news industry. Last year, the Associated Press stopped publishing book reviews; the Times moved four arts critics into different, non-criticism jobs; and recently, the Washington Post killed its books section. How does food reviewing differ from these other kinds of criticism, and do you see any of the same risks to your work? 

LM: I agree that criticism is under threat in some ways. At the Times, we do still have critics in all of those areas, and we’re still all-in on the importance of criticism. What’s interesting about food is that it can feel more populist—and in some ways, we’re all food critics now. If you watch an Instagram Reel and you learn about a little place and you want to go, that’s wonderful. And then maybe you want a deeper dive. Maybe you want to know something more about the cuisine. So I think that food criticism can still have this function for people. 

So what is the value of the Top 100 list when people get recommendations on their social media feed that are supposedly tailored to their particular tastes?

I think the breadth of the list means that it isn’t tailored to your preferences. Lots of people are not happy with it, and I actually love that, because it’s great that we’re all so passionate about restaurants.

The film scholar Elena Gorfinkel wrote an essay in 2019 titled “Against Lists.” She said: “Lists aggregate the already known and consolidate power.” I think that is true, but a list can also undermine the current order and redistribute power; it can make us question what it is that we value, and offer a different way of looking at the world. So that’s what I hope the Top 100 can do too.

Can you walk me through the process of curating the list? How do you narrow it down to a finite number of contenders? 

I’m really fortunate in that I’m not starting from scratch. I’m also lucky to have my colleagues who wrote the previous lists, so those were my springboards: I took last year’s list as a start, and then I went back through the archives of Hungry City. Then I asked my network what has been missed. And then I just wandered the city—took the subway to the very last stop on multiple lines and just walked.

How do you compare a food truck to a tasting menu? Or a casual place to a fine-dining restaurant?

Price point definitely matters, and there’s no way that a list like this could include nothing but the most expensive restaurants. If we were talking about the greatest rock songs of all time, we would say, “Well, Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page will never be matched,” yet there’s the punk guitarist who can only bash out three chords but writes the song you remember your whole life. 

The best that we can do as critics is to take each restaurant on its own terms. What is it trying to achieve? Does it achieve that? Does it do that with warmth and welcome? And is the food as good as it can be, coming from this place? There’s a possibility that the dumplings you eat on a street corner are more perfect and delivered to you with more warmth than the tasting menu that doesn’t necessarily hit all its marks, and where the ambience might not be as welcoming.

What are your “objective” guidelines, and what do you think goes down to your own taste?

It’s a hundred-best list, but it’s not my personal one-hundred-favorite-restaurants list. As a critic, you have to be able to recognize and appreciate many different cuisines and types of places that don’t necessarily make your own heart sing.

When I first started, I tried assigning points in different categories. But I’m not sure that it’s all completely measurable. Restaurants are always changing; they’re different day-to-day. This is why I’ll be going back to all of these hundred for the next list, and I’m going to go back to restaurants that didn’t make the list. But I was looking at everything—the sheer deliciousness of the food, the starters, the mains, the desserts, the service, the ambience. And then all these other qualities, like imagination, ambition, singularity. I was also looking at New Yorkiness, which I think there are different definitions for.

What is yours?

To me, there is something essentially scrappy in the New York character that people bring here from elsewhere, and the ones who are from here are born with: a determination to make it. We have this crazy real estate where so many restaurateurs are working with incredibly tiny spaces, eking out miracles from narrow, under-equipped kitchens, and this is happening anywhere from the low end to the high end. And people are making it work.

How do you dine with your critic hat on and off? 

It’s so hard to dine as a civilian now. But I’m grateful anytime anybody makes food for me. I always think gratitude has to be part of going to these places. The interesting thing that happens with eating out so much is that it becomes slightly harder to be surprised—but that makes it so much greater when it happens.

In a departure, you and your fellow Times food critic Tejal Rao were publicly identified by the paper last summer. How do you deal with being recognized, and what do you do to ensure that it doesn’t affect your experience?

Part of the thinking with showing our faces is that it was always an agreed-upon illusion that we were anonymous. All the restaurants that are watching out for critics, the ones that are at that price point and level, had photos of anonymous critics in the kitchen. So we wanted to acknowledge that reality and also build a closer relationship with readers. This is another part of what food criticism can give, and what all the TikTokers have. You get to know them as people; you understand their taste, and that helps you trust them.

The downside is walking into a restaurant with a reservation under an alias and still seeing a flicker in the host’s eyes. When I am recognized, everything tends to slow down. If you order a few appetizers, they’ll come out one by one so each can be eaten at the perfect temperature. I appreciate that, but I wish I could experience everything exactly the way a diner who isn’t a critic does.

How has the audience for this list changed thanks to social media, or TV shows like The Bear, introducing fine dining to a mass audience? Does it reach more people now?

People get excited about restaurants because it’s a way to engage with the world. Right now a lot of things you would invest in can seem out of reach. We can’t all afford homes, we can’t afford big-ticket items, so the occasional splurge on an amazing meal or finding the little places that don’t require a splurge becomes more meaningful.

But I also think it’s a form of soft power and a way to enter cultures. You can really engage and learn in a way that is stealthy, as all these restaurants are coming in and suddenly our society is changing. Our world has become much bigger, and American food is completely different from what it was half a century ago. 

One thing that changed for the better is that the cuisines I write about are no longer unknown to people. We don’t always have to define certain terms that we would definitely have had to define years ago. But I worry about the chainification of restaurants. There are cases where restaurants with outside investors are squeezing out mom-and-pop shops and other homegrown endeavors, and I’ll always be a champion of little spots because of that.

When does work for the next list begin?

Now.

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