By FoodTyrant

Instead of chef Paul Liebrandt's previous wacky-gastro genius of restaurants past, he's put into the world of fine, completely orgiastic, dining.

The young British wunderkind's now backed by Drew Nieporent, and serving what we guess is haute-french with a heavy seasonal slant. Other professions would basically call this selling out, but in the food-world it just means get the most complicated ways a man could make a handful of impeccable, last-meal-worth dishes.

You'd never touch food this good, in a restaurant this insanely austere, for their price fixe of $76. I know we say "serious" a lot, but we mean it here.

Smoked pasta with truffle, diver scallops with uni cream, cheap winelist (!?), eating in an insanely-white, no-windowed space

By FoodTyrant

The relaxed version of Kurt Gutenbrunner's restaurants--always churning out reliably delicious, homey Austro-German food, any day or time of week.

Anything sausage, golden fried chicken, brunch, Austro-German winelist

By FoodTyrant

Classic American home cooking, running styles from roadside BBQ to old-school NYC diner--and all made from scratch and brought to you by a former pie company.

The pies are still amazing, but most come for Brunch (which is a warzone), and worth the wait. Dinner as American, diner-esque and relaxed as you can get in the neighborhood.

Brunch anything, homemade chips, matzoh ball soup, smoked brisket

By FoodTyrant

Michael "Bao" Hyunh's been cranking out the best Vietnamese restaurants in this city for a while... and then abandoning them, and immediately starting new ones.

His latest creature is his take on a bahn mi shop--the Vietnamese baguette sandwiches filled with delicious meats, or fish, and cucumber, cilantro, hot stuff... you know... those things.

Even if you don't, trust us that these sandwiches are completely awe-inspiring. His take on the classic bahn mi, the "Baoguette," also just happend to be PERFECT. And at $5, almost insultingly perfect.

Come here before 6pm or you're screwed.  

Baoguette, any daily specials, Vietnamese coffee fix

By FoodTyrant

A neighborhood favorite. Eclectic menu, everything sustainably raised or locally sourced, and just big enough to always be both bustling and inviting.

Modern American Heritage is really what you'd have to call it, but we get tired of trying to describe what already know. Just think of this as Chelsea's version of Prune--meaning exciting simple food, lively sophisticated atmosphere, the place you always want to go to when in the nabe.

Any "snack," daily oyster selection, rabbit and any other game meats

By FoodTyrant

Maybe it's supposed to be ironic, or maybe "true to life" to put a Mexican restaurant in what's pretending to be a shanty chinese restaurant on the lower-LES.

But the Tyrant doesn't really get irony, sometimes. And instead enjoys the racous time he can have, and the more than refined every-day Mexican fare.

Be prepared to be friendly with your neighbors.

the 3 salsas with every order of chips, ceviche, speaking with your "outside voice", food much better than it's price tag

By FoodTyrant

New tapas restaurant from a former chef of El Quinto Pino takes the snacks of oft forgotten Basque Country side to real heights.

The menu really shines with the hot portion of the menu, where blood, guts, and lesser-eaten cuts of meat can gloriously slosh around your gullet.

Morcilla, albondigas, barnwood walls and ceiling

By FoodTyrant

April Bloomfield of the Spotted Pig makes a run for multi-starred service surrounding the most enlightened refinement of "unrefined," working class seafare. So it's not a gastro-pub, but the same attention to the subtleties of simple food are there--only with a price tag to matches that ambition.

It also... looks as if you're sitting in a fish shack in a Pewee Herman movie. But with food this good, you're not even going to care.

Just don't come here looking for something delicate--it's three star seafood that'll slap you across your face...with butter.

Stuffed squid, raw bar, wine list, April Bloomfield, open kitchen

By FoodTyrant

A Prince Edward Island (North East Canada, think Maine) sister to a restaurant favorably reviewed by Frank Bruni in a NYTimes Travel section article two years ago. But, to its credit it's got a 3 time Canadian Oyster schucking champ at the raw bar, brings the freshest, carefully prepared mussels you've probably eaten in a long time.

23 different varieties make up it's menu, with flavor nods to almost every cuisine you can think of. We guess we never realized mussels were the new pasta...

Fat, Plump Mussels any way you could want them, Oysters, Beer, Fries

By FoodTyrant

Italian cured meat shop, done to the nines, that doubles as the nabe's best enoteca. Simple tuscan fare served to share, every type of cured, roasted, or steam cooked pork, tuscan wines, as legit as it gets

It's actually perversly exactly like the Upper West Side's version or Marlow & Sons... if you know what we're saying...

And if we have to ruin the metaphor, it's a cozy restaurant with a store upfront that you could tuck into for hours, eating, drinking everything in sight (but you know, with people who are 40 instead of 25)

7 bean salad, pickled mackerel, tripe stew, feeling like the Upper West "is getting it."

By FoodTyrant

Haute comfort food at it's finest--the kind of meals you'd imagine chefs cooking at home. Except this chef just so happened to work in a Jean-Georges Vongerichten kitchen for over a decade.

Not overly barnyard and not overly "SoHo", think Blue Ribbon, but more sincere (and where the dished come out perfect, every time).

Roast Chicken (seriously), Sweet Solera cocktail, Pickled Beets, Pork Belly and Cranberry Bean Salad, link