The New York City dining scene can make any enthusiastic eater very myopic. With 20,000-plus restaurants within the five boroughs, it’s easy to get lost. Don’t forget that outside of the city there are also some excellent places to stick your fork into.
Case in point: the nine restaurants below are worth leaving the city for with an empty stomach and a curiosity to explore. You’ll find everything from elegant-yet-rustic, hyper-seasonal fare to hard-to-find regional Chinese food to one of the best burgers you might ever chomp into to a couple of great examples of regional pizza. Keep reading for our recommendations of the nine best eateries worth leaving NYC.
The Barn at Bedford Post
Located in the intimate eight-room boutique hotel, Bedford Post in Bedford, NY, The Barn is helmed by chef Roxanne Spruance. Spruance creates a seasonal, market-driven menu that is elegant and yet rustic at the same time. Expect to find Wagyu steak tartare, prosciutto-wrapped diver scallops, and mushroom-laden pasta dishes, all with ingredients sourced from the Hudson Valley.
Blue Hill at Stone Barns
Since 2004, aficionados of fine dining have been making the trek 40 miles north of New York City to eat at this temple of hyper-seasonal gastronomy. Chef Dan Barber creates an ever-changing menu made mostly with ingredients that are produced right on the restaurant’s farm.
The long, multi-course meal may likely be your dining highlight of the decade. If you can’t make it to Westchester Country, there’s a Blue Hill outpost of sorts in Greenwich Village called Family Meal.
Bread & Salt
Rick Easton is the baking wizard behind Bread & Salt. This excellent eatery worth leaving NYC isn’t too far away, located in Jersey City Heights. It’s best accessed from Manhattan via the Path train to Jersey City and then a car service.
Bread & Salt excels at just about everything that comes out of Easton’s oven, including addictive Roman-style pizza. Check the website for the business hours, as in 2022 they’re currently only open Friday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. They don’t offer indoor dining at the moment.
Insider’s Tip: In addition to Bread & Salt, check out our other favorite Jersey City restaurants!
Four
Located in Oyster Bay on Long Island, Four consists of a 10-seat dining counter. The chef is renowned Jesse Schenker who made a name for himself at the Gander and Recette in New York City.
Chef Schenker serves a 12-to-15 course dinner every night. It’s a tw0-and-a-half-hour dining extravaganza consisting of tricked-out dishes with foie gras, caviar, and truffles. But it’s not all just edible trappings of luxury. The chef manages to do inventive things, pairing them with veal, fennel, and even horchata to create a divine taste on the palate.
Insider’s Tip: No trip to Long Island would be complete with visiting at least one of these amazing Long Island wineries!
The Inn at Pound Ridge by Jean-Georges
The man in the kitchen here—at least theoretically—is super-chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, one of the one of the most renowned toques in the nation. At this rustically elegant spot in Pound Ridge, Westchester Country, expect excellently executed seasonal fare. Food that looks like it’s not trying too hard until you take a bite and realize it’s layered with palate-popping ingredients.
In typical Jean-Georges flair, dishes at the Inn at Pound Ridge are inspired by France and Italy with plenty of influence from Asia. You won’t regret the trip if you visit this one on our list of the best eateries worth leaving NYC.
King Umberto
Since 1976, King Umberto has been reigning in Elmont on Long Island, serving up classic and very good Italian-American fare like pastas, stuffed artichokes, and veal porcini. Pizza lovers gravitate here because of their excellent New York-style pie, as well as a thick, square, crispy pizza– the great version of the grandma slice. King Umberto didn’t invent the grandma slice though; that would be, confusingly enough, Umberto’s, located two miles away in New Hyde Park.
Krug’s Tavern
Food lovers point themselves to Newark’s Ironbound district because of its high proliferation of old-school Portuguese restaurants that line the streets. But there’s one more restaurant that should be on the list of anyone bound for Ironbound: Krug’s Tavern.
At first sight, Krug’s seem like any ordinary tavern, because it is, but it just happens to make a burger that is good enough to rival any burger in New York City. The bacon cheeseburger is the way to go for first-timers.
Mayflower Inn
If England and New England were to collide somewhere over Washington, C0nnecticut, it would feel, look, and taste a lot like the menu at the Mayflower Inn. About 85 miles northeast of the City, Mayflower Inn is the farthest on our list of eateries worth leaving NYC.
With ingredients sourced from nearby farms, the kitchen churns out things like slow-roasted veggies (whatever is in season) and rustic, but well-executed meat and seafood dishes.
New Fu Run
Located in Great Neck, NY, on Long Island, New Fu Run originally was smack in the middle of the Chinatown in Flushing, Queens (under the names Fu Run and then Fu Ran). What makes New Fu Run special is that they serve up the cuisine of Dongbei, a region in China that is north of North Korea, formerly known as Manchuria.
Expect cumin to be laced into everything. The grilled meat dishes, including a whole rack of lamb, are excellent here, and the menu might expand your definition of what you thought Chinese food was. Offal lovers will find plenty of organ meats on the menu too.
Loved this article? Then check out our post on the Ultimate Outer Boroughs Eating Excursion, where we take you to our favorite places outside of the city center. From Himalayan Heights to Little Ireland, we’ll introduce you to some of our favorite restaurants!
David Farley is a West Village-based food and travel writer whose work appears regularly in the New York Times, National Geographic, BBC, and Food & Wine, among other publications. He’s the author of three books, including “An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town,” which was made into a documentary by the National Geographic Channel. You can find Farley’s online homes here and here.
