Dinner for Two: Most Memorable Meals in 2025
This is what we spent half of our honeymoon writing up
[This list is part of a series of restaurant reviews. A broad description of the series format and other reviews in the series can be found here]
For the end of the year, Mia and I thought it would be fun to catalog some of the food that we enjoyed a ton but never got around to reviewing. An opportunity to both show some love to the restaurants that treated us well, and a chance to reflect on the last year. We each wrote a list of the most memorable meals from the last 12 months.1 Wherever our lists overlapped, we wrote a more full review. Thanks a ton for following along for the last year! We’re hoping to be more consistent about dropping reviews in 2026 😁
Place de Fetes
Place de Fetes is the kind of place that I would expect to hate. It’s a wine bar (I don’t drink) in a bougie part of Brooklyn (so I expect everything to be overpriced) with no distinct culinary tradition (I think it’s technically “New American”, which is a genre that sort of means “doesn’t fit into any other box”). But expectations and heuristics are not the same as truth. And the truth is that Place de Fetes is an amazing restaurant. I have never been to a place where, every time I go, everything we order is fantastic. The restaurant has its standouts — the sardine toast is a favorite of ours, and we never leave without ordering the miso ice cream — but every single dish is executed at such high quality that I can’t help but ask, “what is everyone else even doing?”
Amol rank: 1
Tucked away in Clinton Hill, there’s a perfect neighborhood winebar by the same team as Oxalis and Cafe Mado. Rather than the usual “nuts and cheese board” you’d get at other bars, the dishes here are creative: sardine toast with kosho butter; pork rib with shagbark hickory sauce. Each is delicious in its own right, making the overall meal a satisfying mix of variety and consistent high quality. No surprise at all, it’s one of the few places where we’re “regulars”.
Mia rank: 3
Mokonuts
Maybe I’m biased because I loved Paris, but this meal is one I won’t forget anytime soon. Amol and I aren’t the biggest fans of the Michelin guide → 3 Michelin star places especially feel a bit too pricey for what you get and there’s often too much of a focus on “atmosphere”. However, I do appreciate: the small bites, the playful touches on each dish, and a focus on quality ingredients. Mokonuts had all the good qualities that I look for in a Michelin meal but without any of the frills; it’s a small 12-table restaurant run by a husband-wife duo, and eating from there felt like the purest definition of a neighborhood cafe/eatery but with elevated, refined flavors. The dishes highlighted quality, in-season ingredients and applied exacting French technique, but added spices and flavors that aren’t as common to spot in the area: Tahini, miso, black sesame. Maybe I can convince Amol to move to Paris so we can be regulars here 👀.
Mia rank: 1
We actually got two separate recommendations for Mokonuts from our two most trusted foodie friends, so we went a bit out of the way to grab a meal here. In a city of prix fix menus that feel pretentious and overdone, Mokonuts is neither. It is, simply, good food. Good in many ways — it tasted delicious, obviously, but it also felt good to eat. There was no heaviness, no bloat, no discomfort afterwards; if anything, I felt like my body had been cleared of toxins. It was perhaps the ‘cleanest’ meal I’ve ever had in my life. Coming from the US, where even the freshest produce leaves a little bit to be desired, Mokonuts was something of a revelation, “O, this is how vegetables are supposed to taste.” We went to Mokonuts at the very beginning of the year, and I still vividly remember the gnocchi and the fish.
Amol rank: 5
Noemie and Wayne’s Wedding
You can never experience the same meal twice, not really. Restaurants change staff, or vendors, or menus. Sometimes the restaurant closes altogether. But for the most part, we could return to any other restaurant on this list and be surprised and delighted again and again and again. This meal is different, because it was at a wedding. Most wedding food is (apologies) pretty terrible and unmemorable. But most weddings aren’t between two long term veterans of the restaurant industry. I wish they were, because holy shit. Fresh oysters with caviar, a juicy iberico ham leg, plates of terrine, all served on a boat dock on the Seine. And then, a booked out restaurant run by friends of the couple, with a custom menu that included the best foie gras, steak au poivre, and baked alaska I’ve ever had, all capped by galettes des rois catered by another friend of the couple. (In case you haven’t noticed a theme, I think every food vendor had a personal connection to the family). We flew in on a very expensive red eye from Florida with an 8 hour layover in Charlotte and a 30 minute layover in Philly, and they lost our luggage. But I would gladly do all that again to relive that night. In theory, I suppose we could at least go back to the restaurant — Gallopin — and try to recreate it all. But I suspect that it would not quite be the same.
Amol rank: 2
Hopefully Noemie is okay with us writing about her wedding food 😅 but this needed to go on our list for this year! It was a beautiful ceremony and I couldn’t be happier for Noemie and Wayne. A little bit of background: Noemie is a founding member of the Resy Editorial team (check out her writing here!) and Wayne is a chef & partner at Joji (highly recommend grabbing a reservation here!). Unsurprisingly, the food was amazing. Appetizers included oysters, slices of iberico ham, cornichons, terrine, and a variety of cheeses, all impeccable quality. Dinner included foie gras, buttery escargot, steak au poivre that I still think about, and a classic cheese course before dessert. One of the best parts of the meal was getting seated next to Noemie’s extended family and meeting a bunch of folks who’d known my mother back in the day, sharing stories over a great meal. Big congrats to Noemie and Wayne <3.
Also, check out their write up in the Antibride!
Mia rank: 4
Full list
Mia
Mokonuts – the whole meal stood out from start to finish. Fresh, delicate portions with variety in texture and flavor. A perfect meal – a place I’d love to be a regular at if it wasn’t so damn far.
Sailor – the most decadent french toast (rich without being cloyingly sweet); a perfect ginger cake paired with fresh, decadent vanilla cream
French toast @ Sailor PDF – sardine toast with kosho; miso caramel ice cream
Noemie’s wedding – terrine, cornichons, iberico ham, steak au poivre
Brooklyn Fare – so many perfect bites – a faint memory of so many flavors pulled together into harmony, delivered in small bite-sized packages
Tartlet @ Brooklyn Fare Cafe Mado – pork rib w/ autumn olive; caramelized bits of pork, tangy autumn olive to cut through the rich pork fat and jus
Moono – my first time trying Korean cold noodle soup – really refreshing, clean palate
Sukh – fried young coconut (QED)
Amol
PDF — if we were ranking at the granularity of meals instead of restaurants, PDF would take my first, third, fourth, and fifth spots. I’ve never been to a restaurant where every single thing hits every time I go. Highly recommend splurging on dessert here — get more than one dessert. Get all of them, even.
Noemi’s wedding — oysters with caviar, iberico ham, terrine. And that was just the hor d’oeuvres. This is what happens when a Michelin star chef and an og resy writer get married.
Il buco — I have visited this restaurant so many times that they just started giving me free shit. I only ever get their sandwiches. Best prosciutto in the city.
Wolfgangs — it’s like how I remember Luger’s used to be.
Porterhouse @ Wolfgang’s Mokonuts (Paris, France) — you can boil a lot of meals to a single descriptor. Some are heavy. Some are oily. Some spicy, others bland. The best way to describe the meal at mokonuts: clean. You leave feeling spiritually lighter, as if the world’s worries have lifted.
Breakfast by Salt’s Cure — I generally don’t like breakfast food, but I’ll make an exception for Salt’s Cure. Get the classic pancakes, and maybe some orange juice, you don’t need anything else. (I like the Chelsea location more than the Brooklyn ones)
Chez Vrony (Zermatt, Switzerland) — I normally give very little stock to ambiance. But when the ambiance is “in your ski boots, overlooking the Matterhorn”, I’ll make an exception. It was very memorable for that reason alone. And the food was very good too.
The view @ Chez Vrony S&P — I didn’t know it was still possible to get pastrami like this for less than $30. Sit at the counter, get the onion rings.
Hungry / Thirsty — not as good as its progenitor (RIP Ugly Baby), but still delicious. Also incredibly incredibly spicy. Probably memorable for that reason alone.
Nacho Macho Taco — this is a bit of a guilty pleasure. My go-to is the chorizo quesadilla with jalapenos and sour cream. I think they put cinnamon in the meat. It’s just addicting.
Honorable mention: Empanada King of Brooklyn — sometimes the best food comes from a wholly unexpected source. In this case, it comes from our building’s front door guy. What can I say? They’re extremely and consistently high quality empanadas. No website yet, I gotta bother him to get one up.