1. Canard
Central East Side
Canard, the next-door sister restaurant to James Beard Award-winning chef Gabriel Rucker’s Le Pigeon, has been one of the best casual-ish, fancy-ish spots in town, and now, comes with heated outdoor seating. The icons of the all-day diner-meets-French bistro menu haven’t changed much since it first opened, and that’s a good thing.
Alongside seasonally shifting salads and snacks — the fried kalettes with chipotle cashew and the beets and habanadas with nasturtium yogurt look particularly amazing — you can still find the always-order oeufs en mayonnaise, kissed with smoke; White Castle’s greatest fear: the chef-ified steam burger, available individually or as a set of six; and the Duck Stack, its layers of pancakes, duck gravy, Tabasco onions, and a duck egg only made more luxurious with the optional foie gras. Desserts aren’t to be missed here either, ranging from the more composed Paris-Brest, this season layered with brie brulee, apple and sticky pecans, to the forever cool vanilla soft serve, best in a peanut butter fun cone.