Best French Restaurants in New York City

New York City has a rich history with French cuisine — for much of the twentieth century, the finest French restaurants in America were in Manhattan, and several institutions from that era continue to operate at the highest level today. The city's French restaurant scene has evolved from rigid classical formality towards a more diverse and democratic range of French cooking styles.

Daniel and Le Bernardin remain among America's most celebrated French restaurants, each with multiple James Beard Awards and decades of consistency. The bistro tradition is represented by classics like Balthazar in SoHo and Pastis in the Meatpacking District. A newer generation of French-inspired restaurants — Frenchette in Tribeca, Le Crocodile in Brooklyn — reflects a more casual, natural wine-led approach to French cooking that has found enormous popularity in New York.