Try Vinegar Hill House’s skillet sourdough pancakes, Roberta’s pizza and more dishes we’ve adapted from restaurants and bakeries over the years.
Many of New York Times Cooking’s most-loved recipes come from home kitchens, but just as many are created in restaurant kitchens, where technical skill, high-quality ingredients and ingenuity work together in harmony. In addition to the original dishes that our recipe developers and columnists create, restaurants often generously share their recipes with us, which we then adapt for home cooks. In honor of our 2025 national restaurant list, published this week, here are some of our favorite recipes from restaurants and bakeries across the country. No reservations needed.
The luxuriously thick and fruit-filled sourdough pancake at Vinegar Hill House is a thing of beauty, even before you learn about its origins with one Montana couple and their pure devotion to weekly pancakes. The dish is still on the brunch menu — right now you’ll find it filled with plums — but I love the recipe because you can make it part of your own weekly rhythm at home and the pancake will work all year long with different fruits swapped in. TEJAL RAO
Recipe: Cast-Iron Sourdough Pancakes
I nearly cried when Roseann Grimm, the owner and chef of Anchor Oyster Bar in San Francisco, agreed to share her cioppino recipe with me. Alexa Weibel, one of the New York Times Cooking editors, adapted it for a home kitchen without losing any of the tiny magic tricks that make it so definitively Anchor’s. So yes, you have to prep quite a bit of seafood, make a marinara, and roast four heads of garlic to make a butter, but this is the kind of deeply rewarding seasonal project that you can build a whole dinner party around. TEJAL RAO
Recipe: Cioppino
I like that this recipe forces you to rethink what a biscuit can and should be. Briana Holt, the baker at Tandem Coffee & Bakery in Portland, Maine, uses a high ratio of sugar to butter and flour, resulting in a crackly crust and a tender interior. The size is adaptable, too: You can make these biscuits as big or as small as you want. Sometimes, when I’m feeling silly, I like to bake these as itty-bitty biscuits and eat a handful of them in a bowl with milk, like cereal. ERIC KIM
Recipe: Buttermilk Sugar Biscuits
Red Rooster Harlem was a cultural moment when it opened in late 2010, a restaurant packed every night, delicious and alive in all the ways that matter. There, the chef Marcus Samuelsson took ingredients from around the city and combined them in ways you rarely saw even then. Take this braise, which is called Obama’s Short Ribs in the restaurant’s cookbook, because he served it to the first couple in 2011. Red wine and short ribs are an eternal combination. But adding plum sauce, soy sauce and lemongrass to the pot? That was Red Rooster. EMILY WEINSTEIN
Recipe: Red Wine-Braised Short Ribs With Lemongrass and Soy
This is it: the very model of a perfect home-baked pizza pie, a margherita that is both austere and flavorful, and a canvas for future experimentations. It’s built on an exceptional recipe for dough that the team at Roberta’s in Brooklyn has been using for years, and rewards a long rest in the refrigerator before use, so that its flavors develop. I like to start the recipe on Wednesdays, for use on the weekend. SAM SIFTON
Recipe: Pizza Margherita
Permitting seared halloumi to stand in for bacon in this BLT-inspired sandwich requires some suspension of disbelief — but one bite in and this special from Jake Marsiglia and Costa Damaskos of Baby Blues Luncheonette in Williamsburg, Brooklyn makes perfect sense. Butter-toasted sourdough slathered with garlicky mayo, sandwiches salty slabs of halloumi, sliced tomato and Greek-dressing-slicked arugula; the sandwich eclipses its inspiration. ALEXA WEIBEL
Recipe: Halloumi, Arugula and Tomato Sandwiches
Charlie Bird’s farro salad has legions of dedicated fans — including Ina Garten — and after one bite, you’ll understand the hype. The chef Ryan Hardy nails the fundamentals by cooking the farro in apple cider with bay leaves and salt until it’s so flavorful you could eat it plain, then builds on that foundation with plenty of good olive oil, pistachios, Parmesan and a mix of fresh vegetables including tomatoes, radishes and arugula. It’s the kind of dish that makes you realize how incredible something as simple as a grain salad can be when every element is done exactly right. MELISSA CLARK
Recipe: Charlie Bird’s Farro Salad
The tender and spicy sliced lamb meat should be enough of a reward for making this recipe from Jason Wang and David Shi of Xi’an Famous Foods, but my favorite part is the homemade bun. Though you can substitute it with an English muffin or burger bun instead, nothing quite hits the same as this bread recipe, which has a chewiness reminiscent of a dumpling wrapper that absorbs the red-hot chile sauce from the lamb. CHRISTINA MORALES
Recipe: Spicy Cumin Lamb Burgers
This cake from Joshua Pinsky of the East Village restaurant Claud is a feat of technical finesse that also tastes like childhood — it’ll make you feel nostalgic even if you never grew up eating Bundt cakes or instant pistachio pudding. It’s the pudding mix that works the magic in this recipe — providing that candy-like pistachio flavor, bounce and moistness. This is not the oversweet, dense Bundt cake of yore; the whipped ricotta and lime glaze are cheffy touches that balance the sweetness. But we all know it’s the pudding doing the heavy lifting. PRIYA KRISHNA
Recipe: Pistachio Bundt Cake
I first tasted this exceptional apple pie over a decade ago at the Dutch in Manhattan, a creation of the pastry chef and magician Kierin Baldwin, and then set out (with her help!) to make it at home. The key is to precook the filling so that it is soft and plush, with none of the raw crunchiness that can bedevil home-baked apple pies. SAM SIFTON
Recipe: Apple Pie
Before Sam Yoo’s famed tuna melt landed on my table at New York City’s Golden Diner, I’d never before liked a tuna melt. But his opened my eyes to the sandwich’s potential: crunchy and cacophonous, uniting crisp griddled bread, a fistful of salt-and-vinegar chips, molten American cheese and a cool filling of tuna salad sauced like a Big Mac. Crunchy, creamy, buttery and tangy, this tuna melt converted me on my first bite. ALEXA WEIBEL
Recipe: Golden Diner’s Tuna Melt
I regret to inform you that winter is coming. I know, I know. But there’s a silver lining to the chilliest months of the year: Incredible chicories and bright citrus fruit, the universe’s version of a seasonal pick-me-up. This salad from Mary Attea of Raf’s in Manhattan is a lovely combination of both, with bitter tardivo beautifully balanced by Cara Cara and blood oranges, earthy pistachios, pleasantly salty ricotta salata and plenty of olive oil. NIKITA RICHARDSON
Recipe: Tardivo Salad With Pistachio and Citrus
Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
