12 of Our Staff’s Favorite Restaurant Recipes That You Can Make at Home

Try Vinegar Hill House’s skillet sourdough pancakes, Roberta’s pizza and more dishes we’ve adapted from restaurants and bakeries over the years.

David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist; Simon Andrews.

Published Sept. 9, 2025Updated Sept. 9, 2025

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.

An overhead shot of a large, round pancake topped with sliced pears, a pat of butter and a drizzle of syrup, on a white plate. — Sarah Anne Ward for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky.

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

An overhead shot of a large bowl of seafood stew with crab, shrimp, clams and mussels in a reddish-brown broth, with a piece of toasted bread with cheese and herbs. — David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist; Simon Andrews.

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

An overhead shot of golden-brown biscuits on a plate with small bowls of orange marmalade and red jam. — Chris Simpson for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Pappas. Sugar Biscuits

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

An overhead shot of a large white pot filled with short ribs in a rich brown sauce, with plates and rice on the side. — David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

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

An overhead shot of a round pizza with a charred crust, red sauce, cheese and basil, on a crumpled white background. — Melina Hammer for The New York Times

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

A very tall sandwich, cut in half and stacked with grilled halloumi cheese, sliced yellow and red heirloom tomatoes, and arugula on rustic bread. — Nico Schinco for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

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

An overhead shot of a farro salad with arugula, cherry tomatoes, and sliced radishes, topped with cheese shavings and pistachios. — Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell.

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

A pita sandwich, with the top half leaning against the filling, overflowing with thinly sliced lamb, sautéed green peppers and red onions. — Nico Schinco for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

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

An overhead shot of a pistachio Bundt cake, sliced and drizzled with a white glaze and sprinkled with chopped green pistachios, with a small dish of cream on the side. — Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.

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

An overhead shot of a golden-brown apple pie with two slices cut out, with one of the slices on a separate plate with whipped cream. — Constantine Poulos for The New York Times

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

A very tall tuna melt sandwich, cut in half and stacked, with melted cheese and potato chips spilling from the sides. — Rachel Vanni for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

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

An overhead shot of a radicchio salad with orange slices, nuts and shaved cheese, arranged on a dark plate with a green sauce. — Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.

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

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