100 Very Best Restaurants 2013: Ardeo & Bardeo

This is the iPod Shuffle of restaurant menus. There are trendily bad-for-you bar snacks like cheese fries but also esoterica such as French breakfast radishes with butter. Timid eaters can order a chicken breast; the adventurous can dive into a seven-hour braised leg of suckling pig with redeye gravy. And that’s not to mention the charcuterie, boutique pizzas, and big, soulful bowls of pasta.

This something-for-everyone approach puts strains on a kitchen and means that Ardeo works best as the neighborhood restaurant it was intended to be—where regular patrons swing by a couple of times a week and order the same few things as always.

Don’t miss: Miniature open-faced steak-and-potato sandwiches with horseradish crème fraîche; salmon rillettes with “everything” bagels; chicken soup with green chili; rabbit Bolognese; vanilla-mascarpone cheesecake; chocolate-pistachio tart.

Open: Monday through Friday for dinner, Saturday and Sunday for brunch and dinner. Expensive.