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French-born Yann de Rochefort figured out pretty quickly how to break through the cacophony of trendy new restaurants: be good and be there. It’s startling that this place got it so right so fast. His chef-partner, Seamus Mullen, whose background includes stints in fine Basque and Catalonian restaurants, combines a mastery of Spanish ingredients with an American ease of presentation. Boqueria, named for Barcelona’s splendid central market, delivers a succession of succulent plates—tapas and beyond—to a hip and humming crowd happily perched around deliberately high tables. In creating the polished interior with its Europ-of-the-moment feel, de Rochefort showed he knows the difference between sleek and slick.

Start with such succulent tapas as berberechos y alcachofas, grilled cockles with bits of artichoke and serrano ham, and croquettes of salt cod or suckling pig, and move on to the slightly larger plates: like one beautiful egg, carefully poached in olive oil atop a nest of vegetables, or txiperones —baby squid with spicy arugula. Then lamb shanks or langoustine; there’s even paella Valenciana to share. Boqueria serves constantly from noon to midnight, till 2 a.m. on weekends and accepts no reservations.

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A few prerequisites before you head to this sliver of a restaurant that serves Malaysian-inspired food: you have to like spicy dishes, sharing, eating with your hands and getting cozy with your neighbors. The dimly lit, red-paneled dining room with an open kitchen holds just a few tables and it can get noisy during peak hours, so it’s also not the place for a larger group (it’s ideal for two). But Fatty Crab is the place for discovering incredible flavor combinations, trying ingredients like kang kong (Chinese water spinach) and laifun (a type of noodle), and for becoming obsessed with dishes that will make you return again and again.

For me, those include Fatty Crab’s pickled watermelon and crispy pork salad, a divine combination in which the fruit perfectly offsets the salty richness of the meat, the spicy Jalan Alor chicken wings, the short ribs braised with kaffir lime and coconut and, of course, the Dungeness crab, which is served in a bright-red chili sauce and pieces of sweet brioche bread. The latter is one of the messiest dishes you will ever eat while dining out (it comes with extra napkins and Wet-Naps), but the powerful flavors working together are worth every sauce splatter. Chef Zak Pelaccio lived in Kuala Lumpur in the 1990s, and the Fatty Crab menu he created here, inspired by Malaysian street food, is the real deal (a feat considering the restaurant is in the Meatpacking District, where most diners are not keen on finger food). No reservations are accepted, but there’s a small bar where you can sip delightful Austrian and German wines, as well as some special Asian beers, while you wait for your table.

Also see Spice Market.

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Surprisingly delicious global fusion fare.

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Okayama-born chef Nao Sugiyama is one of the few masters in the United States of the Japanese ceremonial meal called kaiseki: a ritual progression of exquisite dishes. Tension flies away with the chef’s first happy greeting, and as you settle in at the bar, or at a table nearby, he fairly beams hospitality. For that’s what the word kaiseki means. A Buddhist tradition begun some 500 years ago in the temples of Kyoto as a method for serving food at the tea ceremony, kaiseki is a way to welcome weary travelers.

In this small, contemporary dining room, all pure pale wood and fanciful lighting, you are the guest—of the chef and his beautiful wife, and of the adorable San Eric Duong, who keeps the bright chat and fine sake flowing. There is a written menu, but the great luxury is deciding how many courses you’re up for (from five to eight), then watching as the chef’s gifted hands assemble the meal before your eyes. Each course has its own vessel, deliberately chosen to enhance the food, which Sugiyama sets off with maple leaves, sometimes even with gold leaf.

The appetizer may be chilled monkfish roe; sashimi is cut from fish flown in from Japan. In the simmered course, there’s always a treasure: bits of crab or a rare mushroom. Then something grilled, like Japanese black cod. Often you’ll be delivered a hot river stone on which to cook your own Wagyu beef. Always the chef looks for your reaction; his role is to connect and delight.

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You don’t even have to eat there to understand why Tabla’s such an authentic place—just walk in the door and start breathing in the warm, spicy air. But then, of course, you’d miss all the fun. The accomplished chef, Floyd Cardoz, returned to the culinary inspiration of his Mumbai family only after going to school in Switzerland and cooking in one of this city’s best French restaurants. As he writes in his new cookbook, One Spice, Two Spice, “ I see my food as a mission of sorts, a way to bridge the gap between the food of my childhood and the American palate.” Hence, the upstairs dining room features such dishes as Hudson Valley duck samosa, Nantucket bay scallops in kokum broth, a duo of Elysian Fields lamb with apricot-and-black-pepper jus, and sweet spice braised oxtail. But Tabla has two restaurants under its colorful roof.

The perpetually buzzing Bread Bar is downstairs (and outside on fine days) and serves lightened-up fare with an Indian accent: apple and potato chat, tandoori black pepper shrimp, tomato chutney with preserved lemons, saag paneer pizza and duck curry. From the bread ovens come naan, paratha, roti and kulcha. And oh yes, there are those fabulous tamarind margaritas.