New York didn’t make it through this year because it got smarter or more efficient. It made it through because it refused to quit. From a culinary standpoint, this was one of the ugliest, loudest, most distorted years the city has seen in a long time. You could taste the shortcuts. You could feel the exhaustion in the food. You could tell who was cooking to feed people and who was cooking to be seen.

We survived an avalanche of shitty food trends pretending to be culture. Smash burgers everywhere, most of them dry, under-seasoned, and built by people who learned one move and never bothered to learn why it worked. Birria slapped onto menus where it made no sense. Chopped cheese dragged out of its home and turned into an eighteen-dollar joke. Everything was “viral.” Almost nothing was memorable. Food stopped being a relationship and became a stunt.

We survived influencers turning restaurants into sets instead of places. People walking in, ordering the one item they saw online, filming it from three angles, taking two bites, and leaving. Spots went from empty to slammed to empty again in a matter of weeks. No regulars. No rhythm. Just spikes and crashes. That cycle didn’t just bruise businesses. It killed them.

We survived delivery apps warping how food is cooked. Menus stopped being designed for plates and started being designed for containers. Sauces got heavier. Salt got louder. Fryers worked overtime because crisp survives the commute better than care. This wasn’t culinary evolution. It was survival math. When a third of your revenue disappears before it hits your account, the food changes or the doors close.

We survived rules written by people who don’t cook and don’t eat where they regulate. Outdoor dining turned into permanent confusion. Street vendors stayed trapped by permit caps older than most of the vendors themselves. Enforcement hit small kitchens without legal teams faster than chains built to navigate the system. Everyone talked about safety while ignoring sustainability, as if a business can protect the public while bleeding out.

We survived weather that stopped making sense. Heat waves that shut kitchens down. Rainy weekends that erased months of planning. Smoke-filled days that killed outdoor service overnight. Winters that disappeared and came back angry. Food culture depends on rhythm. This year, the rhythm kept getting broken.

And we survived diners getting harsher. Expectations went up while patience went down. Tips shrank. Complaints grew louder. Everyone wanted fast, cheap, authentic, and perfect at the same time. The math never worked, but the demand didn’t stop.

What saved New York wasn’t a trend or a platform or a policy. What saved this city were the people who never stopped cooking.

Immigrant kitchens carried New York again. Dominican, Mexican, West African, Bangladeshi, Yemeni, Chinese, Korean, Caribbean spots that didn’t pivot, didn’t rebrand, didn’t explain themselves. They opened. They cooked. They fed whoever showed up. No mission statements. No influencer nights. Just consistency. Those places don’t spike. They endure.

Street food saved us. Halal carts, tamale coolers, churro setups, jerk chicken smoking in parking lots. Food that meets you where you are, not where the algorithm wants you to be. No press. No forgiveness tour. Just hunger, heat, and muscle memory.

The bodega saved us again. Egg sandwiches before sunrise. Coffee that tastes like survival. Shelves that adjust faster than any consultant ever could. When everything else felt fragile, the bodega stayed boring and reliable. That’s not small. That’s essential.

Cooks saved us. Real cooks. Line cooks. Prep cooks. Aunties. Uncles. People who still care if the rice is right even when nobody’s watching. People working doubles and still tasting the pot. That’s the backbone of this city. Always has been.

New York didn’t survive because it adapted to garbage. It survived because enough people refused to abandon fundamentals. Flavor over hype. Repetition over virality. Feeding people over impressing them.

If this city forgets that food is supposed to be loud, imperfect, human, and a little inconvenient, it doesn’t just lose its edge. It loses its reason. New York taught the world how to eat by being unapologetically itself. Trying to sanitize that is how you kill it.

We made it through another year not because the system worked, but because people did. If we’re smart, we protect the ones who kept the stoves on. If we’re not, next year tastes a lot worse.

Happy fucking New Year, New York.

Cook like you mean it.

By Marco Shalma