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Restaurants to keep your New Year’s resolutions (not just the healthy ones) – Metro US

Restaurants to keep your New Year’s resolutions (not just the healthy ones)

A new year means it’s resolution time again. Whether you’re looking to eat healthier, kick the booze habit for a month or be a more adventurous foodie in 2016, we’ve got some ideas about where to go to keep any resolution.

Depending on how intense your relationship is with alcohol, giving up booze for a month can be a great exercise in finding other ways to have fun. (Bonus: You’ll sleep better when you haven’t been drinking.) Plus, there are a ton of amazing ingredients behind bars right now —all those amazinghousemade sodas, new bitters and mixers like tea — that don’t need liquor to prop them up. Roll up to Chelsea brunch stapleCookshop (156 10th Ave.) and skip the booze for a ginger lemonade or their housemade version of grape soda with orgeat syrup and lime.

If losing weight is your goal in the New Year, changing what you eat accounts for80 percent of weight loss. The past year was filled with problematic news about meat, sugar, salt and dairy, which may sound like all the good things in life, but there are plenty of spots already cooking right. When it comesto indulgent eatingour favorite spot is the Lower East Side’sEl Rey(100 Stanton St.), where veggie-forward eats like the Avocado del Sur — housemade chimichurri makes it the king of avocado toasts — and their raw power-packed Chia Seed Breakfast Pudding will get you excited about eating lighter.

There are plenty of reasons to change what you’re eating that have nothing to do with losing weight: the environmental impact of exotic ingredients, ethical concerns about farm-raised animals, the conditions under which workers produce the food we eat. Bushwick’sFaro(436 Jefferson St.) elevates the farm-to-table concept by house-milling its heirloom grains, keeping seafood limited to local fish and using only seasonal produce. Plus, the Roman gnocchi is the finest plate of pasta you’ll find in the city.

Admit it — you talk a good foodie game, but 90 percent ofwhat you’ve been eating is from restaurantsaround your office and apartment. Left to your own devices, the chances of taking a risk with a new dish or switching trains to check out a new spot aren’t as good as you’d like them to be. So let us give you a sure bet: Take a four-course journey through France’s Alsace region atGabriel Kreuther(41 W. 42nd St., Midtown West), which earned a spot on every 2015 best-of list as a new fine dining classic.

Eating like the locals is essential to traveling — you wouldn’t miss the ramen at Saikoro in Tokyo, or the exquisite and, happily, dirt cheap wine found only in Parisian bodegas. Until you accrue the vacation time (and cash)to party in Rio, there’s Greenpoint’s new Brazilian hot spot Cozinha Latina(37 Greenpoint Ave.) Split a Coconut for Two, which gets its kick from sugar cane spirits, alongside creamy catupiry cheese-and-chicken croquettes and new-to-you ingredients like chayote and chicken hearts.