New York City is known as a food lover's paradise, with endless options to choose from when it comes to dining out – and New York Times food critic Pete Wells is out with his new list of the 100 best locations for a bite to eat.

In an interview with “Mornings On 1” Friday, Wells explained his rigorous methodology for selecting the top 100 restaurants and said his original draft included 200 locations.

“I started out by just writing down restaurant names every time they popped into my head as a place I'd really like to go back to,” he said. “And I would just sit there and think, ‘Oh, what's a place that that that I would just go for fun, not for work, but for my own enjoyment.’ And then the list got longer and longer and longer.”

The list showcases the city's diverse culinary scene in all corners of the city, including obscure locations.

“I've put restaurants that are in neighborhoods that you don't hear about every day. Of course, there's Flushing – which we all know is a great center of Chinese and other Asian foods. But I've got stuff out in strange parts of Brooklyn and in the South Bronx,” he said.

“And I just tried to seed picks all over the place so that people could have a sense of how widespread all the delicious stuff is in the city.”