The 18 Best New Restaurants in America
From LA to DC, the most spectacular restaurants that have opened in the last year
We all look for meaning in life. As Eater’s national critic, I spend most of my life on the road; I seek out meaning in restaurants. I’m not just talking about why comfort food remains in fashion or how alligator pepper may be the next turmeric. I’m thinking about how restaurants reflect shifting cultural values — and about how their own creative achievements stoke diners’ imaginations and ambitions.
Cooking is always an autobiographical act to some degree. I’d argue that now, the dishes emerging from the country’s most exciting professional stoves narrate personal stories like never before. There was something — I’ll call it an acute intentionality — that I could sense and taste in my most gripping recent meals. Chefs seem more willing to risk expressing their honest selves on the plate — that, or they can’t be bothered any longer with the limitations of public assumptions and definitions around the food they cook. They trust that we’ll eat what they prepare and know who they are; they take pride in where they come from; and they frame dining within the context of their communities.
With hundreds and hundreds of meals under my belt over the last year, it felt momentous when a meal distinguished itself as uniquely special, in moments where undeniable skill articulated the emotions and the ideas behind the food: when the details culminated into an intoxicating broth, or a singed slab of beef smeared with garlicky chile paste, or a banana blossom salad trumpeting 10 kinds of crispness.
I relished soba in Seattle made from locally grown buckwheat, and a whirl of Lebanese spreads and fire-kissed lamb shoulder in our country’s capital, and transcendent carnitas in San Antonio. A chef freshly transplanted from Utah is working quiet wonders out of Maine’s bounty; one of our biggest culinary celebrities is tackling a fresh, rhapsodic read on Southern California’s multiculturalism.
These chefs and restaurateurs stand out by gamely revealing themselves — by showing heart in their hospitality, remarkable ingenuity, and individuality on their menus. They are, each of them, leading lights and future influencers. (For the record: Each opened between May 2017 and May 2018.) Dining at their tables shows us why we’re eating what we’re eating, how we’re interacting with one another, and who we are right this moment. In this fractious time in our history, their ability to find meaning in their work helps me trust in a hopeful future.
like the small, speckled tortillas that cradle confit brisket tacos with “black magic oil” (made from sesame and smoked morita chiles) and come alongside grilled fish with bacon salsa or a whopping goat shoulder cooked barbacoa-style. Nuñez alchemizes the dough into half a dozen other magnetic variations, including tlacoyos (plush dough pockets) filled with pork-belly carnitas, and incredibly thin blue-corn tostadas to add crunch to gorgeous red prawn aguachile. Savor this next-level Mexican-Texan cooking with a subtler sipping mezcal; try one in the pechuga family. 1800 E 6th Street, Austin, TX, (512) 953-0092, suerteatx.com
By Bill Addison for Eater Magazine