The 10 Best New Restaurants in America, Ranked

10. Atoma, Seattle

After cooking at Seattle fine-dining institution Canlis, chef Johnny Courtney has launched his first solo venture with his wife, Sarah, in a converted house in the Emerald City’s Wallingford neighborhood. Atoma’s menu isn’t exactly meat-free, but Courtney finds ways to turn vegetables into stars. Begin with the rosette, a subtle nod to the city’s Scandinavian heritage: Turn the crispy fried cookie over and you’ll find a Walla Walla onion jam piped into its cavity, making for a salty-sweet opener to the meal. When squash was in season, the restaurant served it three ways (fried, roasted, and pickled) and topped with a pepita salsa macha. And the schnitzel forgoes pork, instead using thick slices of lion’s mane mushroom that are breaded, fried, and topped with a celery-root remoulade accented with crunchy fennel. It’s a style of haute cuisine that’s comforting, creative, and relaxed.

9. Array 36, Temple City, Calif.

After passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965, an influx of immigrants from China settled in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley. This suburban expanse east of L.A. has since become a rich vein of Chinese dining destinations, where you’ll find everything from dumplings to imperial-court cuisine. Array 36 added a fine-dining experience that eagerly leans into opulence. Take the Peking duck, which is wheeled into the dining room hanging from a dragon sculpture, doused in baijiu, and then set ablaze tableside with a butane torch.

The extensive menu pulls inspiration from China’s regional cooking styles, including a delightful Shanghainese crab-roe and tofu stew and Sichuan-style beef short ribs. But the standout is hong shao rou, or red pork, beloved by Mao Zedong. This glistening, jiggling, sticky, salty, sweet pile of braised pork belly is coated in a mix of rice wine, sugar, and light and dark soy sauces. If the pyrotechnics of the duck get you in the door, this pork will keep you coming back.

8. Burdell, Oakland, Calif.

Burdell feels less like a restaurant and more like a home. Not your home, exactly, but it evokes the feeling of walking into someone’s grandparents’ house, complete with lovingly preserved rattan furniture and Bill Withers songs wafting through the air alongside the aroma of fish being fried.

The food is just as welcoming and comforting. Chef Geoff Davis imbues soul-food classics with a California influence. Chicken and waffles is served with a rich liver mousse and topped with bits of crispy skin that offer a salty textural contrast. A cornmeal-crusted fried Petrale sole, perched atop red beans, is covered with a celery-root remoulade that’s studded with Dungeness crab to give it a touch of luxury.

The barbecue shrimp is a revelation. One side is sautéed hard to add a charred flavor, while the other side is cooked gently. The sauce has a subtle, persistent heat playing in the background—more like a bassoon than a blaring trombone. You’ll want even more of the buttery sliced brioche to sop it all up.

7. Brasero, Chicago

Chef John Manion was born in Michigan but spent his formative years in Brazil, and that country’s food has been close to his heart ever since. At Brasero, he’s reconnecting with favorite dishes and flavors by way of the massive wood-fired hearth that anchors the kitchen.

Start with one of the bar’s excellent caipirinhas and then move on to the pão de queijo, little puffs of cheesy bread, served with papaya jam. There are ample starters to choose from, including prawns swimming in a green curry, fried quail with yuca, or pork ribs with a guava barbecue sauce. Manion is also behind El Che, the Windy City’s beloved Argentine steak house, so there are plenty of carnivorous delights here. But it pays to go surf and turf: Order the grilled Wagyu picanha with chimichurri and pair it with half a lobster that’s kissed by the fire and topped with miso-chili-garlic butter.

6. Le B., New York City

For the past decade, the New York restaurants that wanted to hark back to a bygone era have channeled midcentury vibes. But at Le B., in the West Village, chef Angie Mar is expressing her love of the 1980s and ’90s. Which means filet mignon, French onion dip, and a subtle reference to a salad Wolfgang Puck helped make famous—all of it done with Mar’s keen eye for glamour. The menu reflects Mar’s longtime obsession with French cuisine, but she allows her own personal history to influence her dishes in subtle yet exciting ways. In her lobster blanquette, shellfish mingle in a sea of indulgent, umami-rich sauce: beurre blanc flavored with soy and shiro dashi to give it uncommon depth. And her Chinese chicken salad isn’t like what you’d get at Puck’s Chinois on Main or the mall restaurants that served it for decades. There isn’t even meat in it. Instead, Mar serves a tuile made with chicken fat over bitter greens with a sesame-yuzu vinaigrette. 

5. Iggy’s, Nashville

Ryan Poli has cooked in some of the world’s great restaurants, from French Laundry to Noma in Japan. For a time his prodigious skills made him a globe-trotting knife for hire, until a few years ago when he decided to put down roots and finally open a joint that was truly his own. At Iggy’s, he has partnered with his brother, Matthew, who runs the dining room while he commands the kitchen.

They call Iggy’s inventive Italian, but the restaurant is really a showcase for outstanding handmade pasta. The vibe is relaxed, but the flavors have a precision that betray Poli’s years in fine dining. The black truffles that adorn the agnolotti in a Parmesan-butter sauce aren’t some theater of opulence shaved in front of you: The kitchen carefully portions and places the pungent fungus to control how it perfumes the dish. Hunks of tender and sweet braised beef short rib intermingle with pillows of gnocchi and sauce with a resonant depth of flavor that gets a gentle lift from torn mint leaves. There aren’t entrées per se, just noodle dishes with varying levels of meat, so the best strategy is to dine with friends and order everything on the menu.

4. Katami, Houston

Chef Manabu Horiuchi’s strip-mall grill, Kata Robata, has developed a loyal following of industry peers and diners alike over the past 15 years. At Katami, Horiuchi occupies a much posher environment and serves up the high-end Japanese fare to match. He has spared no expense in presenting the finest ingredients, from Ohmi A5 Wagyu beef to fish flown in directly from Tokyo’s Toyosu market.

While the extensive menu is offered à la carte, it’s best to sit at the bar for omakase. Horiuchi and his buzzing band of chefs put out exquisite delicacies, such as a square of simple house-made goma tofu in soy sauce; Japanese sardine nigiri with kombu, ginger, and green onion; and a green-tea kakigori made with ice imported from Kanazawa, Japan. His knack for elevating some of the best raw materials with world-class technique is on full display.

3. Maxwells Trading, Chicago

On a weeknight, the stretch of Chicago’s West Loop where Maxwells Trading resides can feel desolate, but inside, chef Erling Wu-Bower’s restaurant hums with energy. He and executive chef Chris Jung have cultivated an ambiance as playful as the menu. The duo combine Asian flavors and techniques from around the world, with little regard for authenticity. Pork soup dumplings arrive in the form of tortellini. An array of dips is served with bread that’s like a cross between naan and a scallion pancake. There’s even a Japanese suzuki tartare with Thai influences in the crunch of peanut and the gentle funk of fish sauce. The margarita isn’t really a margarita, but more of a riff with papaya and ancho-chili honey thrown in the mix. And yet, nothing feels gimmicky or strained because deliciousness takes precedence over being creative for creativity’s sake.

But save room, because Maxwells’s Basque butter cake is one of the best desserts we had anywhere in the country. The little golden column sits atop a light miso caramel, and its crisp exterior gives way to a pillowy interior. A topping of apple confit and rosemary imparts a savory dimension that makes this treat dynamic and irresistible.

2. 7 Adams, San Francisco

After walking away from their Michelin-starred restaurant Marlena due to a dispute with ownership, chefs David Fisher and Serena Chow Fisher are back—on their own terms. At 7 Adams, they’re serving a delightful five-course tasting menu in the dining room and an eight- to 10-course experience at the chef’s counter.

The restaurant is rooted in California cuisine, highlighting local, seasonal ingredients with influences from Japan and Western Europe. For the standard menu, there are milk-bread rolls, a crudo, a vegetable course, a choice of pastas, a selection of mains, and a pair of Chow Fisher’s excellent desserts to consider. A recent trip featured a hiramasa crudo served with Shinko pear and a gently spicy Fresno chili and yuzu kosho vinaigrette. The pasta round showcased a celery-root ravioli with pesto, capers, and garlicky Parmesan sauce. But the chefs appreciate the power of surprise—and served up one in the form of a deboned Buffalo wing stuffed with sausage and slathered in a Frank’s Red Hot–based sauce, proving fine dining can be fun, creative, and unfussy.

1. Restaurant Yuu, Brooklyn

The curtain opens, the lights go up, and a row of cooks inside a kitchen is revealed. Chef Yuu Shimano steps forward and welcomes the 18 diners seated at the counter to his restaurant, and with a clap of his hands the team members scramble to their positions for the show to begin. This little gesture could come off as pretentious or annoying, but it’s just the right amount of whimsy for the night ahead at Restaurant Yuu, which performs at an extremely high level but also seems to be having fun with fine dining.

Shimano was born in Osaka and cut his teeth in French kitchens, including a stint at Paris’s Michelin three-starred Guy Savoy. His theatrical culinary experience serves French fare with a Japanese influence. Diners are introduced to the headliner at the very beginning of the meal, when a giant loaf of raw pastry is presented. Duck and foie gras are inside the pie, which heads to the oven so that it’s ready in time to be served as the final savory course.

In the two hours before it returns, a parade of delightful dishes is presented, from an oyster and Wagyu tartare to a langoustine gently grilled over binchotan to impart a bitter flavor of smoke. At one point, a grinning cook strolls by with a comically large loaf of bread before slicing portions for everyone. And then the star returns. The duck-and–foie gras pie, by now, is cooked to perfection. It’s a traditional treat, but also a novel way to finish the meal. That’s what Restaurant Yuu does best: breathe new life into old forms.