We have finished our annual search for America’s best restaurants.
Over the last 12 months, reporters and editors traveled to nearly every state scouting restaurants for our annual list. This year, it was about spaces as much as places. We ate hyperlocal dishes served out of a trailer in a rural Virginia field, experienced one of America’s most refined seasonal tasting menus in one of San Francisco’s most refined rooms, dined on Creole fare in a strip mall down the road from NASA in Texas and joined a party behind a tattered ranch house in Johns Island, S.C.
Of our choices, 32 are new, opened since the 2023 list was assembled. But we also made space for longstanding restaurants still in top form, including one that opened in 1976. As always, there were no-brainers and tough choices — the United States has a vast, diverse spread of great restaurants these days — but these are our 50 favorites for 2024. BRIAN GALLAGHER
Three things to know: You will need an appetite. You will be better off with a big group. And you will want cocktails. One of only three restaurants in the United States that serves the mookata style of Thai cooking — the other two are in Queens and San Francisco — Mr. Baan’s is the next-door sibling to Phoenix’s acclaimed Lom Wong. The mookata setup is a dome-shaped charcoal-fired grill on which you cook your own soy-marinated pork, coriander beef or black-pepper chicken. Surrounding the dome is a moat filled with already rich pork broth that is further fortified by the meat drippings. To this, you add noodles, minced pork, vegetables, mushrooms and various sauces to create a soup of your own specifications, hot-pot style. It’s a party, and, never fear, refills on all elements are included. BRIAN GALLAGHER
After more than 20 years, dinner at Michael and Lindsay Tusk’s Quince is still a master class in the NorCal culinary vernacular. The produce, much of it grown 30 miles up the coast in Bolinas, is superb. And naturally, the menu changes with the seasons. But Mr. Tusk’s dishes — a roasted spiny lobster with black trumpet mushrooms and fava greens, for instance, or sunchoke velouté with a local oyster, chanterelles and sorrel — are a deft balance of cheffing and sourcing. The recently redesigned space feels at once contemporary and timeless. The elegantly spare décor and widely spaced tables are de rigueur for a three-Michelin-starred restaurant, but the dining room is warmed by Ms. Tusk’s presiding presence. Dinner is an expensive occasion at $390 a person (though you can have a four-course lunch for $175). But when you imagine a perfect California fine-dining restaurant, you’re imagining Quince. You just may not know it until you eat there. BRIAN GALLAGHER
Four Kings is breathing much-needed fire into San Francisco’s dining scene. The chefs Franky Ho and Mike Long, from the acclaimed Mister Jiu’s, and their partners Millie Boonkokua and Lucy Li have conjured a restaurant where the surgical precision of their fine-dining past flows as an undercurrent. But the spot-on vibes and energetic dishes are singular here. Nuggets of XO escargot are tucked into shells blanketed with a buttery sheen, served with pillowy milk bread. Sichuan cabbage presents as deceivingly simple on the menu, but surprises as one of the best dishes thanks to a generous dusting of scallion powder. And that’s what Four Kings will do: grab you in a way that’s bold, exhilarating and needed. ELEANORE PARK
When the married couple Reka and Fik Saleh opened their brick storefront, Fikscue, last November, their clientele — devoted since the pandemic-pop-up days — followed swiftly across the Bay, where halal Texas-style barbecue and Indonesian cuisine coalesce. Ms. Saleh deftly weaves together the electric brightness and texture of Indonesia’s underrepresented cuisine with the stalwart comfort of barbecue. The meltingly tender, jiggly brisket and smoked dino ribs alone are worth the nearly two-hour wait to eat here. But Indonesian dishes — like the Sumatran beef noodle soup, batagor, where beef ribs slowly simmer in a pool of lemongrass, makrut lime leaves and galangal, and the balado plate of smoked fried chicken nested under a sauce punched up with fermented heat — round out a menu unlike anything else in the country. ELEANORE PARK
A delicately crunchy slice of ham katsu, enrobed in Mornay sauce, rests on a slice of sweet, buttery house-made shokupan, almost entirely hidden by a softly fried egg. Even the basic croque-madame here is a thoughtfully composed thrill. Charles Namba and Courtney Kaplan, known for their sake-focused Japanese restaurants, have opened a chic, freewheeling bistro that almost feels as if it were imported from the 11th Arrondissement, but has a distinctly Los Angeles flavor. It’s an ideal spot to meet for an aperitif and an aioli garni, but even better to make a long and winding dinner out of its hits. Take the tomatoes and burrata (yawn!) scattered here with fried shiso leaves and a habit-forming ponzu jelly, so soft and delicate that it becomes the dressing. This is the magic of a good bistro: a place where you can come across the familiar, and even predictable, and fall in love with it again. TEJAL RAO
With all due respect to grilled meat on skewers, Cody Ma and Misha Sesar have been using the hashtag #notjustkebabs since they started Azizam as a pop-up in 2021, determined to expand the idea of Iranian food in Los Angeles. Their casual Silver Lake cafe is devoted to the kind of deeply delicious, often labor-intensive cooking that doesn’t like to show off about how much prep (a lot) goes into it. The kitchen bakes nigella seed-freckled barbari each day for its sandwiches, which might be filled with sliced beef tongue or herb-packed kuku sabzi. Stay for a bigger meal, and the rewards are bigger, too: The kofteh Tabrizi is a single, family-size, fruit-studded meatball in tangy broth. The ash-e-jo — an unassuming jewel based on Mr. Ma’s mother’s recipe — is a luxuriously slippery rendition of the stew, stacked with barley, lentils, kidney beans and chickpeas, and crowned with caramelized onions and fried mint. It tastes like being home, no matter where you’re from. TEJAL RAO
After four years as a beloved food truck, the chef Penelope Wong’s dumpling operation found a brick-and-mortar home last year. Part of the joy here is the variety of choices, several of which rotate. There are Hong Kong-style “YW OG” wontons in Sichuan chile oil, tom kha chicken wontons, Chinese chive pockets and steamed chashu pork bao. All are expertly constructed with handmade doughs. Much of the rest of the menu changes as well, but on one visit, the hero was the jok, a Chinese congee with chicken and a warming, nervy duet of ginger and pickled bird’s-eye chile that made the dish hum. BRIAN GALLAGHER
Since the husband-and-wife team Anna and Ni Nguyen opened what they call their “nontraditional Vietnamese restaurant,” they have been stacking accolades, including best new restaurant mentions from national media and a James Beard semifinalist nod for the same. All well deserved. Their trứng và trứng alone would warrant the praise. Described simply as “soft scrambled egg, brown butter, fish sauce, trout roe, rice,” the dish coaxes the humble egg into an improbably rich, custardy realm. And the rest of the menu does not disappoint. Skeins of mint, chiles and ginger run through dishes that play on traditional Vietnamese preparations, but still taste wholly original. Booking at prime dinner hour can still be tricky, though not as Sisyphean as it once was. BRIAN GALLAGHER
Tucked into the southern reaches of the San Juan Mountains, Meander is a gem of a country restaurant. The chef Justin Jacobs spent time in the kitchen at Frasca, in Boulder, among the region’s most renowned restaurants, but has left the white-tablecloth life behind. The menu here is unapologetically eclectic, with quality ingredients, especially produce, and sure-handed cooking keeps it coherent. A Dutch baby topped with a creamy lump crab meat mixture made a novel twist on breakfast for dinner, while a “patio smoked” bratwurst, made in house, was a deftly spiced version of that quintessential cased meat. Particularly on a warm evening, a table on the back deck is the perfect place to have dinner and watch the San Juan River, well, meander by. BRIAN GALLAGHER
Mystic is your classic New England tourist town, well provisioned with fudge, ice cream and, famously, pizza. But it’s also becoming a dining destination, with two innovative bar-restaurants from the chef Renee Touponce and this refined but deceptively casual-looking entry from David Standridge, who won this year’s James Beard award for Best Chef: Northeast. His website’s paean to sustainability and local seafood (including undervalued species like sea robin, green crab and limpets) is more than backed up by dishes like velvety roasted oysters and a delicate batter-fried fillet of whiting. But the highlights here range far beyond the sea: inventive pastas built around the produce of the moment, an exemplary roast chicken and the crispy pig’s head, a voluptuous take on tête de veau that should become a tourist attraction in itself. PATRICK FARRELL
A slice of lasagna at Walrus Rodeo is thin, with a dark, charred surface. From a distance it looks like a healthy serving of parmigiana. Forkfuls reveal wilted mustard greens, tangy stracchino, lamb ragù hinting of moussaka. The food here toys with your expectations in this way, with dishes that look familiar, only to reveal flavors you didn’t predict. Servers mash carrot tartare, bound by espuma and salsa verde, as soon as it lands on the table; charred long beans hold dollops of lemon curd. The staff will make you feel lucky to be part of the scene unfolding nightly in this unassuming Little Haiti strip mall. And while the restaurant lives up to its “not just a pizzeria” tagline, you should order at least one pie. BRETT ANDERSON
La Camaronera’s pan con minuta is a sandwich containing a whole gutted fried snapper, minus the head but including the tail. It’s more fish than the lightly toasted Cuban roll can contain. The sandwich, the most popular order at this 50-plus-year-old Little Havana seafood joint, is both hard to miss and hard to resist. The qualities that make it so delicious — notably the fried-to-order crispness of the fresh fish — are found across the menu, which contains some of the South’s best fried seafood and more. That great-looking hogfish for sale at the retail counter? Order a skin-on fillet of it grilled, with a side of black-eyed-pea fritters. BRETT ANDERSON
After a series of pop-ups, Demetrius Brown quietly took over a much-loved French cafe and transformed dinner into a showcase for French cuisine as interpreted by Caribbean cooks, particularly from Haiti. Cilantro, thyme and epis, the herbaceous spice blend, perfume a delicate interpretation of the classic beef patty. In the same way, Mr. Brown uses English peas and local mushrooms to enhance djon-djon, a dish named after a type of Haitian mushroom. He marinates halibut for escovitch, and marries single-origin Haitian chocolate with coconut ice cream. The kitchen-driven cocktail list gets a special nod, especially nonalcoholic surprises made with snap pea juice and matcha. If more traditional French food is what you had in mind, there are always the lunch and breakfast menus. KIM SEVERSON
Nàdair is the Scottish-Southern mash-up no one knew American dining needed. It’s the latest and most personal restaurant from Kevin Gillespie, the red-bearded chef who became a star in the early seasons of “Top Chef.” With a carpet woven in the colors of his family’s tartan and a pocketful of his Scottish granny’s recipes, you’d think the place would be a stodgy tribute to oats and haggis. It’s anything but. Yes, there is haggis, but it’s a clever vegetarian version in crisp pastry with peated whiskey cream and mushroom velouté. A tender cornmeal crust gives a Scottish cheese and onion pie a Georgia kiss. Lacquered pork shoulder that takes a couple of weeks to cure and smoke arrives with a collard-green dumpling. A small plate with fancy twists on sweet Scottish classics like tablet candy and snowball cookies sends you off into the Atlanta night. KIM SEVERSON
It is no small thing to call this chophouse’s steak the best in Chicago. But it’s hard to argue with the evidence, be it a bone-in rib-eye of Galician beef, rimmed with yellow fat, or a cut of dry-aged Holstein that all but instructs you to order an old Rioja Gran Reserva (there are some good ones). Now consider that those steaks have to fight for supremacy with seafood from the plancha and even a simple tortilla, albeit crowned with a ribbon of nutty jamón. You know how New York carnivores can’t get enough of neo-brasseries like Frenchette and Minetta Tavern? Asador Bastian is kind of like that, only Basque, and in the city that was once the meatpacking capital of the world. BRETT ANDERSON
Lawrence Weeks is among a growing cadre of chefs breathing fresh life into New Orleans cuisine with restaurants outside Louisiana. He does so with cunning refinements to common dishes. Things like fried catfish set under a drift of chopped Haitian pikliz, and crab dressing sparked by cilantro and lime. The gumbo is as dark and enticing as what you’ll find in Cajun Country, only thick with smoked brisket and wilted greens. North of Bourbon established Mr. Weeks as one of the region’s most exciting new chefs. A similar dynamism is on display at Enso, which opened last year, where the chef looks beyond Louisiana with food that blends Southern and Japanese cuisine. BRETT ANDERSON
The food at Acamaya falls into roughly two categories. There are the dishes that send your eyebrows upward at first sight, like the painterly aguachile or the arroz negro topped with mussels that look like a display of emeralds. And there are the dishes that don’t appear far removed from what you’d find on a grandmother’s stove in Mexico City (at least until you take your first bite), like the luxuriously rich acoyote beans or chochoyotes, thick with Louisiana lump crab meat. Ana Castro, already one of the most gifted young chefs in New Orleans, really finds her voice at this stylish, seafood-focused restaurant, which she owns with her sister Lydia. It’s food that excites the mind while aiming for your heart. BRETT ANDERSON
Casual restaurants known through much of the South as meat-and-threes are more commonly identified as plate-lunch places in south Louisiana. Zeeland Street is a paragon of the form. The chef-owner, Stephanie Phares, learned to cook while growing up in Mississippi, where her grandmother Rachel Drain taught her scratch recipes using fresh ingredients. She’s been honing those techniques for more than 30 years at Zeeland Street, where the food tastes as you would expect it to in this swampy corner of Louisiana, roughly halfway between flavor-proud New Orleans and Lafayette. Even the most familiar dishes in Ms. Phares’s deep repertoire of soul-soothing staples — from the eat-with-a-spoon smothered chicken to the gently cooked, notably meatless vegetable sides — tastes of the kitchen’s pride in preparation. BRETT ANDERSON
On a rural crossroads covered in white clapboard, the Alna Store looks like the old-time country shop that it was for decades. But now, the shelves in back are stocked with natural wines, imported tinned fish and bracing housemade ferments (kimchi, hot sauce, curry kraut). And in front, an ambitious restaurant serves a thoroughly of-the-moment, local menu that’s full of sophisticated touches without being at all pretentious. The house margarita is made with mezcal; the buttermilk wedge salad is dusted with crispy fried shallots and capers; and the shrimp topping a mound of creamy grits are coated in warm, fragrant spices, then seared until caramelized. The place is also open for brunch — a great option if you’d prefer to take a long drive to Midcoast Maine during daylight hours. MELISSA CLARK
Jay Salkini, the owner of this ambitious, elegant restaurant in a somewhat corporate condominium complex, and Dima Al-Chaar, the chef, want diners to taste the enchanting, multidimensional sorts of foods they grew up eating in Syria. For anyone steeped in generic Middle Eastern takeout staples, Ammoora will be a revelation. Dishes like muhammara (roasted red peppers seasoned with chile and pomegranate molasses) and kebbet karaz (minced lamb with tart cherry sauce, cinnamon and pine nuts) achieve a thrilling balance of sweet and sour, spicy and breezy. Another dish, kofta kawaj (spiced ground lamb with sweet eggplant and onions in a tomato sauce) builds in complexity and flavor as you eat. Even a familiar hummus or baklava can make you feel as if your eyes have been opened, revealing vivid new colors. ERIC ASIMOV
In a minimalist space on a quiet side street in busy Downtown Crossing, Somaek presents Korean home cooking in all its magnificence and abundance. Chefs often say their mothers taught them to cook, but Jamie Bissonnette’s jangmonim (wife’s mother), Soon Han, gets full menu credit for its focused flavors. Alongside robust classics like chilled pork belly, seared beef and stir-fried squid with rice cakes, Soamaek serves a master class in banchan like chive-garlic salad, radish kimchi and pickled perilla leaf. The restaurant is named after a cold fizz of soju (clear liquor) and maekju (beer), popular for chugging and on Korean reality shows; it’s just part of a full and festive bar program here. Mr. Bissonnette, a veteran of Boston’s fine-dining kitchens (and the tapas juggernaut that was Toro), has built his dream chef cave, with a vinyl listening bar next door and a sushi speakeasy downstairs. JULIA MOSKIN
Walk through the door of Noori Pocha, and you’ll wonder if you’ve found a portal to South Korea without the jet lag. Here you are, on set in Seoul, surrounded by the facades of a bus station and a market. K-pop is on the sound system, and the platters before you bear heaping, steaming plates of bulgogi, chicken buldak and jokbal. The restaurant’s name comes from the Korean food carts — pojangmacha, or pocha — that cater to the after-work crowd with the types of dishes that sit well with a belly filled with soju. The owner In Yeol Kwon runs a franchise of the Korean fried chicken chain Noori next door, but Noori Pocha is something wholly different, with a menu from the chef Bak Sanghwan and Mr. Kwon’s sister, Nali. It’s rare for a restaurant to be this transporting, and rarer still to have a meal that’s this much fun. SARA BONISTEEL
This restaurant grew out of the takeout place that itself was the offshoot of a tortilleria instrumental in elevating the quality of tacos across the Twin Cities. The common denominator of all these businesses: a passion for nixtamalized corn. Made from a multihued array of heirloom corn varieties, the supple tortillas and tamales are not inert vessels. They’re the base of a menu that the chef Gustavo Romero, who owns Oro by Nixta with his wife, Kate, builds out with braised and roasted meats, in-season produce and an impressive repertoire of moles, salsas and other sauces. Imagine a taqueria with a tasting-menu restaurant’s ambitions, and none of its pretensions. BRETT ANDERSON
Vinai takes its name from a refugee camp in Thailand where the chef-owner Yia Vang was born, and to which his family, along with tens of thousands of fellow Hmong people, fled genocide and war. That somber story comes to life at a restaurant that is, above all else, ebullient, thanks in no small part to the affable presence of Mr. Vang. Hmong cuisine shares characteristics with the food of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. The chef’s personal take on it is arresting, packed with chile and citrus, often streaked with wood smoke, and always suffused with back story. Vinai isn’t the only exciting new local restaurant showcasing the cuisine of Minnesota’s sizable Hmong community. Diane’s Place, a terrific, Hmong American bakery and cafe, is a short walk away. BRETT ANDERSON
It’s a farm-to-table restaurant. OK, the farm in question is an oyster-growing aquaculture operation more than 25 miles away in the Delaware Bay, but still. The place is set up like any other South Jersey roadside farm stand where you might buy a carton of eggs, a bunch of radishes and a basket of strawberries. This farm stand, though, has a raw bar, and naturally, the oysters are exceptional. There’s also a counter where you can order casual, colorful plates of whatever happens to have caught the eye of Melissa McGrath, the chef, that week: a towering BLT piled with heirloom tomatoes; falafel over cucumbers and juicy yellow Sungolds; grilled eggplant sandwiches with peperonata. Certain standbys remain no matter the month, like the fried oysters on a grilled buttered roll and the Italian cold-cut hoagies. When your food is ready, you take it to one of the picnic tables outside. PETE WELLS
Blanca, in Brooklyn, is the closest thing you’ll find to an avant-garde restaurant among New York’s tasting counters, most of which seem to make a religion of playing it safe. Not that Victoria Blamey’s cooking is particularly experimental or confrontational, but it is complex and, at times, challenging. Other restaurants will juice yuzu for a precise dose of acidity; Ms. Blamey turns it into a potent sauerkraut that she drapes over clams. Blanca will fill your head with strong flavors in ways that other places charging these prices (dinner costs $275 and lasts about three hours) seem afraid to do. Even gentler ingredients can make your head spin: The creamy sauce for king crab grilled over charcoal is speckled with vanilla seeds, and the snails wrapped in bundles of fresh pasta are seasoned with lavender. PETE WELLS
Almost all the seating at Penny is at a long marble seafood counter broken in two. The section up front is the raw bar, where fresh oysters and clams are popped open; pink sheets of tuna are dressed with cipollini onions and olive oil; and the best shrimp cocktail you’re likely to find in New York is arranged over trays of ice. The far end of the counter is where the cooking happens. Squid bodies filled with tuna and chard are carefully grilled over charcoal, and tall golden columns of puff pastry are set on top of steaming bowls of oyster pan roast. Joshua Pinsky’s cooking looks simple, and in some ways it is. But whenever there’s a chance to make an element of a dish better, he takes it. Taste the fresh, fluffy brioche in the ice cream sandwich (Penny’s only dessert) and you’ll see what I mean. PETE WELLS
The soul food at Shaw-naé’s House, on Staten Island, is as high-spirited as the six-table dining room, where customers invariably skip the short wine list in favor of a house rum punch or a pitcher of sangria. Almost every dish is a party in its own right, like the Soul Fries that are buried under cheese sauce, cubes of fried chicken, spoonfuls of collard greens and molten orange heaps of warm macaroni and cheese. It’s hard to imagine a soul-food restaurant without fried fish, but there’s probably no other place where that means a whole snapper that’s been deep-fried twice for a resounding crunch and posed upright over a small sea of crisp fresh vegetables, as if it were still swimming. Shaw-naé Dixon, the chef and owner, got her start in catering for movie shoots, and she still knows how to lay out a spread that can excite a crowd. PETE WELLS
What happens when Indian food stops trying to cater to a white audience and finally gets to be itself? You get Bungalow, a for-us-by-us restaurant, where the chef Vikas Khanna weaves ambitiously through India’s lesser-known regional dishes, putting personal, creative spins on each. A Lucknowi galouti kebab is constructed with silky kidney beans that are mashed, fried and sandwiched between rounds of lotus root. The ghee roast swaps the meat for plantains, enhancing the richness and sweetness of the fruit. The lamb chops, rich yet tangy with sour mango powder, are just plain primal. Mr. Khanna is one of the most famous Indian chefs in the world, and each night he strolls through the dining room to pose for selfies and sign cookbooks. But the boldness of these flavors shows he’s so much more than his celebrity charm. PRIYA KRISHNA
Southern fish camp meets Black Appalachian foodways at Ashleigh Shanti’s easy, walk-in restaurant in the center of the brewery-heavy South Slope district. Leave it to a former chef de cuisine to make her own versions of Old Bay and sorghum-kissed hot sauce to season thick, tender fried fillets of catfish encased in crunchy, locally milled cornmeal. Have it on squishy white bread with buttermilk tartar, or as part of a lunch plate (served on an actual school cafeteria tray) with meaty Sea Island red peas, macaroni and cheese, and some righteous round hush puppies. The sleepers: a “Ranchovy” salad built with crispy local iceberg showered with fried shallot, chives and black pepper, and a burger made from shrimp caught off the coast of North Carolina. KIM SEVERSON
While the Aperture just opened this winter, it’s not hard to find diners who have already made a ritual of visiting this Art Deco building for live-fire cooking from the chef-owner Jordan Anthony-Brown. The restaurant’s regulars already have favorite bartenders and go-to orders like glazed hamachi collar, pita dips built from roasted vegetables, and tomato spaghetti swirled with candied chiles — stars on a menu that reflects the kitchen’s firm grasp of Mediterranean cuisine, particularly its eastern rim. For a snapshot of how fully Levantine cooking has been embraced by diners in the United States, book a table at this date-night restaurant in the city’s Walnut Hills area. BRETT ANDERSON
At first look, you might think Noche resembles a zillion other popular Mexican restaurants. It’s sleek, festive and loud, with a crowd spilling out of the colorful dining room onto an expansive downtown patio. Beers and margaritas all around! That familiarity ends with your first bite. The complimentary chips are housemade, presented not with a generic salsa but with a purée of black beans and fruity guajillo chiles. Fiery chile heat is reserved for the shrimp aguachile, served in a bath of lime juice, radish and serranos, while Yucatán-style pork shoulder in salsa verde is like great barbecue, smoky and complex. Wrap it in blue corn tortillas. But don’t forget the extensive collection of agave spirits. ERIC ASIMOV
L’Orange is a real charmer. Occupying the second floor of a Victorian house that has variously been a telegram office and a butcher shop over the last 100-odd years, the dining room has a homey sophistication. The menu, which the chef Joel Stocks changes with the seasons, speaks French with a Pacific Northwest accent. Nestle into a chair at the six-seat chef’s counter (read: bar) for a glass from the wine list curated by Jeff Vejr, a co-owner, and a couple of plates as the afternoon light fades to early evening. An ornate ruffle of shaved tête de moine cheese or the chicken liver mousse, presented in tartlet form with a strawberry and red wine gelée, will do very nicely. But so will a buckwheat crepe, amply filled with bay shrimp, Gruyère and zinged with candied jalapeño. And with nothing on the menu more than $30, becoming a regular is a tempting prospect. BRIAN GALLAGHER
Inspired by Bangkok’s Chinatown, the latest project from Akkapong Earl Ninsom (whose Langbaan is widely regarded as one of the best Thai restaurants in the country) is a freewheeling affair. Both the room and the food have a night-market feel. Paper lanterns and candles cast a moody light, while dishes like double-fried chive cakes, with a perfect crisp-outside-to-fluffy-inside ratio, and Yaowarat Road Squid, sloshed with fish sauce and Thai chiles, bring the bewitching depth of flavor found in the best street food. The kuay teow kua gai, chewy wide rice noodles with pork-fat chicken and a steamed egg, is a must. And a delightfully silky mapo tofu may render any other version of the dish disappointing hereafter. BRIAN GALLAGHER
Fet-Fisk is the restaurant equivalent of a cozy sweater. It feels lived in — and not just because of the vintage platters and wood paneling. The co-founders Nik Forsberg and Sarah LaPonte have created an atmosphere, and a Nordic-inflected menu, that is refined (the bright and fennel-y seafood salad is a far cry from the gloppy picnic version) yet comfortable and unfussy. The duo started Fet-Fisk as a pop-up in 2019, and it became so beloved that Mr. Forsberg was nominated for a James Beard award in 2023 even without a brick-and-mortar spot. He and his co-chef, Csilla Thackray, can make a delicate appetizer of thin-sliced scallops and pickled strawberries feel at home alongside a rustic main of chicken brined in whey and smothered with lingonberries and fresh cheese. PRIYA KRISHNA
With Fishtown already overrun with boutiques and chic restaurants, it was only a matter of time until the overflow spread to nearby East Kensington. Navigate the tight residential streets and you’ll find this dimly lit, low-slung corner restaurant serving robust and deftly executed Polish cuisine. The pierogies are a nonnegotiable, of course, but there are other equally appealing dishes: the rustic sourdough served with dill butter and smalec (lard); the wieprzowina z rożna, sumptuous rotisserie pork on a bed of hearty kapusta (stewed cabbage with onions and sauerkraut); and because this is Philadelphia, a seasonal take on water ice, which at the time of this writing featured blueberries and sour cherry. NIKITA RICHARDSON
To outsiders, Lancaster may evoke rolling farmland and Amish families in horse-drawn buggies, but such imagery belies a city of far more diverse and cosmopolitan tastes. (It is only 80 miles west of Philadelphia, after all.) Downtown Lancaster is an especially attractive setting for this months-old restaurant, which since June has been quietly serving outstanding dishes made with the bounty of the surrounding farmland and accented by global sensibilities. Think perfectly seared scallops set into a colorful salad of sweet summer corn and shishito peppers, or a 25-layer zucchini and goat ricotta crepe cake under a shower of ramp powder. Based on my visit in July, it’s unclear whether Lancastarians know that they have an absolute gem of a restaurant in their midst. Consider this a heads-up. NIKITA RICHARDSON
On any given night, the shuckers behind the horseshoe bar at Gift Horse are prying open oysters grown in about a dozen spots along the Rhode Island coast. The quality of the shellfish is impressive even before you dress them with kimchi mignonette or a few jade-colored drops of hot sauce drawn from fermented green chiles. Sky Haneul Kim, the chef, reworks the traditional New England raw bar using the flavors of South Korea, where she was raised. Kimchi of crisp spring asparagus is piled over steamed littlenecks dug from Narragansett Bay. Whipped smoked fish pâté is served with puffed sheets of fried nori. Butterfish, standing in for mackerel, is broiled under a dark glaze of sweet-potato miso. Gift Horse deserves to be talked about in the same breath with Yangban in Los Angeles, Atoboy in New York and a handful of other restaurants that are busy bringing American ways of dining into the orbit of Korean cuisine. PETE WELLS
There’s a party going on behind a tattered ranch house outside Charleston: a cluster of tables, under swoops of sailcloth and some improbable-looking outdoor chandeliers, where the entire menu is cooked just a few feet away over open fires of white oak. Lost Isle calls itself “a truly local experience” — the chef, Josh Taylor, who grew up in North Georgia, leans on Lowcountry staples like collards, grits and roasted clams. Yet the big flavors he applies (chimichurri, harissa, tamarind, togarashi) evoke his world travels. And though he leads with steaks and chops, the real standouts are non-meat dishes like sweet roasted carrots amped up with chiles and brown butter. Even sweeter are the celebratory vibe, a bustling bar and the hot slabs of semolina sourdough, streaked with olive oil and char, that get the festivities started. PATRICK FARRELL
With a cooler of free beer for people waiting in line and a big white sign with just the letters BBQ out front, City Limits is the place students of regional smoked meat dream of. Robbie Robinson, recently nominated for a James Beard award, presides. His vinegary South Carolina-style chopped pork sandwich is a master class, with crisp bits of cracklings mixed into the luscious meat, at its best topped with a proper scoop of slightly creamy, finely chopped coleslaw. He veers expertly into Texas territory, too. Snappy Hill Country sausages and meaty beef ribs sell out early. Don’t sleep on the warm peach cobbler, either. The bad news? The barbecue is available only on Saturdays (with the exception of a monthly whole hog situation on Sunday). KIM SEVERSON
Bad Idea may well be what many seasoned diners thought when they heard there was a wine bar specializing in envelope-pushing Lao food opening inside an East Nashville church. But given the level of cooking here, the name turned out to be a self-aware joke, rather than a self-own. The concept coheres in the hands of the owner, Alex Burch, a seasoned sommelier and first-time restaurateur. He had the good sense to bring on Colby Rasavong as executive chef. The former top lieutenant to Sean Brock grew up working in his Laotian family’s Thai restaurant. He invests the weight of his life experience in food that stretches the boundaries of Southeast Asian cooking to the edge of Appalachia. And the wine list is wise beyond this restaurant’s years, mixing tantalizing obscurities, affordable crowd pleasers and connoisseur selections you’ll rarely find poured by the glass. BRETT ANDERSON
Any meal at this Kurdish restaurant should begin with an assortment of dips, ideally including the walnut-studded haydari, along with savory baked items like lavash, which comes straight from the oven, filled with hot air and covered in sesame seeds, and the spinach-and-cheese stuffed gozleme flatbread. From there, you’ll have to make some hard choices. Pide, stuffed cabbage and magnificent lamb stew poured straight from its clay pot? You’ll definitely want a mixed grill of kebabs and an order of cig kofte, the spicy, inscrutably delicious bulgur wheat balls. Yes, it’s a lot of food, so bring friends. That’s what everyone else seems to do at this convivial restaurant in the Little Kurdistan section of Nashville, home to the country’s largest Kurdish population. BRETT ANDERSON
The Sunday scene here speaks volumes: The wait is three hours, the chatter of Telugu fills the space and the tables are full of bisi bele bath, filter coffee and every variety of dosa and idli you can imagine. In a former Tex-Mex restaurant on the side of Highway 635, Simply South quickly earned the blessing (and then some) of Dallas’s sizable Indian population, thanks to a menu of dishes from Andhra Pradesh, in southern India, that tastes like home cooking from the chefs Venkatesawara Rao Muttavarapu, Manikandan Ramalingam and Anoop Muraleedharan. The flat discs of gunturu thatte idli, made with fermented rice, come steaming and soaked in ghee and podi, a deeply savory blend of dry lentils and chiles. There’s a dosa made of nutty millet, and another, the benne dosa, that is enriched with butter. All come with six different chutneys and a sinus-awakening sambar that you’ll want to guzzle from a mug. PRIYA KRISHNA
Barbs B Q honors centuries of barbecue traditions while also bucking them. The owner, Chuck Charnichart, has an impressive résumé that includes institutions like Franklin and Goldee’s, and she has opened her restaurant in the barbecue capital of Texas. But more crucially, she brings a distinct point of view that makes her food stand out in a crowded meat landscape. The pork ribs are inspired by the flavors of chamoy, the fruity, tangy condiment that she loved during her upbringing in the Rio Grande Valley, and brightened with a sprinkle of lime zest. The brisket is tender in all the right ways, with a smoky, peppery crust, but a piquant rub of chile de arbol and chile de guajillo brings an unexpected flash of heat. And the sides are not to be outdone, particularly the poblano-based green spaghetti, which tastes like fettuccine Alfredo with a huge, verdant personality. PRIYA KRISHNA
Located down the street from NASA (yes, that NASA), Viola and Agnes’ Neo Soul Cafe has poor signage but big flavors. A crab claw juts thrillingly out of the gumbo, along with a cloud of white rice and several fat rounds of okra. This is a soul-food dreamscape, suffused with the flavors of the sea; salty, snappy links of andouille sausage; and fat hunks of bone-in chicken just waiting to be discovered as you dig in. The fried catfish is so long it barely fits the plate, and every bite is as crisp as the last. Puffs of cornbread disappear into the various porky, spicy stews, and into your mouth. The chef Aaron Davis — who has Louisiana roots and named the restaurant after his grandmothers — has spent the last few years honing this rustic Southern cooking that embodies all the delights this planet has to offer. PRIYA KRISHNA
Through her award-winning cookbooks and acclaimed cooking classes, Najmieh Batmanglij has spent her 40-year career exploring the history and richness of ancient Persian and modern Iranian cuisines. In 2023, she brought these exquisite tastes to life by opening Joon (in partnership with Christopher Morgan, the ex-chef at the Middle Eastern standout Maydan) in this suburb of Washington, D.C. The cavernous space, accented in watery blues, is like a portal to another world, scented with rose water and saffron. Both are used exuberantly on the mostly classic menu, designed for sharing. Bring a crowd to savor heaping platters of lamb shoulder with fava beans and dill, duck fesenjoon with pomegranate and fried onions, and a stunning pistachio soup laced with sour orange that’s both creamy and tart. MELISSA CLARK
One of the best, most elegant bites I’ve eaten all year — slivers of golden tilefish with juniper and whey over sticky rice — wasn’t arranged on a ceramic plate in a fancy restaurant. It wasn’t served on a plate at all, but nestled into a paper bowl at a picnic table in front of Pen Druid Brewery in rural Virginia. That’s how it goes at Sumac, where all the proteins, dairy, vegetables and grains are grown within a 150-mile radius and cooked over a fire in a trailer parked in a field. The setting may be rustic, but Abigail and Dan Gleason’s cuisine is fiercely refined, with a menu that changes as the hyperlocal ingredients come into season, like the black walnuts paired with rabbit or the wild persimmons strewed over masa cake for dessert. MELISSA CLARK
It’s never a bad idea to start with a killer burger. And Familyfriend’s version — a paragon of the smashed double-cheese form plied heavily with Kewpie mayo, chopped pickles and onion — is already getting national renown. This Seattle newcomer describes itself as a “Vibe Dispensary on Beacon Hill,” but lucky for the neighborhood, it doesn’t stop at burgers and vibes. The owner, Elmer Dulla, is from Guam, and like the food of that island (and the team of cooks in the kitchen), the menu is proudly pan-Pacific. The diners lined up at opening time are there for the burger, sure, but also piquant chicken adobo tacos and batchoy “La Paz Style,” an envelopingly unctuous noodle soup of pig offal and fermented shrimp broth. The cocktail menu is similarly laced with flavors from around the Pacific, like calamansi and salted Chinese plum. And if you don’t end with the fried-to-order Typhoon Donuts with white-peach coulis, you’ve left your meal unfinished. BRIAN GALLAGHER
Kevin Tien is a Vietnamese American chef from Cajun Country. Those bare facts help explain many of the flavors found in the string of well-regarded restaurants he has opened in Washington, but they only begin to capture the breadth of the cooking at Moon Rabbit. Mr. Tien co-owns this latest, most fully realized restaurant with Judy Beltrano, its co-chef, and Susan Bae, the pastry chef whose desserts you don’t want to miss. The food is playfully creative, but their cooking chops are serious, as evidenced by dishes as varied as boudin-stuffed quail, luscious green curry sponge cake and pâté chaud worthy of Antonin Carême. That this collective is showcasing such excellence so close to the Capitol somehow makes everything all the more delicious. BRETT ANDERSON
It took the chefs (and life partners) Isabel Coss and Matt Conroy several years to bring Pascual to life. The wait was well worth it. Named for the patron saint of cooks beloved in Mexico, Pascual is both homey and elegant, exuding the stylish energy of Mexico City. Many of the best dishes are inspired by Ms. Coss’s upbringing in Mexico — fideos charged with black garlic and huitlacoche, an umami-fied version of the ones she would eat after school, and the giant, airy buñuelo that fills an entire plate and comes alongside a bitter, warm chocolate sauce and toasty cajeta. No table is complete without the lamb-neck barbacoa, brined in salt and orange juice, marinated in adobo, seared over the wood fire, cooked overnight and served over creamy ayocote beans. You’ll stuff the fatty, pull-apart strands of meat into homemade tortillas and understand why these chefs are in a league of their own — not just for Mexican cooking, but all cooking. PRIYA KRISHNA
Previous Lists
The Restaurant List 2023, 2022, 2021
The 100 Best New York City Restaurants from 2024, 2023
Methodology
Here’s how we scout restaurants for the list: We pay for all of our meals.We visit unannounced, using regular reservation booking tools or walking in.We do not seek or accept special treatment.
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Publish date : 2024-09-24 11:57:00
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