NEW YORK (press release) – Esquire has unveiled the year’s Best New Restaurants in America, the annual list of the most noteworthy new destinations from coast to coast. For this year’s edition, Esquire’s team of intrepid food writers – led by Lifestyle & Culture Director Kevin Sintumuang with support from Jeff Gordinier, Omar Mamoon, and Joshua David Stein – traveled coast to coast and dined at more than 200 new restaurants to find the 50 best. Two New Orleans restaurants have made the extensive list.
The Best New Restaurants in America list is on Esquire.com now and in the Winter 2023 issue, available at retail outlets by December 5.
Here are Esquire’s Best New Restaurants in America, 2023 – plus Chef of the Year, Comebacks of the Year, Pastry Chef of the Year, Pizza Joint of the Year, Rising Star of the Year, and Wine Person of the Year.
ESQUIRE’S BEST NEW RESTAURANTS IN AMERICA, 2023: (alphabetically by state)
ARIZONA
Chilte (Phoenix) – A neon sign shines in the night. And in the old lobby of the Egyptian Motor Hotel, chef Lawrence “LT” Smith brings a carnal joy to new Mexican cuisine. Squid-ink-marbled birria tacos, which LT and his Sinaloan wife, Aseret Arroyo, began selling three years ago at local farmers markets, arrive with the requisite mug of consommé, this one tipped into deranged flavor with miso. Each bite is a wonder.
Lom Wong (Phoenix) – The Molken sea-bass curry recipe was given as a sign of affection by a village elder from the ethnic minority in Southern Thailand to Alex Martin, the bespectacled co-owner of Lom Wong, who lived in Thailand for 14 years, where he met his partner (in life and the restaurant), Yokata “Sunny” Martin, whose mother also happened to be a cook of great, though private, renown. A third of the menu is devoted to recipes inspired by Sunny’s mother and grandmother from Chang Ria; these are herby, vervy and fine. A third is from central Thailand. And a third is devoted to seldom seen Moklen specialties from the south. Care is equitably distributed.
CALIFORNIA
Auro (Calistoga) – While there’s no shortage of places in wine country that will give you the luxe tasting menu treatment, Auro, helmed by Chef Rogelio Garcia, does so with precision and California ease. Chef Garcia, who’s had stints at Napa stalwarts The French Laundry and Cyrus, and his team prepare their dishes with remarkable finesse. But ultimately, it’s the way the flavors sing that make you confident you’ve found the perfect place to end the day.
Burdell (Oakland) – Chef Geoff Davis wants us to reconsider everything we think we know about soul food (it’s not all heavy) and California cuisine (it’s not all figs on a plate). Combining his fine-dining chops with his interpretation of the nostalgic food of his youth, Davis’s retro-cool restaurant is flipping the script.
Chez Noir (Carmel) – Chef Jonny Black and his wife and front-of-house manager live on the second floor above their restaurant, located on the bottom floor of a charming old Craftsman house just off the edge of downtown Carmel-by-the-Sea. They’re throwing a dinner party every night, and you’re invited. The sea-centric, French meets Spanish menu changes often and with the season. It’s as romantic as it sounds.
Dalida (San Francisco) – At Dalida, located in a historic beautiful brick building in the Presidio, you’ll find a massive menu that celebrates all cultures and foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant. What husband-and-wife co-chefs Sayat and Laura Ozilmaz are attempting to do is tell the story of an Istanbul that could have been, a world where everyone is welcome and happily co-exists. The idea is idealistic—but something to strive for now more than ever.
Dunsmoor (Los Angeles) – Chef Brian Dunsmoor’s always buzzing, eponymous Glassell Park restaurant is in an art deco building, with golden candlelight. It’s a feast of Southern-inspired deep cuts that feel like they are from another time. It’s a time-traveling, American heritage fantasy that feels more real than anything Hollywood could ever produce.
Hitokuchi (San Diego) – From the street, you might see the drive-through for a fast-food spot, but Hitokuchi is squeezed in the back. Pass through the heavy door and you’ll find some of the most exquisite cooking in San Diego’s Convoy District. Chef John Hong does not hold back when it comes to premium ingredients, and the prices reflect that. But his uni-and-caviar dish is a local legend for a reason.
Kiln (San Francisco) – Deep in the kitchen, at the back of the bare and spare, dark and moody, high-ceilinged, concrete-walled space, chef John Wesley asks himself how much he can do with the absolute least. Kiln is a study in restraint and an exercise in fine-dining minimalism.
Mabel’s Gone Fishing (San Diego) – Take Iberian cuisine, give it a touch of the California coast, and casually wrap them up in a neighborhood bar and restaurant, and you’ve got Mabel’s. There are surprises to the simplest things. The non-negotiable, when it’s on the menu, is the swordfish schnitzel, arguably one of the best uses of the fish, ever.
Poltergeist (Los Angeles) – The midi blips of retro video games and the fuzz of indie rock are the fitting accompaniment to the stoner-on-acid fun that chef Diego Argoti summons at Poltergeist, inside Echo Park’s bar/arcade Button Mash. Expect fun, not fright, despite the ominous name. Poltergeist is haunting, but like Casper the Friendly Ghost, you’ll want to hang with it.
Rory’s Place (Ojai) – The food is a bit French, a bit Italian, a bit Cape Cod, and yet 100% Californian. The sisters who run the place, Maeve and Rory McAuliffe, understand all that jazz about terroir: you could write a West Coast tone poem by assembling the names of ingredients from their menu. But they also understand that the concept of California cuisine has very little to do with mission statements and a whole lot to do with how a place makes you feel.
Ubuntu (Los Angeles) – Shenarri Freeman, Esquire’s Rising Star chef of 2021, made a name for herself serving vegan soul food at Cadence in New York. With her second restaurant, she applies her talent for creating craveworthy plant-based dishes to the broad cuisine of West Africa.
Valle (Oceanside) – Valle is nothing like most Mexican restaurants you’ll find in this part of California. It takes a modernist yet still fun and soulful approach to the cuisine, specifically of the valle in its name, the Guadalupe Valley. Chef Roberto Alcocer’s tasting menu is one of poetic riffs on the essences of Mexican cooking.
Yess (Los Angeles) – It’s cliché to refer to restaurants as “temples,” but Yess actually feels like one, with its beamed ceilings and hushed sonics, its white-robed servers and metal pots that emit fragrant steam and smoke like a sort of culinary incense. Chef Junya Yamasaki stands behind a counter and cooks with priestly vigilance; he looks like a man who can perform miracles, and he kind of does. Yamasaki listens to the seasons, and you should listen to him.
COLORADO
Sap Sua (Denver) – Let Sap Sua, the restaurant that chef Ni Ngyuen and his partner and co-chef, Anna Nguyen, just opened, be a comfort to working parents: Every humble childhood memory could hold inspiration. Here you’ll find classic Vietnamese dishes transformed with brio and love.
FLORIDA
Erba (Miami) – There is a grandness to the room at Erba. It makes you want to settle in for the evening and bathe in the lushness and hospitality from Chef Niven Patel, partner Mo Alkassar, and their gracious team. But it’s the Florida-tinged Italian cuisine that will make you a regular. There is an intense respect for ingredients that shines through in Patel’s cooking. We all know that the greatest Italian food is simplicity squared. Erba offers that, and so much more.
Maty’s (Miami) – Chef Valerie Chang’s ceviches and tiraditos, a Peruvian dish where fish is sliced sashimi style and dressed with vibrant sauces, is like going from a 2D theater to a 4D one where objects fly at you, the seats rumble, mist fills the air, and for those brief moments you are in another reality.
GEORGIA
Gigi’s Italian Kitchen (Atlanta) – The menu, executed by Jacob Armando and Eric Brooks, leaves little room for choice. Two entrees, one pasta, a salad, a beef carpaccio, polenta with caviar, creme fraiche and trout roe, and a tiramisu. Brooks and Armando are virtuosic, indeed obsessed, in execution. The food puts you in such good humor that you can’t help but make friends and end the evening sharing slugs of amaro passed down the bar by once and future strangers who, for tonight, are your paesans.
Mujō (Atlanta) – J. Trent Harris, the young chef who spent years at Sushi Ginza Onodera in New York and Tokyo before opening the 15-seat omakase restaurant Mujō, credits the Atlanta airport for the sterling ingredients. Hairy crabs, delivered live from Hokkaido, are split open, their meat mixed with tuna-infused sauce in an early meal zensai. As a practitioner of Edomae sushi, Harris isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel with his nigiri but rather ensure its smooth revolutions.
HAWAII
Nami Kaze (Honolulu) – If only more brunches were the kind of Hawaiian-Asian-meets-mainland-diner mashup that chef Jason Peel puts out at Nami Kaze. There’s no better way to refuel after a morning on the water than an afternoon here.
ILLINOIS
Asador Bastian (Chicago) – Stepping inside the elegant four-story townhouse that Asador Bastian is ensconced within feels like trespassing, but any impostor doubts subside once an ice-cold martini is handed to you in an oversized shot glass. Chef Doug Psaltis and co-owner Hsing Chen’s place is sneakily one of the most exciting steak joints in America.
Warlord (Chicago) – Chef Trevor Fleming, alongside his comrades Emily Kraszyk and John Lupton, is going to battle every night until 1:00 a.m., even on Mondays. This is a late-night spot, for the industry, by the industry. It’s loud. It’s packed. It’s rocking. Sit at the counter and watch the magic that happens when fire meets meat.
KENTUCKY
Nami (Louisville) – At Nami, chef Edward Lee’s returned to his roots, more seasoned and right on time. Hansik, or Korean cuisine, is peaking and Nami’s menu might be familiar to anyone who’s eaten in K-Town. But Lee’s deep knowledge, invention and skill as well as the sure hand of Yeon-Hee Chung, a Louisville halmoni Lee’s brought on to run the jangs and ferments, means Nami delivers the deeply satisfying gamchilmat, profound flavor that Louisville’s been missing.
LOUISIANA
Dakar Nola – A meal at Dakar Nola comes with stories. With each course of the tasting menu, chef Serigne Mbaye comes out of the kitchen to address the room. All of this happens in the front room of a traditional shotgun house, which makes the night feel like a dinner party that is as fun as it is enlightening.
Hungry Eyes (New Orleans) – Eating at 80s-themed Hungry Eyes feels like you’ve stepped into a music video by Duran Duran. The Patrick Nagel pop art on the walls, the pink neon glow from the mirror behind the bar—it’s lit. Literally. The team has cooked up a lively, stonery DIY dinner menu. Who are they? The same folks who brought you NOLA’s stoner darling, Turkey & the Wolf.
MASSACHUSETTS
Lehrhaus (Boston) – Lehrhaus is a Jewish tavern and house of learning. It’s chef Alex Artinian’s celebration of Jewish diasporic cuisine. Both Ashkenazi and Sephardim are represented: Deviled eggs, Haminados-style, are aged in coffee and topped with pickled mustard seeds. A herring tartine with the bright spice of pickled peppers along the silvery fish. Lehrhaus is both delicious and a revelation.
MISSOURI
Sado (St. Louis) – Chaos is the groundwater from which Nick Bognar springs. His new restaurant Sado, a follow-up to Esquire’s 2020 Best New Restaurant Indo, has all the decorum of a rugby scrum and all the cakewalk swagger of a victor. On the diner-thick menu is the brilliant confluence of his Thai- and Japanese-background. Plenty of labor goes on unseen – there’s a large kitchen with an area for aging fish – but it’s worn lightly, given freely and tasted with joy.
NEW JERSEY
Lita (Aberdeen) – The hearth at Lita takes constant tending with a vigorously waved fan, the feeding of charcoal with a shovel, the movement of chicken and octopus. It is the thing you least expect to see inside of a strip mall in Central Jersey next to an old bowling alley, but then again, no one expected that a destination-worthy Iberian restaurant would be here. But there is depth to Neilly Robinson and Chef David Viana’s menu beyond the hearth. The drinks, from Ricardo Rodriguez, have just enough of a culinary touch to swerve along with the food.
NEW MEXICO
Corner Office (Taos) – A decade ago, Zak Pelaccio and Jori Jayne Emde kick-started a culinary boom in New York’s Hudson Valley with a restaurant called Fish & Game. Not long after Pelaccio won a James Beard Award, they sold it, moved to Taos, and hit reset. Quirky and unlike anything Taos has ever seen, Corner Office is the après-ski lodge of your dreams: a warren for natural wines and funky comfort food.
NEW YORK
Café Carmellini (Manhattan) – It’s taken 14 years for chef Andrew Carmellini and his partners at Noho Hospitality Group, Luke Olstrom and Josh Picard, to bestow his name upon a restaurant. Cafe Carmellini, which opened in a family mansion-turned-hotel on Fifth Avenue, is a grand restaurant, a high-ceilinged sensory casino where everyone’s a winner. The place begs for romance; in its glow the years sluff off and every joke is witty and every morsel manna. Like Boulud, his mentor, Carmellini has always been adept at striding the line between populism (what the people want) and prophecy (what people don’t yet know they want). Here he’s a hitman: executing a deeply personal menu with precision and flair.
Casa Susanna (Leeds) – Nowhere on the East Coast will you have better Mexican food than what Chef Efrén Hernández is cooking at Casa Susanna. His menu (the squash-blossom tetela, the mack- erel al pastor, the tamal de chocolat) is a moan-inducing marvel.
Claud (Manhattan) – The chill basement vibes of Claud kick in—it’s like one of those natural wine bars in Paris or Copenhagen where it seems like bohemian life can go no higher. Order nearly all of chef/owner Joshua Pinsky’s menu, from the towering mushroom mille-feuille to the chicken liver agnolotti to the six-layer devil’s food cake. You know that feeling you get in Europe where you feel like they’ve figured the good life out? You can get that here, too.
Foul Witch (Manhattan) – A crazy name for a restaurant, but it clicks when you eat there. Italian cuisine can be held back by the weight of its own traditions. The team at Foul Witch dares to imagine what would happen if you conjured Italian cooking anew in a stoned brainstorming session. Everything tastes a little funkier.
Foxface Natural (Manhattan) – You could surmise that this idiosyncratic restaurant is the result of combining nearly unlimited capital, thanks to owners Sivan Lahat and Ori Kushnir’s previous lives as tech entrepreneurs, with chef David Santos’s experience in the kitchen of David Bouley, but it’s more fun to simply join in Foxface Natural’s dance at the edge of the possible. The menu is pure weirdo joy, a blip in the gray. It’s best just to devour it all.
Ilis (Brooklyn) RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR – Mads Refslund, a cofounder of Noma, the mothership of New Nordic cuisine and an apex of luxe dining, bases his dream restaurant on a concept he’s been incubating for nearly a decade: Locally sourced ingredients are graced by either the fire of burning wood or the raw coldness of ice. Housed in a former rubber factory in Brooklyn, Ilis conjures its magic honestly. Yes, it’s fire and ice, but it’s also nose to tail, smoked and fermented, upcycled and DIY. All servers are cooks and vice versa, with one staffer switching every few days, which adds to the “gather ’round the counter” energy of the space. There is a tasting menu, but there’s also a choose-your-own-adventure à la carte option and, just starting on Saturdays, relaxed family-style meals.
Oiji Mi (Manhattan) – Chef Brian Kim’s golden-hued Flatiron restaurant is that rare place that’s both delicate and kinetic. High-end riffs on Korean cuisine are, thankfully, no longer rare. But riffs done this well are nigh-on impossible to find.
Tatiana (Manhattan) – Chef Kwame Onwuachi was involved in crafting every element of the experience, from the menu to the playlist to the design of the space. And what he and his team created is a spot that feels simultaneously exclusive and inclusive. As in: Here’s the best party in the city, but everybody’s invited. In New York, there’s nothin’ you can’t do.
Torrisi (Manhattan) – In a score of dishes, chef Rich Torrisi synthesizes New York City into dinner. There’s a glassy-skinned, dry-aged duck on top of a mulberry agrodolce; chopped liver with Manischewitz; an American-ham plate with San Gennaro–inspired zeppole. The restaurant is an exultation of all that the city can be.
NORTH CAROLINA
Ajja (Raleigh) – Ajja tells the story of the Indian diaspora through food, blending borders and reminding us that we have more in common than we do have differences. There’s no other restaurant quite like Ajja, because there’s no other chef (and musician) quite like Cheetie Kumar – she can shred on guitar and she can cook. Sit outside in the back patio and take in the fun and funky vibe.
OHIO
Nolia Kitchen (Cincinnati) – Chef Jeffery Harris is bringing the full press of New Orleans flavors to his small Over-the-Rhine restaurant. His cooking bundles convention and invention into a restless ever-evolving menu.
PENNSYLVANIA
Honeysuckle Provisions (Philadelphia) – Omar Tate is an artist as much as he is a chef. For years he has illuminated passages in Black history with the edible performance art of his Honeysuckle pop-ups, but with Honeysuckle Provisions in West Philly, he and partner Cybille St.Aude-Tate get down to the brass tacks of nourishing a neighborhood.Billed as an Afrocentric grocery and café, Provisions provides the makings of a great day: steaming breakfast sandwiches and juicy plantain snack cakes, tubs of Haitian potato salad and a made-from-scratch turkey hoagie that’s as delicious as any American sandwich you can sink your teeth into.
My Loup (Philadelphia) – You should start with the seafood platter. It’s neither a monument to excess nor a humble plate of oysters. It is, like most dishes at My Loup, sort of French, a little Quebecois, and all fun. Married chefs Amanda Shulman (of the lively supper club Her Place, an Esquire2022 Best New Restaurant) and Alex Kemp flex their skills big-time here. But it’s the witty menu that really showcases the chefs’ talents: Who can resist deep-fried “Philly balls” stuffed with roast pork sandwich fixings, or a dish where you’re instructed to wrap slices of cold roast beef around fries as a schoolkid would? My Loup is guaranteed to cure any bad days.
Pietramala (Philadelphia) – With Pietramala, chef Ian Graye and his crew deliver the Fugazi of veganism: honest (no fake meats!), straight-edge (if you want wine, bring a bottle), and delicious enough to make you pogo up and down. But underneath? Technical precision and intense passion.
RHODE ISLAND
Gift Horse (Providence) – Seafood spots in New England tend to be encrusted with centuries of tradition. Nothing wrong with that. But at Gift Horse, chefs Ben Sukle and Sky Kim scrape off the barnacles and start anew. The result is a reinterpretation of what a raw bar can be.
SOUTH CAROLINA
Scoundrel (Greenville) – French fare with flair. Born-and-raised in Greenville, Joe Cash left to cook in the kitchens of Per Se, Noma, and the original Torrisi before coming back to his hometown. Enter his handsome tall brick-walled space, dip into the burgundy-colored leather booth—order that bottle to match, of course—and go for it.
TEXAS
Este (Austin) – You might think you’re on the Mexican coast, but alas, you’re in good ol’ landlocked central Texas. East Austin, to be exact. Este is a love letter to all things marisco from the affable chef Fermin Nunez, the same jovial giant behind the beloved Suerte nearby.
WASHINGTON
Bistro Estelle (Bellingham) – It’s not that it took a trio of EMP-alums to put Bellingham on the map, the small town located north of Seattle and just shy of the Canadian border—that happened back in 1903 when the town was incorporated. But the chefs’ culinary credentials help make the town undoubtedly more delicious. Bistro Estelle is their third restaurant in less than three years. The first restaurant—Carnal—is a large meaty live-fire mecca; their second was a more fast-casual burger spot located adjacent; but their latest venture is a prettier space, where the French-forward fare is a bit more delicate and refined.
Hamdi (Seattle) – Not all kebabs are created equally. See exhibit A: Hamdi, a pop-up-turned restaurant by a couple of Singlethread alums—Katrina Schult and Berk Guldal. Here they’re recreating their version of glorious adana kabab using hand-cut lamb belly.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Chang Chang – Whenever you’re in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., make it a priority to eat at one of Peter Chang’s restaurants. If such urgency seems odd for Chinese food, then you’ve never dined at a Chang eatery, where he takes familiar classics to a new level but without any fusiony gimmicks.Chang Chang is his first restaurant in D.C. proper, and it is wonderfully wild. The desserts from pastry legend Pichet Ong are also not to be missed—at the very least, get his Asian spiced cookies to go.
CHEF OF THE YEAR: BROOKS HEADLEY (Superiority Burger, New York, NY) – With the way the climate has been going lately, the future is probably plant-based. But Brooks Headley would like to reassure you that the future can be something you crave. Is Superiority
Burger just another cool AF restaurant on Avenue A or is it a global mission statement in miniature?
COMEBACK OF THE YEAR, EAST COAST: SUPERIORITY BURGER (New York, NY) – The second iteration of Superiority Burger—with way more seats, a longer menu, and décor that pays tribute to the weird vibe that has never quite been squeezed out of the East Village—has hit Avenue A. Malted date shakes and a sweet potato with labneh and pickles? This is the food of the past and the future and, more than anything, the now.
COMEBACK OF THE YEAR, WEST COAST: BAROO (Los Angeles, CA) – This version is decidedly all grown up, and, fittingly, the menu is represented as phases of life from birth to rebirth. We like this phase of Baroo, which, in the realm of tasting-menu spots, is one of the most exhilarating experiences you can have for $110.
PASTRY CHEF OF THE YEAR: MAYA-CAMILLE BROUSSARD (Justice of the Pies, Chicago, IL) – The traditional thinking goes that making pastries is more of a science, but when you have the stuff that Maya-Camille Broussard has, you get the sense that it’s one of the most joyous and damn delicious things a chef can do. There is no doubt that MCB has a big heart—just read her book, which spotlights folks trying to pave the way for social justice, or visit her place on Chicago’s South Side and see how beloved the shop is. But it’s her elegantly creative flavor combinations that will leave you hooked.
PIZZA JOINT OF THE YEAR: NONNO’S FAMILY PIZZA TAVERN (Houston, TX) –Nonno’s in Houston evokes the retro pizza parlors of youth, Pac-Man and all, but the
pizza is much, much better. It specializes in the ultra-trendy cracker-thin Chicago-style pizza you might have heard about lately, and it does a damn good job.
RISING STAR OF THE YEAR: EFRÉN HERNÁNDEZ (Casa Susanna, Leeds, NY) – Ask Efrén Hernández about masa. He conjures his from scratch with different hues of heirloom corn, and he can speak with passion and precision about how the masa changes each morning according to the weather and the seasons. Everything he cooks is an expression of love for his heritage.
WINE PERSON OF THE YEAR: RUTH FREY (Dalida, San Francisco, CA) – Dalida’s Wine Director Ruth Frey goes out of her way to seek rarer and more difficult-to-source wines from other places not commonly known for wine like Armenia or Turkey, not just for the sake of esotericism, but to show us that these regions can make good wines, and oftentimes more interesting wines, than your standard classic French and Italian wines. Frey wants you to drink differently and deliciously.
For more information on Esquire’s 2023 Best New Restaurants, click here. And follow Kevin Sintumuang (@sintumuang) on Instagram for additional news about this year’s picks.
