America’s Best Restaurants 2025 – The New York Times

Everyone is having fun at airy Bayonet, where Alabama oysters from Dauphin Island fight it out at the raw bar with East Coast stalwarts. The tight menu features a rotating roster of sustainable fish selected and cooked by Rob McDaniel, who opened the meat-centric Southern grill Helen next door with his wife, Emily, during the pandemic. He uses caramel sauce to punch up a banh mi stuffed with Gulf shrimp, makes schnitzel out of cobia and pairs an acidic fruit salsa with fatty Ora King salmon collar. Sides are seasonal, like a bowl of lady peas, sweet Marconi peppers and cherry tomatoes, but the hand-cut fries with lemon aioli are always around. Candace Foster makes dessert, which one lucky summer night meant a glazed peach hand pie and “watermelon icebox” — a perfect slab of semifreddo with juicy cubed watermelon, granita and a kiss of olive oil. KIM SEVERSON

Inside a Los Angeles bungalow, hedged by banana trees and bougainvillea, Baby Bistro composes its frisky little menu — so small you should order the whole thing, putting together an unceremonious tasting that zips by in the twinkling warren of the dining room. The chef Miles Thompson swaps in new dishes often, which means a great one could disappear at any moment (like the cucumbers and raw squid, aged to the texture of a gummy candy, prickling with yuzu kosho). The upside is that he and the co-owner Andy Schwartz have built a restaurant that feels inviting, unpredictable and alive, and where all of the wine bottles are under $100. TEJAL RAO

The chef Eric Bost and John Resnick, the co-owners of Lilo, are doing their part to transform Carlsbad, a beach town preserved in amber, into a dining destination. Served out of the original Morey Boogie Board factory from the 1970s, the 12-course tasting menu sticks every landing, starting with sips and bites in the garden, including a glass of delicate clarified tomato water that immediately piques the senses. Lush lumps of rock crab arrived in a flying saucer made of ice and covered with kohlrabi shaved thin as a layer of frost. It’s just one stop on a tour of global coastlines — wild-caught turbot blanketed in a sabayon of Pineau des Charentes takes you to Brittany, while later on pops of yuzu and roses conjure Japan. Don’t let the minimalist room fool you, the food here goes all out. ELEANORE PARK

Nozomi Mori shops at the Santa Monica Farmers Market to make her excellent pickles, and turns the first vegetables of the season into juicy tempura with a neon flutter of bottarga. Each morning, she makes mochi filled with sweet red bean paste, serving these tender wagashi at the end of meal with the matcha that she whisks. If none of this sounds like your typical sushi omakase, that’s because it isn’t. The rice is clean and light, and the fish is high quality and masterfully cut, but the real thrill is in the way Ms. Mori builds on the structure and flow of the omakase in her own distinct style, moving you from one captivating bite to the next. TEJAL RAO

The chef Travis Lett, who opened nearby Gjelina and defined its sensibility of effortless seasonality and abundance, now runs this very Los Angeles izakaya with Ian Robinson, where the food and drink are both powerful draws. RVR (pronounced “river”) is on the cool, commercial strip of Abbot Kinney, but it’s all warmth inside when you’re communing with the sweet, vivid clam ramen or grilled duck tsukune. The kitchen is focused, technically precise and, this being a Lett joint, particularly focused on vegetables — this section of the menu holds the most surprises and delights, and goes longer than some restaurants’ entire menus. TEJAL RAO

Hidden on an industrial block in West Oakland, this 12-seat wonder is one of the most competitive reservations in the Bay Area. Though, if you’re lucky enough to cross through the woven noren into the intimate dining room, you’ll find only hospitality. Sarah Cooper and Alan Hsu, who met in the kitchen at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in the Hudson Valley, bring levity to the 12- to 14-course menu — whether it’s a soulful housemade water kimchi paired with halibut crudo and discreetly ornamented with puffed buckwheat and kumquat, or lap cheong snuggled inside a cloud of steamed brioche. (Spoiler: This is actually the most perfect hot dog in disguise.) Bolts of dopamine strike with dessert. Shiso and perilla ice creams transform with each crunch of cacao nibs, and a “triple delight blueberry pie” reminds you of what the right chefs can do with access to California’s bounty. ELEANORE PARK

Originally opened in 2019, Verjus was shuttered by the pandemic. Reopened last November, version 2.0 is exactly the restaurant the city needs: cosmopolitan, grown up and delightfully non-tech. More A.P.C. than All Birds. Michael and Lindsay Tusk, the hit-making restaurant couple behind nearby Quince and Cotogna, call it a wine bar, but that’s really up to you. You could easily pop by the buzzing Jackson Square bistro for an after-work gibson at the bar. Or meet a date at the window counter for a glass of grower Champagne and oeufs manteiko, a Pacific version of the classic oeufs mayonnaise spiked with spicy pollock roe. Or make a meal of perfectly executed bistro classics like leeks vinaigrette, boudin blanc and steak au poivre. The food, the wine, the room, the city, all vibing. BRIAN GALLAGHER

The menu here raises an intrigued eyebrow. The chef Josh Niernberg goes for playful, even risky, flavor combinations, and you will wonder if he can pull them off. He does. Mr. Niernberg calls his cooking “seasonal Colorado cuisine,” which means dashes of Southwestern and Mexican flavors throughout. Sunchoke hush puppies, made with nixtamalized corn from in-state, were paired with whipped Cotija cheese and guajillo orange honey. A maitake mushroom pizza was topped with ricotta — no surprise there — but also epazote. And the truly exceptional Angus “filet,” actually a rib cap roulade, came atop a shallow pool of Jasper Hill cheese reminiscent of a queso and was acidified with a miso chimichurri. It’s just a magnetic restaurant, with the most stylish dining room this side of the Rockies, or at least on the Western Slope. BRIAN GALLAGHER

The chef Johnny Curiel earned a Michelin star last year at the small-but-mighty Alma Fonda Fina, with dishes inspired by his family’s cooking. Just next door, his mezcaleria is the vivacious younger sibling, inspired by the worldly cuisine of Mexico City. A cocktail is table stakes, and a mezcal old-fashioned with fig and tamarind notes will do the trick. Everyone in the room will order the tostada de toro — made with the tuna belly hanging in the drying fridge behind the bar — as should you. The richness of the fatty fish and smashed avocado is punched up with charred habanero mayonnaise and sesame chile oil. The aguachile, made with Santa Barbara uni, Hokkaido scallops and mandarin orange, holds the briny lushness of the seafood in suspension with sweet, tangy citrus notes. But the sneaky star was the burrita de chicharrón. It’s just crisp skinned pork, pickled white onions and guacamole wrapped in a housemade flour tortilla. And it’s everything. BRIAN GALLAGHER

This is the New England seafood shack you’ve always wanted, whether you knew it or not. Dockside on the Mystic River, Haring’s looks like the former marine fueling station and lobster pound that it is: the kind of place where you can put your feet up on the wooden railing, spread some smoked bluefish on Ritz crackers, eat a fried cod sandwich or demolish a succulent steamed lobster. A guy from the local package store — New Englandese for liquor store — will even bring you a cold six-pack or bottle of rosé. But you could also opt for the clapboard dining room and eat things like seared tuna with jasmine rice and pickled cucumbers, steak frites or fragrant squash curry. Haring’s chef Chris Vanasse and Port of Call’s Renee Touponce are chef-partners in 85th Day, the Mystic-area restaurant group that’s glowing up the area. JULIA MOSKIN

Kwame Onwuachi’s follow-up to Tatiana in New York City is bigger and splashier, announcing an empire on the rise. The name comes from a people in Mali famed for their knowledge of reading the stars, and the dining room has a celestial feel, with a stylish play of shadows and lights captured in rough cast-glass globes whose intentional imperfections are their own kind of beauty. Mr. Onwuachi gives the district its due with dishes that celebrate crab (hello, Chesapeake Bay) and the legacy of Ben’s Chili Bowl (founded in 1958 on U Street, once known as “Black Broadway”). But he also roams freely through histories both personal and political, tracing the threads of the Black diaspora — from Ethiopian shiro and West African jollof rice to Louisiana-style shrimp, rich with roasted lobster oil and enough butter to bring you closer to heaven — and making a case for America in all its convolutions and complexities. LIGAYA MISHAN

For Michael Rafidi, Arabic cuisine is a bottomless well. He has made that clear at Albi, the renowned restaurant that began the chef’s public exploration of his Palestinian American roots, and Yellow, his Levantine bakery-cafes, one of which doubles as a visionary Middle Eastern flatbread pizzeria. La’ Shukran risks trying to add too many concepts to the portfolio. Yet it succeeds, spectacularly. La’ Shukran is an atmospheric speakeasy with great cocktails, a witty, thoughtful wine bar and a mezze bistro. Trout roe spills over the tops of jibneh-stuffed falafel. Dumplings come plumped with fava beans. Whole-fried quail are dunked in chile oil. Mr. Rafidi strides fancifully from Paris across the Levant, imagining his way into the cafe cultures of Beirut and the West Bank, where his grandparents are from. His food is the star, and a luminous expression of love. BRETT ANDERSON

Walk into Sunny’s and you find yourself almost immediately back outside, admiring a banyan tree shading an interior patio surrounded by dining rooms, their windows flung open. The restaurant is, improbably, every bit as good as it looks. Yes, this modern steakhouse in the Little River section of Miami will satisfy your craving for Wagyu and foie gras. Just bear in mind that the extensive menu contains no dead weight. The kitchen, overseen by the executive chef Aaron Brooks, effectively powers a destination steakhouse in addition to a blue-chip Italian restaurant (the pasta is superb) and a seafood restaurant that flexes its muscles with delicacy — order pineapple hot sauce with oysters and at least one crudo. Factor in the spectacular pollo a la brassa and you’ve got something new under the sun: a flamboyant South Florida steakhouse that feels worth it, even after you settle the bill. BRETT ANDERSON

In Atlanta, some of the best cooking happens when chefs build new cuisines out of classic Southern ingredients. Karl Gorline, a Mississippi native, mixes his dedication to tweezer-food precision with his Bavarian heritage to create a refined, unexpected menu of what might best be called Southern Alpine. The room has a cozy elegance punctuated by a white taxidermied mountain goat. Mr. Gorline’s version of Alain Passard’s Arpège egg mixes butternut squash custard and pine. His take on Atlanta’s favorite spice comes in the form of lemon pepper frog’s legs. His North Georgia trout crudo pairs plum and amaranth, but the real surprise dish is Bolognese made from fermented carrot with a touch of horseradish and mint. The casual bar next door continues the theme with flammekueche and venison brats, but you can also get a perfect non-Alpine broccoli Caesar. KIM SEVERSON

One of the most irresistible Southern dishes in the country right now can be found in the Beverly neighborhood of Chicago, about 12 miles south of the Loop and 530 miles north of Memphis. It’s the oxtail gumbo at Sanders BBQ, a soup-stew special whose spoon-coating gravy one can only hope is eventually available by the pint. Like all of the meat on the menu, the gumbo carries the whiff of hardwood smoke. The owner James Sanders’ staff, notably the pitmaster-chef Nick Kleutsch, is smoking some of the best barbecue outside Texas. In the process, Mr. Sanders advances a local barbecue tradition that dates to the Great Migration. Don’t skip the rib tips, the peach tea-smoked chicken wings or, if you’re here in the summer, the cucumber-watermelon salad. BRETT ANDERSON

The chef Norman Fenton is serious about process, whether it’s spherification or nixtimalization, both of which make their way to the plate across 12 or so exhilarating courses. He’s also not afraid of some fun (or real spice). The cheffed-up versions of Latin dishes — a chicken liver taco dorado, or a pumpernickel quesadilla with black garlic — are ingenious, but retain the elemental appeal of their traditional antecedents. The “Michelada” was actually an oyster topped with Clamato pearls and beer foam, but still played on the major chords of the traditional drink. The ravioli was a summer stunner, to behold and to taste, filled with earthy huitlacoche, swaddled in a sweet-corn foam and ringed with a tawny corona of fried corn silk. (After all that, the kitchen finds the creative reserves for a taco omakase, available only at 10 p.m.) The cooking here is a feat, and not soon forgotten. BRIAN GALLAGHER

The turkey legs at this exceptional-if-niche barbecue joint in northwest Kansas City demand your full attention — and then reward it. You’ll appreciate how the dark meat beneath the taut browned skin is suffused with moisture. There isn’t much room to eat inside, though this convivial restaurant with food-truck roots has personality to spare. Some of it flows from audacious items like the turkey leg stuffed with mac and cheese. Much of it comes from staff members, like the pitmaster working outside, greeting passers-by with sayings like “We ain’t playing, Jack,” while holding a Polish sausage in his tongs. The burnt ends are excellent, as are the stewed greens, flavored with (shocker) turkey meat. BRETT ANDERSON

Before Emeril Lagasse was “Emeril,” there was Emeril’s, the flagship restaurant that propelled the chef to mononymous fame. Following a renovation in 2023, the 35-year-old institution is now the domain of another Emeril: Emeril John Lagasse IV, better known as E.J., the restaurant’s new co-owner and chef and the founder’s 22-year-old son. Skepticism that E.J. is too green to land Emeril’s pivot to a pricey tasting-menu place is erased by a suite of canapés that includes an oyster po’ boy and daube glacé, both about the size of an adult’s thumb. Too cute by half? Not the way this kitchen executes. Many courses reference the restaurant’s past — the barbecue shrimp and banana cream pie live on. And anxious Emeril fans should be relieved to find that there is an à la carte menu in the bar. The wine cellar is one of the South’s deepest. BRETT ANDERSON

Saint Claire sits near a high levee on the West Bank of the Mississippi River, in a corner of the Algiers neighborhood that feels like a rural idyll, just 15 minutes from the French Quarter. The short journey to the century-old property, converted by the chef Melissa Martin and Cassi Dymond, is part of your meal’s narrative. The restaurant inverts the magic of Mosquito Supper Club, Ms. Martin’s celebrated east bank restaurant, where the coastal Cajun cooking appears perfectly cast for its city dwelling. Here you’ll find seasonal produce like figs and muscadine grapes, pickled peaches and sautéed plums, gilding plates of rabbit rillettes, rare tuna paillard and duck confit. It’s as if the trip to this stylish country refuge of antiques, oak trees and dark roux gumbo passed through Western Europe. Once again, the artistry of Ms. Martin’s food is enhanced by the craft and intelligence invested in the setting. BRETT ANDERSON

Though this impossibly charming inn first welcomed guests in 1890, the current version opened in May of this year. The chef Cortney Burns, who made her name at Bar Tartine in San Francisco, curates a rotating roster of chefs-in-residence who preside over the kitchen for a month at a time. In mid-July, that was the husband-and-wife team of Ben Wheatley and Whitney Otawka, who most recently ran the kitchen at the Greyfield Inn on Cumberland Island, Ga. A lobster and fennel chowder, with diminutive hush puppies scattered throughout, made the culinary connection up the seaboard. Ruby-red tiles of Maine bluefin crudo hummed with salted radish and Aleppo pepper. And the roasted monkfish with clams and tomato broth had a bouillabaisse-goes-Down East notion to it. The menu in the cozy tavern room, including the unmissable grilled skewers of local eel, stays relatively constant. BRIAN GALLAGHER

The chef Sam Richman ditched the haute cuisine halls of Jean-Georges and the Fat Duck for Midcoast Maine, opening Sammy’s Deluxe with a clear mission: to celebrate the state’s pristine ingredients without any high-end fuss. Mr. Richman forages his own mushrooms, pickles local alewives (those overlooked fish from the herring family) and smokes his own haddock snacks, which you can order with a side of sweet homemade brown bread. Ketchup cans double as wine buckets in this charmingly no-frills space, where homemade blood sausage meets late-spring asparagus and every dish tells a story. It’s skilled cooking with a whimsical twist, proving that sometimes the best restaurants happen when chefs focus on cooking the food they want to eat. MELISSA CLARK

A perfect pub requires excellent draft beers, exquisite cocktails, great whiskeys, a few well-chosen wines and food prepared with superb ingredients and meticulous care. The Wren must have been taking notes. With just 20 bar stools and a cozy lounge for drinks, the room looks like any other dim, welcoming Fells Point tavern. But Will Mester, the chef and an owner, working with a couple of induction burners and a small convection oven, produces lovely, seasonal pub fare. The chalkboard menu changes daily, but on a cool April evening it offered rich, tender duck rillettes served with a pile of gherkins and thick-cut bread, smoky grilled leeks blanketed in tangy anchovy butter, a soft spring onion omelet oozing with Lancashire cheese, and a full-throttle beef-and-ale pie with a rich lard crust and buttery mashed potatoes. For dessert, a flowery, light apple cake and perhaps a wee dram. ERIC ASIMOV

For women over 60, head-chef roles at buzzy new restaurants are as rare as starring roles in blockbuster movies. But Jody Adams has a new smash at the plush Raffles Hotel in Back Bay. La Padrona offers a kind of spoiling rare in New England restaurants, with prices to match. But Ms. Adams, one of the last survivors of Boston’s 1980s-era fine-dining revolution (with more than 20 years at Rialto in Cambridge) has learned to pare down her range and pair her flavors. Combinations like asparagus, caviar and chives; or scallops, saffron and corn, aren’t unexpected, but vividly refined here. The must-have is her tagliatelle Emilia-Romagna, composed around two ingredients from the Italian region: A mound of shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese does creamy and salty, and a trickle of aged balsamic vinegar chimes in with sour and sweet. JULIA MOSKIN

Like many Irish chefs, says Aiden McGee, he is fighting a battle of perception over “what Irish food is, and what it isn’t.” He is winning, decisively. In London, his pub won “Best Sunday Roast” — a weekly sellout event here — and that was before he worked for Heston Blumenthal. McGonagle’s is a bit upscale, but that doesn’t mean a trip to fine-dining’s dark side. Mr. McGee brought over a proper Irish chip-cutting machine for the fish and chips. He took mozzarella sticks with marinara and reworked them into crunchy croquettes of Irish cheese, with a black truffle mayonnaise. And he introduced Dublin’s magnificent late-night drunk food: the spice bag, a crunchy, Chinese-Indian-Irish jumble of fried chicken bits with chiles, cumin, star anise, turmeric and more, all tossed with fries and served takeout style in a paper bag. Corned beef and cabbage could never. JULIA MOSKIN

In Traverse City, where the farm-to-table scene is strong, the chef Andy Elliott plays with textures in ways that leave a lasting impression. He runs this perch with his wife, Emily Stewart; they met while working at Boka in Chicago, and she makes the breads and desserts. Each dish calibrates contrasts, using local produce from the Leelanau Peninsula. Trout roe and genmai add pop and crunch to a plate of fat, grilled asparagus swimming in smoked mushroom sauce. Walleye, a staple of menus up north, is reimagined here as a fried roulade filled with a mousse made of walleye scraps. The fish medallions alone are creamy, crunchy and fresh, but Mr. Elliott layers more, serving them on a housemade red mole and showering them with popcorn, onions, chiles and cilantro. It sounds over the top, but it works. SARA BONISTEEL

Bûcheron is almost certainly the country’s first French bistro to count lumberjacks as a source of inspiration. It’s a sincere claim, if you can imagine large men laying down their axes to enjoy meals adorned with juniper and pickled elderberries. The flavors, redolent of Scandinavian American home cooks and the North Woods, are part of a broader, Upper Midwestern palate staked out by the chef Adam Ritter, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Jeanie Janas Ritter. Mr. Ritter’s talents are particularly evident in the fall, when he’s turning rutabaga, butternut squash and pumpkin into dishes worthy of an anniversary. But the restaurant’s real gift to the Twin Cities is that it aims to achieve that standard in a neighborhood setting with staples you can count on, like the smoked whitefish dip and pommes dauphine that, as every regular knows, are really amazing tater tots. BRETT ANDERSON

The chef Diane Moua was a star pastry chef in Minneapolis before she opened this warm, elegant neighborhood restaurant. The barely sweet coconut-pandan croissants and crisp-edged scallion Danishes would be reason enough to visit, but there are so many more. Ms. Moua exalts the Hmong home cooking she grew up with in the Midwest with a sense of both technique and abundance, serving heaps of the pan-fried bean thread noodles that her aunties and grandmas used to cook, as well as sheer-skinned steamed pork rolls just flickering with pepper, and a deeply restorative chicken soup with thick housemade noodles. This is the kind of restaurant that turns you into a regular — if you’re lucky enough to live nearby. TEJAL RAO

You don’t have to talk to many Jacksonians to uncover local disquiet over the Mayflower Cafe’s change of ownership in 2024. What would happen to the comeback sauce and the stuffed shrimp? The answer is that they’re still here, along with the longtime employees Qunika Reuben-Yarber and Willie Morgan. The new chef and co-owner, Hunter Evans, vowed to preserve and improve the 90-year-old Mississippi landmark when he took over last year. The new bathroom, which diners can access without going outside, is a promise kept. So are the menu tweaks. Some are evolutions (the wines, the feta-brined fried chicken special) that draw on the restaurant’s Greek immigrant heritage. Classics like the seafood gumbo, broiled redfish and lacy onion remain simple and direct, distinguished without being high-plumed. The old downtown seafood house is once again a great one. BRETT ANDERSON

In a block of drab storefronts near the Bouffant Daddy Hair Salon, Robin is an unlikely find, a boxy place made inviting with soft lighting and soothing earth tones. Alec Schingel, the chef and owner, offers a four-course tasting menu — five with optional snacks — with lively takes on Midwestern specialties that are playful and surprising but demonstrate Mr. Schingel’s serious chops. Don’t stint on those exuberant snacks, like a chicken liver mousse served between two corn cookies like a savory Oreo. A late-spring meal included a bracing cold green garlic soup, a clever take on surf-and-turf with mushroom-cured trout bathed in horseradish foam and crowned by fried green tomatoes, and pork schnitzel wrapped around Swiss cheese, cabbage, apple and mustard, a beautiful display of controlled contrasts. A mille-feuille of amaro-infused chocolate mousse sandwiched by thin slices of caramelized toast is a perfect, sweet exclamation point. ERIC ASIMOV

In the chowks of New Delhi, tracking down great chole bhature is a major sport. When Chatpati Delhi opened two years ago, word spread quickly through the Indian community of New Jersey that this new restaurant in a Somerset County strip mall made a version that was a true contender. When Chatpati Delhi is busy, which is most of the time, almost every table will be working on an order, tearing apart golden balloons of bread the size of cantaloupes and dipping them into bowls of dark and thickly spiced chana masala. The kitchen, in fact, is adept at a long repertory of chaat from the streets of Delhi, puffs of dough and crisp potato baskets and so on, buried under chutneys and yogurt and little crunchy squiggles of sev. The restaurant also has a subspecialty in snacks from Mumbai, like bun samosa — a samosa on a bun. (You needed to ask?) PETE WELLS

The Brooklyn restaurateur Andrew Tarlow made his first foray into Manhattan with Borgo, where the chef Jordan Frosolone twists Italian classics with brilliant audacity. That focaccia? Paper-thin and erupting molten fontina like edible lava. Handmade ravioli is swathed with the sweetest Sungold tomatoes imaginable. The wood oven unleashes primal magic: coffee-glazed sweetbreads with charred edges, beef heart masquerading as rare steak, whole branzino with the face intact. Candlelit dining rooms buzz with sophisticated energy while a martini cart makes the rounds. Borgo’s smart, confident cooking and timeless, welcoming sensibility make it feel as if it’s been there forever. Let’s hope that eventually comes true. MELISSA CLARK

The hits keep coming at this pocket-size bistro on the Lower East Side, where French classics taste like Vietnamese home cooking, fish sauce appears in (almost) everything and there’s always something exciting to drink. The chefs Anthony Ha and Sadie Mae Burns-Ha have such a strong command of flavor that it’s easy to put your trust in whatever they’ve dreamed up that day. Vol-au-vent with tripe and sun-gold tomatoes? Revelatory. Head cheese with chile crisp? Absolutely. Even a simple lemon meringue pie feels fresh in their hands. The two plan to open a larger version of the restaurant soon. How will they top a warm-up act that’s already exceptional? PRIYA KRISHNA

“Love yuh self,” the menu at Kabawa says. The Jamaican patois phrase sets the tone for this thrillingly ambitious Caribbean restaurant, where the chef Paul Carmichael draws from both his memories of growing up in Barbados and his own wide-ranging culinary imagination. The setup — an open kitchen lit like a stage with counter seats along three sides — is familiar, but here there’s no formality or forced reverence, just a disarming warmth and an inviting in. The prix fixe meal unfolds in three generous courses and a bounty of sides, with playful nods to island classics including golden cubes of bammy, airy-edged and chewy as mochi at the core; pepper shrimp transformed into a crudo, with stealthy drops of fermented Scotch bonnets; and goat, majestic and ready to cleave at the touch, in a conflagration of habaneros. Bar Kabawa, next door, is louder but no less focused, mixing shave-ice daiquiris and patties that flake instantly and everywhere. LIGAYA MISHAN

Dark and stormy is the theme of this seafood restaurant, which pays homage to the flinty soul of New England but charts a course all its own. Forget the breezy clam shacks of summer: These are the murky deeps, where anything could happen. The chef, Nicholas Tamburo, champions the less-exalted side of the sea, coaxing the best out of the likes of bluefish, a bruiser that eats everything with its sharp, snapping teeth; mackerel, whose delicacy belies its reputation for oiliness; and whiting, abundant and underloved. Everything is used, down to the fish bones. A few staples appear, but approached from an angle just slightly askew, so that they come across as small revelations: Chowder is frothed around creamy rice, with quahogs as buried treasure, and the juiciness of biting into an apple is made incarnate in what may be the best cider doughnut on earth. LIGAYA MISHAN

The enchantment starts before you even open the door at this small, studied restaurant whose glow spills from the windows like a favorite spot on a West Village corner. The New York feel is no coincidence. The chef Callan Buckles has cooked in some of the city’s notable restaurants, including Claud and the Four Horseman. A salad built with fava beans, snap peas and anchovies, alongside a little dish of clams swimming in butter spiked with vin jaune, is just what you want. Almost every table has an order of ricotta fritters under a drift of pecorino, but deeper cuts include vinegary eggplant escabeche with housemade crackers. Swiss chard is stuffed under the crispy skin of roast chicken glistening with jus. The drinks list is as tight as the menu, with nine European wines, a briny Basque-inspired martini and bright, herby alcohol-free cocktails. KIM SEVERSON

The descriptions accompanying each course served at Wildweed’s chef’s counter are filled with action. The protagonist is David Jackman, a chef who you’ll learn is also a forager, gardener, fermenter and more. It’s common for restaurants to highlight the busywork behind their creations. It’s less common for those efforts to end up accentuating the silky beauty of lake perch or to lead to dishes as coherent and novel as cool marcona almond tofu jeweled with raw tuna and pickled ramps. Those are just two of the breathtaking miniatures from a recent tasting menu, which contains half as many options as the restaurant’s à la carte menu. Did we mention that this is also one of the Midwest’s most impressive and regionally distinctive Italian restaurants? Mr. Jackman, who owns Wildweed with his wife, Lydia, is cooking like Southwest Ohio lit a fire inside him. Long may it burn. BRETT ANDERSON

Chicken soup speaks comfort in every language. For Jeff Chanchaleune, the khao piek sen, the version he served at his Lao restaurant Ma Der, proved so popular that he opened a Lao noodle parlor, Bar Sen, right next door. The food at this dark, bustling barroom with a sunny patio seamlessly balances contrasting flavors — cool lime, soothing sweet-and-sour tamarind, funky fish sauce, hot chiles and punchy fried shallots and garlic. Yum sen lown, a buoyant glass noodle salad with shrimp and ground pork served cold, epitomizes the effortless complexity that is Mr. Chanchaleune’s specialty. But don’t miss that chicken soup, rich, intricate and almost milky with thick, chewy rice noodles. A pandan cinnamon roll under a blizzard of pecan and coconut is a perfectly proportioned sweet finale. Cold beer is the beverage of choice. ERIC ASIMOV

The dedication to the cuisine of Northern Vietnam runs deep with the co-owners and co-chefs (and spouses) Quynh Nguyen and Carlo Reinardy. They are even making their own rice noodles, a rare and laborious practice, for the deep catalog of phos and noodle plates. Bring a group — that way you can also order the Hanoi Van Dinh-style grilled half-duck for the table — since the menu is copious. Each dish is also accompanied by a fascinating annotation of culinary and cultural history. For instance, you learn that the compulsively snackable Dungeness crab spring rolls are of the distinctive square shape customary in Haiphong, “with its proximity to the bountiful waters of the Bay of Tonkin.” The sapa-style skewers, especially enoki mushrooms enrobed in pork belly, are charred and unctuous, and cocktails like a calamansi gin fizz are pitch-perfect accompaniments. BRIAN GALLAGHER

When you think Oregon, the first flavor that jumps to mind is probably not Caribbean spice. But it should be. Yardy’s chef and co-owner, Isaiah Martinez, grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, before heading west. Originally a food truck, Yardy found its forever home in a cheerful, sea-foam green Victorian near downtown. Start with a sorrel punch from the cocktail list, designed and administered by the co-owner Nico Centanni. Your first stop on the food menu should be the pholourie, heady split-pea fritters sauced with mango, tamarind and peppers. The formidable fried chicken sandwich can be configured to your exact tangy-and-spicy needs with Bajan peppa, tamarind sauce, salsa rosada and the house pepper mix. The Jibarito #2, griyo pork zinged with Scotch bonnets and Haitian pikliz slaw nestled between two twice-fried plantains, is the final sandwich boss. BRIAN GALLAGHER

The pinnacles of the menu at this modestly self-described “noodle house,” like the wild boar prahak and banh chow crepe salad, tend to lean into the Cambodian cooking the chef Phila Lorn grew up eating at home. But a tour through the whole roster of bright, salty-sour salads, curries and hot and cold noodles is to experience Southeast Asian cuisine as fenceless terrain. There isn’t a dish you won’t ache to eat again, one of the reasons reservations at Mawn are in such high demand. Another is that the restaurant embodies so much of what’s appealing about Philadelphia’s B.Y.O. restaurant scene; walking in with a bottle or two under your arm underscores how much the dining room — overseen by Rachel Lorn, Mr. Lorn’s business partner and wife — feels like a domestic space. Love that raw shrimp and chile oil special? Look out for Sao, the Lorns’ brand-new oyster and crudo bar, about a mile away. BRETT ANDERSON

One look at the Meetinghouse menu and you might wonder how such a basic menu could possibly warrant such high praise. But here, nothing is basic: An expertly dressed green salad is stacked high enough to become the stuff of restaurant legend, the hot roast beef sandwich tastes as if it were invented in the kitchen mere minutes ago, and humble pork-and-beans takes on new life. Meetinghouse is “just” a tavern, but it’s the tavern you might have fantasized about while reading historical fiction as a kid, where even the simplest dishes taste divine because of every arduous moment that led up to this meal. No need to fantasize any longer. NIKITA RICHARDSON

Behind the relaxed fish-shack comforts of this side-street storefront lies cooking so finely tuned and resourceful that it can smack you like an ocean wave you didn’t see coming. There’s a formidable raw bar, but most of the day’s catch (and bycatch) is just a base on which the chef and owner, James London, a Charleston native, builds bigger pleasures. A pile of brown-buttered blue crab on toast is torqued up by a tart herb vinaigrette. An Indonesian-style curry of house-smoked wreckfish yields fathoms of flavor. Plump blowfish tails, clad in airy tempura jackets, deliver a thrilling crunch. Seven years on, Chubby Fish still attracts a line. Go around 4 p.m. to get your name on the evening’s list, then pop into Seahorse, Mr. London’s handsome cocktail bar next door. Or stay put on the sidewalk, where the hosts take drink orders and the scene can turn as frisky as the one inside. PATRICK FARRELL

Falafel swathed in preserved mango tahini. Bluefin tartar painted with chile crisp shatta. Spatchcocked chicken you’ll relish for its darkly caramelized skin and side of harissa toum. They are the kinds of ideas one imagines were rattling around Khaled AlBanna’s head when he moved to Chattanooga to study engineering, having grown up the son of a chef in Amman, Jordan. The dishes come to life at Calliope, along with delicious evidence — braised collards sprinkled with peanut dukkah, lamb andouille links crossed over beds of muhummara — that the chef has taken a shine to Southern cuisine. Mr. AlBanna runs this alluring, cosmopolitan restaurant with his business partner, Raven Humphrey. They recently signed a long-term lease for the space on East Martin Luther King Boulevard, increasing the odds that Calliope will truly become what it already feels like: a local institution. BRETT ANDERSON

The flaky pork-belly biscuits were reduced to crumbs before the meal crested with a whole grilled North Carolina trout, suavely deboned before our eyes. The entire early-spring dinner, including scallion hush puppies and cellar-temperature Rioja Reserva, was marked by poise that would stand out in a city twice as big. The same was true two nights later, when the biscuits were spread with strawberry jam instead of apple butter, spring peas had replaced winter citrus on the burrata salad and everyone in the place seemed to be eating Benton’s bacon Bolognese. The common denominator, no matter when you drop in: the chef-owner and Knoxville native Joseph Lenn, a constant presence in J.C. Holdway’s open kitchen since opening day, nearly a decade ago. He has never expanded, and his restaurant is among the country’s most reliably satisfying regional bistros. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. BRETT ANDERSON

This isn’t your average all-day cafe. With just six bowls, some salads and snacks, the chef Ope Amosu weaves compelling, distinct stories from West Africa and its diaspora. Each bowl’s flavors are well calibrated and precise, balancing crisp-edged plantains with a tomato-laden red stew, an aromatic jollof jambalaya with coconut curry. ChopnBlok started as a stall in Houston’s Post Market food hall, presenting the flavors of Mr. Amosu’s childhood. When he moved to a full-service restaurant, he kept the bowls and added frozen drinks (thank goodness) and bites like beef skewers dusted in a jolting suya spice that he personally picks up from a polo club in Lagos. The colorful walls teem with aso oke, a Yoruba fabric worn for Nigerian celebrations and paintings curated by the artist Zainob Amao. In a world of sad salads shoveled out of cardboard, ChopnBlok is a delightful antidote to the slop bowl era. PRIYA KRISHNA

Isidore is an adventure in foraging dressed in fancy attire. The restaurant may look like a hotel lobby, but the food is as wild and unfettered as the Texas terroir it comes from. The chef Ian Lanphear, known for hosting pop-ups rooted in foraged food, isn’t just interested in showing off the bounty of the state, but also presenting it in surprising ways. Mesquite beans are cooked down to a syrup and whipped with butter to make a sweet condiment that dazzles whatever it touches (including the bread, which is excellent). The Wagyu steak, from Texas cows prized for their intermuscular fat, is as sumptuous as you’d expect. But the real prize is an elegant dish of yuba made of milk from a nearby farm that’s stuffed with fresh cheese and cooked in cream — it looks like ethereal ravioli and tastes like heaven. PRIYA KRISHNA

Everyone here is sweating, and it’s not because of the Texas heat. The flavors of Lao’d Bar are relentless in the best way. The papaya salad stings with eye-watering fresh chiles; the fiery crying tiger sauce that coats the rib-eye lahb demands a lager to be drunk alongside. The Lao American chef Bob Somsith, who used to run a Southeast Asian food truck, roots his cooking in Laotian tradition — fish sauce, herbs and chiles abound — but isn’t afraid to take creative liberties. The Lao’d smash burger, for example, is proof that American cheese and lemongrass-spiked pork sausage make a dreamy pair. In a former parking lot, Mr. Somsith has created a restaurant that feels more like a house party, with garage doors, string lights and colorful tablecloths — and where one frozen guava cocktail may easily give way to more. PRIYA KRISHNA

The chef Thai Changthong has been cooking khao man gai for more than a decade, but here he finally has the space to showcase the extent of his expertise. His version is a masterpiece: whole chickens are poached in a rich, two-year-old broth, placed in an ice bath so the skin gets taut, then hung dry, yielding meat you can slice through like butter. The poached pieces are served with slinky slices of chicken skin, rice enveloped in chicken fat, ginger, garlic and a sauce of fermented beans, Thai chile and ginger that could awaken the dead. This cooking speaks to the distinct cuisine born of Chinese immigrants who moved to Thailand, adapting their dishes to the electric flavors of their new home. The kitchen prepares seven distinct sauces to supplement your meal. Order them all. PRIYA KRISHNA

Salt Lake City and Cosmica are Instagram official. The chef and co-owner Zach Wad has called his photogenic new spot in the restaurant-rich Central Ninth neighborhood, “Italian diner meets spaghetti Western,” but you could as easily add “Sicilian discoteca.” It’s big, kitschy fun, with a serious kitchen. Elk carpaccio is a nod to, and deliciously simple use of, the local Mountain West wildlife. The “House Puffy Bread” is a piping-hot saucer of char-spotted bread straight from the oven, a sort of pita by way of Parma. The pastas, like rigatoni all’amatriciana and linguine scampi, are housemade and reliably delicious. Americans are spoiled for high-quality Neapolitan pizza almost nationwide at this point, and the versions here are as good as anywhere. But the clam pie, accented with a herbaceous salsa verde, is outstanding. Frank Pepe’s should be looking over its shoulder from 2,200 miles away. BRIAN GALLAGHER

Ian Boden, the chef and owner of Maude and the Bear, serves four-to-eight course dinners in a spare century-old Montgomery Ward kit house. Mr. Boden’s food demonstrates a deep understanding of how to merge exceptional seasonal ingredients into dishes of novel complexity. Consider a spring dinner of ramp focaccia lacquered with schmaltz, followed by a bright, refreshing salad of rutabaga, frisée and limequat. Spinach, marinated in salted water and served with Emmenthal, garlic and shallot, both fried, had a study in pungency. Ramp agnolotti with soft butterbeans, leeks and morels is a feast of contrasting textures and flavors, while the sweet-tart flavors of preserved chi berries frame the funky umami of dry-aged toro. Finally, a piece of dry-aged ribeye arrives draped in a tangy sauce of hickory nuts, dried cherries and mushrooms. To contemplate the experience, book a room in Mr. Boden’s adjoining inn. ERIC ASIMOV