The search for this year’s best new restaurants took us on a six-month expedition, with stops in Texas’s barbecue capital and Manhattan’s roaring Lower East Side. Whether we were immersed in a rack of ribs inspired by Flamin’ Hot Cheetos or a “Progressive Mexican” tasting menu informed by a chef’s travels, we found teams working together in exciting ways.
Contributions to a prix fixe in Columbus, Ohio, came from line cooks and waiters with diverse culinary backgrounds. A guest bartender in New Orleans sparked an entire night of surprising drinks. Chefs across the country are wholeheartedly embracing collaboration, pulling ideas from cooks and waiters, their mentors, and other restaurants to create unique menus infused with personality and a real sense of place. These dynamics shaped Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurants of 2024.
We celebrate this moment of collective effort with four awards. Our Chef of the Moment is Chuck Charnichart, the 26-year-old pitmaster of Barbs B Q in Lockhart, Texas, who is reshaping barbecue and fostering the next generation of talent. In Seattle, the Cambodian restaurant Sophon boasts our Best Beverage Program, with cocktails that weave Khmer flavors into ambitious drinks. This year’s Sustainability Stewards are Kate and Gustavo Romero, the duo behind Oro by Nixta, a Minneapolis tortilleria championing heirloom corn. To cap the crowning with something sweet, the Best Dessert Program belongs to the bite-size Indonesian delicacies at Pasar in Portland, Oregon. Each honor, accompanied by a story digging deeper, goes to a restaurant that serves stunning food and a team that never loses sight of its mission.
A spirit of culinary mind-melding is apparent in the historically guarded world of Southern barbecue, where two restaurants are ushering in a fresh era defined by teams that blend flavors and work in concert. At Barbs B Q, Charnichart and her young staff pull from the Mexican and Texan flavors of her childhood in a border town to create immediate barbecue classics. In North Charleston, South Carolina, chef Shuai Wang and partner Corrie Wang joined forces with pitmaster Brandon Olson to create a cultural mash-up at King BBQ. In a dining room adorned with hanging red lanterns, they serve chili-crisp-flecked sausages and cha shao spareribs alongside dan dan noodles and shrimp toast sliders.
Ambitious chefs are going beyond their own kitchens too, linking up with friends in pursuit of new flavors. Ordinarily, dinner at the low-key but spectacular pub, Meetinghouse in Philadelphia, means a decked-out club sandwich or a towering leafy green salad. But step in on a Monday, when chef Drew DiTomo hosts chefs from other restaurants, and the menu features Guatemalan enchiladas, or roast beef strombolis, or platters of crab cakes. In New Orleans, the ’80s-obsessed restaurant Hungry Eyes hosts visiting bartenders to add their own drinks to the slate of throwback appletinis and cosmopolitans. Collaboration, no matter how short-lived, sparks ingenuity.
Use the list as a cross-country map and you’ll meet a chef in Chicago who’s devoted himself to one dish (Akahoshi Ramen), a Midwestern crew of cooks with global vision (Agni), and husbands bringing Miami influences to Vietnamese drinking food (Tâm Tâm). Stay a while and you’ll see how many hands it takes to build a truly great restaurant. —Elazar Sontag
This list considered restaurants that opened between March 2023 and March 2024.