Bûcheron
Minneapolis
"We knew Bûcheron was significant when it opened, and it looks now like all the world agrees," said Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl in Mpls.St.Paul magazine. This year's winner of the James Beard Best New Restaurant award is redefining fine dining by serving food that's "fine-dining complex, but presented with warm hospitality in absolute casual style." In a chic 38-seat dining room done in mostly pine green, you can comfortably wear your favorite hoodie as you start with the petit plateau: kampachi crudo, Gulf shrimp, and Maine oysters. Pair the dish with champagne and take a selfie, "because I assure you that no one on God's green Earth—not Beyoncé, not Elon Musk—is having a better seafood tower experience."
Many of chef Adam Ritter's dishes occupy the same "no better to be had" category. The pommes dauphines are "basically tater tots as they must serve in heaven." The foie gras terrine is "of such satiny silkiness it glides through your soul." In winter, I fell for a celery root tortellini in acorn broth that was "a whole symphony of earthy tones." Challenging, delicious food; peerless cocktails; a tasteful space. In short, Bûcheron belongs in "the biggest of big leagues." 4257 Nicollet Ave.
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Mawn
Philadelphia
When I first wrote about Phila Lorn getting the Best Emerging Chef nomination, "I said that the James Beard Award judges should just make their job easy and give him the award immediately," said Jason Sheehan in Philadelphia magazine. "Apparently, they were paying attention." Walk into Mawn and you feel a joyful energy that on a busy night "can jump from table to table like electricity."
Lorn's one-page menu is a poetic ode to "a cuisine nearly lost to war and genocide but very much alive now on South 9th Street." The son of Cambodian refugees remixes the cuisine he grew up eating with American, Thai, and Jewish influences— chicken soup bolstered with schmaltz, papaya salad spiked with bird's-eye chile. Lorn's noodles? They're "unlike any I've ever had." The cold dish listed as Night Market Noodles is a conversation: ground boar and crunchy ramen, flavors of lemon-grass and basil, and a chile burn that's "road-flare bright." 764 S. 9th St.
Belly of the Beast
Spring, Texas
Like Phila Lorn, Thomas Bille "doesn't just serve food, he tells stories," said Brittany Britto Garley in Eater. This year's Best Chef: Texas winner has earned the right to tell them. At Belly of the Beast, Bille "merges his Mexican-American heritage, French culinary training, and family memories into dishes that are personal, playful, and genre-defying." Bille was 10 when he began hanging out in the French bistro where his father worked. Chefs would slip him filet mignon and lobster thermidor. Then culinary school, cooking for Qantas Airways and hotels, a stint at Otium in Los Angeles. It all led to this intimate little spot in a suburban Houston strip mall and a menu that pops.
Street corn agnolotti, a summer dish that's earned a cult following, "combines the comfort of homemade pasta and elote flavors." Birria tacos are a grail, stuffed with fall-apart tender beef and crispy-edged Oaxaca and Chihuahua cheese. Yam-filled tacos, with "earthy" almond salsa macha, queso fresco, and chicken cracklings, "taste like Mexican Thanksgiving." Don't worry about defining Belly of the Beast's cuisine. Consuming it is delightfully easy. 5200 Farm to Market Road 2920.
