Fall is award season, not just for TV. (Hello, Emmys!). This is the time of year when some of the publications that most know what’s afoot in the food world knight their chosen favorites for the year. For some pubs, that means dubbing a select handful of places as the best restaurants of the year. For others, it’s about name-dropping the country’s best chefs. However you use your abacus with that data, it means there’s a lot of good eating to be had.
Avize, Atlanta
Atlanta loves a lemon-pepper wing. It wasn’t until Avize opened that Atlanta discovered it also loves lemon-pepper frog legs. The Alpine-Atlantan cooking of Avize’s Karl Gorline slips right into the “tradition of Atlanta chefs expanding upon Southern food by leaning into their heritage,” said Pervaiz Shallwani at Bon Appétit when picking Avize for one of 2025’s Best New Restaurants.
Comadre Panadería, Austin
You know you’re in a Mexican panadería when you spot a concha, those domed, crackly pastries named for their resemblance to a shell. You know you’re at Comadre when those conchas have a red-berry coating or are loaded with chunks of chocolate. The bakery’s owner, Mariela Camacho, won a coveted 2025 Best New Chef nom from Food & Wine. Whether it’s pink cake with locally milled corn flour or a delicate polvoron with Texas pecans and mesquite, Comadre focuses on “making food that’s nostalgic and makes you feel warm and fuzzy while still honoring really nutritious ingredients,” Camacho said to the magazine.
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Cordelia, Cleveland
Chef and co-owner Vinnie Cimino, winner of a Food & Wine 2025 Best New Chef nod, harnesses the warm essence of “Midwest Nice” at the slightly cheeky and seriously delicious Cordelia. “It’s about holding the door, greeting people with a smile and the respect they deserve,” he said to Food & Wine. It’s nice, too, how Cimino and his crew created a menu that nods to myriad regional traditions: a relish tray you can assemble from seven spreads and bites, greens with Akron-style white French dressing, and lamb that has been corned à la corned beef.
Giovedì, Honolulu
Fritto misto with makrut lime aioli, prosciutto with Vietnamese donuts, gnocchi mapolonese: The cooking at Giovedì is an unabashed amalgam of Italy and the Asian continent. Yes, that gnocchi mapolonese is a hybrid of gnocchi with mapo tofu. Instant winner. “Local food in Hawai‘i is singular,” said Jennifer Hope Choi at Bon Appétit when selecting Giovedì as a Best New Restaurant of 2025. It is “defined by the natural merging of flavors across the islands’ many diasporas.” Giovedì merely stretched those diasporas a touch further — into the European continent.
Lenox, Seattle
Restaurants that trumpet Black cuisine from either the African diaspora or the African-American canon are somewhat easy to find. Afro-Latin cuisine, less so. Jhonny Reyes, with his Seattle restaurant, Lenox, shines a gleaming spotlight on plates like mofongo (mashed plantain served, uncommonly, with prawns) and lechon (pork belly with peas and rice, plus Reyes’ own touch, pickled mustard seeds). “Each dish is a snapshot of the chef’s life, presented with no pomp or ego,” said Elazar Sontag at Bon Appétit for Lenox’s selection as a 2025 Best New Restaurant.
Mawn, Philadelphia
A little Cambodia and quite Philly, Mawn is a noodle house that stretches not just its dough but also its wings. Phila Lorn, its chef, snagged a 2025 Best New Chef award from Food & Wine for his free-wheeling cooking that “casts a wide net of Southeast Asian flavors,” said the magazine. Steak comes seasoned with prohok (fermented fish paste). Cold noodles are slicked with tahini, ground lamb and chili jam. An entire fish is served with fish sauce vinaigrette. Rice pudding, in various forms, is always on the menu. All easy to admire. More challenging? Snagging a reservation.
Recoveco, Miami
One barometer of a restaurant’s greatness is how much it loves where it is located. Recoveco, situated in South Miami, loves it some South Florida. So the menu is loaded with items from the area: grouper, wahoo, Royal Red shrimp, Brogden avocado — much of what Recoveco employs are Florida’s “less obvious treasures,” said Kate Kassin at Bon Appétit. The restaurant’s unearthings are diners’ happy discoveries.
Sun Moon Studio, Oakland
The San Francisco Bay Area adores celebrating its farmers and purveyors. In the United States, that ethos arguably began around those parts. Nonetheless, “dinner at Sun Moon Studio still feels like a revelation,” said Elazar Sontag at Bon Appétit. Sun Moon Studio, a wee restaurant of 12 seats that received a Best New Restaurant 2025 nod from Bon Appétit, uses products from some of the region’s finest purveyors; it includes quail from Wolfe Farm and tofu from Hodo. In the region where this culinary philosophy first took root, dinner at Sun Moon Studio still feels like a revelation. The restaurant’s cuisine is served across 10-plus courses and swerves from Taiwan to France to Japan — all to say the cooking is extremely Californian.
Vinai, Minneapolis
Hmong culture is an indelible part of Minnesota life. A nomadic people originally from Southeast Asia, many Hmong landed during the twentieth century in the northern-central United States. Yia Vang’s Vinai, a 2025 Best New Restaurant winner, is an homage to his Hmong heritage, where “every meal is a chance to tell the story of family,” said Kate Kassin at Bon Appétit. That might mean grilled chicken with coconut-ginger vinaigrette or roasted eggplant that comes from the family’s nearby farm. Bonus: There are four housemade hot sauces to turn the dial up on your meal.
