The 20 Best New Restaurants of 2024

What’s a Chinese chili oil dumpling doing on the same menu as a Oaxacan mole or a Texas Roadhouse–inspired bread service? Every plate served at Agni is a reflection of executive chef and owner Avishar Barua’s staff and their diverse backgrounds. Some creations, like Sardinian pasta with goat curry, blend cuisines, while others, like a pani puri, stick to tradition. The courses (and the many extra snacks) also share an underlying assiduity—and a sense that Agni’s kitchen team is having a great time. Rohan duck undergoes an intensive one-week aging and marinating process for one of the bigger dishes. Yet a comically large chili cheese fry, which nods to Cincinnati’s iconic food, is pure fun. Servers credit one cook with that luscious mole, another for a Brazilian shrimp stew, and Barua’s uncle with a bright, creamy yogurt dessert. Lucky for us, Barua has a knack for surrounding himself with talent. —Serena Dai

Before Mike Satinover opened Chicago’s most promising new ramen restaurant, he was a home cook known on Reddit as Ramen Lord. He spent over a decade posting about broth and noodles in the forum r/ramen, where he helped to cultivate a community of more than 1 million devoted enthusiasts. Online, Satinover collected fans for his highly detailed postings as a home cook eager to learn more. At Akahoshi, he’s mastered his craft and found a home for his precision and finesse. (To ensure his broth has the ideal viscosity, for instance, he employs a device called a refractometer.) A bowl of miso ramen comes with slender Sapporo-style noodles in a velvety broth topped with thinly sliced green onions, supple bamboo shoots, and pork belly chashu. A brothless bowl of tantanmen features thick, soft noodles, heavily spiced ground pork, and a tingly mala spice powder. Satinover is usually in the kitchen, and even on the busiest night, you might just receive your bowl from Ramen Lord himself. —Kate Kassin

Walking into Alpenrausch may prompt a few questions. For instance, what's up with the fur rugs handing over the backs of so many chairs? Or the wood-burning stove roaring in one corner (does it ever really get that cold here)? This winter wonderland comes from the charcuterie experts at Olympia Provisions and acts as a backdrop for a relaxed, cozy education in the food of the Alps. Dishes pull from tradition while taking every opportunity to highlight the bounty of the Pacific Northwest. A beautifully golden pork schnitzel curls upward and cradles spears of fresh asparagus and zippy salad greens. Whole trout is tightly bundled in chicories, grilled until smoky, then bathed in beurre blanc. The more bitter, dark mountainous spirits you take down (there are dozens to choose from, infused with assertive botanicals native to high altitudes) and the lower you sink into that fur-covered chair, the warmer the fire starts to feel. Don’t tap out quite yet, there’s still melty raclette warming over a tea candle. And just one last flight of schnapps. —Elazar Sontag

Cody Ma and Misha Sesar put a hashtag under their mouthwatering Instagram photos: #notjustkabobs. At their restaurant, the couple leans away from the standard grilled meats you’ll find at many Persian restaurants, instead sharing seasonal dishes inspired by home cooking. Azizam has a fast-casual feel—order at the breezy restaurant’s counter and find a seat—but the meal is only as fast as you want it to be. You will savor every bite of the kofteh tabrizi, a densely packed beef and rice meatball that’s bigger than a baseball and rarely seen outside the kitchens of accomplished home cooks. At each one’s center is a chewy-sweet cluster of tender walnuts and sticky dried fruit that evokes the childlike joy of finding the toy in a cereal box. Be careful not to finish the freshly baked bread before scooping up the last of the maast o mousir, a rejuvenating yogurt dip rich with wild shallot and bright mint oil. Yes, of course, you could eat all of this in a matter of minutes and be home before traffic picks up. But not before tasting the saffron rice pudding. —Elazar Sontag

The pizzas at DC’s Bar Del Monte are excellent, which should come as no surprise. After all, chef-owner Oliver Pastan grew up in the kitchen at 2Amys, his parents’ iconic Neapolitan spot. But Bar Del Monte is not a pizzeria. Rather, it’s a celebration of the kind of rustic, ingredient-driven cooking found at the best Italian trattorias and Basque pintxos bars, places where humble, top-notch ingredients are treated with exacting care, and pigs’ ears really are turned into silk purses. (Or, in this case, a perfectly crisp-chewy fritto misto.) For the arrosticini, a specialty of Abruzzo, Pastan breaks down whole Virginia lambs into bite-size nubbins, then painstakingly alternates fatty and lean bits on skinny skewers before grilling them gently. The dish is not flashy, but it astounds: quality meat, aged and butchered with care, seasoned and grilled to taste like sweetgrass and fat and the barest whisper of smoke. When so many chefs are playing to phone cameras, this kind of salt–pepper–olive oil cooking feels especially bold—a reminder that simple food can be the hardest to make, and every bit as exciting to eat. —Amiel Stanek

Lines are practically a prerequisite for great barbecue in Texas. But the one that forms outside of Barbs B Q in the town of Lockhart feels different. There’s excitement as people sit on coolers and discuss the 26-year-old pitmaster who’s turned the barbecue world upside down. Fresh out of college and working at Goldee’s in Fort Worth, Chuck Charnichart earned a reputation as perhaps the finest brisket cook in Texas. At Barbs B Q, whose cheeky name is inspired by Nicki Minaj’s fanbase (“the Barbz”), Charnichart goes beyond that classic cut and adopts an irreverent style shaped by pop culture, her Mexican-American upbringing, and the flavors of South Texas. In tribute to her childhood memories of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, sticky-sweet pork ribs are coated in a sauce Charnichart makes with serrano, guajillo, and arbol peppers. Sausages that take their cue from the flavors of fajitas are filled with gooey cheese and taste of fresh cilantro. Instead of mac and cheese or potato salad, she serves spaghetti dressed in an herby sauce, a dish traditional to the Rio Grande Valley. Where traditionalists zig, Charnichart zags and this state’s barbecue is better for it. —Elazar Sontag

Where’s all the African food in Charleston? This is what Senegalese chef Bintou N’Daw asked herself when she arrived in the Holy City three years ago. Lowcountry and Gullah Geechee cuisines are rooted in West African foodways brought over by enslaved people, but the ancestral ties that shaped local culinary identity have yet to shine on the peninsula. That is, until last summer, when N’Daw and her husband, Tracey Young, opened Bintü Atelier. Though she’s classically trained in French pastry, N’Daw’s focus here is on craveable homestyle cooking. Tantalizing crab rice dotted with steamed pumpkin and smoky Ghanaian shito or tender goat egusi with pillowy fufu emerge from a tiny kitchen. Savor them at the outdoor tables beside the tropical flora or in the quirky neighboring house, adorned with ratan-like wainscoting and eclectic pan-African paintings. Decor is Young’s contribution, along with fresh juices like tangy soursop and creamy, dairy-free ice creams in flavors like salted cashew or citrusy baobab. Those won’t last the ride home, but jars of Nafi’s Hot Pepper Condiment, named after N’Daw’s mother, are for sale so you can take a bit of Bintü’s charm to go. —Jennifer Hope Choi

Fresh out of culinary school, Fidel Caballero started to connect some dots as he cooked around the world. Pea shoots piled high at Chinatown markets in Shanghai resembled alache, a plant he grew up eating in Northern Mexico. The prevalence of grilled meat at restaurants in Basque Country brought him back to his childhood in Chihuahua where cattle is king. This spirit of curiosity for different cultures and a talent for weaving these connections together is on full display at Caballero’s first restaurant, which features a dressed-down à la carte in the front and a sparse back room where chefs in an open kitchen create a $110 seven-course tasting menu. A crisp tlayuda is coated with edamame-pistachio guacamole and veiled in dry-aged raw beef, and a little bowl of “udon” is made of slippery potato noodles and served with an earthy corn husk dashi. Caballero has dubbed his cooking “progressive Mexican” and urges diners to approach this cuisine with the same excitement and wonder that shaped his restaurant. —Elazar Sontag

Forgo a table for a bar seat at Four Kings. Perched at the open kitchen, you’ll have a prime view as chefs Franky Ho and Mike Long carve golden squabs evoking the scene that plays out in so many Chinatown restaurant windows. The energetic duo takes cues from their shared nostalgia for traditional Cantonese flavors, but instead of a classic banquet setting, they’ve designed their menu in the style of a Japanese izakaya—in which small dishes are meant to be eaten alongside plenty of drinks. As you lift a paper-thin slice of chili-crisp-laced pig head to your lips, in comes a clay pot of rice flecked with Chinese sausage and smoky bacon. When you’re sure the stream of food has ended and you can’t eat anymore, a cluster of massive snails arrive, served in their shells, packed with XO sauce, and accompanied by a sidecar of fluffy milk bread. Sweet, spicy oil stains anything in its path. This is the cooking of two chefs who know how to really let loose, and hope you will too. —Elazar Sontag

Subtlety is not the goal at Hungry Eyes. The New Orleans restaurant shares a name with the iconic 1987 soft rock hit—yes, the one from Dirty Dancing—and is a full-on tribute to the ’80s. The restaurant is outfitted with striking Pop art, pink neon lights, and precisely four enameled leopard figurines behind the bar. The food is just as colorful, refracting globally inspired flavors through the lens of Southern cuisine. Seared okra and shishito peppers are glazed in a fragrant mixture of lemongrass and fish sauce. Steak tartare is dressed in a sharp, fatty “burger grease vinaigrette.” Halibut crudo thrums with salty richness thanks to a sauce of cinnamon and malty beer. Restaurants oozing personality aren’t unusual for co-owner Mason Hereford, whose audacious takes on the sandwiches of his youth at Turkey and the Wolf earned him the title of Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurant in 2017. Though the environs at Hungry Eyes may be firmly retro, the dishes you’ll enjoy throughout a synth-soundtracked night are anything but old-school. —Sam Stone

The pair of 300-pound imperial lion statues flanking the entrance to King BBQ is a sign of good fortune ahead: a winsome counter-service spot where New York’s Chinatown and Carolina barbecue traditions gloriously reign. Chef Shuai Wang and pitmaster Brandon Olson lean into pork and poultry—an ingenious cross-section between their food cultures—and meld disparate cooking styles with craft and calibration. You’d be in hog heaven ordering the succulent chopped pork (a Piedmont, NC, specialty) or smoky cha shao ribs by the pound—seasoned with an amped version of five-spice and served with a Chinese mustard and Carolina gold–inspired BBQ sauce on the side. But the pro move is to go with the soup bowl: thin, chewy, slurpable lo mein noodles buoyed by a ginger-forward broth and topped with crispy duck. Finish with Hong Kong milk tea flecked with popping boba or the soju-yuzu-coffee mind eraser—the most balanced shot you’ll ever have the pleasure of downing. A visit is quick and affordable yet you’ll still leave feeling like royalty. —Jennifer Hope Choi

At Kisser, Leina Horii and Brian Lea’s lunch-only ode to a kissaten, or Japanese teahouse, the concise menu features traditional dishes like onigiri and udon while leaving plenty of room for improvisation. A melon cream soda leans into nostalgia for the kissaten Leina frequented as a child and is topped with chewy nuggets of mochi and a classic maraschino cherry. Inari, the simple Japanese dish of fried tofu skin and sushi rice, is flipped on its head: a sweet tofu wrapper stuffed with potent wasabi shrimp salad and transformed into something like a New England–style shrimp roll. You’ll want to return often, if not for a full meal, then a ramekin of miso crème brûlée and a chopped salad tossed with a riff on the ginger dressing Leina’s father served during his 40 years as a sushi chef. The only obstacle to a leisurely meal in Kisser’s warm farmhouse dining room is the crowd of East Nashville residents with the exact same plan. —Kate Kassin

Meetinghouse is, at its heart, a beer bar, though you might not know it from the menu. There are exactly five beers on offer. Three they make themselves, and are described with refreshing succinctness as “pale,” “dark,” and “hoppy.” Do a few idiosyncratic things with a humble obsessiveness. Every aspect of Meetinghouse adheres to this mantra, from the tightly curated (and all-draft!) cocktails to chef Drew DiTomo’s unassumingly excellent pub fare approached with fine dining fastidiousness. A lofty plate of lettuces, delicately dressed and unencumbered by a word salad of garniture. Twin turkey cutlets crowned with nothing but a fat lemon wedge, so moist that sauce would only distract. A hot roast beef sandwich that squares up with even the best bar burger. This is the Platonic ideal of a neighborhood joint: clear-eyed, hospitable, doing so little to draw attention to itself that it is positively irresistible. —Amiel Stanek

Philadelphia and Montreal are not sister cities in any formal respect, but the food at My Loup makes a very compelling case that they should be. Chef Alex Kemp’s brand of Quebecois-inflected cooking feels perfectly matched to the City of Brotherly Love: bighearted and maximalist, proud but unpretentious, by turns serious and fun as all hell. Only here could an elegant seafood platter feature fat, chilled mussels topped with a hoagie-inspired relish, or a textbook pâtè grand-mère be followed by a garlic knot smothered in plump, extravagantly green escargot. This feels as much like a brawny bear hug between strangers celebrating a championship win as it does an elevated bistro. Kemp, who is from Quebec, co-owns the restaurant with his wife, Amanda Shulman, the chef behind the enormously successful Her Place Supper Club. Their collaboration suffuses the whole affair with a heady romanticism. My Loup brings together creative minds, culinary sensibilities, places far away on a map but deeply linked in spirit—and becomes far more than the sum of its parts. —Amiel Stanek

Corn is a shape-shifter at Oro by Nixta. It may blend into a burnt orange molote, a masa-based fried dumpling made of sweet potato and hibiscus, or be nixtamalized for a steely indigo tortilla that cradles celery root batons cut thick like steak fries. Whatever the hue and final form, the corn—an array of colorful heirloom varieties sourced from Mexico—simultaneously satisfies and excites. These corn-based dishes are vehicles for a robust selection of inventive and largely vegetarian options, such as a creamy ceviche-style dish bejeweled with tomato and hearts of palm, whose smooth curls could be mistaken for squid. Oro’s casual paper menu is designed to enlighten, educating diners on varieties of mole, salsas, and other ingredients and describing how nixtamalization allows hard kernels of corn to transform into supple dough. With their anti-pretentious approach, chef-duo Gustavo and Kate Romero invite their diners to marvel at the diversity of Mexico’s heirloom corn options and to be thrilled by the way it anchors a beautiful meal. —Serena Dai

Pasar’s dining room is lined with bright bags of Indonesian candies, and a thatched roof shades the well-stocked bar. This is chef-owner Feny’s recreation of the bustling street markets she frequented as a child in Jakarta. Her menu is filled with renditions of the snacks that fueled these early-morning and late-night adventures. Small dishes, many of them just $3 or $4, come in quick succession until the table fills up like a game of Tetris. Neat squares of sticky rice stuffed with shredded chicken sit alongside tender beef skewers coated in velvety gravy and bright turmeric-tinted rice wreathed in condiments. Feny has a pristine touch with snackable desserts called kue, which she fries and steams into delicate treats that you’re encouraged to eat throughout the meal. A counterpoint to American dessert culture—eat your dinner, then you can have dessert—they’re most gratifying when nibbled between forkfuls of savory dishes. By the end of the meal, it’s hard to imagine eating any other way. —Elazar Sontag

Anthony Salguero’s pupusas are mesmerizing. The chef nixtamalizes and grinds corn into plump balls of masa that he stuffs with seasonal vegetables and presses flat on a cast-iron griddle set above a wood fire. They arrive at the table molten hot, oozing salty cheese, and tasting of smoke and sweet corn. It’s tempting to order another before you’ve finished the first. But Salguero’s menu has much more to offer, blending local produce with Salvadoran tradition to create something entirely his own. He braises chicken in a rich stock enhanced by tangy fermented pineapple juice and sappy panela, and crowns the tender chunks of meat with a mound of grilled radishes and dates. Little links of funky, salty chorizo hang above the grill absorbing smoke and come to the table in sets of four. It’s both a blessing and a curse that Salguero, who hopes to expand diners’ perceptions of this cuisine far beyond pupusas, makes one of the most delicious versions of El Salvador’s national dish. Fortunately, every dish at Popoca is worth a return visit. —Elazar Sontag

At Sắp Sửa every team member’s name is listed at the bottom of the menu. There’s Ben Carolan, the sous-chef responsible for the trúng và trúng—cloudlike scrambled eggs laced with bright fish sauce and brown butter served over warm rice. And Theo Bodor, who helped develop a dish of fried tofu served in a rich tomato stew punctuated by bites of crunchy peanuts. Husband-wife owners Ni and Anna Nguyen moved to Denver from Los Angeles in late 2020, intent on introducing this city to the Vietnamese American cooking of Ni’s first-generation upbringing. Along the way they created a restaurant shaped equally by the influences of their talented, enthusiastic team. In a lively dining room that’s consistently packed, Vietnamese flavors blend into those of other cultures—turmeric-batter fried catfish sandwiches topped with slices of American cheese or grilled corn ribs with shrimp aioli—and point to two leaders who know when to stick to tradition and when to color outside the lines. —Kate Kassin

The very existence of Sophon is a testament to Cambodian resilience. The restaurant is named for chef Karuna Long’s mother, who survived the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and fled to the US in 1980. His menu is rooted in traditional flavors but pulls influences from Seattle’s cultural and culinary bounty. Locally grown oyster mushrooms take a cue from the Japanese dish of karaage and are fried to an audible crunch and drizzled with a bright lemongrass aioli. Kha sach chrouk, pork belly braised in a sweet soy-coconut broth, is showered in microgreens and flanked by pickled daikon and delicate quail eggs. This conversation between heritage and creativity continues as bar manager Dakota Etley shakes up Khmer-inspired cocktails. Order the Mekong or the savory Khlang, featuring a Brie-infused rye—a subtle gesture to the country’s history of French colonization. As you savor your final sips, Long might emerge to share more about his world. But by then you’re already immersed in it. —Ali Francis

In Vietnamese, the term quán nhậu describes a place where people gather to drink, feast, and experience pure enjoyment. Next to a downtown Miami bus stop, Tâm Tâm is exactly that. Chef Tam Pham and his husband, sommelier Harrison Ramhofer, have created a funky diner vibe that extends to a bathroom equipped with a hidden karaoke machine. Outside, patrons chill on colorful plastic stools drinking natural wine, while in the dining room they lounge on floral vinyl banquettes and order off a menu that’s Vietnamese with a hint of Miami flair. Goat curry is bathed in chili oil and served with Chinese egg noodles and a flurry of herbs—a fiery nod to Miami’s Caribbean community. A tangy crudo punches up Key West pink shrimp with fragrant lemongrass, fresh ginger, and pungent shrimp oil. Many of the best dishes are designed to be eaten by hand. Pham wraps ground lamb in peppery betel leaves and serves the dish with rice noodles, baskets of lettuce, and enough toppings to fuel a feast that shows no signs of slowing down. —Kate Kassin