The Best Dishes We Ate at New Restaurants in 2024

On the hunt for the Best New Restaurants of 2024, our scouts consumed hundreds of dishes, including so many that we loved. But one dish rarely makes a best new restaurant, so plate upon delicious plate is woefully left on the cutting room floor, giving us reason to celebrate our favorite dishes of the year.

As we narrowed the list to these 16 standout plates, we noticed a few fascinating trends after all the jet-setting: several ingenious interpretations of the bread course, from escargot-studded rolls to charred whole wheat loaves kneaded with chunks of crisp chicharron; wonderful expressions of French pastries, from savory madeleines dusted with jalapeño powder to two daring reinterpretations of the architectural phenomenon mille-feuille—one holding layers of durian and caramelized milk, the other threaded with tender crab.

From an astounding salad at the reopened Vespertine in Los Angeles to a radically simple scoop of vanilla ice cream capped with crème de menthe in Philadelphia, this list reflects the endless ways chefs channel hospitality and creativity through dishes both high and low.

Here are the best dishes we ate at new restaurants in 2024—because delicious meals need to be shared.

Camote Asado

Alma Fonda Fina, Denver

The highlights at chef Johnny Curiel’s contemporary Mexican restaurant in Denver’s Lower Highlands include soulful frijoles puercos with sourdough flour tortillas and adobo-seared hamachi aguachile. But few tables skip out on the camote asado, an opener deserving of main dish status. Perched in Alma Fonda Fina’s airy, light-soaked dining room, you’ll likely watch the kitchen team assemble this sweet potato dish for nearly every table. Sweet potato spears roasted with agave until dark and caramelized arrive atop fennel-tinged whipped requesón cheese, finished with a smoky, nutty salsa macha that boasts a mellow spice that brings it all together. At the end of a journey that includes several excellent dishes and a very refreshing avocado margarita, you’ll seriously consider ordering another camote for dessert. —Kate Kassin

Esca-roll

My Loup, Philadelphia (a Best New Restaurant of 2024)

I ordered the Esca-roll at My Loup because I thought the name was clever, knowing well that a good food pun is not an automatic great dish. But whether the ingenious idea for the petite roll of bread filled with escargot started as a play on the similarly named endive or just a mash-up of two words, chef Alex Kemp has unleashed a dish that elicits much more than a chuckle. A lone sculpturesque roll arrives atop a pool of herb-rich butter, the whole affair showered in Parmesan. The steaming bread unravels like a roll of film, revealing generous chunks of meat. It’s as if a cinnamon roll has crashed head-on into a plate of France’s finest escargot. —Elazar Sontag

Mini Madeleines

Xiao Ye, Portland

Outside Xiao Ye, a large sign calls the restaurant’s cuisine “first generation American food.” Co-owners Louis Lin and Jolyn Chen, who are Taiwanese American, celebrate a little bit of everything from everywhere on their menu, including but not limited to Japanese sweet potato, Korean and Mexican chiles, salted egg yolk, guanciale, and S&B Golden Curry sauce. The unassuming madeleines embody Xiao Ye’s eclectic, expansive ethos: delicate French pastries baked with mochi rice flour and masa, dusted in jalapeño powder. They stand attentively on the plate, propped up by a schmear of whipped butter. There are six to an order, just the right size for a “midnight snack,” the translation of xiao ye. —Karen Yuan

Wild Onion Flower Salad

Vespertine, Culver City, California

Housed in the Waffle, a building designed by renowned architect Eric Owen Moss, this otherworldly restaurant is where chef Jordan Kahn and his team present an imaginative tasting menu inspired by the building’s sculptural elements and the mysteries of the earth, sky, and sea. There’s a mussel dish that reflects like a black mirror. And a raspberry dessert reminiscent of the rings of Jupiter. Of the many stars, the stunningly beautiful salad course with a sparkling vinaigrette stands out. It’s an entertaining ode to California ingredients: a wild onion custard—studded with crunchy pea pods, dressed in an explosion of lupine and wisteria blossoms and sprigs of variegated thyme—that was its own refreshing constellation. The salad blooms change with the seasons but are a harbinger of more modern flavors and clever use of regenerative flowers. —Jamila Robinson

Crab Mille-Feuille

Café Carmellini, Manhattan

The menu at Café Carmellini, which anchors the luxe Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan, has its share of grandeur with its mix of French and Italian Mediterranean cuisine that includes pasta and seared octopus. But the crab mille-feuille, a savory take on the classic, is an absolute showstopper of a starter. The layers of sweet lump crab are stacked between crackly sheets of pastry, paired with a red pepper curry, and crowned with a flourish of microgreens. The dish crackles under the knife, adding a textural interplay to the buttery crab that is balanced with the zip of piquant sauces. In summer, a milder sauce has just a whisper of melon, showing the versatility of a mille-feuille that can stretch over seasons. —Jamila Robinson

Lobster Bisque

Gift Horse, Providence

Refreshing isn’t usually what you’re looking for in a lobster bisque—particularly in the dead of New England winter when I first visited Gift Horse. This raw-bar-centric seafood spot, brightened by funky stained glass and emerald green banquettes, has a rotating menu. When on offer, the bisque is an invigorating and refreshing version of the classic. Lobster is a supporting character, not the main act. Instead, a blush-pink broth—silky and luscious—boasts a range of complex flavors: tangy pickled fennel, meaty maitake mushrooms, and hints of zingy ginger completely steal the show. —Li Goldstein

Sweet Plantain Brioche

Palma, Miami

The only constant on Palma’s ever-changing tasting menu is this brioche bun served with coconut caramel butter. Sweet from roasted plantains, it arrives as a divine offering just as you’re looking for a way to sop up the last bits of a delicious squid ink sauce. Use half as a sponge and dip the second half in the butter, whipped with sweet, heavy coconut milk and topped with dried plantain leaf. Chef Juan Camilo Liscano’s seven-course tasting menu, which focuses on local Miami flavors and Hispanic heritage, changes almost weekly, but his take on the bread and butter course remains constant for good reason. —Kate Kassin

Tortilla al Rescoldo

Blanca, Brooklyn

The “bread course” is nothing short of a revelation at Blanca, the fine dining restaurant behind a legendary pizza shop in Bushwick. Once chef Victoria Blamey’s rapid-fire stream of mostly seafood dishes has been presented, she pulls a tray of bread from the oven. The small, nearly blackened loaves send plumes of steam into the tall-ceilinged dining room—charred wheat, sweet butter, and the unmistakable scent of salty pork fat. Blamey arranges the loaves on a wood board and delivers one to each diner seated at the intimate bar that wraps the kitchen. She rips open a loaf with a dramatic flourish, revealing chunks of crisp chicharron and a dark, dense whole wheat crumb. Half placed on one plate, half on the next. As diners dip into the salty pat of butter before them, the room goes silent save for an occasional moan. More courses follow—all of them good. But the sweet scent sticks to the air, and the taste of pork fat lingers the rest of the night. —Elazar Sontag

Grilled Flat Bread

Wild South, New Orleans

It’s not hard to find something to love as you dine in Wild South’s intimate dining room in New Orleans’s Lower Garden District. You may be amazed, for instance, at just how crisp a slice of pork belly is. Or swoon over the wine list, which features a slew of esoteric and hard-to-find natural wines. But the most extraordinary part of your evening comes smack dab in the middle of the five-course set menu as a dish titled “Grilled Flat Bread.” A half-moon of dough, lightly charred but still soft, arrived topped with a generous dollop of tangy ricotta and several slices of smokey grilled mushroom. A just-cooked egg serves as the crown, artfully sprinkled with beads of orange trout roe. The gentle prod of a fork releases the sunset orange yolk, which blankets the canvas in a velvety sauce. Like all of the best things in life, Wild South’s ingenious flatbread is fleeting—the menu changes weekly. You’ll no doubt discover another dish to fawn over when you visit. —Sam Stone

Culurgiones

Couch Cafe/Scampi, Philadelphia

It feels like cheating to call out a “restaurant” on this list of newcomers that is, at best, liminal. In Philadelphia, chef Liz Grothe has made quite a name for herself over the past year with her buzzy personal project, Couch Cafe, a supper club she constantly sold out from the comfort of her apartment. When I attended Grothe’s Feast of the Seven Fishes, she served up elegant trout-stuffed culurgiones, a generously plump, crimped Sardinian pasta-dumpling situation that is so pillowy, the dish has been haunting my thoughts since. Whether delighting diners with her pasta prowess or paying homage to her home state of Oklahoma (think chicken-fried steak), Grothe’s Couch Cafe allowed her to play even as she worked in some iconic Philly kitchens. Now she’s building out Scampi, an Italian American prix-fixe restaurant that—we expect—will channel the whimsy and experimentation of her supper club in more professional digs. —Joseph Hernandez

Krapow Smashburger

Little Grenjai, Brooklyn

In due time, any dish that earns the label “American” will be reimagined, from pizza to the hot dog to the chicken wing, as each generation of newcomers takes flavors they know and combine them with what they find. Of late, the smashburger has been getting this treatment to much cheer. The husband-wife duo at this inviting little restaurant tucked away in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood has raised the bar with a Thai American version that takes krapow, the spicy, tangy, basil-packed ground meat stir-fry from the wok to the griddle. Opt for the double, two charred beef and pork smashed patties laced with garlic and Thai chiles, topped with melted American cheese, spicy house-made giardiniera pickles, fresh leaves of Thai basil, and XO sauce, all sandwiched by a sesame seed bun. Be forewarned, the ingenuity is only available at lunch. —Pervaiz Shallwani

Whole Lobster

Penny, New York

Penny, the second restaurant from chef Joshua Pinsky and Chase Sinzer of Claud—located right below—is a land ruled by ice. It’s everywhere in the jewel box of a seafood restaurant: Diners dig into pebble-ice-lined trays studded with market-fresh periwinkle snails, Jonah crab salad, live scallops, and more, while shucked oysters and plump mussels are plucked from orderly shelves behind the handsome marble counter. On a tight menu where flame and heat are in short supply, one of the highlights is the whole lobster, poached, segmented, and presented in its shell, doused in an herbaceous, earthy brown butter that pools at the bottom of the bowl. The literal warmth is downright luxurious in a restaurant that doesn’t lack simple opulence. —Joseph Hernandez

Red King Crab Tagine

Safta 1964 by Alon Shaya, Las Vegas

Vegas is a king crab city, and chef Alon Shaya recently upped the ante with his opulent take at this outpost of Safta, a limited-run residency at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel with no clear end date in sight. The menu is built around the fantastical idea of what Shaya’s grandmother would have cooked had she headed for Vegas in her 20s in 1964, and king crab is how he believes she would have approached tagine when Sin City budgets provide access to any ingredient in the world. The reveal is three colossal hunks of perfectly picked pink crab, gently cooked in a turmeric-tinged coconut sauce, brightened with curry leaf and fresh cilantro, and served with orange-scented hand-rolled couscous. Sometimes it’s nice when no work needs to be done to enjoy the prickliest and most luxurious members of the crab family in a city where money is no object, and guests are here for the show. —Pervaiz Shallwani

Pork Chop Peralan

Thattu, Chicago

Gone are the days when pork was marketed as the other white meat. These days happy pigs get the steak treatment on menus—quality cuts, dry-aged and charred to more pragmatic temperatures so when you tear inside, the juices run ever so pink, making the need for a sauce optional instead of necessary. Chef Margaret Pak and her team at this South Indian pop-up turned restaurant have incorporated the flavors of her husband’s Keralan roots to showcase a herculean bone-in pork chop that has been deftly marinated in a tomato and curry leaf paste before receiving a deep smoky char. It arrives vibrant and fragrant, artfully draped over a deep-fried yucca cake and coconut-braised greens. It’s finished with a fiery, vinegary peralan sauce that tames the chop’s richness without overpowering the quality pork. For those gathered around the table, it all elicits an eye-popping pause, followed by jittery politeness that’s a primal reaction when something this good is part of a menu where everything is being shared. —Pervaiz Shallwani

Durian and Caramelized Milk Mille-Feuille

Bad Idea, Nashville

The durian-laced mille-feuille is the proper way to round out a meal at Bad Idea, a wine bar with Laotian plates in a reconstructed Presbyterian church. Like the restaurant’s stained glass windows and Dali-esque wood mural behind the bar, chef Colby Rasavong’s mille-feuille is intricate and thought out. You’ll need a fork and knife to cut through the towering layers of durian, caramelized milk, and Earl Grey custard intricately sandwiched between crisp sheets of puff pastry and dusted with powdered sugar. The pungent scent of the spiky fruit is mellowed by the cream, a worthy endnote that mimics the grandeur of its surroundings. —Kate Kassin

Vanilla Ice Cream With Crème de Menthe

Meetinghouse, Philadelphia (a Best New Restaurant of 2024)

There are times when the pleasure of a dish is inversely proportional to the actual effort put into preparing it. Summer figs on a plate. A tin of caviar with good potato chips. Ripe cheese with the perfect honey. In the right context, from the right kitchen, these little feats of curation can be astonishing, especially in how they feel like a personal invitation. Try this, trust me, you’ll like it. This is exactly what the first dessert on the menu at Meetinghouse feels like: two generous scoops of vanilla ice cream in a glass dish, drowned tableside in mouthwash green (and, actually, quite mouthwash-esque) crème de menthe. The excellent ice cream comes from Fiore Fine Foods, a few blocks west; the booze comes from Jacquin’s, the oldest producer of cordial liqueur in the country, a few blocks east; and the inspiration comes from a 1960s-era archival airport menu the owners came across while doing opening research. It’s cheeky, a little odd, eminently enjoyable, and inexplicably nostalgic, and it elicits the kind of meal-end grins that would make any fine dining pastry department jealous. —Amiel Stanek

Correction, 10/22/24: A dish mentioned at Vespertine is made with mussels, not razor clams.