New York Times America's Best Restaurants 2025

Opened in March 2025 on a nondescript stretch of Manchester Road in Maplewood, Robin serves a four-course tasting menu built around Midwestern ingredients and seasonal produce. Chef Alec Schingel's cooking moves between playful and precise, with snacks like chicken liver mousse pressed between corn cookies setting the tone for a meal that rewards the curious diner.

Opened in December 2023 in Chicago's Uptown neighbourhood, Cariño earned a Michelin star in its first year by treating Mexican cuisine as the basis for serious tasting-menu cooking. Chef Norman Fenton runs a 12-course counter experience where nixtamalization and spherification sit alongside al pastor seasoning and huitlacoche ravioli, producing food that reads as both technically ambitious and elementally Mexican.

Opened in April 2024 in a converted East Austin parking lot, Lao'd Bar brings Lao American cooking into a house-party setting of garage doors, string lights, and colorful tablecloths. Chef Bob Somsith's menu runs from papaya salad loaded with fresh chiles to a lemongrass-spiked smash burger, anchored throughout by fish sauce, herbs, and heat. Frozen guava cocktails keep the pace easy; the flavors do not.

Wildweed occupies a specific and convincing position in Cincinnati dining: a farm-to-table restaurant rooted in Midwestern foraging and freshly milled grain that also happens to be one of the region's most serious Italian kitchens. Recognised by Esquire as one of 2024's best new restaurants in the country and holding a Pearl recommendation, it operates from 1301 Walnut St with a chef's counter format that rewards advance planning.

Ranked #5 on the New York Times Best Restaurants in New York City list for 2025, Ha's Snack Bar opened in January 2025 on the Lower East Side, where chefs Anthony Ha and Sadie Mae Burns-Ha cook French bistro classics through a Vietnamese lens. Fish sauce threads through nearly every dish, natural wine anchors the drinks list, and the pocket-size room at 297 Broome Street fills fast.

A West Indian kitchen operating out of a sea-foam green Victorian near downtown Eugene, Yardy Rum Bar opened in February 2024 after graduating from food truck to permanent address. The menu draws on Caribbean and Afro-Latino traditions, running from split-pea pholourie to a Haitian pikliz-dressed plantain sandwich, backed by a rum-forward cocktail program built around sorrel punch and house-designed drinks.

Opened in July 2022 on West Front Street, Modern Bird brings a technically serious contemporary American approach to Traverse City's farm-to-table dining scene. Chef Andy Elliott sources from the Leelanau Peninsula and builds plates around deliberate textural contrast — fried walleye roulade on housemade red mole, grilled asparagus with trout roe and genmai. Pastry and bread come from co-owner Emily Stewart, who trained alongside Elliott in Chicago.

Two years after opening in a Somerset County strip mall, Chatpati Delhi has become a fixed point on the New Jersey Indian dining circuit, drawing regulars for chole bhature that circulates by word of mouth through the state's South Asian community. The kitchen covers a serious range of Delhi chaat alongside Mumbai street snacks, making it a reliable reference point for North Indian street food outside the subcontinent.

Opened in January 2024 on Nicollet Avenue, Bûcheron applies French bistro technique to the flavors of the Upper Midwest, drawing on Scandinavian American pantry traditions, North Woods ingredients, and the kind of neighborhood reliability that most destination restaurants sacrifice for ambition. Chef Adam Ritter's fall cooking, built around root vegetables and foraged accents, has drawn particular attention from critics as a serious contribution to the Twin Cities dining scene.

Bayonet in Birmingham is a contemporary seafood destination showcasing a raw bar and seasonal Gulf Coast plates. Must-try items include Dauphin Island oysters, a bánh mì stuffed with Gulf shrimp finished with a bold caramel sauce, and the Ora King salmon collar served with an acidic fruit salsa. Chef Rob McDaniel, a James Beard semifinalist, focuses on sustainable sourcing and precise techniques that preserve bright, briny flavors. Opened March 2025 in the historic Berry Building, Bayonet pairs a spirited cocktail program with desserts from pastry chef Candace Foster, from glazed peach hand pies to a watermelon icebox semifreddo. Expect lively service, hand-cut fries with lemon aioli, and menus that rotate with Gulf seasons.

Opened in February 2025 next door to Ma Der, Bar Sen is Oklahoma City's dedicated Lao noodle parlor, where the khao piek sen that made its predecessor a local fixture now anchors a full menu of cold salads, funky broths, and chile-forward small plates. The dark, busy room opens onto a sunny patio, and cold beer is the standard pairing. It is one of the few spots in the country building a genuine Lao kitchen in a mid-sized American city.

Opened in December 2024 in Dorchester, McGonagle's applies serious kitchen craft to the pub format without the fine-dining pretension. Chef Aidan McGee, whose London pub earned recognition for its Sunday roast, brings over an Irish chip-cutting machine for the fish and chips, reworks mozzarella sticks into Irish cheese croquettes with black truffle mayonnaise, and introduces Boston to Dublin's spice bag — fried chicken, chiles, cumin, and fries served in a paper bag.

ChòpnBlok brings West African cuisine into Houston's fast-casual conversation with precision and cultural specificity. Chef Ope Amosu's compact menu of bowls, salads, and snacks draws on Nigerian and broader West African flavors, from jollof jambalaya to suya-spiced beef skewers. Since opening its Westheimer Road location in October 2024, it has established itself as one of the city's more considered takes on accessible, flavor-forward dining.

Open since February 2009 on Grand Junction's Main Street, Bin 707 Foodbar is the Western Slope's most confident statement in seasonal Colorado cooking. Chef Josh Niernberg threads Southwestern and Mexican references through locally sourced ingredients, producing combinations that read as risky on paper and land with precision on the plate. The dining room holds its own against restaurants in cities three times the size.

Opened in June 2024 in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood, Sanders BBQ Supply Co. has already earned a Resy Best of the Hit List nod and critical praise for barbecue that carries the influence of the Great Migration's Southern traditions north. The oxtail gumbo and rib tips are the early anchors of a menu that draws from hardwood smoke and regional soul food craft, about 12 miles south of the Loop.

Opened in September 2024 inside the Salamander Washington DC hotel, Dōgon brings Kwame Onwuachi's Afro-Caribbean vision to the capital with a shareable menu that moves between West African, Jamaican, Trinidadian, and Creole traditions. The Michelin Plate recipient earned a spot on Esquire's Best New Restaurants list for 2024 and Resy's Best of the Hit List in 2025. Chef de cuisine Martel Stone, a Chopped Next Gen winner, executes a tightly edited menu where every dish earns its place.

At Sunny’s Steakhouse at Lot 6, the elemental allure of flame meets modern culinary precision. This refined steakhouse reimagines the classic chophouse with an elegant, wood-fired lens—showcasing rarefied cuts, pristine seafood, and seasonal produce rendered with quiet confidence. Guests are welcomed into a warmly lit room where polished service, a sommelier-led cellar, and tactile details create a sense of occasion from the first pour to the final, lingering bite. Whether indulging in a bespoke tasting progression, carving into marbled wagyu kissed by smoke, or retreating to an intimate alcove with a vintage decanter, Sunny’s balances sophistication with ease. It’s a sanctuary for discerning palates: convivial, meticulous, and effortlessly memorable.

Named Esquire's Restaurant of the Year for 2025, RVR is Travis Lett's Japanese-California izakaya on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, CA. Opened in October 2024, it brings together small plates, ramen, yakitori, and a vegetable-forward menu that draws as much from seasonal California produce as from the izakaya tradition. The drinks program pulls equal weight alongside the food.

Opened in November 2024 alongside the Michelin-starred Alma Fonda Fina, Mezcaleria Alma channels the energy of Mexico City's contemporary dining scene through a focused menu of seafood-driven small plates and a spirits program exceeding 120 agave expressions. Tuna belly tostadas, Santa Barbara uni aguachile, and a mezcal old-fashioned with fig and tamarind make the case quickly.

Sammy's Deluxe has occupied a corner of Rockland's Main Street since June 2016, channeling Midcoast Maine's larder into a no-frills room where ketchup cans hold the wine and the cooking is anything but casual. Chef Sam Richman forages his own mushrooms, pickles local alewives, and smokes his own haddock, producing a menu that reads as a direct argument for what New England cooking can be when it stops apologizing for itself.

Opened in August 2023 in Fishtown, Meetinghouse earned a spot on Resy's 2025 Best of the Hit List by doing something harder than it looks: making tavern food taste genuinely considered. The menu is short and ostensibly familiar, but a dressed green salad and a hot roast beef sandwich have become the kind of dishes that fill reservation slots weeks out. This is the neighborhood bar Philadelphia has been quietly wanting.

The Paper Bridge brought Northern Vietnamese cooking to Southeast Portland in November 2023, and the co-chef team behind it makes their own rice noodles in-house — a rare practice that anchors a menu spanning pho, Haiphong-style crab spring rolls, and Sapa-inspired skewers. Recognized on Resy's Best of the Hit List for 2025, it is among Portland's most considered treatments of regional Vietnamese cuisine.

Verjus is Michael and Lindsay Tusk's French-leaning wine bar in Jackson Square, reopened in late 2024 after a pandemic closure. The Michelin Plate-recognised room sits a short walk from their flagship Quince, offering grower Champagne, bistro classics, and a deliberately grown-up atmosphere in one of San Francisco's most characterful neighbourhoods.

Opened in June 2025 on the West Bank of the Mississippi, Saint Claire occupies a century-old property in Algiers, roughly 15 minutes from the French Quarter. The kitchen merges coastal Cajun technique with French sensibility, plating seasonal produce alongside rabbit rillettes, rare tuna paillard, and duck confit in a setting of antiques, oak trees, and dark roux gumbo. Resy named it to the 2025 Best of the Hit List.

Opened in April 2024 in Northeast Minneapolis, Diane's Place brings Hmong home cooking into a full-service restaurant format through the hands of a chef with serious pastry credentials. Coconut-pandan croissants and scallion Danishes anchor the baked goods program, while pan-fried bean thread noodles, steamed pork rolls, and housemade-noodle chicken soup make the case for staying through every course.

A 12-seat Michelin-starred counter on an industrial block in West Oakland, Sun Moon Studio earned its first Michelin star in 2025 — less than a year after opening. Chefs Alan Hsu and Sarah Cooper run a 12- to 14-course seasonal tasting menu built around California farmers and producers. One of the most competitive reservations in the Bay Area, it operates on a format closer to a private dinner than a conventional restaurant.

Opened in October 2024, Avize brings an unlikely but coherent idea to Atlanta's West Midtown: Alpine cooking filtered through Southern ingredients. Chef Karl Gorline's Michelin Plate-recognized menu fuses the precision of French and German technique with Mississippi-rooted produce, producing dishes like fermented carrot Bolognese and lemon pepper frog's legs. The adjoining bar extends the concept with flammekuechen and venison brats.

Part of the Raffles Boston hotel in Back Bay, La Padrona opened in May 2024 as a two-story Italian restaurant with a ground-floor bar and a high-energy dining room above. Chef Jody Adams, who spent more than two decades at Cambridge's Rialto, leads a kitchen built around house-made pastas and shareable plates. The room earns its reputation on cooking, not just atmosphere.

Nine years into its run on Union Avenue, J.C. Holdway has become a reliable measure of how good a mid-sized American city's dining scene can get. Chef-owner Joseph Lenn fuses Southern ingredients with Italian technique in an open kitchen that has held a Michelin Plate since 2025 and consistent Opinionated About Dining recognition. The biscuits alone justify the detour.

All Day Baby distills Los Angeles’ golden-hour glamour into an all-day, chef-driven dining experience where comfort cuisine meets refined craft. In a sun-splashed Silver Lake setting, house-smoked meats, flaky, butter-layered biscuits, and a quietly ambitious pastry program anchor a menu that moves seamlessly from morning brightness to evening glow. Precision-roasted coffees, inventive low-ABV spritzes, and elegant cocktails round out the ritual—casual in posture, exacting in execution—inviting discerning travelers to linger, taste, and feel instantly at home. The room hums with neighborhood warmth and industry polish: marble gleam, brass accents, and the perfume of smoke and citrus drifting from the open kitchen. Service is relaxed yet impeccably attentive, guiding guests through signature plates and limited daily specials that reward the early, the curious, and the devoted. All Day Baby is where the city’s creative pulse meets a cultivated appetite—comfort elevated, nostalgia reimagined, and every detail tuned to pleasure.

A former marine fueling station and lobster pound on the Mystic River, Haring's opened in June 2024 as one of the more considered seafood spots on the Connecticut shoreline. The menu moves between dockside classics — smoked bluefish, steamed lobster, fried cod sandwiches — and a clapboard dining room serving seared tuna, steak frites, and squash curry. Chef-partners Chris Vanasse and Reneé Touponce bring the organizational weight of the 85th Day Food Community behind it.

Mayflower Cafe in Jackson, Mississippi serves Southern seafood with Greek influences at a 1935 landmark. Must-try dishes include stuffed shrimp, broiled redfish and the Mayflower Greek Salad with lump crabmeat. New chefs and owners preserved the comeback sauce and longtime staff while adding feta-brined fried chicken and a refreshed wine list. The dining room’s tile floors, neon sign and leather booths frame buttery broils, briny seafood and crisp, lacy onion rings. Statewide acclaim and film appearances underline the cafe’s cultural weight. Expect straightforward, expertly prepared dishes that honor nine decades of Jackson history.

Opened in March 2024, Mori Nozomi earned a Michelin star in its first full year and landed on the LA Times 101 Best Restaurants list, ranked 53rd. Chef-owner Nozomi Mori runs an eight-seat counter in Sawtelle, leading an all-female team through a kaiseki-inflected omakase that folds farmers market pickles, fresh wagashi, and seasonal Japanese seafood into a format that reads as distinctly its own.

A 1926 Montgomery Ward kit house on North Augusta Street is now one of the Shenandoah Valley's most serious tasting-menu destinations. Chef Ian Boden runs four-to-eight course dinners Thursday through Saturday by reservation only, pairing Virginia's seasonal larder with technically considered cooking. The adjoining inn means the whole evening, from first course to last sleep, unfolds under one roof.

A dock-to-table seafood counter on Coming Street where the menu changes daily based on what came off local boats that morning. Chubby Fish holds 40 seats, takes no reservations, and has drawn lines around the block since opening in 2018. Named to Resy's Best of the Hit List 2025, it's one of Charleston's clearest expressions of the city's relationship with its coastal waters.

Opened in January 2025 on Selwyn Avenue, Rada earned a Michelin Plate in its debut year — a signal of how quickly Charlotte's serious-dining scene absorbed this small, European-leaning room. Chef Callan Buckles brings New York kitchen credentials to a tight, seasonal menu where fava bean salads and ricotta fritters keep tables coming back, and a nine-bottle European wine list matches the menu's precision.

Reopened in May 2025 after a storied history dating to 1890, Pilgrim's Inn on Deer Isle has become one of coastal Maine's more compelling dining propositions. A rotating chef-in-residence format brings a new kitchen voice every month, anchored by produce and seafood pulled from the surrounding island economy. The result is a table where the sourcing logic changes the menu rather than decorating it.

Andrew Tarlow's first Manhattan venture, Borgo opened in September 2024 on East 27th Street with a trattoria-style menu that changes monthly. Recognized by New York Magazine's 43 Best Restaurants in New York (2025) and awarded a White Star on Star Wine List, the restaurant pairs wood-oven Italian cooking with a natural-leaning wine list and a roving martini cart — a confident debut for a restaurateur better known for Brooklyn.

Isidore in San Antonio presents Progressive American dining rooted in Texas terroir. Must-try plates include the milk-made yuba stuffed with fresh cheese, a seared Texas Wagyu steak, and mesquite-bean butter served with house bread. The kitchen transforms local foraged ingredients into refined tasting plates, balancing rugged flavors with polished technique. Opened August 2024 and named a top U.S. eatery by the New York Times, Isidore pairs Texas-only wine selections with inventive cocktails. Expect warm oak interiors, attentive service, and flavors that reveal the state’s wild bounty in surprising, luxurious ways—perfect for special evenings in the Pearl District or an elevated weekend dinner.

Opened in May 2025 in Salt Lake City's Central Ninth neighborhood, Cosmica plants a flag where Italian-American diner energy meets Mountain West ingredients. Chef-owner Zach Wade describes it as 'Italian diner meets spaghetti Western,' and the room delivers on that with kitschy confidence. The kitchen is serious: housemade pastas, a clam pie that competes with the East Coast's best, and elk carpaccio that makes a local ingredient case no other Italian restaurant in the region is making.

KC Turkey Leggman opened in May 2023 on Quindaro Boulevard in northwest Kansas City, Kansas, bringing food-truck energy and serious pit technique to an underserved corridor. The turkey leg — dark, moisture-laden beneath taut browned skin — is the organizing argument, but the burnt ends and stewed greens make an equally strong case. Tight on space, heavy on personality.

Mawn is a Cambodian-led noodle house on South 9th Street in Philadelphia, where chef Phila Lorn — recipient of the 2025 James Beard Emerging Chef Award — serves bright, salty-sour dishes rooted in Southeast Asian cooking with no fixed borders. A B.Y.O. format and a dining room run with the warmth of a domestic space make reservations here among the most sought-after in the city since opening in March 2023.

Calliope brings Modern Levantine cooking to Chattanooga's MLK Boulevard corridor, where chef Khaled AlBanna fuses the flavors of Amman with the pantry of the American South. Dishes like braised collards with peanut dukkah and lamb andouille over muhummara make the case that two culinary traditions share more common ground than most menus dare to test. Open since September 2021, it has already earned the kind of repeat-customer loyalty that precedes institutional status.

Opened in November 2024, Smithereens brings a subterranean New England seafood sensibility to the East Village, with Chef Nick Tamburo's tight, seafood-forward menu championing under-appreciated species like bluefish, mackerel, and whiting. A Star Wine List White Star and 2025 Resy Hit List pick, it occupies a dimly lit, counter-and-table space at 414 E 9th St with a wine program built almost entirely around high-energy whites.

Inside a repurposed 1970s boogie board factory on Roosevelt Street, Lilo runs a 12-course tasting menu that traces the world's coastlines from Brittany to Japan, filtered through a California lens. Opened in April 2025, it earned a Michelin star within its first year and seats 24 guests around a chef's counter. It is the most ambitious restaurant in Carlsbad by a measurable distance.

Opened in February 2025 in Fells Point, The Wren is a 20-stool American Irish pub drawing from British, Irish, and continental European seasonal cooking traditions. Chef-owner Will Mester works a minimal kitchen setup to produce a daily-changing chalkboard menu of duck rillettes, lard-crust pies, and anchovy-buttered vegetables. The drink program spans draft beer, cocktails, whiskeys, and wine in a format that takes each category seriously.

Emeril's opened on Tchoupitoulas Street in 1990 and built a category of its own: New New Orleans cooking that placed Louisiana's produce at the centre of serious fine dining. Now holding two Michelin stars and a 2026 La Liste score of 92 points, the Warehouse District flagship operates under Chef E.J. Lagasse, whose tasting menu reframes the restaurant's founding classics through a lens shaped by Frantzén and Core by Clare Smyth.

Few dishes in the Thai-Chinese canon demand more technical discipline than khao man gai, and at P Thai's Khao Man Gai & Noodles on Airport Boulevard, chef Thai Changthong has spent more than a decade refining his version. Opened in April 2024, this Airport Boulevard counter delivers whole chickens poached in two-year-old broth, finished in an ice bath for taut skin, and served with seven house-made sauces that trace the cooking of Chinese immigrants who reshaped their food around Thai flavors.

Opened in March 2025 in the East Village's former Momofuku Ko space, Kabawa brings a three-course Caribbean prix fixe to New York's tasting menu tier. Chef Paul Carmichael, Barbados-born and Momofuku-trained across Má Pêche and Sydney's Seiōbo, builds a menu of roti, braised goat, and coconut turnover that reads as regional memory made precise. New York Magazine named it among the 43 best restaurants in New York for 2025.

La' Shukran occupies a second-floor space above a Northeast D.C. alley, reached through a green door that most of the city hasn't found yet. Chef Michael Rafidi blends Palestinian American cooking with the informal energy of Parisian bistronomy, producing Levantine mezze, soujek dumplings, and arak-driven cocktails that make the room hard to leave. Reservations fill fast.