The 10 Best New Restaurants in America for 2026

The married duo of restaurateur Tracy Vaught and chef Hugo Ortega has made an indelible mark on Space City’s dining scene, populating Houston with Mexican restaurants that each tackle different subgenres of the cuisine. At Zaranda, which focuses on culinary traditions up and down the Pacific coast, the team may have their best restaurant yet. Their take on Las Californias cooking incorporates influences of Asia: In the aguachile negro, for example, lime-cured shrimp has the salty punch of soy sauce. At this seafood-focused restaurant, the whole-grilled fish is a must. It’s served with a trio of excellent sauces, from the salsa verde with its sharp acidity to the charred-tomato salsa that has a rounder, fruitier, and smokier flavor profile.

Subtle, artful, and not overly formal, Wolfsbane exemplifies what makes San Francisco one of America’s premier fine-dining destinations. Carrie and Rupert Blease opened the restaurant after closing their beloved Lord Stanley, which earned a Michelin star in its first year. Rupert mans the kitchen, Carrie runs the dining room, and together they create a lovely experience built around a seasonal tasting menu based on Northern Californian ingredients. Flavors are expertly dialed in: The cabbage course, served with house-made buttermilk, has a slight tanginess and the salty, umami flavor of cured sea urchin. A sweet and spicy Dungeness crab and sunchoke croquette is whimsically presented atop the whole shell. And the duck, the final savory course of the night, is one of the best dishes we’ve had all year. With its crunchy skin and flavors of sesame and pine nut, it’s a stunning capper.

Built inside a four-story 19th-century townhouse in D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, the latest restaurant from the Popal Group is sexy and stylish. Helmed by Matt Conroy—who, with his wife, Isabel Coss, landed on last year’s Best of the Best list for Pascual—Maison Bar à Vins is billed as a wine bar, but that belies its ambition. It’s simultaneously a great place to drop in for drinks with friends and a dining destination in its own right. The tight Parisian-bistro-inspired menu moves beyond classics like steak frites to offer creative fare that still delivers on comfort. The seaweed choux buns are cloudlike in their lightness. They’re filled with a cooling cream and accented by the salty brine of trout roe. The brioche-stuffed chicken is tender and juicy with skin the same color (and tautness) as George Hamilton’s.

Over the years, we’ve noticed that at a lot of restaurants we review, the top of the menu—where the starters reside—is home to most of the best bites. Sometimes the main courses can even feel like afterthoughts. That couldn’t be further from the case at modern Chinese restaurant the Happy Crane, where James Yeun Leong Parry’s final savory dishes shine. The unctuous and sweet char siu pork jowl is interspersed with green apple pressed with lime and ginger for a bright and crisp counter to the fatty pig. The lingcod is perfectly cooked and swimming in a broth with eggplant, roasted celtuce, and yam leaves. And, for those with the forethought to pre-order one, there are few whole Peking ducks every night. Of course, Parry’s small plates hit the mark, too, especially the golden coin, his bao with chicken liver and coppa. It’s a satisfyingly grown-up play on gum tsin gai, a peasant dish from his native Hong Kong.

This 10-seat chef’s counter tucked into a tiny, elegant space in New York City’s Chinatown is home to one of the most serene dining experiences we’ve encountered. Chef Isao Yamada executes his kaiseki menu with stunning precision, yet he and his staff carry out the service with a grace that feels calm and almost effortless. Note-perfect preparations include a silky smooth chawanmushi; the sea-bass scales are dehydrated and fried so that the fatty grilled fish has a crunchy counterpart; and the A5 Wagyu that’s smoked with pine is a slightly leaner version of the delicacy, making it more texturally interesting. The savory courses conclude with a donabe filled with rice and seasonal ingredients like Dover sole and Dungeness crab. Better yet, if you enjoy that dish, they’ll be back around with the clay pot to give you more.

The story of Nashville’s rise as a great dining destination can’t be told without mentioning chef Philip Krajeck. He opened the rustic, seasonal Rolf & Daughters in 2012, then followed it up with his natural-wine and pizza spot Folk in 2018. But Junior, opened in 2025, revealed a whole new side of Krajek’s personality. The exposed brick of his past ventures is traded for lacquered woods, red banquettes, and starched white tablecloths. The food is said to be inspired by Basque open-flame cooking, and you can see a healthy dose of French technique, too. Accordingly, the 50-seat restaurant’s service staff and design exude a confident swagger. Dishes are gorgeous, like brilliant melon, razor clam, and speck ham; the barbajuan, a fried pastry popular in Monaco, that is crumbly like a cookie and packed with deep umami flavor; or the spiral of Romanesco zucchini that comes in a little cast-iron pan. Krajek is like a musician going for a brand-new sound with his latest album—and still hitting all the right notes.

Before he came to Los Angeles, chef Marcus Jernmark spent time in Stockholm as culinary director of Frantzén, one of the world’s greatest restaurants. In his stateside debut, the Swedish chef isn’t leaning heavily into New Nordic fare. Sure, there’s fermentation and a first course with gooseberries, but Jernmark is creating what he calls California bistronomy, rooted in native ingredients and a laid-back vibe that resonates with Angelenos. Lielle offers a tight, ever-changing, seasonal four-course menu. There’s an undercurrent of acidity that carries through the dishes to keep what could be a heavy experience light. The abalone is plump and toothsome, yet still tender and accompanied by asparagus kissed by the fire. Cornmeal-cream-stuffed pasta with morels and wild allium flowers tasted like that moment in time when winter merges into spring. And the Californian squab grilled over pine is served alongside hen-of-the-woods mushroom and atop a black-truffle jus. All of it is enjoyed while ’90s hits from “No Scrubs” to “Mr. Jones” provide the soundtrack to the night.

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The goat arrives in an exacting cube shape and swimming in an electric sauce of dried scallops and habaneros. It has been cooked low and slow, bringing it to an ideal tenderness. It’s among the many must-orders when dining at Kabawa, chef Paul Carmichael’s glorious return to New York City after years spent cooking in Australia. He and his team serve a three-course prix fixe, and there’s no danger of going home hungry. Along with the plates you select—from that goat to jerk duck sausage to spicy raw pepper shrimp to a massive pork chop—the kitchen sends out a parade of fun surprises, including roti and cassava cakes called bammy. Dishes hail from across the Caribbean and are influenced by Carmichael’s own upbringing on Barbados. This restaurant is still part of the empire David Chang founded—it took over the 25-seat tasting counter of Momofuku Ko and inherited the restaurant’s outstanding wine cellar—but is fully Carmichael’s spot, and it’s one of the most ebullient examples of fine dining we’ve found.

Nearly a decade after David and Anna Posey made their debut with the Nordic-inspired Elske, the couple have brought the Windy City their hotly anticipated follow-up. Tapping chef Tayler Ploshehanski to lead the kitchen, they’ve created a Midwestern bistro heavy on creativity and whimsy—like the custom plates with quirky little line drawings of faces on them. The food is as good as the tableware. Carrots are made exciting with sultanas, the crunch of almond, and an acidic, supple, and creamy sauce; honey-coated gougères ooze with brie; and the freekeh crepe with sweet potato, vadouvan, and kale is crispy, earthy, and nutty. A good bistro should nail its chicken, and Creepies does: The bird comes tender, juicy, and bathing in a silky, liver-enriched wine sauce. This is the kind of restaurant packed to the gills on a random Monday night, and deservedly so, because from design to service to food, Creepies has a defined and compelling voice.

When we traveled America in 2019 and early 2020, we finished our Best of the Best research for that issue just as Covid shut the world down. Even with all the winners closed indefinitely because of the pandemic, we decided to run that ranking anyway and celebrate the outstanding restaurants that had opened that year. However, one honoree shuttered permanently before we went to press, so we decided to replace it on the list. That was chef Eric Bost’s Auburn in Los Angeles.

Bost left L.A. for Carlsbad, a quaint seaside city in northern San Diego County, to join restaurateur John Resnick’s French spot Jeune et Jolie. Bost would lead it to a Michelin star, and the duo deepened their partnership by turning an old boogie-board factory into Wildland, a large all-day café and restaurant in the front, with Lilo—a stunning tasting counter—hidden in the back. Bost, who has worked for icons Alain Ducasse and Guy Savoy, has created a love letter to fine dining and California here. The 24-seat space is designed to be inviting, with natural materials like oak and stone. The service is friendly, warm, and impeccable. The wine list is great, but the nonalcoholic drinks were some of the most thoughtful and delicious we’ve ever had. The plating of the dishes is gorgeous, utilizing the brightly colored edible flowers sourced nearby. And the food itself—like abalone with roasted chicken and bone-marrow broth, kombu-cured scallop with house-made koji and buttermilk sauce with dill, and grilled lobster with a riff on salsa macha—celebrates local ingredients while taking inspiration from coastal regions in France, Japan, and everywhere in between. Despite the global influence, Lilo feels like a true expression of Southern California in restaurant form.