These are the 15 new restaurants that best captured the year in dining. Our team of editors and scouts traveled across the country, drawing on years of experience to build the 2026 winners list.
What we found remarkable: the quiet confidence of a chef who’s mastered Hungarian food in Pittsburgh; a fresh revamp of family-style Italian dining in Philadelphia grounded in the original restaurant’s 1950s roots; a cozy tribute to Southern cuisine in Denver that still manages to feel cool. What they have in common: a sincere commitment to making diners feel at home. — Missy Frederick, editorial director
Learn more about this year’s Eater Awards, presented by Capital One, and how editors selected them, here.
“You went to Kansas City for sushi?” I was asked more than once — with some derision — after returning from Missouri, so I can only imagine the uphill battle chef Peter Hoang faces at Akoya Omakase. Hoang isn’t easily daunted. He’s so committed to sourcing, he often personally drives to the airport to pick up the fish hand-selected by his two private buyers in Tokyo 26 hours after placing his order.
At Akoya, the fish quality is unassailable; the rice seasoned with precision. But Hoang consistently finds ways to complement Akoya’s sashimi and nigiri with unexpected accents. Smoky juvenile king mackerel gets a hit of acid and sweetness from pineapple chutney. Truffle, notorious for being overwhelming on just about anything, manifests in pate form alongside dashi and kelp salt to highlight delicate hirame. The miso-butter-accented crab nigiri (a steal at $6) calls to mind decadently dipping crab legs in drawn butter. While affordable for omakase, $165 is still a commitment: Akoya diners have the option to test the waters with a la carte offerings and lunch specials in a warm and unpretentious restaurant. Befitting the Midwestern stereotype, the personable chefs, who chat freely with those seated across the bar, are eager to answer questions. Even tables in the dining room chime in.
Hoang, who worked in his father’s mid-2000s sushi restaurant before heading to bigger markets like New York and Chicago, is excited to be part of his hometown’s emerging Japanese dining scene — one that’s increasingly drawing national attention thanks to ambitious restaurants like Anjin izakaya and promising newcomers like day-to-night Tian Tea House/Moon Bar. Kansas City just might develop a reputation for cuisine beyond barbecue. — MF
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Assuming new ownership of beloved, old restaurants can be a risk, but South Philly local Joey Baldino has the formula down: Keep the trappings, dial in the food. After taking over his family’s private Palizzi Social Club and retaining its members-only allure, Baldino bought Bomb Bomb Bar, which first opened in 1951, and reopened it last year. The bar’s lore precedes it: A rival business bombed it twice, immortalized by the large neon sign of two cartoonish bombs. Some reboots feel ironic, but not this one; the payphone by the door, the swordfish on the wall, and even the endearingly gruff servers feel like they’ve been there forever. It’s proof that classic Philly and modern culinary destination Philly can coexist.
In the front room, locals analyze Eagles games, and you might hear children playing in the street. In the back dining room, the procession of seafood here, priced at $65 per person, feels like a steal in this era of rising prices. The meat for the lobster Française has been removed from its shell, battered and fried, placed onto a buttery sauce, and then crowned with its shell once more. The crispy calamari gets enlivened with twangy cherry peppers. But it’s the overall dining experience that’s unbeatable: The restaurant hasn’t reinvented the wheel, but as the Beach Boys play and you sip a pepperoncini martini while watching your server pour hot fudge onto a sundae, you remember (perhaps while still wearing a bib) that complete novelty isn’t always necessary. — Bettina Makalintal, senior reporter
Cassis is big in every sense. The nearly 200-seat dining room of the Milwaukee restaurant is an immaculately designed jewel box of gleaming tile, cozy banquettes, and antique mirrors, and even on a Wednesday night, it’s packed and roaring, with a towering, glowing bar at the center of the action. The latest project from Kyle and Meghan Knall, the couple behind nearby acclaimed bistro Birch, channels the conviviality and polish of a classic, old-world French brasserie while remaining distinctly Midwestern in spirit. It’s an all-day restaurant with both heart and panache.
Kyle Knall’s cooking roots itself in French tradition without feeling stodgy or like Parisian cosplay. Instead, it takes cues from his farm-to-table approach at Birch: Classical technique provides a framework for showing off Wisconsin ingredients with playfulness, vividness, and attention to detail. Oeuf mayo gets a jolt from intensely herbaceous, bright green aioli; ravioli Dauphiné pairs almost sugary-sweet summer corn with buttery Wisconsin-made Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese; and an understated, frill-free but deeply umami foie gras eclair transforms one of French cuisine’s richest ingredients into an almost weightless bite.
At a moment when ambitious dining often means intimate tasting-menu counters and an air of exclusivity, Cassis makes a case that dinner can still feel like a real night out on the town. The cooking has an eagerness to please that succeeds. Within its walls, you’re offered an increasingly rare pleasure: a space where you’re invited to settle in, linger, order another bottle of wine, and maybe even have a friendly chat with the table next to you. Cassis could exist — and surely thrive — in New York or Las Vegas, but it’s more exciting in Milwaukee, where its scale and ambition feel like a vote of confidence in the city itself. — Hilary Pollack, deputy editor, Eater
In 2026, the Midwest has proven a formidable destination for dining, with restaurants from Cleveland to Milwaukee leaning into what makes the region’s food special. Creepies in Chicago embodies this movement: A nonsensical (if memorable) name belies a thoughtful restaurant destination from chefs David and Anna Posey. The refreshing space feels contemporary, but with cottage-esque touches — geometric patterns dot the furniture, cartoonish artwork shares space with kitchenware tchotchkes, and mini curtains hang from open shelving.
Chef de cuisine Tayler Ploshehanski embeds French technique into dishes fiercely grounded in Chicago’s identity. Steamed mussels get kissed with classic Pernod and a fennel giardiniera that honors the city’s iconic Italian beef sandwiches. An Alsatian-leaning tarte flambe comes “tavern-style,” a nod to the square-cut pizza beloved by locals. Not every dish invokes the Great Lakes; the generous portion of gougeres may be Midwest-appropriate, but here the French classic takes a decadent turn as warm Brie seeps from the center of each choux pastry. A textbook roast chicken’s umami-laden sauce gains extra depth from liver; drag one of the restaurant’s hefty, yet impossibly crispy fries through its drippings for the best bite of the night. Save room for Anna Posey’s desserts: The savory soft-serve trend manifests as a baguette-infused concoction topped with chocolate and buttery breadcrumbs. In a year when a diner can grow weary that Everything’s a Bistro these days, Creepies proves some still offer delights and surprises. — MF
I’ve always felt a connection to Cuban cuisine, having visited the island country in my youth and eaten many pan con lechons from LA’s Porto’s Bakery in iconic Glendale. But a July meal at Emelina, which snagged a Michelin star months after opening for its ambitious, $275 Cuban tasting menu, showed me the country’s cooking in an entirely new context.
I wasn’t the only one to find it a revelation. Several older Cubans fortunate enough to nab a reservation got emotional toward the end of the meal, moved to tears as they told me they’d never had Cuban food like this before.
Located in tony West Palm Beach, this striking restaurant from chefs Osmel González and Camila Salazar draws inspiration from the former’s family history and upbringing in Cuba. After working together at world-class restaurants like Disfrutar in Spain and SingleThread in California, they partnered with Alvaro Perez-Miranda to achieve their vision. Employing lush ingredients sourced from South Florida farms in Redland and Lake Worth, the meal starts with a tender knob of fried flounder topped with caviar — a winking nod to traditional pan con minuta, a fried fish sandwich slathered with tartar sauce. A mid-course of pristine tropical fruits including mamey, lychee, and mango, arranged over creamy ricotta and dotted with Benton’s country ham, conjures a bounty one might linger over on a Cuban beach. Rabo encendido, or braised oxtail with Koshihikari rice, takes the homestyle guisado to new heights.
Cuba has a long history of home restaurants called paladares, serving personalized versions of staple dishes like arroz con pollo. Emelina represents that same opportunity to delight and enlighten, casting attention on a cuisine and culture that could have been. In balmy West Palm Beach, it thrives. — Matthew Kang, correspondent
The winding walkway into Maroon is a portal into a new dimension, a leap from the beeps and bloops of the casino floor at the Sahara Las Vegas into a thrumming dining room, dimly lit and streaked with red-orange accents. Chef Kwame Onwuachi, who most recently earned acclaim at Tatiana in New York City and Dōgon in Washington, D.C., has become a beacon of African diasporic dishes in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
Onwuachi is building something approachable yet grounded in technique. The name Maroon comes from 17th- and 18th-century enslaved people who escaped and established mountain communities in Jamaica; the kitchen centers African and Caribbean flavors rooted in their foodways. Consider the artful array of bluefin tuna belly chunks, hamachi, and braised octopus, swimming in a tangy broth pool and best enjoyed spooned onto fried saltine crackers, that gets an intense but brief spice hit from Scotch bonnet peppers. Luxurious, palm-sized oxtail patties and jerk mushroom earn a dash of caviar and grated truffle, a maximalist garnish on the typically humble dish. Grilled butterflied shrimp brushed with achiote sofrito recall pescado zarandeado, while sweet white grape chow chow brings a puckery kick. The blackened jerk chicken, its juiciness sealed in with a crust of aromatic spices, might be the finest in the U.S.; oxtail fried rice could moonlight as Caribbean bibimbap, with saucy deboned beef and fork-tender stewed chicken on an assemblage of julienned peppers and peas. Yes, there is steak, but go for the seared, bone-in pork chop instead for its sweet glaze.
Maroon engages you with sensory brilliance and familiar yet indelible flavors, like a catchy song that gets better with each listen. In a different city, it might feel overwrought, but here in Las Vegas, it matches the city’s frenetic energy and lands like a satisfying opus. — MK
Maydan Market opened in 2025 as a collaborative restaurant space and marketplace home to a few different Los Angeles-born businesses; in essence, it functions as one super-incubator for some of the best food you can find in the city. Diners bounce around to try a pozole flight and pescadillas (sofrito-fried fish nested in supple blue corn tortillas) at Maléna, from the family behind the beloved Tamales Elena; a crisp, UFO-sized, asiento-painted tlayuda from Lugya’h, from Los Angeles legend Poncho’s Tlayudas; and chile-sauce-slicked gai tod from Golden Mountain Chicken (formerly Yhing Yhang), from the intrepid team behind Thai restaurant Holy Basil. They will certainly stop to perch at the rotating Club 104 stall, which has hosted Black-owned businesses such as Melnificent Wingz and Caribbean diasporic pop-up Rubie, as well as Palestinian home restaurant Mid East Eats. On their way out, they may circle the storefront simply named Sook to eye wines, spices, and woven goods sourced from the Levant.
This is not to mention the market’s anchor restaurants: the Lebanese-influenced Maydan and Compass Rose, respectable D.C. transplants from prolific restaurateur Rose Previte, who, alongside her team, curated the market with the knockout lineup of Indigenous vendors. Maydan Market feels boldly like one whole; people rarely come for a single hyped stall. The point, in effect, is the crawl. In a year marked by ongoing, unrelenting, nationwide ICE raids targeting Black and brown immigrants, the fact that the market centers Indigenous Mexican-owned businesses, allowing their owners the space and sovereignty to reach a wider stage and audience, speaks loudly. — Nicole Fellah, dining editorial manager
Take the former location of Portland’s — if not North America’s — most famous Northern Thai restaurant, combine it with the city’s most prolific and highly decorated Thai chef and restaurateur in Akkapong “Earl” Ninsom, and pepper in an elite local bar manager — co-owner Eric Nelson. Mix it all together, and you get OK Chicken & Khao Soi. Those familiar with its predecessor, Pok Pok, will find the space uncannily similar: a covered patio and downstairs service at a small bar, upstairs seating at oilcloth-wrapped tables. Now customers order on paper tabs. It’s casual and intimate, with just the right level of noise to feel like you stumbled into a really good dinner party.
OK Chicken’s menu leans into the flavors of Chiang Mai, starting with crispy chicken wings and two styles of khao soi — one with chicken and another richly prepared with beef. Plates of smoky nam prik makheua (eggplant dip) come with crisp and waxy long beans, green cabbage leaves, and cucumber. A memorable dish of yum moo yang — tender grilled pork shoulder tossed with snappish chunks of celery stalk and leaves as well as sliced onion — relaxes in a funky fish sauce with Thai chiles that sneakily build in your system until your lips hum. An herbal tea slushie refreshes even when mixed with a shot of infused Scotch. Close the meal with longan sticky rice speckled with perilla seeds, showered with crispy coconut and bathed in salted coconut milk that balances the sweetness of the pale lychee fruit and tangy mango ice cream on top. Each bite or sip at OK Chicken is surprising and pleasurable in equal measure. — Brenna Houck, dining editorial manager
In kitchens across the country, chefs have been happily marrying Japanese and Mexican foodways: Both cuisines have a reverence for local grains, honor highly specific seafood preparations, and play on savory, acidic flavors. Ramen Del Barrio blossomed from this shared cultural language — a Japanese Mexican izakaya centering ramen.
Chef and owner Chris Krinsky deftly laces together these threads for dishes such as creamy carnitas tonkotsu with two types of pork, confit buche and belly, as well as a chewy tangle of fresh noodles — made in partnership with Austin chef Gary Wu — using flour from a local mill. A honeycomb tripe and hominy-studded pozole tonkotsu comes rojo- or verde-style, while the mole tsukemen gets paired with thick whole wheat noodles and carnitas for dipping into rich, hearty mole. Tuna tostada, served on top of a sheet of origami paper, packs a zesty punch thanks to a dried shrimp and morita chile aioli, chicharrones furikake, eel sauce, and salsa macha. The yaki-tacos — hefty yakitori skewers served on top of corn tortillas — use smoky pulpo and vegetarian-friendly mushrooms accented with pepitas.
This isn’t fusion for fusion’s sake. Krinsky was born in Maine, grew up in Mexico, and worked at Japanese restaurants throughout most of his career. He started his ramen journey cooking out of his garage and then opened a food court stand, for which he won an Eater Award in 2023. Somehow, his menu tastes better now that he has his own dedicated space where he hand-layered wood panels along the wall and lined the ceiling with sushi mats. A small television in the dining room blasts Spanish-dubbed anime. Ramen Del Barrio 2.0 feels wholly like a loving expression of his culinary fascinations and his commitment to honoring both traditions. — Nadia Chaudhury, deputy editor, Eater New York
San Francisco, California
In an unmarked space in San Francisco’s Nob Hill, chef Patrick Gabon and partner Celine Wuu quietly rewrote the playbook on fine dining with Restaurant Naides. Filipino food has not historically held a footing in the Bay Area’s higher-end echelons, but Naides’s dishes make a powerful claim that the cuisine deserves its place there. Gabon deploys the sour, salty, and sweet flavors of the Philippines with subtle tenacity: The saline funk of bagoong, or fermented salted shrimp, takes on new dimension in Gabon’s hands, where the condiment gets mellowed into a creamy sauce that acts as foil to tender slices of chayote, crisp duck cracklings, and the burst of caviar. His approach to the mouth-puckering sourness of sinigang invigorates the Philippines’ national dish by pouring dry-aged beef broth over meticulously sliced abalone and scallions. These plates manage to retain the soul of the food but in new forms; they don’t placate the audience, asking them instead to reconsider their fundamental notions of fine dining and how Filipino food presented in this way may upend them.
Wuu’s beverage program has become a force of its own. It’s not often that a nonalcoholic pairing manages to outshine a traditional wine program, but Wuu keenly matches the bold flavors of each dish. A drink mixing the flavors of green mango with rooibos and habañero cordial complements the salty punch of bagoong at one turn, while coconut water, osmanthus, and rose vinegar offer a gentle start with the opening snacks, composed of Gabon’s takes on lumpia, okoy, and puto. “As you age and you grow, you tend to go deeper in your roots: ‘How can I make something so traditional the best it can be?’” Wuu told me earlier this year. Naides has answered that question with every meal since. — Dianne de Guzman, editor, Eater SF
It’s tricky to pin down what exactly Rougarou is. It’s a restaurant, certainly, serving modern Southern food in the historic Five Points neighborhood in Denver. It also has a ripping bar program, late-night hours, live music on the patio, and a casual roguish charm. Inside an understated brick building on a flyby street, the dining room is full of personality, dim and moody, all hard surfaces that bounce around the fun clatter of spirited groups throughout the dinner hour.
The menu conveys the right balance of accessibility and intrigue: The ubiquitous tomato stone fruit salad gets a curry-inflected jolt of vinaigrette and a crunch of coconut benne granola. Charred zucchini is doused in smoked cheddar sauce and scattered with bits of country ham. Fried catfish sits on a pond of fermented hot and sour sauce, with pickled chiles that lash the tongue at first and Sichuan peppercorns that leave you gently tingling. And the signature Chicken on a Stick is a lovingly updated homage to a legendary gas station restaurant in Oxford, Mississippi.
While the food feels approachable, the cocktails are high-concept and assertive, leaning on tropical ingredients but pushing for wilder edges, like green banana, oversteeped oolong, and Haitian clairin, pungent and unctuous with fusel oils. A second visit, late at night, revealed a laid-back restaurant-industry hangout at the bar instead of the celebratory din I found earlier. Much like its namesake monster, Rougarou can shape-shift to host a group dinner, a date night, a jam session, or a beguiling nightcap. It’s the kind of restaurant that invites returns, and a great fit for this moment in restaurant culture. — Ben Mesirow, travel editor
D.C. hospitality veterans Jon Sybert and Jill Tyler took a risk when they converted Adams Morgan’s Michelin-starred favorite Tail Up Goat into Rye Bunny, a restaurant that straddles the line between upscale and casual. Appetizers start at $15 and entree prices go up to $40, and instead of table service, diners line up to order at a counter. In the end, both the owners and D.C. diners have seen a payoff. Sybert’s dishes are inventive yet comforting, with Aleppo honey-covered fried chicken served alongside delicately stacked anchovy and quince jam toasts built on thin slices of milk bread. Everything is still seasonal and sourced from nearby farms, but those high-grade ingredients are easier to afford now that the restaurant has been able to cut down on the number of staff by 20 percent. While D.C. diners are not crazy about queuing, the nightly line out the door has sustained for more than six months and become an unexpected way to meet neighbors. A server brings over a drink menu as you wait, so you can catch up with friends and sip on a Slovenian orange wine before you sit down.
Rye Bunny encompasses the simple joy of a neighborhood restaurant that’s an equally excellent destination for a weekday date night or a special occasion, and it represents a larger shift in our dining landscape that might save these mid-price-range restaurants as margins get thinner. — Emily Venezky, social media manager
When So. Fox opened in Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland neighborhood in July, chef Myles Moody and sommelier Rachael Pack had an instant hit, bringing new energy to that pocket of the city. But a successful restaurant often belies monumental effort behind the scenes. So. Fox’s signature dish — a whole roasted chicken — is only available to five lucky tables per night and regularly sells out before the second seating. Much like a great restaurant takes time to build, the simple bird takes days for its mustard brine to infuse, and the result is stunning: a glistening interior and exquisitely crispy skin.
So. Fox commands an insatiable demand for a table topped with that prized poultry, herby rabbit dumplings, and Carolina Gold rice. Snagging a spot at the welcoming bar or at the curved, floating table near the entry, which helps capture overflow crowds, is equally competitive. The space that formerly housed a burger joint (and before that, an auto repair shop) has been transformed into a bright, perennially packed dining room with grand windows, offering an optimal view of North Highland Avenue.
Short for Southern Fox, an American indigenous grape varietal, So. Fox showcases Pack’s longtime knowledge of natural, low-intervention, biodynamic, and Old World producers, many of whom she knows personally. Pack and Atlanta-born Moody first met while working at New York’s Michelin-starred Aska, and returned south to open Kinship Butcher & Sundry in 2021, which resides next door. This isn’t just farm-to-table; it’s produce from their own Ormewood Park farm, highlighted in grilled beef with Vidalia onions and braised leeks, and at the end of summer, in sugar snap peas with chives and farmer cheese.
It’s seasonal Southern fare that feels current and relevant, with a refreshingly casual approach — and people can’t help but show up for it. — Mona Holmes, editor, Eater LA
Somssi, from Ahris Kim and chef Daniel Gronert, is one of the clearest examples in New York of a restaurant that goes all-in on personal history, rather than focusing on the broader food culture of any one country or a region.
Korea-born Kim, who ran operations at Atomix, lived in Indonesia and the Philippines before moving to Wisconsin with her family. Gronert, who has German roots and spent time as a pitmaster in South Carolina, cooked across restaurants in Atomix’s parent company. Those influences show up in dishes like the caviar-crowned Potato Potato Potato, a crispy-soft tater tot simulacrum nested on miso hollandaise; ox tongue grilled and glazed with tare, a kaleidoscope of textures; and pork schnitzel presented like shrimp toast (it works).
With the team’s fine dining pedigree, Somssi sets a high bar for hospitality, yet it’s still casual: The room is designed to feel like a home, and the menu nods to places Kim and Gronert have lived.
The bar extends that expertise. Christian Gray’s cocktails include well-made minis, which the bartenders are game to explain to curious drinkers. Sommelier (and Punch contributor) Jenny Eagleton’s list of wines and sakes leans toward lesser-known areas. The duo and their staff reward handing your night over to them, whether you’re there with a group or alone with a Kindle.
Personal touches carry through the space in gloriously analog fashion. Lace curtains on the door spell out the restaurant’s name in embroidery, and handprints line the bathroom wall, left by the broader constellation of people who helped build Somssi into the singular restaurant it is today. — NC
Sunday is a very good night to be at Titusz. That’s Schnitzel Sonntag — when the Pittsburgh restaurant, clad in warm wood and gem-toned ceramic tile, offers an irresistible special at an even more irresistible price: a 4-ounce veal cutlet, breaded and fried in lard, for $13. The golden brown slab comes with a single lemon cheek on the plate and nothing else. It takes confidence to serve a dish so simply: Chef and owner Csilla Thackray gained hers in some of the city’s top restaurant kitchens. She named Titusz after her great-grandfather, and his portrait hangs by the first-floor bar. Her own name comes from her Budapest-born grandmother, who raised the chef on her cooking.
Call it grandmacore if you want to peg Titusz to a national trend, but the menu is modern, Austrian, Hungarian, and distinctly Thackray’s. Here, meggyleves, the Magyar sour-cherry soup, gets an electrifying swirl of paprika oil. The chef has made charring an art: You will want to pick up the bowl and drink every drop of charred leek and sauerkraut broth beneath her buoyant kaspressknödel (cheese dumplings). The Maillard reaction pays off again in the savory brown butter drizzled over a dessert of aranygaluska (think walnut monkey bread), served warm on a puddle of peach creme anglaise. Thackray’s husband — Sean Rosenkrans, another veteran of Pittsburgh’s restaurant scene — has built a stunning list of wines from Central Europe, as well as cocktails fluent in that idiom — a slug of herbal Unicum here, a toasty hint of caraway there. Everything makes profound and reassuring sense together. The decision to spend money at a restaurant might feel fraught right now; the choices at Titusz never do. — Beth Kracklauer, dining editorial manager
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