For one third of Esquire's seventy-five years, we've been heralding America's best restaurants--a chronicle of an era that saw France's nouvelle cuisine translated into New American cuisine, then fusion, global, and molecular cuisine. This year alone, we've chowed down fermented garlic, bacon-flavored peanuts, braised goat tacos, and soup for dessert. We've seen the rise of tea sommeliers and the near disappearance of tablecloths. And through it all, we've witnessed the emergence of American cooking as the most diverse and most innovative in the world. U. S. chefs born and schooled in every country in the world have mined their backgrounds and ingenuity to create a modern American food culture. Once again, after eating our way from coast to coast (hey, somebody's got to do it), we've narrowed it down to the twenty best new places to eat right now. Actually, make that twenty-one if you count your own dining room. (For more stories related to "Esquire's Best New Restaurants, 2008," including our chef, hostess, and tables of the year, please click this link.)
RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR: L20
Chicago
Chicago has always had an insatiable and open-minded appetite, embracing everything from Polish pierogies and Greek dolmades to the sci-fi creations of chefs who serve food on scented linen pillows. But the city has never had a great modern seafood house. Now restaurateur Rich Melman and chef Laurent Gras have filled that gap, and they have done so with style. The room is a paradigm of cool, with ebony columns at the entrance, etched glass and steel cables that shimmer with light, soft white leather chairs, and caramel-colored banquettes.
Gras, who's worked at three-star kitchens like Alain Senderens and Guy Savoy in Paris and most recently as chef at San Francisco's Fifth Floor, brings a finely honed precision to every element of seafood cookery--from the texture of the skin to the slicing of the flesh. He draws from whatever port he needs to in order to get the best fish--hirame from the Hokkaido and Kinki prefectures in Japan, octopus from the Galicia region of Spain, and codfish from Maine. Meanwhile, sommelier Chantelle Pabros has in a very short time built one of Chicago's finest wine lists. Give her a price and trust her judgment.
If you're feeling indulgent and flush and want to fully experience Gras's mastery, go for the $165 twelve-course menu, which may begin with shimmering sashimi, followed by Japanese snapper whose crisply edible scales preserve the sweet flesh of the fish. His lobster bisque is a rich chestnut-spiked broth floating dumplings filled with lobster. The most intriguing way to end a meal here is with the "exotic consommé"--a sweet broth brewed like tea and perfumed with cardamom, black pepper, lemon balm, and mint and paired with the cold edge of mango sorbet.
2300 North Lincoln Park Avenue; 773-868-0002; l2orestaurant.com.
BAR BLANC
New York
Sadly, enthusiasm and generosity of spirit don't always trump hype when it comes to a restaurant's endurance. But when you experience the kind of dedication and genuine hospitality of partners Kiwon Standen and Didier Palange at a jewel like Bar Blanc, you cheer it on (even if you'd prefer to keep it to yourself). Set in a former carriage house on one of the loveliest blocks in the West Village, Bar Blanc is a long sixty-seat dining room with white brick walls, white leather banquettes, and a twelve-stool white stone bar. Dutch-born chef Sebastiaan Zijp is a master at separating out the distinct flavors of each ingredient in a dish. Crispy sweetbreads lie on watercress made tangy with lemon vinaigrette and sweetened with sherry-poached cherries. Seared black cod is underpinned with spinach, roast sunchoke, and the anise scent of fennel, bathed in a saffron-mussel sauce. Zijp understands that when the strawberries are perfect, they need nothing more than a light marinade, a bit of meringue, and a small scoop of sorbet. All these dishes are richly satisfying, even homey. For all its modern white chicness, there is something comforting about Bar Blanc. And when you get up from the table, the owners seem really sorry you're leaving.
142 West Tenth Street; 212-255-2330; barblanc.com.
BAR BOULUD
New York
Daniel Boulud grew up in Lyon, France, where his family ran a little café and his maman spoiled him with homemade charcuterie. Now, after having established himself as one of America's greatest chefs, with restaurants including Daniel, Café Boulud, and DB Bistro Moderne, he has returned home with Bar Boulud. He recruited charcuterie master Sylvain Gasdon, from Paris's renowned Gilles Verot, who reproduces the lusty flavors of lyonnaise-style artisanal sausages and pâtés better than anyone in America. Just sit at the counter or the tasting table and point to the compotée de lapin, pâté grand-mère, or andouille de Vire. None will let you down. Or take a booth along the wall beneath the wine-stain artwork and order any bistro classic--coq au vin with fresh pasta, lardons, onions, and mushrooms, or a thick braised flatiron steak with carrot mousseline and onion confit--perfectly prepared by chef Damian Sansonetti and accompanied by sturdy Provençal wines. If steak frites is your measure of a good French bistro, you'll find the textbook version here. After some ripe cheeses and a rich, custard-filled gâteau Basque with brandied cherries, realize what a lucky little boy Daniel Boulud must have been back in Lyon.
1900 Broadway; 212-595-0303; danielnyc.com.
CONVIVIO
New York
It's true that Fiamma vet Michael White and his Alto partner Chris Cannon have reconfigured the highly regarded L'Impero into a more casual dining room--but just slightly. You'll still find white tablecloths and exceptional service in this sprawling Tudor City restaurant, now updated with bright crimson banquettes and a cozy new bar. This remains, after all, the place for UN dignitaries (you know, like Bono) to gather to solve the world's problems over a few glasses of Barolo. What truly has become far less formal, in a dramatic and delicious way, is the food. Here, White is serving the southern Italian food he loves. Though the preparation is meticulous, the dishes that emerge--firm fusili coated with a thick pork shoulder ragu and doused before serving with a tangy cheese sauce; a massive rib-end pork chop accompanied by a sweet corn ragu--are joyful, begging to be shared. So just accept the fact that your tablecloth will get a little dirty from the get-go, as you pass around the sfizi (little whims), bowls filled with bites like swordfish marinated in oranges and black olives, or radishes dipped in velvety anchovy paste. With the entry of Convivio and its fifty-nine-dollar four-course menu that could include any of the above (or if you prefer, tomato-braised octopus as a starter, or maybe a perfectly simple seafood spaghetti followed by a grilled lamb chop with escarole and white beans), New York's always competitive upscale Italian market just got a lot tighter, and we're not complaining.
45 Tudor City; 212-599-5045.
CORBETT'S AN AMERICAN PLACE
Louisville
You're just going to have to forget that Corbett's has an unfortunate street address and the fact that there is a looming Costco about a football field away in the distance. And you will, as soon as you step onto the veranda of this grandly restored mansion listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The heavy wooden beams, the rough red brickwork, the use of creamy colors, gauzy fabrics, and warm lighting all reflect the mansion's past and contribute to a completely easygoing atmosphere of Southern hospitality. Dean Corbett, who also runs the estimable Equus in town, poured close to $4 million into his new namesake, and it shows as much in the back of the house as the front. He's entrusted chef de cuisine Chris Howerton to present a menu that straddles Kentucky homey and bold international, which you'll immediately taste in his hot-and-cold foie gras with plums and Southern Comfort gastrique, and desserts like blueberry crumble with crispy little fried ravioli and cardamom-spiced ice cream. Summer's ripest tomatoes go into a chilled soup with seasonal herbs; his take on "Vietnamese coffee" is gooey goodness--chocolate mousse, condensed milk, espresso jelly, and cinnamon meringue. And there's no more elegant place in Louisville to hold a small dinner than in the downstairs wine rooms here.
5050 Norton Healthcare Boulevard; 502-327-5058; corbettsrestaurant.com.
DISTRITO
Philadelphia
On one wall hang six hundred shiny masks of lucha libre pro wrestlers; another displays American westerns dubbed into Spanish and then subtitled back into English. Chairs are covered in the bright tartan plaids of Mexican plastic shopping bags. Seats swing back and forth; booths rotate in semicircles. The downstairs bar, which stocks more than seventy tequilas, is a riot of color and neon, with a green-and-white Volkswagen Beetle parked next to a working jukebox. All in all, it's one of the most fun places you'll ever knock back a few cans of Dos Equis. No doubt Distrito, named after Distrito Federal (aka Mexico City), could get away with serving decent Mexican grub. But chef Jose Garces, who also runs the excellent tapas eateries Amada and Tinto in Philly, is using his fun new venue to show off his love and knowledge of Mexican street food--from guacamole tossed with lump crabmeat and ceviche of red snapper, olives, capers, and tomatoes to huaraches, masa cakes stuffed with carnitas of charred pork, chorizo, ham, potato, and Oaxacan cheese. Charred strip steak sizzles with fried tomatillos and creamy poblano-chile-and-corn rice on the side, and Garces's moles -- duck breast, rabbit, and pork belly--are as unusual as they are good. We doubt you'll find a place like this anywhere, including the Distrito Federal.
3945 Chestnut Street; 215-222-1657; grg-mgmt.com.
KAMPUCHEA
New York
It's hard to believe New York doesn't have more Cambodian restaurants. Fortunately, it has Kampuchea (the Khmer word for Cambodia). At this casual storefront on the Lower East Side, chef Ratha Chau, whose family immigrated to the U.S., pays homage to the street food of his native land with dishes you won't find anywhere in this country. You sit on bar chairs at communal tables and eat more or less family style, which means you'll have to fight over the chilled rice vermicelli with grilled Duroc pork, Chinese sausage, shallots, crushed peanuts, and an egg over easy. The more adventurous will love the seared monkfish liver with a beef jus, spiced pears, pickled daikons, and bush basil. Mussels (below) come in a fiery broth that you sop up with a crusty baguette, and the skin of the crispy pork belly is rich with its marinade of honey, scallions, and apple-cider vinegar. But it's the sandwiches you'll crave days later. The "Num Pang Tasting" is a plate of three of them, like the coconut tiger shrimp, the sweet pulled oxtail with tamarind-basil sauce, or the hoisin-sauced meatballs with tomato sauce. And if you want to rave or complain about the food, Chau is standing there, just feet away in the open kitchen.
78 Rivington Street; 212-529-3901; kampucheanyc.com.
MANSION RESTAURANT AT ROSEWOOD MANSION ON TURTLE CREEK
Dallas
When chef Dean Fearing left the Mansion on Turtle Creek after twenty-one years to open his own namesake restaurant in the Ritz-Carlton (Esquire's Restaurant of the Year 2007), it nearly caused a management meltdown. Should they stick with the "New Texas Cuisine" style that Fearing pioneered? Or should the restaurant go in a completely new direction and risk alienating an already aging clientele? And should they allow...blue jeans? The final decision was to import veteran New York chef John Tesar and let him do his thing while revamping the dining room into three distinct spaces: a main à la carte dining room, a more luxe room offering prix-fixe menus, and a "Chef's Table" room, where Tesar cooks for six people according to his whim. And blue jeans are welcome, especially on the young Dallas women who now pack the place nightly for Tesar's cooking, which brings a New York edge to Texas swagger. Take his wagyu, caramelized in a red-hot skillet, then dressed with a truffle vinaigrette and raw fennel. He roasts guinea fowl until golden, then serves it with a casserole of seasoned French lentils, carrots, and bacon, and gilds it all with a potent reduction of foie gras and crème fraîche. Gamey rabbit is dressed up with fava beans, leeks, and tiny gnocchi dumplings. Tesar had the unenviable task of stepping in for a legend. He pulled it off, and now Dallas can look forward to years of amiable crosstown competition between the two.
2821 Turtle Creek Boulevard; 214-559-2100; mansionturtlecreek.com.
MERCAT A LA PLANXA
Chicago
While the press dwells on Ferran Adrià and his acolytes, the real food of Spain is to be found in traditional restaurants whose chefs use the best Spanish ingredients--fragrant gold-green olive oil, the finest hams in the world, and a new abundance of seafood like turbot and red mullet. These are what you'll find at Mercat, a new Chicago restaurant specializing in cooking a la plancha, on the grill, to sear in flavors enhanced with paprika, garlic, and oil. The executive chef is Jose Garces, whose new Mexican restaurant in Philadelphia, Distrito (page 94), also makes our list. In Chicago, chef de cuisine Michael Fiorello throws plenty onto that grill, from prawns and turbot to rack of lamb and morcillo sausage, though what he cooks off it is just as delicious--bonbon-like Serrano-ham croquettes, chile-spiked chicken-chorizo-rock-shrimp soup, and the bocadillos--sandwiches that come with smoked paprika fries. The big, two-level dining room has been as big a hit at lunch, when tapas, charcuterie, and cheeses are a great way to eat light, as at night, when the Latin music rises up and the sangria goes down easy.
638 South Michigan Avenue; 312-765-0524; mercatchicago.com.
PACIFIC TIME
Miami
Since much of the snap and good taste has left Miami Beach, the burgeoning Design District can now claim some of Miami's most exciting new restaurants -- Michael's Genuine Food, Brosia, Domo Japones, and the newest, Pacific Time. Chef Jonathan Eismann originally opened Pacific Time on the beach in 1993, but he got tired of the bandanna-wearing guests who couldn't pronounce gnudi without laughing, so he's relocated. Now, in a large, popular dining room with outdoor tables, things are still tropically casual, but Eismann's food has gained greater character and a stronger inflection of Asian flavors -- skirt steak with Indonesian spices, fermented black beans, and braised bok choy; a marvelously crisp softshell-crab tempura; and addictive hot-and-sour popcorn shrimp with Thai vinaigrette. (You will regret agreeing to share this dish.) Some of the original signature items are still on the menu, but the new Pacific Time shows how Eismann's cooking has evolved while so many restaurants back on the beach are still slapping down the same old grilled-chicken pizzas.
35 Northeast Fortieth Street; 305-722-7369; pacifictimemiami.com.
PALATE FOOD + WINE
Glendale, California
I had never seen so many car dealerships in my life until I drove down Brand Boulevard in Glendale, which is not sufficient reason to drive out there. But in a year when it was hard to stifle a yawn over the new restaurants in L. A., Palate Food + Wine is worth the trip. A fairly simple dining room is housed in a 1920s warehouse, with a flattering pink glow, a friendly bar, black-and-white tile floors, an open kitchen, and big windows from which you can see hundreds of unsold SUVs. In the rear is a big family-style table and behind that a great communal room where you can feast on cheeses and wines in a sleek, industrial-style wine cellar. From the greeting and seating to the service and wine list, Palate hits every point of hospitality. Chef Octavio Bercerra, formerly with the Patina Group restaurants, starts you off with mason jars of salmon rillettes and potted Berkshire pork, then it's on to crawfish with chile butter; yellowtail poached in olive oil with olive tapenade and artichoke béchamel; pork belly with farro grain and cherries; and a fabulous wagyu rib eye with sweet onions, charred carrots, and oxtail sauce -- this last, the most expensive thing on the menu, is nineteen dollars. Whatever you spend on gas to get to Glendale, you'll save on the food and wines here and go home very happy, maybe even in a new car.
933 South Brand Boulevard; 818-662-9463; palatefoodwine.com.
THE PLUMED HORSE
Saratoga, California
The new owners poured millions into gutting and transforming the dated Plumed Horse, and it's now one of the most beautiful restaurants to open in northern California in years. The wine rooms alone are some of the coolest in the world: You walk on a glass floor surrounded by walls of wine and look down into a two-story cellar below holding thousands more bottles. The dining room--with sycamore panels, fiber-optic chandeliers, an onyx bar, curved ceiling, and leather armchairs--could not have more polish. But what drives this place is the cooking of chef and partner Peter Armellino (most recently at the Aqua Restaurant in San Francisco). Skip the caviar service--Armellino's appetizers are much more interesting: Camembert fondue to dip fingerling potatoes fried in duck fat and showered with black truffles, or foie-gras-and-onion soufflé with Armagnac-soaked prunes. Then move on to roast breast of duck with more foie gras, white peaches, the crunch of walnuts and cornichons, or a juicy rib eye of Colorado lamb with shallot-stuffed ravioli and a truffle jus. Even if you're just in San Francisco for the night, the Plumed Horse is easily worth the forty-five-minute drive from SFO.
14555 Big Basin Way; 408-867-4711; plumedhorse.com.
SCAMPO
Boston
Two decades ago, at Seasons, Lydia Shire was at the forefront of "New New England Cuisine," and as her access to better local ingredients has grown, so has the authority of the menus at her successive haunts. At Scampo, located in a former prison transformed into the new Liberty Hotel (the bar doors still hang), she focuses on Boston's rich Italian-American heritage. With its brick walls and wooden floor, sports bar and open kitchen, the place rings with loud music and the joyful sounds of people passing around dishes like executive chef Mario Capone's spaghetti with cracklings and hot pepper. Don't miss the hazelnut risotto with sweetbreads and vin santo, the quail with a yellow-raisin sabayon and semolina gnocchi, or the massive black pig chop with a sweet spring-onion tart. Finish with a ricotta cheesecake with almond toffee and a shot of fiery grappa. If you can, get yourself seated in waiter Mario Depasquale's section -- his crazy exuberance sets exactly the right tone for a night at Scampo.
The Liberty Hotel, 215 Charles Street; 857-241-1150; scampoboston.com.
SCARPETTA
New York
The name means "little shoe," an Italian colloquialism for the crust of bread used to sop up your pasta bowl. The word is also an alliteration of the chef and owner's name--Scott Conant, who has brought back real culinary muscle to the Disneyfied Meatpacking District. At Scarpetta, you push your way past a crowded bar into a skylit room with close-set, trattoria-style tables and brown leather banquettes and find the menu picks up where Conant left off as chef and partner at L'Impero (now Convivio, page 86). His lusty regional Italian food, like his signature roast capretto (young goat), is revived here in all its succulent goodness, but with less pomp than before. Among the antipasti is that old Italian-American favorite mozzarella in carrozza--mozzarella oozing through a fried crust, cooked with stewed baby tomatoes. Meltingly braised beef ribs cuddle next to farro risotto, and his simple spaghetti with tomato sauce elevates a dish you thought you knew. He doesn't shy away from pastas with complexity, either: Ricotta raviolini with a subtle salty benediction of anchovy butter and orange zucchini blossoms or big fat duck-and-foie-gras ravioli slippery with a marsala reduction are perfect before the seared pearl-white sea scallops with mushrooms and sunchoke puree, or the orata with leeks. You'll indeed be sopping up everything with a little shoe of bread.
355 West Fourteenth Street; 212-691-0555; scarpetta-nyc.com.
SPRUCE
San Francisco
It took years for Spruce finally to open in the renovated 1930s brick auto barn it now occupies -- the usual development hassles -- but the wait has yielded a high cathedral ceiling and a manly series of dining rooms, including a charcuterie, a private dining area, and an eighty-seat dining room with dark mohair walls, black ironwork, and smooth faux-ostrich-skin chairs, plus a swank bar where you can order anything on the dinner menu. Flavor is in the fat, and chef and partner Mark Sullivan skimps on neither, so that a starter of perfectly sweet tomatoes comes not just with mozzarella, but with burrata, the mozzarella with a belly of pure cream. His main courses are just as hearty, like Moroccan scented chicken with preserved lemon or a nice chewy bavette steak with bordelaise and potatoes fried in duck fat. His sweetbreads are wrapped with pancetta and served with creamy lentils and glazed apples, and the charred tenderloin of pork comes with crispy pork belly and beans. And after you've eaten all these big dishes, you might as well give in and have a plate of warm, fragile palmiers cookies along with your chocolate-caramel fondant with chocolate sorbet and chocolate paper.
3640 Sacramento Street; 415-931-5100.
TAKASHI
Chicago
Chef Takashi Yagihashi first trained in Japan as an interior designer, then taught himself how to cook by working his way up through better and better kitchens, absorbing all the fine points of French, Japanese, and Mediterranean cuisine before becoming a star in his own right--first at the over-the-top Asian-fusion restaurant Tribute outside Detroit, then as chef at the splashy Okada at the Wynn in Las Vegas. Now he's back in Chicago with his own very personal namesake restaurant--just sixty-five seats--in what was once an artist's studio in Bucktown. He's embraced a simpler, more minimalist style than at his previous places, working out of a tiny kitchen with a small crew and pouring everything he knows into unforgettable dishes like his crispy pork belly with a sweet caramel-soy glaze and a hearty chicken in a clay pot with eggplant and okra.
1952 North Damen Avenue; 773-772-6170; takashi-chicago.com.
TERRA
Tesuque, New Mexico
About an hour out of Albuquerque and just ten minutes from Santa Fe, Terra is the showcase restaurant at Auberge Resorts' new Encantado, located in the gorgeous, mesa-studded New Mexican desert, where breathtaking sunsets appear just on time outside Terra's glass-wall dining room. Hell, even the thunderstorms here are inspiring. With Terra, crafted in polished stone and wood, and with a bar that begs you to steal a few minutes from dinner for a cocktail, chef Charles Dale, who for years was one of the top chefs in Aspen, has opted to take advantage of the region's strengths without forcing his menu to scream "southwestern." His cooking here is more global, as in a dish of ravioli stuffed with greens, graced with a pistachio pesto in a tomato broth, or his osso buco of veal breast with glazed onions and carrots. Still, he obliges with a few regional elements you crave in the Southwest, like adding a huitlacoche mushroom cream to grouper cooked in a corn papillote and served with fried gold-and-green zucchini blossoms. He plates quickly seared, quivering foie gras with a duck tamale, then dashes it with a cherry-Coke sauce.
Encantado Resort & Spa, 198 State Road 592; 877-262-4666; encantadoresort.com.
VOICE
Houston
Designing a restaurant in the open, columned space of the Icon hotel lobby is tricky. It's too easy to get lost in the vastness of this former bank, as Jean-Georges Vongerichten learned last year when his restaurant here closed. Now, with bare wooden tables, plush chairs, warmer lighting, and brighter colors, Voice seems both more self-contained and more intimate. Chef Michael Kramer's menu is also more approachable. Kramer, who set a high bar years ago in Charleston, South Carolina, at McCrady's, is not trying to start a movement here; he just does American creative flawlessly: potato gnocchi laden with morels, asparagus, and prosciutto, each ingredient retaining its own powerful flavor; slowly cooked venison bolstered by a bold sour-cherry sauce, itself offset by sweet spring onions and apples. His unusual combination of roast chicken, Maine lobster, soft polenta, and a ragout of vegetables is inspired. Splurge an extra six dollars for the french fries dusted with truffles and Parmesan cheese.
220 Main Street; 832-667-4470; hotelicon.com.
ZAHAV
Philadelphia
Zahav means "gold" in Hebrew, which is what chef Michael Solomonov hopes he will strike by offering people the food, flavors, and even wines of Israel and other European countries with their own Jewish food cultures. The big dining room, mostly done up in browns, isn't particularly exciting, but Solomonov supplies more than enough exuberance with his cuisine, starting with the hot, puffy pita bread straight from the oven. I've never had better, creamier hummus than here, and both the cold and hot mezes, like kibbe naya (spicy raw ground lamb with bulgur wheat) and Moroccan pastilla of phyllo pastry, rabbit, prunes, and almonds, could hardly be improved upon. The shipudim (skewered foods) cooked over charcoal are all intensely and aromatically seasoned, so when sizzling and smoky lamb sausage served with couscous or baby eggplant with pistachios and rice come off the grill, half the pleasure is in the scent of the food as it comes toward your table. God promised the Jews a land of milk and honey; I'll take the leg of lamb with saffron that Zahav serves in Philly.
237 St. James Place; 215-625-8800; zahavrestaurant.com.
