Winners For

Best New Restaurant

Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski's State Bird Provisions may be the most fascinating restaurant to open this year. Small and sparsely decorated, the restaurant is innovative not just in the format of its service — small trays that circle the room, dim sum style — but in the food that the two chefs (he savory, she sweet) put out. The carts allo...

Situated on a stretch of Queen Anne Avenue that's notoriously tough on fine-dining restaurants, LloydMartin has struggled in its first year to keep its dining room packed. Vets invariably wonder why, since Sam Crannell and his talented crew have created the restaurant that Seattle eaters say they want: The focus at this clubby haunt is squarely ...

In 2011, Tamara Murphy, who helped define contemporary Seattle dining at Brasa, reminded eaters that she intends to continue shaping the local food scene. Years in the making—thanks to unanticipated landlord tangles and renovation delays—Terra Plata acquired must-visit status the moment it opened, serving food that reinvigorates the farm-to-tabl...

The city's most blessed culinary address may be 2238 Eastlake Avenue, the strip-mall storefront which housed Sitka & Spruce and Nettletown before Charles Walpole painted the room's walls red and christened it Blind Pig Bistro. Walpole, formerly of Anchovies & Olives, is relishing the freedom of self-employment: He serves what he wants when he wa...

Brian Durbin owned a Caribbean resort before taking the chef's job at the Innkeeper, a restaurant that celebrates a seamier vision of seafaring than most tropical getaways promote. The dusky room evokes a pirate's haven, and Durbin's best small plates taste very much like buccaneer comfort food. If wayward pirates found an old island wench willi...

David Sanford designed Belle Clementine “in the philosophy that the shared meal is one of the best ways to bring people together,” he said soon after the restaurant opened. Unlike many restaurants which clump their communal dishes on big platters, forcing guests to privately calculate how much they can take without denying their neighbors a fair...

Spring Hill is no longer—it's been renamed Ma‘ono Fried Chicken & Whisky and has traded its linens and braised short ribs for paper napkins, kimchi, and expanded bar seating. In addition to the items already familiar to fans of Spring Hill's wildly popular Fried Chicken Mondays, the new standard menu includes poke, short ribs, barbecue pork buns...

Former Canlis executive chef and James Beard award-winning food writer Greg Atkinson gets his first chance to run the show at Marche, which he opened with the backing of fellow Bainbridge Islanders. The casually classy bistro melds French techniques and Northwest ingredients, often to stunning effect. The very best plates feature plants, perhaps...

The New Mexicans isn't a souped-up, Pacific Northwest interpretation of Land of Enchantment cookery: It's a real-deal restaurant that might as well be on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Helmed by a native New Mexican whose grandfather policed Hatch County and whose grandmother taught her how to make dumplings, the casual restaurant is an enchilada...

It may look like meat and taste like meat, but servers at this Renton restaurant are quick to assure patrons that everything on the menu is animal flesh-free. Working in a Buddhist cuisine idiom that's underexposed in the U.S., chef and nun Hue Phan creates gorgeous sesame beef and roast pork from vegetables, soy and seitan. The properly spicy b...

Vashon Island's May Kitchen offers just 10 entrées, a puny figure by American-Thai standards. Yet with so many terrific dishes already on the menu, it's silly to grump about what's not available. The gai haw bai thoey is a gleefully tactile starter of three tender chicken bits, each bandaged in an untrimmed emerald-green pandan leaf, its forearm...

The Dutch is an American-roots-inspired restaurant (and oyster bar) that takes homestyle foods such as roast chicken and braised short ribs and then shapes them for big-city palates. It is a partnership among New York restaurateurs Andrew Carmellini, Josh Pickard, and Luke Ostrom (who operate a Dutch in New York's SoHo neighborhood) and Karim Ma...

When Josef Centeno opened Bäco Mercat a little less than a year ago, the stunning menu — calibrated to suit both California produce and myriad Spanish sauces — and happy atmosphere were less a surprise than the fact that it was actually Centeno's first restaurant. The Texas-born chef was a veteran of many wonderful kitchens (Manresa, Meson G, Op...

When Oak opened earlier this year it captured the attention of an entire city. Six months later not a lot has changed. Chef Jason Maddy's cooking has been consistently praised, and the restaurant still feels like it's gaining momentum, likely because in addition to great cooking, the menu is relatively affordable. Not that you'd know it by looki...

Sure, chef Shinji Kurita's exquisite Japanese restaurant may have opened last June, but its discreet location, low-profile stance, and a nod as a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant in the 2012 James Beard Awards makes it seem as recent as ever. Kurita's omakase, or chef's choice dinners, are nothing short of spectacular, elegant works of art, ...

With Oxheart, husband-and-wife chefs Justin Yu and Karen Man have created a restaurant that feels everything like and nothing like Houston at once. The bold menus offer only three different tastings nightly — two four-course meals (one of which is vegetarian) and one seven-course meal. They use a fascinating array of ingredients obtained locally...

You can't go home again? Nonsense. Bethalto, Illinois, native Jennifer Cleveland returned to the metro east last year from the oft-extolled climes of California, and the restaurant that she and her partner, Eric Heath, opened in downtown Edwardsville has had mouths watering on both sides of the Mississippi River since day one. Cleveland-Heath's ...

Baileys' Range, the latest, most ambitious venture from restaurateur Dave Bailey (Baileys' Chocolate Bar, Rooster and the Bridge Tap House & Wine Bar), could be the perfect restaurant for St. Louis' current culinary moment. It's a burger joint writ large, and even allowing for the fact that burgers never stopped being scarfed, right now that mos...

The pho broth at St. Louis Pho is so good you might hesitate before doctoring it with herbs, raw jalapeños and lime, rich without being heavy, its meaty backbone rounded out with warm, sweet notes of cinnamon, ginger and star anise. The menu features more than the restaurant's namesake dish: 75 Vietnamese items in total, including a banh mi dac ...

You shouldn't venture out to Kelly English Steakhouse for a dose of the steak-house experience. (Though the steaks are excellent.) You should go there because the Memphis-based English is a talented, creative chef whose hand with seafood is distinctive and delicious. Try the "Creole Midnight Snack" for ample proof. This brings toasted brioche to...

A posthumous nod for Mike Randolph's ambitious, excellent and, alas, short-lived, progressive Mexican concept inside his breakfast spot Half & Half. We wrote in our review of the restaurant, "While the place transcends the gimmick of being a restaurant inside another restaurant, you end up sensing that there's the ambition and potential of a com...

Technically, a relocated rather than a "new" restaurant, but Famous Szechuan Pavilion's new home is so unlike its original drive-thru hut -- like, it's an actual restaurant -- that we're counting it as new. Owner and chef Xin Lin hails from Szechuan province, and the food here draws upon the region's reputation for fiery chile heat and the uniqu...

The broad menu ranges from taqueria and street fare to dishes that even the most casual fan of Mexican cuisine knows well (enchiladas, chiles rellenos) to dishes that aficionados have yet to cross off their checklist, like the pambazo, a torta-like sandwich in which the bread has been soaked in a guajilo-chile sauce. The carnitas here is amont t...

Owner and chef Christy Augustin describes her approach as "[going] back to how people used to bake: seasonal ingredients, real butter, real sugar. None of that fake junk." Her husband describes her aesthetic as "punk-rock grandma," which, let's be honest, is far catchier. Pint Size's menu includes a wide range of sweets: cookies, cupcakes, brown...

The only problem with Blood and Sand? You have to be -- or know -- a member of this private club to dine or drink there. If you can gain access, though, do. The sophisticated libations from mixologist and co-owner TJ Vytlacil alone are worth the $10 a month for a partial Monday-through-Thursday membership. (The $15-per-month full memberships are...

You can't go home again? Nonsense. Bethalto, Illinois, native Jennifer Cleveland returned to the metro east last year from the oft-extolled climes of California, and the restaurant that she and her partner, Eric Heath, opened in downtown Edwardsville has had mouths watering on both sides of the Mississippi River since day one. Cleveland-Heath's ...

When the menu stops changing daily, when the controversial chalkboard proclamations of "If you want your meat well-done, bring it with you" is erased, that's when you'll know Jason Quinn has lost his edge, his ballsy confidence, his passion—everything that has made the winner of the second season of The Great Food Truck Race the toast of foodies...

German-born chef Martin Heuser was close to signing a lease for a space on 135th Street when he had an epiphany: The sophisticated, elegant and romantic restaurant he envisioned simply couldn't be in the suburbs. He felt that the Crossroads District, now dominated by the soaring Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, was a better fit. It was a...

Of all our online categories, this culled the most votes—a sign of Philadelphians’ relentless obsession with all things food. In the end, acolytes of upscale Indian fave Tashan weren’t able to topple the newest Italian gem in Stephen Starr’s crown.

Otherworldly—that’s perhaps the best word to describe the way that Komi chef Johnny Monis has converted this former basement-level Dunkin Donuts into something sublime. You’ll hear other restaurateurs boast about attaining this sort of transcendence through their various design theories. Most fall far short. I’m looking at you, Lost Society: “Yo...

We knew that Jody Adams had it in her to open another outstanding restaurant. And now that we’ve enjoyed the bold, world-inspired cuisine at Trade, the companion to her Harvard Square flagship, Rialto, we only wish it hadn’t taken her so darned long. Then again, if time is what Adams needed to craft her spicy lamb-sausage flatbreads, cool yet cr...

City dwellers happily hop the Fitchburg line to the Concord Depot train station and head directly upstairs to the impeccable 80 Thoreau, where chef Carolyn Johnson (formerly of Rialto) cooks up some of the most consistently well-executed farm-to-table fare around, from a creamy parsnip-and-nettle soup with green garlic to seared skate with aspar...

The people have spoken, and it seems they want pork — lots of it. In the weeks leading up to the opening of the Salty Pig, there was a palpable shiver of excitement in the air, as if all the cured-meat-and-stinky-cheese groupies in town were holding their collective breath. Thankfully, the place has more than met our expectations. The menu, desi...

Handsomely presented seasonal American cuisine — showcasing Michigan and Midwestern ingredients such as Michigan-grown beef, pork and chicken and as much locally sourced produce as possible — put the Root in the top spot with Metromix readers. Sustainable fish and seafood, cocktails handcrafted with all-natural, house-made ingredients, an all-Mi...

When a new restaurant announces its presence with the exuberance of Brazilian Carnival, it’s good that it’s named Samba Room. Chef Felicia Lacalle’s tapas bounce around your mouth with flavor combinations that you don’t see coming, and the result is thrilling. From the panzanella salad to the guava glazed pork belly to the dreamy tres leche cake...

What a change from last year, when candidates for new restaurant were few and far between. This year’s crop includes restaurants from national and local celebrity chefs, more farm-to-table, more pizza, more gourmet burgers, more highly designed dining rooms. The Fork and Wrench is an amalgam of most of those trends, wrapped up in one very fine p...

Since the day it opened in July 2011, clever Noodlecat has tickled palates with a slurpalicious blend of Japanese flavors and contemporary American style. Drawing equal inspiration from Tokyo shops and local, seasonal ingredients, chef-owner Jonathon Sawyer wouldn't have it any other way. While Noodlecat's prices are always moderate, daily happy...

It takes major cojones to name a restaurant “rusty spoon” given that the last thing anyone wants after a meal is a tetanus shot. But the only thing you’ll want after eating at Rust Spoon is to revisit the gastro pub with everyone you know. Orlando’s food scene is thriving, and it’s because of inspired places like Rusty Spoon that it does.

Fifteen years ago, if someone had said the city's best new restaurant was a ramen shop, you might've asked, "What's a ramen shop?" But we're living in a post-Momofuku era, where the virtues of minimalist decor, cloudy broth and curly noodles are commonly extolled, so today most Denver diners would shake their heads knowingly and reply, "I know, ...

When Jack Riebel, former executive chef of La Belle Vie and head of the revamped Dakota, opened Butcher & the Boar in the spring of 2012, he and the restaurant made an immediate splash on an otherwise sleepy block of Hennepin. With its menu of big, manly meats and bold selection of bourbon, Butcher & the Boar took straightforward, delicious food...