Ten Restaurants That Define American Dining in Spring 2023

You can reasonably ask whether L’Ardente, having opened in 2021, set the tone for the ebullient dining mood in the nation’s capital, or whether it just happened to capitalize on this après-pandemic moment. Either way, chef David Deshaies and his team have created an exemplar of glam and grown-up (but not too grown-up) Italian dining.

L’Aredente’s menu will sound familiar — at least on the surface — to anyone who’s  navigated American Italian cooking in recent decades: rigatoni carbonara, whole branzino, several pizzas (a wood-fired oven is a centerpiece), meatballs with caciocavallo cheese. What keeps earning Deshaies accolades — love from the James Beard Foundation, Eater’s Restaurant of the Year, and so on — is the attention to detail around the edges. Yes, sure, the 40-layer lasagna has its own gravitational pull, but even as plucky an ingredient as cabbage gets dressed to impress, with trout roe, currants and beurre blanc. Not only Deshaies, an alum of Michel Richard’s Citronelle, but also his partner Eric Eden have an uncanny sense of what gets Washingtonians excited, as similarly demonstrated at Unconventional Diner — and, one assumes, at the forthcoming Love, Makoto.

When you add in L’Ardente’s recently launched brunch, plus a taut, curious wine selection that sews together Italy and France (trend alert: apparently the Italian wine lists of the 2020s will embrace Gaul as the 21st region) and you have a model for great Italophile dining, circa 2023.

“Coastal seafood” isn’t the most obvious play when it comes to opening a regional Mexican restaurant in landlocked Austin. But it makes brilliant sense when you know that chef Fermín Núñez and his business partner Sam Hellman-Mass, who made Suerte into one of the most worthwhile Mexican restaurants in the country, are behind this newly opened effort. The two spent time in cities on both Mexican coasts, gathering ideas. While you can pick out threads of influence — the shrimp tacos might nod to Ensenada, while the fish flautas take a cue from Oaxaca — the net effect is what Austinites have come to expect from Núñez: dishes that are their own sort of nuevo Mexican wonder, as with a whole Dover sole milanesa, or tuna carnitas served with Núñez’s nonpareil tortillas.

If both concept and menu at Koloman feel pulled from another time, that might be because it’s been a while since New York crushed on Austrian cooking (the early 2000s), and even longer since the pan-European catchall known as Continental cuisine was in fashion. And yet, given buzz surrounding this NoMad spot, chef Markus Glocker seems to have an uncanny knack in reframing both for the present day.

Koloman identifies its cooking as a mix of Parisian and Viennese; its reference to “Secessionist-era European cafes” only prompts more questions. Like, what does a mashup of Gilded Age bohemianism and the French neobistro taste like? And what happens when you locate it in the ex-Breslin space? Somehow Glocker is a perfect choice to answer this, perhaps because he grew up in a family of Austrian hoteliers, and then cooked for Charlie Trotter and at the lauded Bâtard.

The answer comes in the form of a certain stark modernism on the plate (and in the decor) — the boiled beef dinner known as tafelspitz here becomes a finely hewed terrine; tartare comes from celery root and is boosted with Parmesan; and of course Glocker has resurfaced the veal schnitzel that was a Bâtard mainstay. Heck, there’s even a salade composée, a dish that might evoke thoughts of the Larousse Gastronomique but here lands avant-garde.

The exquisite frustration in trying to experience Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon’s groundbreaking Thai cooking was that odds always seemed against even the diligent reservation-maker. From the moment Suntaranon’s original iteration of Kalaya opened in spring 2019, it was packed — with good reason. She used as her inspiration the intricacy of royal Thai cuisine, in dishes like the blue-tinged dumplings known as shaw muang, or stir-fried beef with coriander seeds. Here was a new, highly personal interpretation of a cuisine that was familiar to Americans in a very narrow way. Then the pandemic put her cooking even further out of reach.

Which is why her move to a larger Fishtown last fall, in partnership with one of Philadelphia’s top restaurateurs, is welcome news. For one thing, a lot more seats. Also a new roster of dishes, including a sour fish curry and her take on gai yang, the classic Thai fried chicken. We’ve known that Philly was home to one of the country’s great Thai cooking talents. Now more of us can enjoy that for ourselves.

Forgive us for being hasty, but we know a hit out of the gate when we see one. And it’s fair to say that this new entry from Itamae chef Valerie Chang  — opening just this week — is headed there quick. The evidence? Let’s see: Chang and her family have built Itamae not only into one of Miami’s top dining destinations but also an emblem for Nikkei cuisine in this country.

Maty’s marks a progression of sorts: While Itamae has been a collaboration with her father Fernando (a former sushi chef) and brother Nando, this 150-seat spot more reflects Valerie’s own vibe — and her inspiration from the women of the family, including Fernando’s mother Marta. The menu is still a work in progress, but in addition to Peruvian fish preparations like ceviche, expect more down-home dishes like chicken stew. As Chang told Miami New Times, Maty’s will be about “celebrating Peruvian cuisine, not reimagining or redefining it.” We probably don’t even need to tell you, but grab a table, asap.

On balance, Chicago has been something of a maximalist dining town, which might explain why it was relatively late to the American omakase boom. Yume was a key arrival on that front, in 2018, although chef Sangtae Park was already a veteran of the city’s sushi establishments when he opened this postage-stamp sized West Loop room, with seating for barely a half-dozen diners at a time.

The progression here moves through 16 servings, mostly exceprtional nigiri, usually including a couple cuts of toro, white-fleshed fish and hikarimono, perhaps a bit of wagyu, and then miso soup and dessert. Kim’s take on omakase is serious and meditative, a sign that Chicago is now on the circuit of cities for sushi fanatics.

We often encourage chefs so hard to indulge in the new that “constancy” can seem like a four-letter word — even if that’s what gives many restaurants a long, happy life. There’s perhaps no better evidence that the wheel does not always need reinvention than Jonathan Waxman’s perennially packed West Village hit. Barbuto’s current, larger iteration on Washington Street makes nabbing a seat slightly easier than at the Horatio Street original …  slightly.

There’s no secret as to why. Yes, Waxman has replicated it in restaurants across the country, but his roast chicken with salsa verde remains one of New York’s most craveable dishes. (And he is savvy to know not to cook the golden … uh, bird. At $32, up from $17 in 2004, it’s one of the few dishes in the city to largely track with inflation.) The rest of the menu sits comfortably in a supporting role: the Hannah pizza, with its mix of fontina and stracciatella cheeses, a fine bucatini carbonara, the familiar kale salad. Large windows bring sunshine and a peek at the Hudson waterfront, and especially at weekend brunch, the familiar has never felt so right.

Embrace the wonderful improbability of the newly opened Jiwa, found literally just beyond the Beltway in a Virginia mall. The focus on Singaporean cooking isn’t such a surprise; it’s having a moment of attention (witness the arrival of Urban Hawker in midtown Manhattan). Rather, note the players, namely Pepe Moncayo, whose Crane’s Spanish Kaiseki galvanized his Barcelona upbringing and a fascination with traditional Japanese dining. Even during nearly a decade cooking in Singapore, Moncayo was guided more by invention than local fare. Yet the menu at Jiwa sounds surprisingly traditional: nasi lemak, hokkien mee, laksa, chili crab. Moncayo’s involvement, then, can only deepen the innate brilliance of classic Singaporean cooking, and with his wife Aishah, a Singapore native, serving as general manager, you should probably plan a trip to the suburbs post-haste.

Amid all its farm-to-table fetishizing, you might not know that the Bay Area has long had a remarkable depth of standout Indian restaurants. Copra is not only the latest but also a twisting together of strands: Housed in the palatial old Dosa space on Fillmore, it is run by Srijith Gopinathan and Ayesha Thapar, who also own Ettan in Palo Alto. Gopinathan is known as well for his cooking at Campton Place, which for years has quietly served up standout haute Cal-Indian fare. The focus at Copra is on India’s southern tip, including the state of Kerala, and similar cuisine from Sri Lanka. Hence the appearance of dried coconut, black curries, jackfruit and the like; and dishes like roast chicken inspired by the Tamil Nadu city of Dindigul. Those flavors echo on the cocktail list, and with a wine selection assembled by Ceri Smith of Biondivino, this is a bold addition to San Francisco’s roster of South Asian cooking.

If it can be hard to check in on a longtime fave in any city, that goes triple for L.A. Like, if you’re Silver Lake, a revisit to anything on the Westside can mean … nope, just going to Alimento again. We plead, though, for you to return to Santa Monica. Check in on Bryant Ng’s remarkable Asian-ish bistro.

Ng and his wife Kim Luu-Ng, along with partners Zoe Nathan and Josh Loeb, opened Cassia in 2015, which now feels like a lifetime ago. Yes, some of the menu has evolved — although the lamb breast with Sichuan peppercorns and charcuterie fried rice are still there — but Ng’s cooking feels just as ahead-of-curve as it did then, a template for where Asian American chefs are headed these days. The kaya toast with a slow-cooked egg, Vietnamese Caesar salad, and minced-duck dan dan noodles with a leek sauce all feel like fusion done right, the inverse of the French tendency to muddle cultural quotations. The beef rendang remains epic. The wine list remains quirky and nuanced, a reflection of Cassia’s ties to the Rustic Canyon group. All of which is to say: If you love the ways bistros are being reinvented today, go immerse yourself in one of the spots that began this quantum leap.