Ten Restaurants That Define American Dining in Summer 2023

We’re well aware that nearly anything from Major Food Group creates its own weather. But the return of Torrisi (or rather the reappearance, since Torrisi Bar & Restaurant isn’t quite the same as the original Torrisi Italian Specialties) marks an auspicious moment for New York dining. Rich Torrisi returning to have a platform for his uniquely adaptive Italian American cooking is great news in every way. 

Those of us who dined at the original Specialties remember not just Torrisi’s inventive dishes — sui generis pastas and tweaks like his sweetbreads Milanese — but the way that the restaurant itself planted a flag for a lot of things that have come to define dining on these shores in the decade since. A $50 tasting menu that showcased deep kitchen talent without white tablecloths or frills — essentially a NYC twist on what was happening in Paris’ néobistros. Also the elevation of Italian American cuisine on its own merits, with depth and soul. This would not only give birth to Carbone, devised by Rich Carbone, Torrisi’s co-owner at the original (and to their Parm sandwich shops) but also to the entire revival of red-sauce Italian as a nationwide retro trend.

Because Torrisi himself always comes with new tricks up his sleeve, Torrisi 2.0 has taken the skeleton of the original and built something completely new. The interior now exudes a touch of Carbone-y glitz, and more importantly, the cooking has found a way to take Torrisi’s original homages and springboard them. The old pickle plate has evolved into cucumbers “New Yorkese,” which tips a hat to the old Jewish brining traditions of the Lower East Side. A lobster-studded capellini Cantonese nods to nearby Chinatown without losing the rootedness of Little Italy. Cavatelli with a Jamaican beef ragu, and octopus Nha Trang (a rework of a dish at nearby Nha Trang One) bow to other flavors that form the city’s fabric. The net effect is a celebration of how American cuisine at its best hybridizes and amplifies the breadth of our traditions, into things that are delicious and new and uniquely ours. This new Torrisi provides a perfect showcase.

Let’s stick with that hybrid idea for a moment and duck down to D.C., which has a great tradition of Indian food — and a community of chefs and restaurateurs who have made the city one of the best in the Western Hemisphere to enjoy India’s varied cuisines. Daru was opened by two of them: Suresh Sundas, formerly the tandoor chef at Rasika West End, where he worked with Dante Datta, a Bengali cocktail maestro who also worked at Ellē.

Daru is very much their creation — a vibrant neo-Indian joint, tuned up with standout cocktails, and a menu that’s willfully nontraditional in the best way. Chicken tikka tacos and a reshmi kebab that incorporates blue cheese and sour cherries are the sort of thing we’re talking about. And if some of the larger dishes, like a dough-topped wild mushroom biryani, stray less far from canon, they’re matched by other experiments gone right, like wok-fried cabbage jolted with both Sichuan peppercorns and curry leaf. Daru is the sort of restaurant you throw in the face of anyone mumbling about “authenticity,” before you go back to craving another order of their bison momos.

If it seems odd to throw into a list of new and shiny a restaurant that remains largely in its original form from a quarter-century ago, then you’ve probably never dined at Lula. Jason Hammel’s cafe not only catalyzed Logan Square as a Chicago dining nexus, but also provided the Second City’s answer to West Coast farm-to-table temples like Chez Panisse and Zuni Cafe. Funnily enough, as those two Bay Area legends have settled into a mellow sort of middle age, Lula feels constantly inventive — even if wackily genius dishes like its Yia Yia pasta (bucatini, feta, cinnamon, fried garlic, brown butter) are basically now forever etched into the menu.

This is clean-edged, focused cooking (which, of course there’s a roast chicken) of the sort that now defines Cal-tinged New American. And of course there remain Lula’s now-legendary Monday farm dinners — always a three-course set menu that’s both an homage to the best local produce and an incubator for new menu items. If it sounds familiar, just keep thinking “24 years,” and you’ll realize why Lula has been a low-key icon for a long time.

Peter Cho and his wife Sun Young Park have, over the past decade, created their own empire of Korean-inspired cooking in Portland. First came Han Oak, the house-party-slash-restaurant that operated out of the couple’s own house, serving chef-worthy versions of dumplings, budae jigae, wings and the like. (Cho had been a protégé of the Spotted Pig’s April Bloomfield.) The indulgence factor amped up a bit with their follow-up, Toki, which dabbled in what might well have been dubbed Korean-ish stoner food. And then during the pandemic, Han Oak shifted to serve hot pots and the like.

Now comes Jeju — its name from the southern Korean island of that name, which has inspired no shortage of other modern Korean spots (Jeju Noodle Bar and Haenyeo in New York, to name two). Jeju’s inspiration comes from a slightly different spot, namely Korean barbecue, specifically of the wood-fired kind. But this being Cho, and Portland, the approach is rather more distinct, with a focus on whole-animal butchery and off-cuts, service built around (still pretty informal) tasting menus, Korean spirits at the bar. It is, perhaps, a sign that the party has dialed itself down just a bit, gotten more structured, and perhaps more ambitious. After all, as Portland Monthly noted, this is essentially the restaurant Cho originally intended to open when he moved west. It’s also a hot new take on a beloved form of Korean cooking.

A beloved Indian restaurant, the anchor of a snoozy corner of Santa Monica for half a century, is replaced by a technicolor, Insta-ready Southeast Asian street food destination, run by a former curry specialist. If that sounds like the most L.A. story ever, well, we love L.A. stories. And there is much to love about Cobi’s, opened in late 2021 by Cobi Marsh and Lance Mueller. Marsh had been running an itinerant operation, serving up curries from different corners of the globe, while Mueller was as Eveleigh and E.P. and L.P.

Here, on Santa Monica’s Main Street, they created a wallpaper-bedecked space that might best be described as Victorian on digitalis. (That’s a compliment, btw.) The food at Cobi’s bops around different corners of Asia — gai yang and larb from Thailand, beef rendang from Malaysia, nasi goreng from Indonesia, butter chicken from India. Even Marsh’s vegan “African curry,” with its west African roots, has resurfaced. The net result is wonderfully eclectic, in a way that truly does channel old-school Santa Monica, before the Aesops arrived, yet also feels totally 2023.

Can the tasting menu survive? Restaurant types in 2023 keep debating this, as the appetite — literally — for elaborate multicourse meals seems to keep waning. If you want evidence of how the form will not only endure but thrive, might we suggest taking a trip down to Houston?  March has become a master of the form since its 2021 opening — definitively making its case despite being a pandemic baby. 

This is, in large part, thanks to its owners, Felipe Riccio and June Rodil, of Goodnight Hospitality. Riccio, Mexican-born and a Houston native, has all the essential chef credentials (stints at Osteria Francescana, Stone Barns, and so on) but he also ran one of the city’s best wine bars, Camerata, and honed his cooking chops doing pop-ups around town in the mid 2010s, before such things were a thing. Rodil, Filipino and also Texas raised, is a master sommelier, but has applied those skills to become one of the country’s most fun wine people. (Check her Wes Anderson memes.)

Their sensibilities have infused March with a sense of lightness — not only in its concept of wandering the Mediterranean, highlighting specific cuisines (Greece is in the slot right now, with haute takes on souvlaki, moussaka, and more), offering wine pairings that never feel rote (plus a 100-page wine list), generally leaning into the bounty of a coastal city that quietly outperforms in its culinary achievements. The team at March, then, answers the debate affirmatively: Tasting menus are doing fine; they just need to stop being so joyless.

The great French resurgence keeps expanding on these shores, and a standout example can be found in California Wine Country — in a sandwich shop. By day, at least … by night, owners Sean McGaughey and Melissa Yanc, who also own Quail & Condor, Healdsburg’s hit new bakery, turn their nearby boulangerie into a small bistro.

The couple landed in California to work at the starry SingleThread, part of a raft of culinary talent drawn to work there. (The new Molti Amici, opened with their friend Jonny Barr, is another dividend of the SingleThread migration.) That cheffy migration keeps paying dividends in new projects — in the case of Troubadour’s dinner service, with a nightly homage to Escoffier-era French classics made current. This might take the form of snails in a parsley velouté, or riz de veau, or duck à l’orange, all served on a mix-and-match of vintage gilded china, with a taut wine list that balances French classics and local standouts.

The result fels like a classics-revisited dinner party hosted by a very talented friend, the formality of the cooking offset by the fact you’re sitting at a bakery counter. Which, needless to say, make sure you eat the bread here.

If you want to understand Atlanta’s restaurant vibe these days, get yourself to Delbar on a weekend afternoon. (The original Inman Park location; there’s another in Alpharetta and a third coming soon to Buckhead.) There you’ll see the full spectrum of the city’s diners — families still in church garb, locals shaking off the previous night’s party, couples from nearby Poncey-Highland enjoying a lazy Sunday. The drinks are well spiced and complex (the Istanbul Nights, built around mezcal, basil eau de vie, and harissa, is a United Nations in a glass) and same for the dishes on the table: sosis bandari, an Iranian beef sausage, with potatoes and taftoun bread; silken dill labneh and falafels with kale salad. Much of this appears at dinner, too, plus a range of tahdigs, the eggplant-laced lamb stew known as gheimeh bademjoon, a branzino stuffed with walnut and pomegranates, and so on. 

It’s all the vision of owner Fares Kargar, who left Iran as a teen and came via Turkey to Atlanta, and tumbled into the restaurant world almost by accident. Kargar didn’t want Delbar to be limited to Persian cooking, so the influences on the menu end up wandering the Middle East — but more importantly, Delbar captures how this cuisine has come of age in Atlanta (and many other cities), appealing to the full spectrum of the city’s residents. 

As we mentioned, French food is (yet again) so hot right now and if Troubadour exalts the classic classics in an improbably chill location, Obélix in Chicago’s River North attempts the opposite.

The décor here is classic bistro, and owners Oliver and Nicolas Poilevey are from a family that ran some of the city’s beloved French spots, Le Bouchon and La Sardine. And the menu dabbles in being traditionally French, with pâte en croûte, leeks vinaigrette, onion soup, and quite a lot of duck. But there’s also a “foie-co” (Oliver co-opened Taqueria Chingón during the pandemic), a chawanmushi with snail-stuffed morels, and so on. Let’s just say “ratatouille pithivier” are two words we very much like seeing together.

None of this is particularly outside the modern Parisian canon, but it’s a way of keeping a beloved cuisine fresh in a city that cherishes its Francophile moments. And it’s further evidence that classic bistro tropes can remain fresh, even as American cuisine grows ever more diverse.

Alex Raij and her husband Eder Montero have long been staples in New York’s restaurant community, with their brand of Spanish-inflected cooking. And last year it felt like there was a perhaps belated acknowledgment of the enduring importance of their work.  

If that focused perhaps more on Txikito, their Basque spot in Chelsea opened in 2008, it’s worth a moment to focus on the beauty and durability of Saint Julivert, their seafood-focused restaurant in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill. Raij refers to it as a “jewel box,” and that seems apropos — a tiny, trim space with not an inch wasted, more to relax and indulge in a casual way (Raij was inspired by Parisian wine bars). If La Vara next door hews Spanish, Saint Julivert is perhaps a touch more French, but really global: the cured wild shrimp with kumquat and poblano could evoke Sinaloa or southeast Asia; put them on your table next to sorrulitos, a Puerto Rican sort of hush puppy; a yuzu-accented lobster mayonnaise; and without a doubt, the cod pot pie. The last is a Raij masterpiece, more British than the British could devise, yet with sofrito and curry-leaf aioli. 

Add in her natural-tilting list of hidden gem wines, equally quirky desserts (mezcal flan, anyone?) and you have ecumenical cooking of the highest order.