The 38 Most Essential Restaurants in America
Torino’s strawberry and spruce dessert. All photos: Bill Addison for Eater
You been to Philadelphia lately? It’s the most surprisingly great food town in America, according to Eater's national critic, Bill Addison.
On Thursday Eater, the restaurant-obsessed website, launched its first ever Eater 38—a selection of 38 knockout restaurants—on the all-over-America scale. Addison visited 29 cities, traveled over 75,000 miles, and ate 263 meals putting this list together, and told us, “It’s such an amazing job; I feel so lucky. There is no complaining, except to other critics, that’s the rule.”
It’s a smart rule to have when you have what many consider a dream job. Addison, maintaining his neutrality in the spirit of the list, wouldn’t cop to an all-over favorite restaurant over the phone, but told us that Los Angeles is his favorite food city in America. “It’s got extraordinary range. I feel like I can go to L.A. and satisfy every craving.”
Below, 10 of Addison’s top picks. Click to read, and click on over to Eater for the full list when you’re done.
The fried chicken at Husk, one of Addison’s picks.
On April 10 last year, I started my job as Eater’s first restaurant editor with a flight to Los Angeles. Shortly after touchdown I launched into a torrent of consumption that began with chorizo and chicken mole tacos on freckled tortillas and ended nine hours later with scrambled eggs and uni on toast, duck liver mousse with pickled Asian pear, spaghetti tossed with Dungeness crab, and strawberries over mascarpone sabayon.
That Thursday kicked off the 263 on-the-clock meals I consumed in 29 cities during seven months of travel (or, more precisely, 147 days in the field) in 2014.
My pound-packing task: to compile Eater’s inaugural roll call of the 38 essential restaurants in America, an idea that builds on the Eater 38 lists maintained by our local editors in 24 cities across the U.S. (and in Montreal). Documenting my journey of feasts in the yearlong Road to the 38 series, I asked myself about the meaning of the word essential at every stop: What are the indispensable restaurants across the nation right at this moment of our culinary history? Which ones jump-start the trends, which reset notions of cooking and hospitality, which illuminate a place or time? What assembly of restaurants, ultimately, reflects the fundaments of our culture?
This is my answer. These names — the most memorable and enriching among my scores of meals — represent not only a roster of exquisite eating at every tier but also a group portrait of regional diversity and exceptional individuals. Of course I couldn’t lift a knife and fork at every noteworthy restaurant across the country; this project is designed to be a work in progress. I’ll be off again soon to cities ripe for exploring and to hallmarks of gastronomy that deserve fresh consideration. In the meantime, dig in. Let the standouts from my year of field research serve as your dining road map for 2015.
Conversation Starters
Restaurants that shatter the gastronomic status quo and set the standard for contemporary cuisine
San Francisco, CA
A rice dish at Bar Tartine
Among chefs who compose menus around personal proclivities (rather than a specific cuisine or style), Nicolaus Balla and Cortney Burns stand alone in their obsessiveness. Their menu entwines flavors from Japan, Hungary, the Middle East, and Middle America with borderless fluidity, and every dish has an element they’ve pickled, cured, cultured, inoculated, infused, or dried. Their penchant for fermentation connects the restaurant in philosophy to nearby sister operation Tartine Bakery, San Francisco’s game changer for naturally leavened bread. It may sound like Bar Tartine doubles as a food-science workshop, but the food is ambrosial rather than laboratorial. Sink a spoon into sprouted lentil croquettes wallowing in yogurt-like kefir, beet sauce, spinach, turmeric oil, and zingy cilantro chutney. Or swipe roasted, smoked, and fried potatoes through dabs of heady black garlic and aioli punchy with pickled ramps. Vegetarians eat remarkably here, though carnivores can relish the multitextured nuances of beef tartare with dried beef on toast. This is one restaurant where a $3 surcharge for country loaf feels like a steal.
New York, NY
Chef Ignacio Mattos at Estela. Photo credit: Daniel Krieger
A 55-seat charmer housed in a former knitting factory in downtown Manhattan, Estela earned solid reviews after opening in 2013. Its renown kept building, though, on the strength of Uruguayan-born chef Ignacio Mattos’s singular ingredient combinations and the seductive beverage list assembled by co-owner Thomas Carter. Many of Mattos’s most admired dishes have a wonderful hide-and-seek quality: He literally layers his flavors. A forest-ground blanket of button mushroom disks covers ricotta dumplings; fried potato wafers conceal a hunk of rib eye funked up with taleggio. Even brunch haters venture out on weekends for the smash-hit sandwich of egg, avocado, and pancetta stacked atop Danish tea pastry.
Atlanta, GA
It’s hard to say no to the cooks at Atlanta’s most dynamic restaurant. Each week chef-owner Kevin Gillespie and his crew decide on a few dishes they’ll each prepare, and as they’re ready, the team takes them out to the dining room on carts and trays to personally describe them. Ethiopian-style braised lamb? Whole hog barbecue, cornbread, bourbon-soaked peaches, and coleslaw? Thai red curry duck leg? The kitchen heeds no national or stylistic borders in their cooking, and each person focuses on their own predilections. Keep an especially sharp eye out for chef de cuisine Joseph Ward’s tweaks on standards, like a reinvented beef Wellington with crisp pastry or his glorious, gloppy “West Coast Burger.” This isn’t a place for quiet conversation: It’s loud, it’s bright, it’s participatory and immersive, and it’s awesome.
New York, NY
Putting an egg on it at Momofuku.
Even after a decade of nationwide — nay, global — fetishism and imitation, it’s still a joy to return to the East Village restaurant where David Chang’s Momofuku empire launched. From the Noodle Bar came creations like rice cakes in chile sauce with caramelized onions, ramen with bacon-enhanced pork bone broth, and (they need no introduction) steamed Chinese buns swabbed with hoisin and folded around pork belly squares with scallions and cucumber. Don’t discount the contentment these dishes continue to deliver in their archetypal rightness. The rich stew of faces and languages among the never-ending crowds is so New York. It’s a testament to how Chang’s eldest succeeds not just as an accomplished kitchen but also as an egalitarian haven.
Washington, DC
Asparagus dish at Rose’s Luxury.
Myriad accolades have helped push the wait for a prime-time table at Washington DC’s buzziest restaurant to two hours or longer. The silver lining? The experience exudes warmth in every way. The staff makes customers feel extra pampered once they make it inside the converted two-story townhouse, beginning with speedy drink service and an evolving array of sumptuous breads. Chef-owner Aaron Silverman distills his eclectic experience (at Momofuku Noodle Bar and McCrady’s in Charleston, among others) into a short, ever-shifting menu. His dishes may unite seemingly disparate ingredients, but they’re never too busy, and a knack for acidity keeps every bite lively. Crumbled pork sausage blanketed with lychees, coconut cream, red onion spears, and herbs dazzled in the spring with its floral, tropical flavors. Silverman’s cacio e pepe remains a deserving staple.
Philadelphia, PA
Plainly stated, Vedge is the best meat-free restaurant in America. It stands as a culinary X-Man of the genre, an astounding evolutionary leap advanced by Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby’s accomplished cooking. The format couldn’t be more modern: a swank multiroomed restaurant in a Center City brownstone with designer lighting, knotty hardwood floors, and a kinetic menu of gorgeous small plates. Yellow beets roasted on a bed of salt, for example, form the base of a cylindrical terrine layered with avocado, smoked tofu, capers, red onion, and cucumbers. In a sculptural dish inspired by the flavors of a Reuben sandwich, smoked carrots stand in for brisket, with a tangle of cabbage bridging the gap between sauerkraut and kimchi and a strip of pumpernickel bread crumbs underscoring the Eastern European influences. Nothing about the dining experience feels overtly dogmatic. The place simply serves breathtaking food that also happens to be vegan.
Regional Americana
Kitchens where cooks champion the ingredients, techniques, and soul of their local culture
Berkeley, CA
Chez Panisse, serving a prix-fixe menu that changes nightly, is arguably America’s most famous restaurant: It helped propel the California cuisine movement and reroute the nation’s culinary trajectory. The upstairs cafe opened in 1980 as an adjunct for diners seeking a more casual option. Over the years it has developed its own personality as the spunkier younger sister who is, frankly, more fun to be around. The cafe’s à la carte menu has grown in length through the decades, and the kitchen feels more limber in its creativity. Salads, pizzettas, and entrees practically vibrate with just-in-the-door freshness. And whoa, the desserts. They spoil you for fruit everywhere else in the country. This is the Chez Panisse experience that best encapsulates California right now.
Portland, ME
Lobster will always be Maine’s king crustacean, but this nonstop-crowded bar in Portland specializes in the state’s other seafood star. The menu divides the oysters, displayed over ice on a counter cut from rugged granite, into categories using local parlance: “From Maine” and “From Away.” Start by slurping local gems like citrusy Pemaquids from the Damariscotta River. Accoutrements go traditional (cocktail sauce, mignonette) and inventive (ices flavored with blasts of cucumber and ginger or kimchi). A palm-sized lobster roll arrives stuffed in a steamed Asian bun. Though clearly reveling in New England flavors (don’t miss the Maine blueberry pie in high summer), the kitchen’s cross-cultural playfulness gives Eventide a winning edge.
Charleston, SC
It says something about FIG that my Charleston friends love it as much as the tourists, even if the locals do resent having to hustle so hard for a table. Mike Lata and his executive chef Jason Stanhope buy seafood from local fishermen and surround them with deft Italian, French, and New American flavors. The breadth of influences doesn’t diminish the sense of place engendered in the food, which is buoyed by a sly use of quintessential Lowcountry ingredients. Whipped buttermilk glosses smoked mackerel. Corn flour-dusted skate wing is anchored to the region by Carolina Gold “middlins,” or broken rice grits that have been a local favorite for centuries, and benne, the African strain of sesame seeds. Like the cooking, service epitomizes Southern graciousness.
New Orleans, LA
In New Orleans, where the veil between past and present is thinner than in any other American city, Galatoire’s remains a vital experience. The French Quarter old-liner, established in 1905, is most famous for its Friday lunch, where the business elite jump-starts the weekend over Sazeracs and shrimp rémoulade. Join the feast of Creole classics with oysters Rockefeller covered in a lava of pureed greens, fried trout prepared amandine style, and pompano heightened by the sweetness of brown butter and crabmeat. Arrive by 11:30 a.m. for a midday meal: The restaurant doesn’t accept reservations for the soigné downstairs dining room, but it is the only acceptable place to sit.
Minneapolis, MN
At his Twin Cities restaurant, chef-owner Lenny Russo goes the locavore distance: Around 90 percent of the food at Heartland and its adjacent market comes from within a 300-mile radius. There’s nothing fussy or self-satisfied about the experience. The substantial bar menu includes four burgers (beef, pork, veal, and bison) and fun, smart riffs on snacks like smoked kielbasa corn dogs or cheese curds with apricot ketchup. In the main room, entrees dole out bear hugs of direct, honest flavors: The “Midwestern Cassoulet” defrosts with its mix of lusty meats and silken white beans delivered from nearby Encore Farms. Russo’s devotion to culinary Minnesota is evident in every forkful.
Read the rest of the list on Eater!
Did you read the whole list? What did Addison miss?
