Esquire's Best New Restaurants of 2021

Dhamaka on the Lower East Side makes no apologies for bone-in cuts, fierce spice levels, and preparations drawn from India's lesser-known regional traditions. Chef Chintan Pandya holds a 2022 James Beard Award and a Michelin Bib Gourmand, with OAD rankings confirming its place among North America's most serious casual restaurants. The $$ price point makes it one of New York's more instructive meals at any budget.

Two Michelin stars, a La Liste score of 96 points in 2026, and an AAA 5 Diamond rating place Ever among Chicago's most decorated fine dining rooms. At 1340 W Fulton St, Curtis Duffy's Fulton Market restaurant operates in the modernist tier occupied by a handful of American restaurants — technically ambitious, compositionally precise, and priced to match its peer set.

A Michelin-starred address on Rue Berryer in Paris's 8th arrondissement, Helen brings an unusual pairing of coastal seafood and Southern American grill techniques to a neighbourhood dominated by grand French institutions. Ranked third on Esquire's Best New Restaurants list in 2021 and holding its star through 2025, it occupies a distinct niche inside the Paris fine-dining tier — one that prizes sourcing discipline over spectacle.

Hestia holds a Michelin star for consecutive years and sits at the top of Austin's live-fire dining tier, where wood smoke and precise technique define a menu built on American ingredients with deep European and regional influences. Wine Director Ali Schmidt oversees a 480-selection list weighted toward France and California, with 1,800 bottles in inventory. Dinner runs Tuesday through Sunday from 5:30 PM at 607 W 3rd St in downtown Austin.

Horn Barbecue in Oakland holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand (2025) and an Esquire Best New Restaurants top-five ranking, placing it among the most recognised smoke-focused operations on the West Coast. Open Tuesday through Sunday, the $$ price point puts serious barbecue within reach without a tasting-menu reservation window. A 4.2 Google rating across 863 reviews confirms the consistency.

March holds a Michelin star and an Opinionated About Dining North America ranking, positioning it at the top tier of Houston fine dining. Chef Felipe Riccio and wine director June Rodil bring a Venetian-inflected Mediterranean menu to Westheimer Road, backed by a 10,000-bottle cellar with particular depth in Burgundy, Champagne, and Piedmont. Dinner runs Tuesday through Saturday from 5:30 PM.

The 2022 James Beard Award winner for Best New Restaurant, Owamni brings Indigenous American cuisine to an 80-seat dining room along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The menu draws exclusively on pre-contact ingredients, placing it in a category with almost no direct peers in American fine dining. Esquire named it among the country's top new restaurants in 2021.

The Harvey House reimagines Wisconsin’s beloved supper club tradition with the finesse and precision of modern fine dining. Housed in a storied Madison setting, it summons the romance of a bygone era—crystal glow, polished wood, and hushed conversation—while elevating Midwestern icons such as the relish tray, crisp walleye, and warm apple pie with pristine sourcing and expert technique. For the discerning traveler, it’s a transportive celebration of regional memory made new: an elegant dining experience that balances comfort and craft, warmth and sophistication, familiarity and surprise.

Cadence distills the warmth and generosity of Southern soul food into a refined, plant-based experience led by chef Shenarri Freeman in the heart of the East Village. Here, heirloom traditions meet modern finesse—smoked grits carry a whisper of oak, fried lasagna arrives in crisp, golden layers, and every plate honors the spirit of comfort while celebrating the vibrancy of vegetables. Intimate, polished, and deeply flavorful, Cadence offers discerning diners a singular invitation: to savor the soulful pleasures of the South through a luxuriously modern, entirely vegan lens.

Shawarmaji brought Oakland its most-discussed shawarma counter of the pandemic recovery era, landing on Esquire's Best New Restaurants list at number ten in 2021. The Franklin Street address sits inside a food hall format, making it one of the Bay Area's clearest examples of refined street food operating without the overhead of a full-service room. Google reviewers have settled it at 4.5 stars across more than 860 ratings.

A South Philadelphia neighborhood address that landed on Esquire's Best New Restaurants list in 2021, Irwin's brings modern Sicilian cooking to a city already fluent in Italian-American tradition. Located on Mifflin Street in the heart of the Italian Market corridor, it earns a 4.4 Google rating across more than 300 reviews — a signal of consistent neighborhood loyalty rather than one-time destination traffic.

Oyster Oyster sits at the sharper end of Washington D.C.'s tasting menu scene, where Chef Rob Rubba's vegetable-focused progression earned a Michelin star in 2024, a 2023 James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef, and a place in the Opinionated About Dining North America top 250. The format is a multi-course plant-led menu in Shaw, with a 165-label wine list weighted toward France and Maryland.

Inside a gleaming steel structure moored on Hardangerfjord, Iris holds a Michelin star and an Opinionated About Dining ranking of #119 in Europe for 2025. Chef Anika Madsen's kitchen draws on foraged Norwegian produce alongside creative Greek and Turkish influences, arriving by short boat ride from Rosendal. The format is ambitious and the setting demands planning, but the combination of technical cooking and fjord surroundings is difficult to replicate anywhere on the continent.

Myriel in St. Paul's Mac-Groveland neighborhood translates a Scandinavian-inspired, forage-and-farm philosophy into a restrained tasting menu that earned chef Karyn Tomlinson the 2025 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest. Vintage china, muted neutrals, and whole-animal sourcing from local farms define the room and the plate in equal measure. It is among the most decorated destination-dining addresses in the Twin Cities.

The Anchovy Bar on O'Farrell Street occupies a specific niche in San Francisco's casual seafood scene, framing Californian ingredients through the lens of a single, underused fish. Ranked in Opinionated About Dining's Casual North America list for three consecutive years and named among Esquire's Best New Restaurants in 2021, it has built a sustained following on the western edge of the Fillmore district.

Nana's Bakery & Pizza earned a spot on Esquire's Best New Restaurants list in 2021, placing this Mystic, Connecticut spot in a peer set that few neighborhood bakeries ever reach. The format combines a working bakery with a pizzeria, drawing a 4.6-star rating across 371 Google reviews. It sits at 32 Williams Ave, making it a practical anchor for any visit to the Connecticut shoreline.

Dimo's Apizza brings the coal-fired, char-edged discipline of New Haven–style pizza to Portland's East Burnside corridor. Named one of Esquire's Best New Restaurants in 2021 (ranked #17 nationally), it operates in a city already serious about wood-fired pies, and carves out a distinct position by anchoring to a specific American regional tradition rather than the Italian-inflected freestyle that defines most of its local peers. Google reviewers rate it 4.5 across more than 700 responses.

La Natural in Miami's Little River holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for consecutive years and an Opinionated About Dining North America ranking, operating as a pizza and wine bar at the more affordable end of the city's dining spectrum. Chef Javier Ramirez runs a Mediterranean-leaning program with a strong vegetable focus. Open Tuesday through Sunday, with weekend lunch service added to the evening schedule.

At Degust, Houston’s most intimate chef’s counter, culinary boundaries dissolve with poetic precision. Influenced by Mexican soul and Spanish heritage, yet refined through the exacting lens of Japanese technique, each course emerges as a revelation—unexpected, meticulously balanced, and delicately plated. Seats are few, the pacing deliberate, and the experience deeply personal: a hushed theater of flavor where smoke, citrus, umami, and pristine seafood converge in a graceful, avant-garde procession.

En Passant on Division Street earned an Esquire Best New Restaurants spot in 2021, placing it among the eclectic New American wave reshaping Chicago's neighbourhood dining scene. Sitting in Wicker Park, the restaurant draws on a wide range of culinary references without anchoring to any single tradition — a format that reflects broader shifts in how Midwestern cities are redefining creative cooking outside downtown fine-dining corridors. Google reviewers rate it 4.7 out of 5 across 45 reviews.

Roots Southern Table in Farmers Branch brings Creole-inflected Southern cooking to the Dallas dining circuit, earning a spot on Esquire's Best New Restaurants list in 2021. The kitchen works at the intersection of Louisiana tradition and broader American fusion, producing food that reads as regional but draws from a wider culinary vocabulary. A Google rating of 4.7 across more than 1,100 reviews signals a consistent following rather than a flash-in-the-pan debut.

Miss River anchors the Louisiana Creole tradition inside the Four Seasons New Orleans, with a wine list of 170 selections and 2,000-bottle inventory curated by sommelier Blake Baudier. Chef Glen Forman's kitchen works the classic register of the city's cooking, earning the restaurant a spot on Esquire's Best New Restaurants list in 2021. Lunch and dinner service, with wine pricing at the $$$ tier.

Bacanora brings Sonoran Mexican cooking to Phoenix's Grand Avenue arts corridor, where Chef Rene Andrade's 2024 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest confirms what the neighborhood already knew. Named for the agave spirit native to Sonora, the restaurant treats masa and regional tradition as its primary language — earning a spot on Esquire's Best New Restaurants list in 2021 and sustained critical attention since.

Esmeralda brings an unusual pairing to Knokke's Jozef Nellenslaan: classic European technique alongside Peruvian pachamanca, the ancient Andean tradition of cooking in an earth oven with heated stones. A Michelin Plate holder since 2024 and named among Esquire's Best New Restaurants in 2021, it occupies a mid-premium bracket (€€€) in a resort town where fine dining skews heavily French.

Moon Rabbit brings modern Vietnamese cooking to downtown Washington, D.C., where chef Kevin Tien fuses his Cajun Louisiana upbringing with Vietnamese tradition. The 2024 F Street address earned a Michelin Plate, while bar director Thi Nguyen took the 2024 Michelin Guide D.C. Exceptional Cocktails Award. Dishes like mochi beignets with freshwater eel and fried quail over crispy tomato rice set the tone for the kitchen's approach.

A Gilded Age chophouse reborn for the 21st century, Gage & Tollner has operated on Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn since 1879, with a restored dining room of mahogany mirrors and brass chandeliers that has earned consistent recognition on Opinionated About Dining's North American list. The menu draws from the Southern chophouse tradition shaped by Edna Lewis, running from oysters Rockefeller to dry-aged beef and fried chicken with cornmeal fritters.

Rosella, on Avenue A in the East Village, applies a hyper-sustainable sourcing philosophy to an à la carte sushi format that diverges sharply from the city's omakase mainstream. Ranked #245 on Opinionated About Dining's North America list in 2025 and named an Esquire Best New Restaurant in 2021, it earns its recognition through a rigorously sourced menu and a room that looks nothing like its peers.

Pearl River Deli distills the heart of Cantonese comfort into a polished, modern experience that resonates with discerning palates. Chef Johnny Lee reimagines classics with meticulous technique—think lacquered, smoky char siu crafted from sous-vide pork collar and a Macau-style pork chop bun layered with tangy, memory-sparking sauce—while preserving the soulful warmth of a neighborhood staple. Set within Los Angeles’s storied Chinatown, the restaurant feels like a culinary atelier: intimate yet vibrant, grounded yet cosmopolitan. Every plate is a study in texture and restraint, delivering depth without excess and nostalgia without cliché. For travelers who curate their itineraries by flavor, this is a destination where authenticity meets finesse.

In East Harlem, Contento marries polished conviviality with a distinctive Peruvian-inspired culinary voice, guided by chef Oscar Lorenzzi’s deft touch. Expect pristine ceviches bright with lime and ají, pillowy causas crowned with jewel-toned seafood, and comforting plates that honor Andean heritage while nodding to New York’s cosmopolitan palate. Sommelier Yannick Benjamin curates a refined, globally minded wine list—thoughtfully priced and meticulously sourced—designed to elevate each bite. The space itself is intimate and warm, with an inclusive ethos woven into every detail, from the gracious service cadence to barrier-free design. It’s a rare intersection of sophistication and soul, where discerning diners gather for conversation, craftsmanship, and a quietly celebratory evening.

Among San Francisco's mid-price Filipino restaurants, Abacá operates at a different register than the Filipino fast-casual spots that preceded it. Based inside the Kimpton Alton Hotel in Fisherman's Wharf, it earned a Michelin Plate in 2024 and an Opinionated About Dining ranking of #364 in North America for 2025, placing it firmly among the city's most recognised mid-range dining destinations. The menu moves between traditional Filipino techniques and Northern California produce with clarity and confidence.

Andros Taverna on Milwaukee Avenue brings Greek cooking to Logan Square with enough conviction to earn a Michelin Plate and a place on Opinionated About Dining's North America casual list. The wood-burning oven anchors a menu that runs from mezze and charred dips to grilled lamb chops, while an all-Greek wine list spanning Macedonia to Santorini signals the kitchen's commitment to staying on-source. Weekend brunch and a $50 corkage fee round out the picture.

On SE Division Street, Oma's Hideaway brings Malaysian and Asian fusion cooking to one of Portland's most competitive dining corridors. Chef Thomas Pisha Duffly earned an Esquire Best New Restaurants listing in 2021 and has maintained consecutive Opinionated About Dining Casual rankings through 2024 and 2025, placing the restaurant inside a small peer set of independently run, critically tracked spots in the Pacific Northwest.

On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Fat Choy reframes plant-based dining through a distinctly urban, Chinese-inspired lens. This counter-service charmer turns street food into an object of desire—think mushroom sloppy joe tucked into a flaky scallion pancake, or shatteringly crisp tofu layered with aromatic sauces and herbs. The vibe is unfussy yet knowing, a confident whisper that indulgence and virtue can share the same plate. For the well-traveled palate, Fat Choy delivers a memorable intersection of texture, spice, and city swagger, all at a refreshingly accessible price point.

A vegan Caribbean kitchen on Nostrand Avenue in Flatbush, Aunts et Uncles earned an Esquire Best New Restaurants listing in 2021 for cooking that draws on the flavors of the Caribbean diaspora without any animal products. The restaurant sits at the intersection of plant-based cooking and West Indian culinary tradition, a combination that remains rare in New York City at this price point and neighborhood depth.

A counter within a counter, Imperfecto: The Chef's Table holds a Michelin star and a seat count that keeps it among Washington D.C.'s most intimate tasting experiences. Chef Enrique Limardo works directly above a handful of diners, delivering an elaborate Latin American menu where technique and ingredient quality carry equal weight. Esquire named it among the 35 best new restaurants in the country in 2021.

Angie Mar’s Les Trois Chevaux in New York City resurrects haute French glamour with a strict dress code, opulent ingredients, and polished service inside an intimate 48-seat West Village salon.

Named one of Esquire's Best New Restaurants of 2021 (#37), VAGA brings a Californian-Mexican framework to the North Coast Highway 101 corridor in Encinitas. With a Google rating of 4.3 across 535 reviews, it represents the more ambitious end of San Diego County's coastal dining scene — a restaurant where SoCal produce and Mexican culinary tradition meet with enough editorial attention to place it well above the local average.

Mark's Off Madison sits at the junction of New York's deli tradition and Italian-American comfort, drawing notice as an Esquire Best New Restaurants pick for 2021. Located at ground level on Madison Avenue in the Flatiron district, it operates in a city where casual-but-serious American dining commands as much critical attention as its formal counterparts. With a Google rating of 4.0 across nearly 600 reviews, it holds a consistent audience in a notoriously competitive market.

Kasama occupies a rare position in American dining: a Filipino restaurant holding a Michelin star and a James Beard Award, operating as a daytime bakery and café before transforming into a 13-course tasting menu destination by night. Located in Chicago's East Ukrainian Village, it draws on the culinary pedigrees of Genie Kwon and Timothy Flores to reframe Filipino cuisine within the language of contemporary fine dining.

Fritai brings Haitian Creole cooking to Basin Street in Treme, one of the few places in New Orleans where the Caribbean roots of the city's culinary identity surface with this kind of clarity. Recognized by Esquire as one of America's best new restaurants in 2021, it holds a Google rating of 4.3 across more than 500 reviews — the signature of a room that earns repeat visits rather than one-time tourism.

Fish & Bird Sousaku Izakaya brings the creative izakaya format to Berkeley's Shattuck Avenue corridor, earning consecutive Michelin Plate recognition in 2024 and 2025 alongside an Esquire Best New Restaurants nod in 2021. The mid-price point positions it well below the Bay Area's fine-dining tier, making Michelin-recognized Japanese cooking accessible without the tasting-menu commitment. The drink program's alignment with izakaya tradition gives sake, shochu, and wine equal footing on the list.

In Uptown New Orleans, Seafood Sally’s distills the city’s Gulf-born exuberance into a polished yet playful seafood experience. The kitchen celebrates pristine regional catch with exuberant boils and perfectly fried platters, then elevates them with an irresistible chili butter sauce that hums with heat, citrus, and caramelized richness. Guests savor the convivial spirit of a neighborhood seafood shack, reimagined with thoughtful service, quality-driven sourcing, and the kind of layered flavors that invite indulgence. It’s a place where casual rhythms meet culinary intention—perfect for those who appreciate both authenticity and a deftly executed thrill on the palate.

Havens landed on Esquire's Best New Restaurants list in 2021 at number 43, a rare national signal for a burger-and-Hawaiian spot in Kihei. The menu draws from the local ingredient logic that defines Maui's serious casual dining, sitting well outside the resort-corridor norm. Google reviewers rate it 4.6 across 155 reviews, a score that reflects consistent execution rather than novelty.