2026 Robb Report’s Top 10 New Restaurants in America

Zaranda is an upscale Mexican restaurant in Downtown Houston from Tracy Vaught and chef Hugo Ortega, focused on Las Californias coastal cooking, seafood, wood-fired dishes, and cocktails near Discovery Green.

Named one of the San Francisco Chronicle's Best New Bay Area Restaurants for 2025, Wolfsbane operates out of 2495 3rd St in the Dogpatch corridor, a neighbourhood that has quietly absorbed a disproportionate share of the city's serious new cooking. The recognition places it among a small cohort of Bay Area openings worth tracking from the first year of service.

Maison Bar à Vins is a modern French wine bar from Popal Group in Adams Morgan, pairing polished bistro cooking with a serious wine program.

Named one of the San Francisco Chronicle's Best New Bay Area Restaurants for 2025, The Happy Crane at 451 Gough St brings a tradition-rooted approach to Chinese cuisine that sits apart from the city's more familiar Cantonese and dim sum circuits. The kitchen works from time-honored references while applying considered technique, producing a menu that earns its recognition without leaning on novelty for its own sake.

Yamada occupies a compact address on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan's Chinatown-adjacent corridor, operating in a tier of New York dining where format discipline and editorial recognition carry more weight than scale. The restaurant has built its presence through a studied evolution rather than a static identity, placing it alongside the city's more deliberate high-end operators. Booking demand reflects a reputation earned over time rather than through marketing volume.

Junior sits on Dickerson Pike at a remove from Nashville's more polished dining corridors, and that distance is precisely the point. Esquire named it one of the best martini programs in America for 2025, placing it in a tier of bar-forward venues that take the classic cocktail seriously. The room and the drink list reward those who seek it out.

On West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, Lielle occupies a address that places it squarely in the city's mid-Westside dining corridor, a stretch that has quietly accumulated serious restaurant credentials over the past decade. With a format that rewards collaborative front-of-house craft as much as kitchen precision, Lielle sits in the tier of LA dining rooms where the full-table experience is the product, not just the food.

Opened in March 2025 in the East Village's former Momofuku Ko space, Kabawa brings a three-course Caribbean prix fixe to New York's tasting menu tier. Chef Paul Carmichael, Barbados-born and Momofuku-trained across Má Pêche and Sydney's Seiōbo, builds a menu of roti, braised goat, and coconut turnover that reads as regional memory made precise. New York Magazine named it among the 43 best restaurants in New York for 2025.

A French-leaning neighborhood restaurant on West Randolph Street, Creepies sits next door to Elske and shares its owners, David and Anna Posey. Stone walls, checkered tile floors, and a concise bistro menu built around dishes like Parisian gnocchi with gruyere and crispy ham make it one of the more considered casual openings on Chicago's restaurant row. Esquire named it one of America's best martini bars in 2025.

Inside a repurposed 1970s boogie board factory on Roosevelt Street, Lilo runs a 12-course tasting menu that traces the world's coastlines from Brittany to Japan, filtered through a California lens. Opened in April 2025, it earned a Michelin star within its first year and seats 24 guests around a chef's counter. It is the most ambitious restaurant in Carlsbad by a measurable distance.