The Best New Restaurants in America, 2014

We eat. A lot. From fine dining to fast food, we eat. Together or alone, we eat. All year long, we eat. For many years, Esquire has brought you the Best New Restaurants in America. We're doing it again, but this year we've added the best new everything else. Because we eat. Good Lord do we eat. (And don't even get us started on the drink.)

The Cecil, Harlem, New York

Eat out in America, particularly in high-end restaurants, and you tend to see the same people, eating the same dishes, and you start to take them for granted. Then you find a place like the Cecil and you wake up. Yes, its food was the most thrillingly unique we tasted this year, primed and loaded with the flavors of the African diaspora—that trail of taste that moved from West Africa to India, the Caribbean to America to China, and then back again. But more remarkably, the Cecil has made a community restaurant in one of the most polarized places on earth. Very rich, very white grandees with $3 million condos go there, and so do middle-class blacks who have lived in Harlem for decades. Asian-American people eat there, and Hispanic people and grad students and he-men—everybody, more or less. Go in, even on a Tuesday, and the place hums with happiness.

Much of this derives from the ubiquitous presence of its genial co-owner, Alexander Smalls, a white-bearded former opera singer with a deep, mellifluous voice. The rest comes from the great young chef Smalls enlisted to bring his vision to life: JJ Johnson, whose classical training provides the backbone for all the exotica. The oxtail filling in the dumplings wouldn't be possible without veal stock and demi-glace; and the gossamer dough that wraps it isn't something you just pick up overnight. And the mélange of flavors is found no place else—from the bird's-eye chili and Madagascar vanilla in the opulent feijoada, a Brazilian black-bean stew with merguez and oxtail, to the Chinese cinnamon scent of the fried guinea hen.

Both culinarily and culturally, the Cecil feels like a restaurant from an alternate universe, or possibly a better future, a great melting pot of gumbo and good times. All the restaurants on this list make great food. But the Cecil has the unique distinction of creating not just a new kind of cooking but a new kind of culture. It matters. And that's why it's the Best New Restaurant in America.

210 West 118th Street; 212-866-1262; thececilharlem.com

Do It Yourself:
JJ Johnson's Fried Okra

Combine 3 cups rice flour, 1 tsp smoked paprika, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Add a cup of water and whisk until smooth. Slice okra lengthwise, batter, and fry in 2 inches of canola oil until golden.

Qui, Austin

Paul Qui, unlike other great chefs, doesn't have a signature dish. He doesn't have a signature style, not really. So it can be hard to convey just how special he is. But let's try. Qui came to national prominence a couple of years ago when he won Top Chef (in retrospect a mismatch as unfair as a footrace between Usain Bolt and the Jets' offensive line), but before that he was revered in Austin for his work at Uchi, the city's best Japanese restaurant, and Uchiko, a spin-off created to showcase his fluid skill. Qui is a true sui generis talent, and none of his work—currently on display in his fantastic new restaurant, called Qui—is easily classified. He uses tweezers, but he's not a tweezer chef. He cooks large blocks of weighty beef, all salt and sizzle and rugged oomph, but his new place is no meatery. His vegetable dishes, like his "Ode to Michel Bras," a paean to the French salad guru, are marvels of delicacy and detailed composition, but he doesn't claim to be Mr. Seasonality.

So maybe he's less Bolt than he is LeBron: able to do anything he wants on the court, in any style, without visible effort. One side of his new restaurant has a tasting counter serving as a platform for his most ambitious and precarious creations. A few hundred feet away, on the patio, he's serving Filipino street food, paired with cold Lone Stars and San Miguels. Vegans and carnivores can be blown away at Qui; the menu contains multitudes.

But a chef is more than a cook. He's a leader. And one of the things that makes Qui exceptional is that unlike most great chefs—especially young ones—he's doesn't bully his staff or feed off his own ego. Instead he creates a space in which his cooks can excel, working in quiet synchronicity. Add in Deana Saukam, Qui's fiancée, partner, and public face, who has done more to enable his genius than any investor or critic, and you have a chef defined not just by his food but also by the quality and loyalty of the people behind him. Culinary brilliance and character don't always go together. In Qui's case, they do.

1600 East 6th Street; 512-436-9626; quiaustin.com

Do It Yourself:
Kinilaw (Filipino Ceviche)

Slowly add 3/4 cup coconut vinegar to 1 can of coconut milk. Stop when the acidity and fattiness are balanced. Add ginger to taste, about 1/4 cup. Add 1 tsp fine sea salt and 1/4 cup olive oil. In a small mixing bowl, combine 2 Tbsp red onions, 5 slices Thai chili, 1/8 tsp yuzu juice, and coconut milk dressing. Pour into the serving bowl. Arrange 5 kampachi slices (about 2 oz) on top of the dressing and season with sea salt, sliced cilantro stems, Thai chili, black pepper, and red and green onions.

You can't get more prosaic than a chicken potpie, but then most chicken potpies do not, when brought to the table in a cast-iron vessel and cut open, emit a steam cloud of Old World grandeur fueled by big pieces of seared foie gras, black-truffle cream, morels, and a vel-vety chicken ve-louté. The chicken potpie at New York's NoMad Bar does. And it justifies every penny of its steep $36 price tag. Let it cool a little, though. This sort of kingly overindulgence is best enjoyed at body temperature.

1170 Broadway Street, New York, New York; 212-796-1500; thenomadhotel.com

Look at Virginia on a map. How is it not an established food paradise? The oldest region in the country. One of the biggest. Loaded with wealth and power, enclosing the nation's capital. Vast mountain silences and endless meadows pierced by broad and powerful rivers, all emptying into the biggest, most complex bay system in the country. And yet, the occasional ham excepted, it has never gotten its proper due. It's time. The Old Dominion has seemingly overnight exploded into one of the country's greatest gastro regions.

• More on Why We Chose Virginia

Chi Spacca, the country's most high-minded new temple of meat, has a peerless pedigree. In 2006, Mario Batali partnered with pasta doyenne Nancy Silverton to create L. A.'s Pizzeria Mozza. They followed it up a year later with an even more successful restaurant, Osteria Mozza. Somewhere along the line, one of Silverton's chefs, a quietly determined man named Chad Colby, began longing for a meatery, and after much lobbying, found a space for it.

Colby, it goes without saying, is obsessed with meat, and so is everybody else here. (One night, our waitress, Veronica Rogov, explained the location of the pork chop by pointing to the corresponding place on herself.) Obviously it's not a restaurant for vegetarians, but it's not your standard upscale steak joint, either. A beef-and-marrow pie shows up with a giant round bone sticking up out of the middle like a watchtower, the walls made of Silverton's incomparable dough. The huge pork chop, described so pruriently by our server, is untrimmed, its long ribbons of intercostal "finger meat" dusted liberally with fennel pollen—a Batali preoccupation going back to his enfant terrible years. The salumi is of course outrageous, as is the foccacia di Recco, a kind of Ligurian cheese pie so singular that Silverton and Colby had to source special pans to cook it in.

Any meatery has to be judged by its steak, though, and that's what puts Chi Spacca over the top: a four-week-old aged porterhouse, obese and gorgeous and cooked with constant turning and tempering over a live almond-wood fire. Like the pork chop, the pie, and, really, all of Chi Spacca, the steak speaks for itself. And what it says is "I am meat. Love me." And we did.

6610 Melrose Avenue; 323-297-1133; chispacca.com

Do It Yourself:
The Perfect Rare Steak

Temper a porterhouse steak (minimum 35 oz) at room temperature, 2 hours. Rub with salt and pepper. Form a great crust fast by cooking on the hottest part of the hottest grill you have. Turn off half the grill. Rest the steak for five minutes. Place the steak standing upright on the cool part of the grill, fillet facing away from the part that's still hot. Roast to an internal temperature of 100 degrees over 30 minuets. Slice and serve with olive oil and sea salt.

With all due respect to Bob's Steak & Chop House and all the other local classics here in one of the most beef centric of cities, Knife is the steakhouse of the future. The reason why: John Tesar. For 20 years, Tesar has maintained a reputation as one of the city's most high-powered luxury chefs. Which makes him about the last person anyone expected to open a steakhouse—a kind of restaurant that often has no real chef at all, just a guy taxed with the old turn-and-burn method of cooking USDA Choice beef slabs.

Tesar has already done at lot at Knife, but two things in particular have the potential to change the game, even in Texas. The first is that by sourcing most of its meat from 44 Farms, Knife has made good on a promise that we have been hearing about for years: that we could eat local beef that was as delicious as the best grain-fed commodity Prime from the Great Plains. That he has done this in arid, drought-stricken Texas—not the place you'd usually go for truly great local beef—is all the more remarkable.

The second is the fact that (are you sitting down?) Knife serves a steak for $25. In this age of $175 porterhouses, steak that cheap, made this well, from meat this conscientiously sourced qualifies as some kind of meat miracle.

There is also a burger program second to none—although I'm obligated to disclose that its top seller, the Ozersky, was partially inspired by my lifelong advocacy of American cheese and white squishy buns. I should recuse myself. But I won't, because the Ozersky rocks, just like the rest of the meat at Knife.

5680 North Central Expressway; 214-443-9339; knifedallas.com

Do It Yourself:
John Tesar's Steak Tartar

Combine 8 oz freshly ground rib eye, 1 Tbsp chopped capers, 1 Tbsp chopped cornichons, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, 2 tsp grated Parmesean cheese, and season with salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly. Finish with 1/2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil. Top with 1 quail-egg yolk.

If there is a manlier restaurant in America than Atlanta's Gunshow, you probably don't want to eat there. Its lights are interrogation-harsh. Its walls and floor are hard and bare. If not for the giant painting of a boar that serves as the place's only decoration, it would look like an abandoned factory. Or a meth lab.

Chef Kevin Gillespie's food is something of an all-male revue as well: a procession of dim-sum-style carts, each freighted with some audacious feat of "lardcore" cookery. One night, in the course of half an hour, you might see pork-skin risotto, or Vietnamese chicken and waffles, or even something as random as beef Wellington or foie gras with figs and Coca-Cola reduction (this being Atlanta). You don't know what to expect, other than a kitchen so ballsy and hypercreative that you can't figure on ever getting the same thing twice.

That can be frustrating. What if a man had life-changing claims in black-bean sauce one time and then never saw it again? But such is the high-wire act diners face at Gunshow. Is it impudence? Or a pure existential thrill ride written in the language of lard? Either way, you'll want to go back.

924 Garrett Street; 404-380-1886; gunshowatl.com

Do It Yourself:
Kevin Gillespie's Pork Belly

Rub 1 lb slab pork belly with 2 Tbsp salt. Place in a small roasting pan. Add 1 cup cider vinegar. Wrap pan tightly with foil and place in a 300-degree oven for 3 hours. Remove, keep wrapped, and let cool to room temperature.

Get it while it lasts: Kevin Gillespie's pan-roasted duck with peach, hazelnut, foie gras three ways, and nasturtium (an edible flower).

Every good restaurant claims to be all about the ingredients; Husk Nashville really is. Like its Charleston parent, its attitude toward things like oysters and tomatoes is reverential almost to the point of mysticism, and chef Sean Brock gets more focused all the time. (The greatest part of his work now consists of finding and protecting what he calls "the gifts of the southern earth.") So when he creates dishes with names like "a Plate of Southern Vegetables" and "Rappahannock Oysters, Green Garlic Butter, Bottarga, Preserved Lemon," it's not the coy modesty of so many contemporary restaurants. The garlic butter isn't some arcane emulsification you wouldn't understand. It's just garlic butter, done exactly right.

But while the southern seafood and garden vegetables are well served by this approach, it's the meat that really benefits. Unlike its parent, Husk Nashville has a huge wood-burning grill, which gives its brutish rib steak, with its blackened bone and seething surface, a deep-forest flavor. Its preparation consists of getting meat from nearby Bear Creek Farm, putting salt on it, and setting it ablaze. These are the elemental things—wood and fire and salt and blood and bone and muscle. What comes on your plate couldn't be any simpler. Or any better.

37 Rutledge Street; 615-256-6565; husknashville.com

Do It Yourself:
Tomato Gravy

Heat 2 Tbsp bacon fat over high heat. Stir in 2 Tbsp fine white cornmeal. Reduce heat to low and stir until the cornmeal turns light brown. Crush 3 cups canned tomatoes into small pieces. Add to pan and stir to combine. Increase heat to medium. Simmer until slightly thickened and cornmeal is soft, 10 minutes. Stir occasionally; don't let it scorch. Add 1 Tbsp of salt and pepper.

Faith & Flower doesn't have to be nearly as good as it is. A late-night refuge for roués and rascals, it's the epicenter of the city's downtown renaissance and has little in the way of competition; people would go there just for the flaming absinthe cart. But chef Michael Hung counterintuitively takes things far into fine-dining territory, bringing deep flavors and impeccable technique to a kitchen that could have gotten away with far less. Perfectly tempered slices of rib steak come accompanied by an oyster jus with the kind of umami kick that doesn't come without real beef stock. Oxtail agnolotti, dressed with marrow butter, gets acid from tangerine salsa and texture from little bits of fried Durkee-style beef tendon.

The place is gigantic, with high ceilings, splashy art, and pretty girls, and the cocktail menu just won't quit.* There are few places in America more fun to eat and drink well.

705 West Ninth Street; 213-239-0642; faithandflowerla.com

It's hard to get a handle on this inexplicably great suburban Florida restaurant. Do you start with the ham-and-biscuit plate? Or, no: maybe the southern ramen, with the duck ham and the soy-bacon broth? What about one of the spicy dishes, like the spot-on tribute to Prince's Hot Chicken Shack in Nashville (above), the skin a blistering phosphorescent orange? Or the red-eye hanger steak with the crispy potato-and-shishito hash? Or a tall, thick, creamy golden draught of the house cask ale?

Cask & Larder is a spin-off of a local gastropub, the Ravenous Pig, whose owners, James and Julie Petrakis, showed a gift for a kind of food that nobody seems to have expected. As a result, there's a tendency to sputter and freeze when trying to hip people to the place, to grope for all the great things you had and say them all at once. (Did we mention the pimento-cheese dip with a "ham jam"? Well, allow us to do that.)

And that's not even getting into the "Whole Cookery" menu, which we can only guess is for large parties seeking a last meal before self-immolation. Because after a pork threeway with fresh porchetta, sausage, and ham, or a beef debauch consisting of whole roasted beef ribs and grilled rib-cap steaks, that is about all that is left for you. Other than the peaches-and-cream cake. Or maybe one more oxtail tamale. And then the cake.

565 West Fairbanks Avenue; 321-280-4200; caskandlarder.com

Do It Yourself:
Ham Jam

Render 1 1/4 lbs ground country ham, then sweat 1 1/4 lbs diced onion. Add 3 1/2 oz sugar, 3 1/2 oz honey, 5 1/2 cups water, 1 tsp curry powder, and 1/2 tsp cayenne. Reduce by two thirds. Finish with 1 3/4 oz sherry vinegar. Cool. Smear on warm buttermilk biscuit.

It may have been inspired by oysters, but Rappahannock, the crown jewel of the Croxton empire (see above), has bigger concerns. At the helm is the inordinately skilled and ambitious Dylan Fultineer, who for eight years ran Blackbird in Chicago and who now has three things at his disposal that all chefs long for: amazing seafood, a big space, and an audience ready to be wowed. And wowed they are, or at least they should be. On one visit, it was crispy braised oxtail sitting on top of four plump Virginia scallops, which in turn rested on a radiantly white, viscous pool of curry-scented cauliflower. Another night, he served a braised lamb neck as big as a big man's fist, meltingly moist but with all the meaty power of a rib steak. Give Fultineer even the gnarliest of proteins, like river eel, and he'll wood-grill it and serve it with smoked barcat oysters and piquillo-pepper sauce. It's not just about the food, though; the cocktails are also strong, original, and varied, and the service never creaks. And of course the oysters are out of this world.

320 East Grace Street; 804-545-0565

Do It Yourself:
Roasted Oysters with Smoked Paprika Buerre Monte

Roast 12 Rappahannock river oysters in 350-degree oven until they open. In a small saucepot, reduce 1/4 cup Dolin dry vermouth until only a small amount remains. Turn heat to low and whisk in 1/2 pound butter, smooth. Whisk in 2 tsp smoked paprika. Serve oysters with sauce.

The sheer luxuriousness of Nico comes as a surprise, since executive chef and partner Paul Kahan's other restaurants, though great, have never even hinted at opulence. Blackbird is sleek and understated; Avec is a small-plates restaurant; Publican a tavern; and Big Star a rowdy taco joint where you go to chow down and tie one on.

And yet here is Nico, elegant and posh, with its staggering array of crudi, enough for an omakase tasting of its own. An antipasti equal in finesse to half the things people go to Avec for. Then the abbondanza: the pappardelle with milk-braised pork and carrot and black truffle. The whole market fish, astronomically expensive and astronomically good. The glazed sweetbreads. The seafood in brodo with Scottish langoustines, the lobster spaghetti, and, really, more than you could easily keep track of. And we remember, vaguely, wild-salmon belly with fermented chile and black-lava salt and plums. And on and on it goes.

Kahan wouldn't do a restaurant of this ambition without a serious meat commitment, so of course there is dry-aged rib eye with Calabrian chile butter to go along with all those great seafood dishes. Amanda Rockman's desserts are gorgeous, too, as masterful and mature as everything else on the menu. And if you're too overwhelmed to indulge at that point, you can always content yourself with one of the 70 or so exotic digestifs on the menu. Or just hold off: Nico serves all throughout the day, so you can just have Rockman's pastries for breakfast.

1015 North Rush Street; 312-994-7100; nicoosteria.com

Do It Yourself:
Erling Wu-Bower's Striped Jack Curdo

Lay thinly sliced jack fish on an ice-cold plate and season with sea salt. Combine 1 Tbsp lemon juice with 1/2 tsp honey. Drizzle over the fish. Thinly slice radishes and Thai bird chile crosswise. Place one piece of both on each slice of fish. Top with torn mint. Drizzle liberally with high-quality olive oil.

The hallmark of northern-California cuisine has always been, to borrow a phrase from Bruce Lee, "the art of fighting without fighting." The food just seems to appear without any effort or design. That approach is epitomized by the Commissary, a beautifully understated, flawlessly executed, Zen-simple restaurant run by Traci Des Jardins.

Really, it all starts with the chicken (above)—one of the best we've ever had. It's unbrined, barely seasoned, and cooked essentially the way you might at home, on a hot piece of metal with minimal attention. And somehow it emerges plump, dense, oozing juice, and resting under a skin as light and crispy as the crust of crème brûleé.

When the kitchen—a huge space ringed on three sides by a broad and elegant counter—turns to heavier, more rustic fare, like its memorable meatballs glazed with North African spices, or seared cuttlefish resting on tiny green fregola pasta, it handles them with equal aplomb. And this being the Bay Area, everything connected with the plant kingdom also sings, whether it's the bass notes of the meaty mushrooms or the piccolo line of bright greens and microgreens that highlight nearly every dish.

The Commissary was created to help draw people to what had been an abandoned Army base. We came all the way from New York. And we were glad we did.

101 Montgomery Street; 415-561-3600; thecommissarysf.com

Falling in love, with restaurants as with women, happens when you expect it least. At first, Take Root sounds like a parody. It's open only three nights a week, with one seating per night. It serves tiny portions on big plates whose overwhelming whiteness is reminiscent of the dreamy, guileless idealism of the young couple behind the place, Elise Kornack and Anna Hieronimus (above). It's in a converted yoga studio.

All that is true, but none of it matters. Not only is Take Root great, it is an oasis of passion, a crack in the rock of a cynical world. Hieronimus runs the front of the house, Kornack cooks the food and brings it out, and everything is exuberant, original, and expertly done. On a recent visit, one of the top chefs in the world told Kornack, only half-jokingly, that he wanted to rip off her lobster sauce. It was understandable. The sauce was impossibly rich, boiled down to mere ounces from gallons of stock and still somehow a complement to a small slab of fat-capped duck.

She also crusted a sweetbread in leek ashes and served it with black-garlic pudding, a dish that makes no sense at all, except that it was fantastic. Even less appealing was the idea of a lime-cured asparagus in cold macadamia-nut soup, or a burnt-coffee mousseline with coconut, dark chocolate, and sorrel. Yet that was fantastic, too. Again and again we asked ourselves, Can this really be that good? And each time the answer came back: Yes.

187 Sackett Street; 347-227-7116; take-root.com

Do It Yourself:
Elise Kornack's Pickled Mussels

Sweat 1 sliced garlic clove in olive oil over medium heat. One fragrant, add 2 lbs mussels and 1/4 cup white wine. Toss until mussels open, then remove them from shells and place in 1-pint pickle juice for 8 to 10 minutes. Serve with aioli.

When you hear the name April Bloomfield, you think gut-bombs like the Spotted Pig's immense short-rib cheeseburgers or the Breslin's fried lamb belly. What you don't think of, at least until now, is ethereal, transparent, life-affirming minestrone soup; gemelli with black pepper and pecorino, bound in a flanlike viscosity so perfectly in balance that it was impossible to separate the three elements; a peerless bucatini composed of equal parts pasta, Bay Area tomatoes, and guanciale, all in a state of chile-scented harmony; or a lean and barely seasoned heritage whole chicken, feet still on, served with another three inseparable ingredients: ricotta, pine nuts, and a marsala sauce that just won't quit.

Tosca is the best restaurant Bloomfield and her partner, Ken Friedman, have ever done. Part of it is Bloomfield's evolution as a chef; she has moved beyond the meaty excess of her early years and the overcomplicated dishes she did later on and has quickly mastered San Francisco's minimalist cuisine. The rest is Friedman, who excels in taking old, over-the-hill neighborhood standbys and remaking them without changing their old-school souls. Tosca was a neighborhood fixture for almost 100 years before Friedman and Bloomfield bought it, restored it, and added an open kitchen. It feels like a midcentury red-sauce joint, with red semicircle banquettes and old, obscure oil paintings, including a classic pizzeria-style mural of Venice's Grand Canal, but it remains undeniably San Franciscan. The wine list, divided into "new school" and "old school," says it all.

242 Columbus Avenue; 415-986-9651;

Do It Yourself:
Cacio e pepe

Boil 3/4 lbs gemelli in well-seasoned water. Meanwhile, toast 3 Tbsp coarsely ground pepper with 1 Tbsp olive oil. Add 1 cup water, 1 cup pasta water (straight from the pot of cooking pasta), and 3 Tbsp butter. Reduce until large bubbles form. Strain pasta a minute before it's done cooking and add to pan. Add 1 1/2 cups coarsely grated pecorino Sardo. Stir vigorously until melted. Season to taste with lemon and salt. Serve with freshly grated Pecorino and olive oil.

Serpico, Philadelphia

Peter Serpico is a huge talent, but still finding his own identity. When he does, watch out.

Pêche, New Orleans

Winning a James Beard Award for its chef and impressing the famously conservative New Orleans eating public, Donald Link, Stephen Stryjewski and Ryan Prewitt's seafood restaurant does for Gulf seafood what Chez Panisse did for salad.

Milkwood, Louisville, KY

Esquire favorite Ed Lee is growing and evolving, and Milkwood shows him stretching his wings.

The Shack, Staunton, VA

No restaurant has ever done more with less, but there's a limit to how far you can go with a hundred square feet of cooking space.