The 50 places in the United States that we're most excited about right now.
For the third annual New York Times Restaurant List, we sent a dozen reporters, editors and critics to hundreds of places across the United States — from Rattlesnake Point in Florida to the Arts District in Los Angeles — to find our favorites.
Half of this year’s selections — marked as New — have opened since the 2022 list was published, but plenty of others have been around for years and are still sending out exceptional dishes. Despite the upheavals in recent years, this is an expansive moment for independent restaurants. We can’t help but feel that cities and towns in the United States are better to eat in today than they have ever been.It wasn’t easy to narrow it down, but here are the 50 restaurants that excite us most right now.
Sam Gelman grew up eating lunch at Pearson’s Drug Store, just down the block from Mercy Hospital, where his grandfather worked as an orthopedic surgeon. Today, Mr. Gelman and his wife, Riene, operate the Webster, a restaurant named after that grandfather, in that drugstore’s former space. Mr. Gelman’s food channels his experiences working as a top lieutenant in the chef David Chang’s restaurant group, which took him from New York to Toronto to Los Angeles. With its window-lined dining room and vibrant, Asian-accented, often locally sourced dishes, the Webster treats Mr. Gelman’s hometown as an asset, and serves as a compelling enticement to visit this cosmopolitan corner of the Midwest.
- Brett Anderson
