“Are we celebrating anything this evening?”
I love it when a server asks this question, because I get to answer, “Just life.” It’s jokey, but genuine. Who doesn’t feel fortunate to be seated in a nice restaurant, to share a special experience with friends or family, to be asked, “Gin or vodka?” when ordering a martini? Dining out is such a wonderfully easy way to feel alive.
But the more I dine, the more I realize it’s the lives of the folks behind the food and drink that we’re celebrating. We get asked often: What are you looking for in an Esquire Best New Restaurant? We’re always hooked when there is soul and a story to go with delicious, inventive dishes. It’s hard to deny the reflection of lived experience imbued in a menu, a wine list, a cocktail, atmosphere.
Over time, we’ve seen these stories—and the dynamic eateries they inspire—become even more deeply personal and eclectic. That’s especially true in this fortieth edition of our Best New Restaurants in America. To celebrate the milestone, this year we decided to rank the top forty new dining spots in the U. S. You can read all about the top twenty in the pages ahead. (Go to Esquire.com or use the QR code on page 78 to peruse the full forty.) Finalizing our rankings required a healthy appetite. Four of us ate and drank our way across the country: Jeff Gordinier, Joshua David Stein, Omar Mamoon, and yours truly.
Along the way, we heard dozens of those inspiring origin stories. Over dessert at Kann one fall evening, chef Gregory Gourdet told me that he almost didn’t want to serve Haitian food in his first restaurant. Rather, he wanted to do something global. But when he cooked Haitian food on Top Chef and for Oprah and saw the impact it had on Haitians and Haitian Americans, he knew what he had to do. A similar spirit of mission inspires Katianna Hong at L. A.’s Yangban Society, which has a very specific Korean American POV. Hong serves jeon, fried disks of squash topped with caviar, because she always felt the labor-intensive dish she had as a kid deserved more respect. In Sonoma, you’ll find Korean chef Joshua Smookler, who was adopted by Jewish American parents, casually incorporating pastrami from New York’s famous Katz’s deli in his kimchi fried rice. Sitting at the chef’s counter at Comedor Lilia in Portland, chef Juan Gomez will tell you how freeing it is to cook the food of the Pacific Northwest through a Mexican lens as an expression of himself—hence his signature dish of a pork-collar confit served with pan arabe. Arjav Ezekiel, co-owner of Birdie’s in Austin with chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel, was never formally taught as a sommelier, but he’s managed to create one of the best wine lists in the country.
“Are we celebrating anything this evening?” The answer will always be life. But it might include more than just yours. —kevin sintumuang
1 A LOVE LETTER TO HAITI
Kann
Portland, Oregon
It is perhaps unfair to ask a restaurant such as Kann, Gregory Gourdet’s revelatory Haitian eatery, which opened in August, to carry a country on its shoulders. It is also perhaps impossible to experience Gourdet’s assured debut and not consider Haiti’s troubled history and the way the country has been portrayed in news reports over the decades. Many Americans associate Haiti with
