By one completely unscientific measure, Eater has put at least 160,000 restaurants on its maps in the past 20 years. All of them have been worthy of visiting for a bite, a drink, or a full-on experience. But which had a tangible impact on the national restaurant conversation?
When the Eater team set out to crown the most influential restaurants of the past two decades, we spent a lot of time debating how exactly to define the idea of influence, particularly from a national perspective. After all, restaurants that make shock waves locally don’t always move the needle when it comes to dining culture more broadly, and places that are breathlessly covered in glossy publications don’t necessarily resonate with those who live in and dine out frequently in that city.
To help us cull the list, we turned to a council of more than 20 experts — along with Eater’s highly opinionated staffers and contributing editor Hillary Dixler Canavan — to nominate the restaurants across the country that we felt had the biggest impact in the past two decades. We narrowed it, partially, by limiting ourselves only to restaurants that opened in 2005 or later; this excluded noteworthy Mexican food trucks in LA, the Bay Area’s farm-to-table pioneers, fast-casual standouts turned global juggernauts, and scores of classic restaurants. We wanted to highlight a snapshot in time, not the entire history of dining in this country. For that same reason, we included beloved restaurants from that period with an outsize influence, even if they have since closed.
The resulting list of 38 (a nod to Eater’s signature number, one that was arbitrarily chosen in the site’s early days) spans the country from Honolulu to Philadelphia. It includes fine dining temples and pie shops. Some of the restaurateurs featured on the list run one extremely wonderful place; others oversee entire empires. A few grandes dames share an opening year with Eater, while others are a mere three years old. But they all have one attribute in common: an indisputable impact on restaurant culture. — Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief
While molecular gastronomy may feel a little bit like a punchline in 2025, Alinea made major waves when it opened in Chicago 20 years ago, scoring three Michelin stars and putting theatrical, maximalist, surprise-packed dining on the national map. This was the highest form of culinary artistry — a magic show of a tasting menu packed with powders, vapors, edible puzzles, and trompe l’oeils. No process here is too tedious, no ingredient too obscure. Alinea is America’s answer to Catalonia’s El Bulli, an avant-garde restaurant that blurs the line between kitchen and laboratory, dinner table and stage. The novelty of chemistry as cooking and painterly plating may have subsided, but there’s still so much influence from molecular gastronomy that remains in modern restaurants and cocktail bars to this day. — Hilary Pollack
The string-light-lit patio at Los Angeles’s Alta Adams hosts the ultimate party for the city’s Black community. When Keith Corbin, who grew up in Watts, opened Alta in West Adams in 2018, the restaurant quickly became a California soul food sensation. Corbin placed a bright spotlight on the Black foodways that crossed into California through the Great Migration, his menu steeped in Southern cooking traditions, African diasporic flavors, and his own personal family history. Here, find gravy-drenched oxtails punched up by soy sauce, ginger, and miso and Alta’s signature fried chicken with Fresno chile hot sauce. Corbin’s advocacy to hire and create growth opportunities for fellow formerly incarcerated people further cements his status as a community leader. Alta isn’t the first “California soul” restaurant, but it boldly ensures the genre’s legacy. — Nicole Adlman
Los Angeles’s culinary scene could look back at 2008 as the year the city finally landed in the national spotlight, when a pair of plucky bearded dudes opened a meaty nose-to-tail restaurant along Fairfax Avenue just steps from streetwear boutique Supreme. Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo created a new moment for LA dining, sculpting chicken liver onto toast slivers, crowning crispy pig ears with eggs, and crafting dessert out of foie gras (then legal in California). Veal tongue, pig’s head, rabbit, and other unheralded ingredients — their usage inspired by Shook and Dotolo’s rabid eating across Southern California’s international cuisines — became the norm in LA and beyond. Animal may have closed in 2023, but its legacy reverberates through a generation of restaurants serving aggressively seasoned plates drawn from a global pantry. — Matthew Kang
Dominique Crenn is a true trailblazer: In 2019, her restaurant, Atelier Crenn, became the first in the United States helmed by a female chef to earn three Michelin stars. Before that, she was the first (and for a while the only) woman whose establishment achieved two stars in the U.S. Her gains in the male-dominated restaurant-ranking game initiated a sea change, demanding that the media at large pay more attention to women’s contributions to fine dining. It’s also a tribute to her unique cooking style, where dishes meld memories with poetry, resulting in a dreamy, intensely personal tasting menu experience, complete with gorgeous desserts courtesy of chef and business partner Juan Contreras. Crenn is a force both inside the kitchen and out, now known to audiences far and wide thanks to Iron Chef and Chef’s Table. Her dedication to personal narrative and her trailblazing boldness have inspired countless chefs and diners. — Dianne de Guzman
In the late 2000s, David Chang’s Momofuku Ko and Corey Lee’s Benu cemented a place for boundary-pushing Asian American cooking in the country’s fine dining temples. A decade later, in 2018, Atomix splashed onto the New York scene with an unapologetically Korean and impressively playful tasting menu. As a follow-up to their lauded debut Atoboy, Junghyun and Ellia Park launched a concise 10-course lineup that incorporates art and design as an inextricable part of the meal, whether it’s the selection of artisanal chopsticks and ceramics commissioned from South Korean artists or the menu cards that provide context for each course. Atomix expanded the perception of modern Korean cuisine in this country — and created a blueprint for innovative Korean creativity in New York and beyond. — Stephanie Wu
A turn toward vegetable-centric cooking, the cresting popularity of Korean cuisine, the universality of grain bowls, an experimental streak with fermentation: So many touchstones of the 2010s-era zeitgeist synthesized at Baroo, a bare-bones, 16-seat restaurant in a scrappy Hollywood strip mall. South Korea native Kwang Uh imagined $15 creations that pinged between wild and comforting, often in one forkful. Pineapple kimchi, tiny purple potato chips, and a dozen other garnishes blanketed miraculous fried rice. Pureed, fermented beets and cream saturated chewy grains to resemble Pop Rocks. The operation ran fitfully from 2015 to 2018, its singularity too delicate to last. Five years later, Uh and his wife, Mina Park, resurrected Baroo in LA’s Arts District as an astonishing $120 tasting menu restaurant. Uh’s gift for grafting cultural connection with transformational risk-taking, while giving it everything in whatever environment he pulls off, continues to rivet chefs and writers nationwide. — Bill Addison
Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi, and Jeff Zalaznick of Major Food Group opened Carbone in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village in 2013 as a swaggering homage to midcentury Italian American red-sauce joints, reimagined with fine dining precision. It remains one of the toughest reservations in town. With Zac Posen-costumed servers delivering tableside Caesars and al dente rigatoni alla vodka, Carbone helped usher in today’s era of maximalist dining — priming America’s appetite (and wallets) for restaurants where decor, service, and food are turned up to 11. It also kicked off a red-sauce renaissance that ladled glamour onto what had been, for decades, a fusty genre, tapping into our collective nostalgia while offering an experience that felt elevated and new. That craving for glitzy red sauce has gone global, as the brand has expanded to Miami; Dallas; Vegas; Doha, Qatar; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Hong Kong; and soon, London. — Melissa McCart
Charleston, South Carolina
Within Charleston’s stacked lineup of Southern restaurants and barbecue smokehouses, Chubby Fish carved its own lane, in no small part thanks to its caviar sammich, a social media darling: Small cloud-like buns loaded with fresh caviar enmeshed within a zingy creme fraiche have become synonymous with the best of Southern culinary lore. But the driving force of this institution is its devotion to seafood, abundant in the surrounding Lowcountry. Co-owners James London and Yoanna Tang’s equally expansive and eclectic approach to Southern cuisine is evident. The menu offers bay oysters glistening with peppery crab fat; a cacio e pepe of local cauliflower mounted with Parmesan; and a trompe l’oeil Not Fried Chicken dessert of ice cream, waffle cone flakes, and a chocolate pretzel. The restaurant’s irreverent approach to the region’s dining is a welcome shift, distinctive in a dining landscape fortified by tradition — and steadily strengthened by variance. — Kayla Stewart
New Orleans has long been one of America’s best food cities, with several restaurants that boast over a century of service under their belts. So it takes being as innovative, stylish, and soulful as Compère Lapin to attain icon status there. After her Top Chef: New Orleans run, Nina Compton opened Compère Lapin to immediate fanfare in 2015. Compton’s menu — exemplified by a signature, deeply spiced goat curry that’s become one of the city’s most sought-out dishes — tells a story of her childhood in St. Lucia, her expertise in French and Italian cooking, and her love for her New Orleans home. And as the years passed and Compère matured from buzzy hot spot to acclaimed mainstay, the restaurant further strengthened the ties that bind the foods of the Caribbean to New Orleans’s culinary soul. — HDC
There is absolutely no other restaurant in Texas, let alone in the country, that has done more to put Viet Cajun food on the map than Houston’s Crawfish & Noodles. The Bellaire-based institution has become a nonnegotiable stop for anyone seeking Gulf Coast flavors beyond big meats and Tex-Mex. Here, supple, fiery crawfish and molten seafood boils fit on a spread alongside garlic butter-drenched blue crab, soul-stirring gumbo, and crusty-cushiony banh mi. Trong Nguyen essentially popularized Viet Cajun food on a national stage — especially in the yearslong aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which brought a huge number of Vietnamese immigrants and former Louisiana residents to the Lone Star state. Since then, this style of cooking has become a successful and thriving genre, one that no map or borders can confine. — Jesse Sparks
Tea drips slowly into a clay cup at Dakar NOLA while chef and Senegal native Serigne Mbaye details the harrowing story of the migration of Africans to the Americas. Amid terror and strife, enslaved Africans created the foundation for the meal that awaits: generously seasoned gumbo with slices of okra; akara dotted with caviar; and fluffy, tomato-laden jollof rice, each illustrating a component of the birth and evolution of the African diaspora, and the inseparable relationship between West Africa and the Americas. Like so many of the best restaurants of the past half decade, Dakar NOLA started as a pop-up. When Mbaye opened his brick-and-mortar in 2022, the restaurant became New Orleans’s first fine dining West African restaurant. Sitting on stage with such institutions as San Francisco’s Benu and Minneapolis’s Owamni, Dakar NOLA adds a long overdue narrative to the nation’s understanding of fine dining, bringing along with it plenty of spice, flavor, and culture. — KS
The Four Horsemen in Brooklyn gave the stuffy wine world a chill — but serious — makeover, redefining what a neighborhood wine bar could be. Co-founded a decade ago by LCD Soundsystem front man James Murphy and wine director Justin Chearno (who died in 2024), Horsemen embraced natural wine from the get-go, while chef Nick Curtola whipped up deceptively simple dishes like a celery salad with dates, ricotta toast with braised leeks and anchovies, and Sungold tomato pasta. These days, wine bars across the country have taken up pairing natural wines and vibrant small plates, but here, the produce-centric menu and obscure wine list really sing. Where else can you find a 2009 Slovenian skin-contact, qvevri-aged white blend next to a list of grower Champagne? With its unfussy approach and bevy of industry fans, the Four Horsemen remains one of the most quietly impactful restaurants in the country. — Henna Bakshi
Though there are many stellar pitmasters across the United States, no one is more associated with barbecue’s meteoric rise in popularity over the past two decades than Aaron Franklin. From its humble beginnings inside a smoke-stained trailer in 2009, Franklin Barbecue — our esteemed culinary council’s most-nominated restaurant — forever changed the world’s perception of Texas-style smoked meats and played a vital role in spreading the gospel of smoky, juicy, flawlessly barky brisket and Austin more broadly. Franklin’s empire now includes cookbooks, classes, sauces, other restaurants, and a barbecue pit he designed himself. But the real, enduring magic of Franklin Barbecue is the full experience: Wait in the infamous line for a couple of hours, drink the free beer, and embrace that enormous tray of brisket and sides as a divine reward. — Amy McCarthy
The thing to understand about the restaurant that came to represent the epitome of California eating over the last 20 years is that it is not a pizza restaurant, despite what the menu might look like. Gjelina is a vegetable restaurant. In 2008, just when it seemed the farm-to-table trend kicked off by Alice Waters 30 years prior had run its course, chef Travis Lett piled buttery maitake mushrooms on toast, spooned chimichurri over delicate baby turnips, and topped a, yes, pizza, with squash blossoms or Bloomsdale spinach or whatever was kicking that week at the Santa Monica Farmers Market. The results were as effortless as they were grand; the simplicity devastatingly chic, drawing in a celebrity clientele, recent beneficiaries of the Venice neighborhood’s emerging tech boom. Out-of-towners quickly followed and took the ingredient-focused playbook nationwide, birthing the “vegetable-forward small plates” trend we’re still relishing today. — Lesley Suter
Perhaps a 1938 Greyhound bus terminal in Savannah isn’t the typical location for a restaurant, but the Grey is not a typical restaurant. At the helm of the kitchen is Bronx native Mashama Bailey, who, with her partner, John O. Morisano, challenged diners to contemplate this country’s history alongside its foodways. The result is a Southern restaurant that has transformed America’s restaurant industry — racking up awards and extending its influence beyond the nation’s borders and into Paris’s 7th arrondissement — illustrating the true origins of American foodways and demonstrating the legacy of the nation’s original culinary architects. Elegant, toothsome Southern plates like fried chicken and hoe cakes, rabbit mortadella, and classic pimento cheese invite diners to relax and to indulge, but also to remember. Punch-like chilly bears served at the end, an ode to the chef’s memories of visiting the South as a child, are a sweet nightcap to a truly all-American meal. — KS
Charleston, South Carolina
When Sean Brock — the Virginia-born chef already known in town for his avant-garde menus at McCrady’s Tavern — was given the opportunity to explore the foodways of the South at his restaurant Husk he threw himself completely into it: Only ingredients grown in the South were allowed. When Husk opened in Charleston in 2010, it represented a new chapter for Southern cuisine. Grits were cool. Bourbon was boss. Benton’s bacon was a hot commodity. Deviled eggs got fancy; crispy pig ears earned a prime spot on the menu. Brock revered the cuisine, but he had to convince diners that a plate of (local) shrimp and (heirloom) grits was worth as much as a bowl of hand-rolled pasta in a fine dining establishment. He undoubtedly succeeded. His spotlight helped bring more shine on Charleston, whose dining scene boomed in the wake of unprecedented national attention. Brock left the restaurant and Charleston behind in 2018, but his impact remains. — Erin Perkins
Top Chef favorite Gregory Gourdet broke the dining scene in Portland, Oregon, wide open in 2022 when he debuted Kann. It was a smash hit for its modern approach: sleek, night-out energy; casually gluten-free and dairy-free; sober-friendly; and a menu that spotlights the vibrancy and resilience of the Haitian and African diasporas. Instant classics include puffy plantain buns, as shiny as Parker House rolls; crisp, tender pork griyo with tangy pikliz; and an irreverent Baked Haiti dessert with spiced pineapple and charred meringue. Gourdet has evolved the menu over the years, but it stays grounded with its sharply realized Haitian flavors, often combined with Southeast Asian influences and prime Pacific Northwest produce. That he has also invested in developing a more equitable, diverse workplace environment further codifies Kann’s place at the forefront of what it means to be a sustainable restaurant in this country right now. — NA
For years, Tim Flores toiled in other chefs’ kitchens, daydreaming of cooking for himself, paying tribute to his Chicago and Filipino roots. Since he and his wife, Genie Kwon, opened Kasama in 2020, it’s become a cultural phenomenon for locals and members of the Pinoy community, regardless of where they live: Tourists often plan their trips around a visit. Each day, customers queue in long lines for Kwon’s delicate pastries and bowls of Flores’s comforting mushroom adobo. At night, reservations are hard to come by for the tasting menu that made Kasama the first Michelin-starred Filipino restaurant in the world. Here, the humble lumpia gets an elegant makeover; truffles cover a special croissant served for dessert. Flores says he wasn’t prepared for the tears from Filipino customers seeing flavors presented in ways they never thought possible. The reality of Kasama has proved sweeter than the dream. — Ashok Selvam
Kogi, with Roy Choi at the helm, was a pioneer of the food truck boom of the late 2000s and, with its playful mashup of Korean and Mexican food, transformed the perception of fusion cuisine. In 2008, nothing was more mind-blowing than the sweet-spicy combination of Korean short rib in a corn flour taco, topped with a Mexican and Korean chile salsa, and crowned with a riff on sangchu geotjeori. Kimchi quesadillas, blue moon mulitas, and Kogi dogs were equally game-changing. As food trucks proliferated in LA and across the country, Kogi truck was the must-visit stop. To this day, it is still a thrill to stumble upon a Kogi BBQ and nab a taco — one that’s truly emblematic of the diversity and melting pot that makes Los Angeles what it is. — Kat Thompson
San Francisco and New York
From its inception, Mission Chinese Food was ahead of the curve. It began life in 2008 as Mission Street Food, a pop-up before pop-ups had entered into the common restaurant vocabulary. Two years later, co-founders Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz moved it to the kitchen of an existing Chinese restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District and renamed it Mission Chinese Food. With the new name came chef Danny Bowien, whose Sichuan-inspired dishes — mapo tofu with Berkshire pork, sizzling cumin lamb, salt cod fried rice — emboldened innumerable chefs to liberate themselves from the constraints of “authenticity.” A second location, in New York City, cemented its place in the zeitgeist. Between the MSG shakers on the table, the ubiquitous tingle of Sichuan peppercorns, the Twin Peaks bathroom soundtrack, and Bowien himself (arguably the ur-hipster chef) there was nothing quite like MCF, and despite the attempts of imitators, there hasn’t been one since. — Rebecca Flint Marx
Diana Dávila’s audacity powers Mi Tocaya Antojería, her tiny dynamo that helped make Chicago one of the best places in the world for Mexican cuisine. Opened in 2017, Mi Tocaya explores both contemporary and pre-Hispanic Mexican food. Within the year, Dávila had earned rave reviews and major accolades, acknowledging her talent for making explicit the deep connection she’s forged between Chicago and Mexico (that’s seen in some of her most famous dishes — braised lengua with peanut butter salsa, a stew of nopales topped with cheese curds). This isn’t the food she learned to cook in Oaxaca, this isn’t the food customers might get in California, and it’s definitely not the food Rick Bayless makes. Dávila raises the bar playing with Midwest produce in ways her abuela never imagined. But it’s not at all esoteric — her steak burrito still slaps. — AS
On a corner that became synonymous with East Village cool, Momofuku Ssäm Bar (2006-2021), David Chang’s second restaurant, led the way for the country’s aspiring chefs in its style of service, menu, price point, and punk approach to boot-strapping a restaurant. It popularized large-format offerings with its iconic Bo Ssäm platter. Its adjacent space incubated Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar, deeply influential in its own right. But most of all, Chang’s restaurants were so important for a whole new generation of chefs because they led a wave of cooking from the children of immigrants who were raised in America. His defiant style challenged the notion of “authenticity,” granting permission — and proof of concept — for a new cuisine: one that pays homage to our parents’ roots through the lens of our American upbringing, and one where the quirks that come with being raised between two very different cultures could be celebrated. — Christina Nguyen
When the food scene in Portland, Oregon, erupted in the early aughts, enough buzzwords emerged to sustain an entire sketch comedy show: It was scrappy and iconoclastic, hospitable to rule-breakers and culinary traditionalists. Nong Poonsukwattana represented all of the above. At her downtown food cart Nong’s Khao Man Gai, which debuted in 2009, Poonsukwattana offered just one namesake dish: chicken poached in a bath of aromatics, served with rice, a cup of winter melon broth, and a side of ginger-garlic sauce. The audacity of one simple thing served so well — each flavor clean and precise but not at the expense of heartfelt comfort — made it an icon. The original Nong’s cart might be gone and the menu expanded (don’t sleep on the pork, seriously), but two brick-and-mortars and one bottled sauce empire later, Nong’s is the country’s most delicious feel-good story. — Erin DeJesus
Owamni — chef Sean Sherman’s James Beard Award-winning Minneapolis restaurant, in a white-stone building above the Mississippi River — is not just a restaurant but a culture shifter, a thoughtful interrogator of American food systems that has cemented the place of Indigenous cuisine in our broader dining culture. Every dish is decolonized, made without wheat, dairy, and other foods that Europeans brought to North America: so bison, not beef steak, served with berry-bright wožapi; flourless corn cakes; salmon tartare; duck spoonbread sweetened with maple; a simple plate of wild rice harvested, cooked, and eaten in Minnesota. But to reduce the restaurant to its ingredients is to miss the more meaningful point. This food asks you to consider your roots and how they weave into the tapestry of food, people, and power that make up these complicated, ever-changing United States. — Justine Jones
Nancy Silverton finished the 20th century as an LA legend at the front of the Cal-Ital pack — that vanguard of chefs shifting America’s culinary identity in the final decades of the 20th century. When she opened Pizzeria Mozza in late 2006, she reshaped American dining again, proving beyond doubt that pizza was a worthy endeavour for serious cooks. An accomplished baker, Silverton offers crusts that are at once crisp and chewy. Her toppings embrace California’s bounty and LA’s culinary aesthetic: squash blossoms and a plop of burrata; summer’s Jimmy Nardellos with ’nduja and a sunny side egg. Pizzeria Mozza inspired a host of chefs to think of pizza as a blank slate (a properly fermented, expertly wood-fired slate) on which to explore the flavors of their own local foodways. Still fantastic nearly 20 years later in its corner space at the Mozzaplex, Pizzeria Mozza ensures Silverton’s status as a 21st-century LA legend. — HDC
When restaurateur Ashok Bajaj opened Rasika in 2005, it represented a cutting-edge but accessible approach to Indian cuisine and made a star out of chef Vikram Sunderam, eventually a James Beard Award winner. Twenty years, a second location, and a cookbook later, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Washingtonian who hasn’t consumed several orders of palak chaat, the restaurant’s iconic crispy spinach dish. Some items, like crab pepper masala, have stood the test of time while the kitchen continues to experiment, with dishes like a purple potato dosa paired with coconut chutney and a cauliflower bezule fragrant with curry leaves and green chiles. Rasika’s innovations paved the way for a national restaurant scene that has more fully embraced contemporary Indian cuisine, years before Chicago’s Vajra took to Tock, Dhamaka dazzled New Yorkers, and Semma topped the New York Times’s best restaurant list. — Missy Frederick
Marcus Samuelsson was already one of America’s most famous chefs when he opened Red Rooster in Harlem in 2010. Having made a name for himself in New York with his innovative cooking at Aquavit — and then on a national stage with appearances on food shows, including an epic run on Top Chef: Masters — Samuelsson was up to the task of reinventing a Harlem legend and centering Black culture as he did it. I’m not the only chef who’s been inspired by Red Rooster, the atmosphere Samuelsson created — the energy of the space, the thoughtful music playlist, the enthusiasm of his team, and the layers of the menu. Dishes like his Yardbird, Helga’s meatballs, and oxtail rigatoni showcase culture and creativity. What resonates most, though, is the diversity — from the kitchen staff to the guests. Red Rooster had an indelible impact on what I thought was possible. — Chris Williams
Reem Assil may not consider herself a chef, but she’s a tremendous culinary voice, shining a light on Middle Eastern recipes. Her Oakland bakery launched in 2015, gaining early fans with mana’eesh flatbreads and Arabic tea. Sumac-braised chicken and freekeh-stuffed squid followed as she crisscrossed the bridge into San Francisco’s Mission and waterfront; so did plates ringed with falafel, Palestinian summer classics like watermelon and feta salads, and sesame-studded halawa cookies. Assil delighted her fans by announcing she’ll return to Oakland by the end of 2025, the first time in five years. Her luxurious cooking, her bold political heart, her wholesale rejection of American imperialism: The baker’s fare and legacy are as entwined in the Bay Area as the chirping of wild parrots over Telegraph Hill in the morning. — Paolo Bicchieri
A decade ago, Detroit had just emerged from bankruptcy, peeping at “ruin porn” was a national pastime, and Sister Pie emerged on a quiet corner in West Village. Founder Lisa Ludwinski came up at the nexus of a pie-infused, Recession-era rise of artisanal baking fueled by spots like Four & Twenty Blackbirds and Milk Bar in New York (both on her resume) before taking her serious baking chops (and scrappy ingenuity) back to Michigan in 2012. Salted maple, apple-sage-Gouda, and sour cherry pies and rosy strawberry galettes fully embraced the local terroir; awards and a cookbook deal followed. Today, Sister Pie alums run their own spots, and Ludwinski mentors other local entrepreneurs. The bakery has evolved — most recently pausing to reenvision the business — but like its fleeting seasonal flavors, Sister Pie’s story is really about Detroit and encourages savoring every moment. — Brenna Houck
Capulhuac, Mexico-born chef Cristina Martinez launched South Philly Barbacoa in 2014 as a food cart, garnering lines down the block for slow-cooked lamb. The following year, she and her husband, chef Ben Miller, moved to a brick-and-mortar and, soon, the awards came flooding in. One bite and it’s easy to see why. SPB is known for its pit-braised lamb, offal sausage (a spicy grind of kidneys, hearts, herbs, and chiles), house-nixtamalized tortillas, and steaming bowls of consomé laced with barbacoa drippings over rice and garbanzos. In fact, Martinez is largely credited with catapulting the popularity of barbacoa in the States, expanding many palates beyond the limited “sliced beef” served at Chipotle. What’s more, she has spurred on a national conversation about the rights of undocumented workers in the food industry, exemplifying what it means to be a mission-driven chef. — Jess Mayhugh
The brainchild of former Del Posto pastry chef Brooks Headley, Superiority Burger started as a pop-up and then became a tiny takeout spot in 2015. In the age of alt-meat, Superiority Burger established itself through its off-kilter insistence on legume-based veggie burgers, fried tofu sandwiches, and best-in-city gelatos and sorbets. As “plant-based” restaurants experience growing pains and old-school hippie veg spots shutter, it remains a beacon for chefs around the country who want to cook (and diners who want to eat) vegetables in an idiosyncratic, punk way. In 2023, Superiority Burger expanded into the space once occupied by the East Village mainstay diner Odessa. There, it continues to sling the kind of vegetable dishes that you actually crave at the end of a long night while also offering the sense of preserving an older, more eccentric New York. There’s a reason everyone loves Superiority Burger, not just the vegetarians. — Bettina Makalintal
Jiro Dreams of Sushi made its film festival debut in 2011, ushering in a new style of food TV and establishing a fresh era of so-called sushi experts. As the lore goes, restaurateur Alessandro Borgognone sought out Jiro apprentice Daisuke Nakazawa, whose painstaking mastery of tamago was memorialized in the documentary, and convinced him to open a restaurant together in New York. Sushi Nakazawa debuted in 2013 and immediately became the city’s hottest table for sushi acolytes looking to experience the Jiro magic stateside. While the intensity around the coveted midnight reservation drops has cooled, the restaurant — which still holds itself to a high bar — maintains its celebrity appeal. In 2018, it opened a second location, in Washington, D.C. And in a fitting evolution, it’s become its own breeding ground for talent: Former chefs now get the “Nakazawa alum” title when they move on to start their own places. — SW
Among his contemporaries in the Alta California cuisine movement, chef Carlos Salgado’s Taco María served as the crema de la crema. Emerging from second-generation Mexican American chefs versed in California cuisine, and raised on combo plates and loncheras, Alta California cuisine brought modernity to California’s Mexican roots. With chops honed in the Bay Area at Coi and Commis, Salgado brought refinement, the Chicano flavors of his parents’ OC Mexican American taqueria, and a quiet intensity to his fine dining food truck before going brick-and-mortar in 2013. Signature dishes, like kanpachi aguachile that balanced the sting of chile serrano with drops of olive oil and sweet watermelon jam, and a groundbreaking in-house nixtamal program stunned. More than any other Alta California restaurant, Taco María inspired a new generation of Mexican and Latino chefs across the country before closing in 2023. — Bill Esparza
It’s 2005 and one of the buzziest new restaurants in the country is a Spanish hot spot in Boston. At Toro, the music is loud, the wine is flowing, and the food comes on small plates meant for sharing. Have you dined this way before? Slinging miso-buttered uni bocadillos, chorizo-studded paellas, and anchovy-topped pan con tomate, chefs Ken Oringer and Jamie Bissonnette bent Boston to their fun-loving will before achieving the near impossible with a successful New York City expansion. It’s not that there weren’t big-name Boston restaurants before Toro — there absolutely were, some of which still thrive today — it’s more that Oringer and Bissonnette were such good ambassadors and evangelists for their city. And while Bissonnette has since stepped away from the group and the New York City location closed during the pandemic, Toro remains an essential Boston restaurant: still a party in a town that knows how it’s done. — HDC
Chef Ed Kenney opened Town on the heels of the Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine Movement, bringing a fresh perspective on sustainability with seasonal, Mediterranean-inspired menus. “Local first, organic whenever possible, with aloha always” — Town’s mission statement shined brightly with seamlessly relaxed and soulful cooking, in a welcoming Kaimuki setting that customers flocked to before it closed in late 2020. Effortlessly hip and a steadfast community favorite, Town was committed to supporting local farmers and agriculture, making it a leader in a place that imports more than 90 percent of its food supply. Its kitchen produced scores of future chefs, all inspired by their time with chef Ed. Kenney still represents all things local, with Hawai‘i-grown farm-to-plate fare at his award-winning restaurant Mud Hen Water, across the street from the original Town location in Honolulu. — Lee Anne Wong
Take the migas taco. It’s the signature dish of Veracruz All Natural, which has been an Eater darling since sisters Reyna and Maritza Vazquez opened their food truck in 2008. It’s an utterly perfect food — a mess of scrambled eggs, deep-fried tortilla chips, vegetables, spicy salsas, all within that oh-so-soft flour tortilla. Veracruz’s story is the dictionary definition of Austin’s food scene, as the business has grown from a singular food truck to now a proper fleet with restaurants to boot: The sisters came to Texas from Mexico, worked their asses off, and opened a hit. By focusing on house-made ingredients for their simple yet superb taco menu, they created a perfect (and perfectly casual) dining experience that remains true to the “work hard, play harder” attitude that made the whole country fall for Austin. — Nadia Chaudhury
Via Carota quickly made itself a classic in a city that thrives off the new hotness. And it isn’t solely defined by its glittering clientele. Instead, when co-owners Rita Sodi and Jody Williams opened in 2014, they showed that food should be just as important as sophisticated patronage. And that’s how you feel when you dine at the millennials’ Balthazar: like a sophisticated adult. Via Carota presents the couple’s vision of modern dining: seasonal Italian menus; polite and competent staff; and endless, excellent Negronis. Dark wood panels and smart waiters dressed in eggshell white aprons almost immediately transport guests to a corner in Rome’s Trastevere, but then you look around: 30-somethings with neon-dyed hair, elders taking a beat from their rent-stabilized abode, and groups laughing over conversations, their languages intertwining to make a diverse medley unique to the city that pulls it all together — New York. — KS
When Zahav opened in Philadelphia in 2008, it ushered in a vision for the future of Israeli dining. More than that, it helped catapult the cuisine of the Levant into the culinary spotlight — where it’s become a through line in American restaurants, from fast casual to fine dining. As Zahav’s popularity grew, it became a showcase for chef Mike Solomonov’s personal storytelling through dishes like silky hummus with laffa, meze framed by his upbringing and travels, and pomegranate lamb shoulder. Its success helped shape Philadelphia’s modern restaurant scene and paved the way for the group’s many offshoots there and now in New York City. What keeps Zahav relevant is its generous service, a menu that feels intimate, food that reflects a sense of place through Solomonov’s perspective, and a kitchen and bar that continue to evolve while honoring their roots. — MM
Edited by Hillary Dixler Canavan
Copy edited by Leilah Bernstein and Nadia Q. Ahmad
Fact checked by Kelsey Lannin
Special thanks to the Eater culinary council: Bill Addison, José Andrés, Mark Canlis, Sue S. Chan, Nina Compton, Amanda Kludt, Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel, Adrian Miller, Christina Nguyen, Kwame Onwauchi, Hugo Ortega, Femi Oyediran, Marcus Samuelsson, Chris Shepherd, Jazz Singsanong, Lien Ta, Mike Traud, Chris Williams, Erick Williams, Lee Ann Wong, Ellen Yin
