The North America’s 50 Best Restaurant List Matters to American Diners

Last night at the Wynn Las Vegas, the 50 Best organization — the group behind the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list — unveiled a new ranking, the North America’s 50 Best Restaurants, to a roaring crowd of hundreds of chefs, owners, journalists (including yours truly and Eater audience editor Kat Thompson), and other food enthusiasts.

The event marked the first time North America received its own list — though by the organization’s definition, North America comprises the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean, but not Mexico or Central America, which are part of the Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list. New York City Korean American tasting menu restaurant Atomix was placed at the top, receiving the highest number of weighted votes from 300 voters across the region (who each rank their top eight restaurants). Montreal wine bar Vin Mon Lapin placed second and Ontario’s Restaurant Pearl Morissette placed third.

There are already plenty of restaurant lists and awards like this. Internationally, the World’s 50 Best goes toe-to-toe with Michelin guides (which don’t rank restaurants and award stars to a select few). Domestically, the James Beard Award Foundation, Bon Appétit, Esquire, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and plenty of other organizations attempt to make their mark with annual best lists or awards. Eater has been doing 38 Essential Restaurants maps for almost 20 years, and the team recently issued its 20-year anniversary edition of All-Time 38 Essential Restaurants, including places that have since closed.

But a few things make the new North America’s 50 Best list stand out.

William Drew, 50 Best content chief, explained at the start of the show that voters were given no criteria for their choices, which opened the door to casual restaurants like Los Angeles food hall spot Holbox, New York seafood counter Penny, and Washington D.C.’s modern Vietnamese specialist Moon Rabbit. Sure, a good portion of restaurants on the list serve pricey tasting menus, like New York’s Le Bernardin, Aska, Jungsik, and Saga, or Los Angeles’s Kato and Providence. But Denver’s Alma Fonda Fina, Portland’s Kann, and Philadelphia’s Kalaya all feature reasonably priced a la carte menus. That immediately distinguishes the North America list from the more aspirational tiers of Michelin’s star system (though Michelin does also feature more affordable Bib Gourmands) or even 50 Best’s own worldwide list, which also leans toward the highest end of fine dining.

The new North America list also provides more room for American fine dining. New York’s Eleven Madison Park was the last American restaurant to top the World’s 50 Best list back in 2017. In recent years, U.S. restaurants have been sidelined to some extent in favor of talent from around the world. The 2025 edition of the World’s 50 Best only had one U.S. restaurant, Atomix (though the back 50 included another four spots).

50 Best’s regional lists, like those that have existed in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East/North Africa, essentially act as minor leagues, highlighting up-and-comers and feeding directly into the World’s 50 Best. Now that North America has its own list, more local restaurants could land on the granddaddy list. At a time when it seems like American excellence on the global stage is waning in areas from business to technology to geopolitics, the U.S. can now flaunt a bit of culinary pride.

Part of that American excellence is our diversity. As compared to 50 Best’s other regional rankings, which tend to feature the native cuisines of member nations, it’s also striking how culinarily varied North America’s list is. Senegalese tasting menu Dakar from New Orleans and Dōgon in Washington D.C. highlight West African cooking; New York’s Corima, San Francisco’s Californios, and Toronto’s Quetzal point to Mexico; Albi draws its flavors from Palestine; Baan Lao in Richmond, Canada, serves food from Laos; Kato offers food from Taiwan; Chicago’s Kasama from the Philippines; Kalaya from Thailand; Atomix from Korea; and Moon Rabbit from Vietnam. If there’s a common theme among North America’s 50 Best Restaurants, it’s that many are grounded in immigrant cuisines.

And of course this is just the start. The prestige of this regional list will become an enticing proposition for restaurants reaching for national and international recognition in the years to come. The voting body, which will change by 25 percent annually, will continue roaming around in search of the next Atomix. (Though a full third of voters are chefs and restaurant owners, a system that Drew said “works for them” but does raise questions of allegiances and vote-trading.) Perhaps the Canadians will continue to show their strength, or future editions could include more representation from the Caribbean, which landed just two spots toward the back of the list.

At a time when recognition comes in so many forms — influencer spotlights, celebrity name-checks, food media lists — most restaurants and chefs appreciate all of it. But even as someone who has helped produce hundreds of restaurant best-of lists, not all of them are created equal. North America’s 50 Best Restaurants will likely become a new aspiration for American, Canadian, and Caribbean restaurants, and the collective effort from chefs, servers, bussers, bartenders, sommeliers, and operators will only mean gr excellence — and better experiences for diners. As a dining enthusiast, I’m excited to use this list to return to the places I’ve visited and explore so many that I haven’t tried.

Eater’s coverage of the North America’s 50 Best Restaurants event was produced with assistance from 50 Best and the Wynn Las Vegas. All editorial content is produced independently of those organizations. Read more about Eater’s ethics policies here.