.jpg)
As we look back on a great year of dining, we're celebrating the best dishes and desserts we ate at new restaurants in 2023. For our list of The 24 Best New Restaurants of 2023, click here.
I’m a chronic menu-checker. By the time I make a reservation, I’ve usually read the menu, clocked dessert, and figured out a game plan. But luckily—despite my best efforts at planning out every detail—most of my favorite meals are still full of surprises.
A few months ago, sitting in the food court where LA’s only Garifuna restaurant is based, I was introduced to hudut. A tender whole fish bathed in coconut milk curry came out of the kitchen in an aluminum tray. It was at once sweet and mellow from simmered coconut milk and tingling with the heat of scotch bonnet pepper. I hadn’t tasted anything quite like it before and haven’t since. And in Portland, OR, a Burmese dish listed in English simply as “large dumpling” proved to be just that, only the single almost-translucent rice dumpling in a pool of chili vinegar was even larger, more supple, and delicious than I could have imagined.
Here’s the thing about a really great restaurant dish: It can wipe away our expectations and refigure our plans, leaving us dreaming about one very big dumpling or a tray of fish. As we charted our way across the country putting together our list of the Best New Restaurants of 2023, these 13 dishes at new restaurants left us delighted, surprised, and very, very full. —Elazar Sontag, restaurant editor
These dishes were eaten throughout 2023, and some may no longer be offered. When in doubt, check a restaurant’s updated menu.
Pig's Head Lasagna
The first thing you see when chef Pat Alfiero’s pig head lasagna arrives is not noodles or bechamel or tomato sauce, but a wide slice of barely-warm head cheese. Draped over the slab of baked pasta like a porcine tablecloth, that wobbly mosaic of jowl meat and fat feels like a statement: If you thought you were going to be able to close your eyes and pretend you were not eating a dish called Pig's Head Lasagna, you’ve got another thing coming. Alfiero’s Heavy Metal Sausage Co. (one of BA's Best New Restaurants of 2023), which operates as a whole animal butcher shop and salumeria by day and hosts ticketed dinner party-esque Trattoria Nights twice a week, is a giddy celebration of nose-to-tail cooking—and this dish may as well be its mascot. Hiding underneath that head cheese are tender sheets of pale pink pasta, nutty with house-milled flour and tangy with pig’s blood, and unctuous layers of sticky pig’s head ragù. In other words: It’s pork in between pork with more pork on top, and it is every bit as delicious as it is clever. —Amiel Stanek, contributing editor
Sour Milk Cornbread
I’d heard a lot about one dish in particular before my dinner at Dunsmoor, an LA restaurant that serves what it describes as old-timey “American heritage cooking.” My friend Ben Mims, a cooking columnist at the LA Times, could not stop talking about the cornbread. “You have to order it,” he texted me at least a few times before my reservation. I trust Ben with pretty much all important food decisions, so of course, I listened. Alongside hearty Pennsylvania Dutch slippery dumplings and a pork and green chili stew served with the most tender flour tortillas, out came a little round of cornbread in a personal-size cast iron pan. The burnished exterior was topped with a veritable slab of cultured butter. Inside it was speckled with white cheddar and bits of hatch chili. Each bite was salty, sweet, and surprisingly tart from sour milk folded into the batter. You may hear others in LA talking about this cornbread, and you too should listen. It’s a dish deserving of its cult following. —Elazar Sontag, restaurant editor
Jellyfish Tiger Salad
Jellyfish salad is hard to find in US restaurants; good jellyfish salad is even harder. That’s partly why the one at Potluck Club, a nostalgia-fueled Cantonese American restaurant in Manhattan, is such a revelation. It takes all the elements that make the classic Cantonese dish shine—crunchy jellyfish tendrils, tangy dressing—and combines it with the pared-down yet refreshing joy of a scallion-and-Chinese celery-packed tiger salad. If you haven’t eaten jellyfish, the texture is exactly as it looks: slippery at first, then crunchy. It is extremely fresh. I love eating the tendrily, cartilage-like jellyfish on its own, as it’s more classically prepared, but Potluck Club’s version feels like a more substantial salad. Unlike the traditional dish, which is often an appetizer or small dish, this salad is an event in itself. —Serena Dai, digital editorial director
Jerk Cauliflower
The whole cauliflower gets a pretty bad rap as a restaurant dish, and you know what? I think that’s what the almost-always-bland dish deserves. But I must tell you that the whole head that comes off the hearth at Kann, chef Gregory Gourdet’s Haitian restaurant in Portland, OR, is one of the most creative vegetable dishes I’ve tasted. Usually, by the time you get to the center of a whole roasted cauliflower, it just tastes like, well, cauliflower. Gourdet solves this seasoning dilemma at Kann (one of BA's Best New Restaurants of 2023) by sourcing small heads. The vegetable is rubbed in warm, herbaceous jerk spices, and roasted over the flames of the restaurant’s live-fire hearth until the taste of smoke permeates to its center. Gourdet places this near-blackened mass of flavor in a sweet-tangy sour coconut cream that absorbs into each pore. Even a few dishes later, as I cut into a seriously great slab of smoked beef rib rubbed with Haitian coffee, all I could think about was that cauliflower. —Elazar Sontag, restaurant editor
Large Dumpling
I was immediately hypnotized by two words on the menu at the casual Burmese restaurant Rangoon Bistro in Portland, OR: large dumpling. The dish, called khao pyan sane in Burmese, consisted of a massive mound of rice noodle sheets, wrapped around ground pork. The substantial pillow of noodles and meat sat in a sweet, bracingly acidic pool of chili-dosed vinegar. It reminded me of Cantonese cheung fun but with an eye-wateringly sour kick. I haven’t been able to find anything resembling the dish since my meal at Rangoon, but I’ll patiently await the next time I come across those two magic words. —Elazar Sontag, restaurant editor
Bagnet
A bite into the bagnet—deep fried pork belly—served at the Filipino BYOB spot Boonie’s in Chicago yielded an audible crackle from the shattering of the crisp skin. The sound of that crunch was quickly followed by a “whoa” from my friend as we ate our dinner there a few months back. Chef Joe Fontelera serves his bagnet, which debuted on the original menu at the restaurant’s former Revival Food Hall space, with pickled papaya and sarsa (a sauce whipped up from pork liver, breadcrumbs, spices, and herbs). Despite the richness, I kept going back for another piece of meat and a welcome forkful of pickled papaya, until every last bite of pork was gone. —Kate Kassin, editorial operations manager
Milk Bread with Brown Butter and Smoked Pecans
It's hard not to set high expectations the minute you walk through the doors of Twelve. The sleek minimalist fixtures, the tables made out of reclaimed wood, the team of chefs who seem to never break a sweat in the open kitchen—this restaurant seems to have considered every detail. Still, Twelve exceeded my expectations. The most stunning moment of my meal wasn’t the baked halibut with a Ritz cracker crust and bone marrow jus (delicious!), or a buckwheat porridge accompanied by slices of roasted mushroom speared on a rosemary sprig (just as good). It was the bread. More specifically, milk bread with sweet potato and brown butter. To call this bread soft would be an understatement. The small loaf arrived warm, in a cast iron pan, accompanied by a nutty, smokey brown butter. It was a convincing reminder to always order the bread. —Sam Stone, staff writer
Hudut
Winston Miranda, the chef-owner of LA’s only restaurant dedicated to the food of the Garifuna people, warned me as I was ordering that the hudut would take 45 minutes to cook. That’s longer than I’d planned to sit around the counter-service food hall where Gusina Saraba is located, but Miranda said that if I wanted to experience Garifuna food, this was the place to start. While the fish was cooking, out came delectably tender oxtail stew, as well as panades colored clay-red by achiote (or annatto) seeds and stuffed with shredded chicken. Though I was nearly full when it arrived, I was right to wait for the hudut. It featured a whole fish, cut in half and bathed in a rich coconut milk curry. A whole scotch bonnet floated in the mixture for good measure. I forked up as much of the flakey meat as I could, and took the rest home for later. A few hours later, it was nearly as rich and flavorful from the fridge as it had been straight off the stove. —Elazar Sontag, restaurant editor
Say Cheese Dosa
Tava is one of the few places in New Orleans to serve a dosa, and it does the South Indian dish justice. The restaurant is casual and comfortable and covered in bright murals, ideal for sharing some dosas with friends. One of Tava’s more unique creations, the Say Cheese, features a crisp dosa whose fermented tang is accentuated by a layer of cheddar cheese with gunpowder seasoning and garlic aioli. Eating it with a bowl of sambhar is akin to dunking a grilled cheese into tomato soup. It's drunk food for the gods. —Serena Dai, digital editorial director
Short Rib Pastrami Suya
Beef suya is one of my all-time favorite summer dishes: the classic Nigerian street food of skewered beef, cooked hard and fast and coated in a peanutty spice blend, is all I want when it hits 95 degrees in New York. So, after my sweaty subway ride to Lincoln Center to eat at Tatiana, Kwame Onwuachi’s new restaurant, I was delighted to see suya on the menu. Like most of his best dishes, this one was an interpretation, not a direct translation. At Tatiana, the food is something of a patchwork tapestry of New York, where curried goat patties sit next to, say, black bean hummus and truffle chopped cheese. The suya was no exception; the Nigerian-Jewish take on the dish featured a massive beef rib that looked like it might have come off a dinosaur, cured like pastrami, and coated in sweet and spicy suya-inspired spices. Tearing that meat apart and stuffing it into supple fresh-baked rolls was a delicious, on-the-nose reminder of exactly what makes New York’s food culture so tantalizing. —Elazar Sontag, restaurant editor
Naro Bap
It almost felt wrong to dig into my bowl of Naro Bap, a thrilling combination of A5 wagyu, cubes of tender gyeran mari (a seasoned, rolled omelet), and barley and sorghum bap—an earthy and nutty rice base. This beautiful dish was on the menu at Naro, the traditional Korean spot at Rockefeller Center owned by the Korean restaurant duo Junghyun (JP) and Ellia Park. To add to the visual allure, the bowl came adorned with clusters of tiny orange trout roe and precisely minced chives. After a moment spent staring at the almost sculptural dish, I listened to the server’s instructions and mixed the various elements together. The buttery sorghum-coated rice clung to the melt-in-your-mouth slices of wagyu and the pillowy egg. Between the saltiness of the roe and the delicate oniony chives, each spoonful was ethereal. —Kate Kassin, editorial operations manager
Oxtail Stew
The front of Jamaican Jerk House is painted a striking highlighter-yellow and pokes out onto busy St. Claude Avenue. At lunchtime, no matter the day, the Caribbean restaurant is packed with fans. The kitchen turns out a host of excellent takes on familiar dishes like jerk chicken. But of the classics, the oxtail stew is the most special of all. The meat around the bone is fall-apart tender and the fat is the ideal balance of squishy, chewy, and soft. The seasoning screams of pepper, and has a kick that feels in line with the bright NOLA flavor palate. Order the dish with rice, and all that sauce will coat each bite. —Serena Dai, digital editorial director
Goat Gnocchi
Nolia, helmed by chef Jeffery Harris, serves dishes that highlight classic Southern flavors and are informed by Harris's early years in New Orleans. It's hard to take a wrong turn when ordering, but what stopped me in my tracks was a goat gnocchi dish on the menu when I visited. I'm not sure what I expected—maybe a ragù?—but what arrived was a bowl of invigoratingly bright and citrusy broth, punctuated here and there with seared gnocchi. In the center of the bowl were chunks of tender braised goat topped with sliced chili and a handful of mustard greens. The long swirls of greens soaked up the broth but kept their bracing bitterness. Is it gauche to drink every drop of broth? That's exactly what I did. —Sam Stone, staff writer