Every year, as soon as we announce the Hot 10 Best New Restaurants in America, two thoughts race through our minds: 1. We gotta book a reservation! 2. There's no way we're gonna get a reservation. Which is why we're so happy that our test kitchen works with the winning restaurants' chefs to translate their best dishes into user-friendly recipes. And hey! You can view all of this year's recipes right here.
It takes a lot to become a tested-and-approved Bon Appétit recipe, and restaurant dishes, whether for the Hot 10 or for our monthly RSVP column, aren't given any special treatment. Translating a chef's creation—intended to be cooked by professionals for hundreds of people per night—into something you can cook at home comes with its own unique set of challenges, from scaling down enormous quantities to sourcing obscure ingredients. Luckily, our test kitchen staff is always up for an adventure. Here's what senior food editor Dawn Perry, senior associate food editor Alison Roman, assistant food editor Claire Saffitz, and test kitchen contributor Alfia Muzio had to say about how to turn a restaurant's best dish into a Bon Appétit recipe.
A whole roast fish. That's what the dish Saffitz was testing from Tosca Café was supposed to be. But the chef had sent her a reference photo of...fillets. Curious about the disparity, Saffitz checked in: The chef apologized, explaining that he thought it'd be easier for magazine readers to work with fillets rather than a whole fish—a fair consideration, but one that would require a re-proportioning of the other ingredients as well. This was not the first time a chef had sent a pre-adapted dish rather than the raw restaurant recipe. Although chefs mean well when they edit this way, Saffitz prefers they not alter their recipes at all when sending them to the test kitchen. Granted, a clunky, stream-of-consciousness paragraph isn't easy to work with—but a glossed-over "update" can be just as frustrating. "I want to know exactly how the dish is made in the restaurant," says Saffitz. "Figuring out issues and editing it is my job."
Roman had seared chicken livers to a crispy golden brown. She'd puréed them into a coarse paste. As she reached for her aromatics, she checked the recipe for Hot Joy's dirty fried rice—how much jalapeño did she nerd? A fraction of a teaspoon?! Huh? What had happened was this: In scaling down the restaurant version, originally intended to serve dozens, she'd rendered the jalapeño superfluous. "At that point, we just cut it because such a small amount doesn't make a difference," she says. So it goes when adapting restaurant recipes. Rose's Luxury's buttermilk biscuit recipe, for example, originally made a whopping "40 orders"; our version produces a mere 16 biscuits. The trick is to whittle things down without sacrificing the dish's integrity.
Restaurant recipes aren't always user-friendly: Perry says that an average chef-sourced recipe may start with an instruction to "sauté a bunch of onion." Although the restaurant's cooks can intuit the details, Perry's left pondering a slew of questions: How much onion is "a bunch"? How should it be cut? What type of fat should the onions be cooked in? Vague instructions like these leave the test kitchen scratching their heads. "These recipes are written by line cooks, for line cooks," explains Perry.
Sometimes the questions can be answered with a little common sense: Roman, who has worked as a pastry chef, knew that although the Måurice recipes she tested didn't call for salt, it was probably used in the restaurant. She added it in her test run, then called to confirm: Yep, salt was definitely a must. Either way, communication with the chefs is key for a true-to-life representation of each dish. When working through Rose's Luxury's recipes, Perry walked through each one on the phone with chef Aaron Silverman, and as Muzio puzzled through a roasted potato bread from High Street on Market, she found herself in near-constant communication with baker Alex Bois. "He must have a very particular, intense spreadsheet about the science and technique behind his breads," says Muzio, highlighting another common issue the test kitchen can encounter: The chefs don't always reveal all of their secrets. "We have to ask and trust they're telling us everything," says Perry, but Saffitz adds that sometimes "we have to change the recipe they give us in order to make it closer to the dish they cook."
When Saffitz was testing recipes for Tosca she quickly realized that although the techniques were simple and the food was unfussy, there was an unapologetic insistence on high-quality, somewhat obscure ingredients. One salad, for example, was a dead-ringer for an old-school pizza-shop-style salad with Italian dressing and plenty of oregano. It was delicious, but had one problem: The recipe required imported dried oregano—the average supermarket variety just wouldn't do. "We couldn't tell our readers they had to buy imported oregano," Saffitz says, explaining that each dish should be accessible. "So we ultimately decided not to feature the salad." Restaurants have the best connections to suppliers (how do you think they get all those truffles?), and while that's great for diners, it can make tough work of translating their food to the home cook.
All of Tosca's recipes, in fact, included helpful notes about ingredient sourcing and specifics, including the type of oil used for each dish: fruity Ligurian olive oil for a fish recipe that didn't make the final cut, and spicier Tuscan olive oil for the roast chicken. Although you won't see that note in the final recipe, Saffitz found the specification helpful: "It let me understand a little better what sort of flavor profile they were aiming for."
Perry explains that whenever the test kitchen works with a restaurant, they request images from the chef of how each dish looks once it's plated. Seeing a restaurant's version of a dish helps Bon Appétit stay true to the original recipe, and also gives the test cooks some direction when the instructions are vague or confusing. Once Perry has cracked the code on a dish, it's presented to the magazine editors at one of the daily tastings. Because restaurant editor (and Hot 10 curator) Andrew Knowlton is present, it's important the dish looks as close as possible to the restaurant version—he's checking for authenticity in both flavor and aesthetics.
When you dine out at a restaurant, it's inevitable that you and your dining companions will have different opinions on what sounds great and what's skippable—it happens at our tastings, too. The restaurants that make it onto the Hot 10 list are no wallflowers; the chefs are creating ambitious, innovative food that often pushes the envelope. That can mean either a homerun or a "no thanks" for the editors. Rose's spaghetti with strawberry-tomato sauce sparked a big debate: Some people loved the sweet-spicy notes, while others couldn't get past the vibrant pink color. But ultimately, whether it's something they'd order again or not, they're looking for a dish that's unique and creative—and indicative of what makes that restaurant special. It's important to showcase the strength of each restaurant, and if fried rice bolstered by a hit of puréed chicken liver is Hot Joy chef Quealy Watson's jam, well, that's what the test kitchen cooks. "We stay as faithful as possible to the original recipe," says Saffitz. "We're not the creators—we're translators."
Roman baked plenty of desserts and pastries when testing recipes for Måurice, highlighting another part of the process: The test kitchen cooks through far more recipes than the print magazine has room for. It's smart planning, and not just because some dishes prove too tricky to translate, like an ultra-creamy soup that needs an industrial-grade blender. Why so many options? Each dish has to be considered as part of a larger package. That means the test kitchen has to think about a wide variety of flavors, styles, techniques, and visuals. Say the kitchen tests out two dynamite blueberry dessert recipes from two different restaurants—it's unlikely they'll both make it to the pages of the magazine. In the case of Måurice, the test kitchen and editors were careful to curate a list that not only showcased the restaurant's strengths but also showed the breadth of its ability. After all: One of the things we like best about dining out is the unique plethora of flavors, styles, and cuisines we get to experience—and that's just what makes cooking these recipes so satisfying.