654: Who Made Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurants List? Joseph Hernandez Helped Make the Tough Calls.

0:00This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Resi is a digital platform that connects restaurants to restaurant lovers by elevating dining experiences, providing original industry content, and helping to fill some of the country's most exciting dining rooms. Because restaurants have always been more than just places to eat. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resi app and at resi.com.

0:31LA is just always going to be kind of that perennial restaurant city. Totally agree. And it's always exciting. It's always got something going on. If we allowed it, there'd be like seven restaurants on this list from LA. Right. That just doesn't make for a very democratic list. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbar.

1:22Los Angeles, and Chicago. Who made the list? We'll go over it all. Also on the show, Eliza and I go over some of our favorite baking cookbooks from this busy fall season. This is a really fun episode, and I hope you enjoy it.

1:39Joseph Hernandez, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you? Doing well. How are you? Well, big day for you guys. Yeah. You've just released this amazing list of the best new restaurants in America, And I've been such a fan of the way BA Bon Appetit has really thought this through. And I really appreciate when I see this list, I like front as somebody who like tries to know about everything in the food world. But I'm like learning about new chefs and new restaurants in cities that I haven't been to in years. Tell me a little bit about the process to get to this list. Yeah, it's a long process. Yes.

2:16You know, we're planning, we're drafting, we're thinking about these things fully a year, a year and a half out. I know for a fact that while we're in production of the current list, we're already six months into researching the next list. We're just always on. And we, you know, we love a spreadsheet. So we're constantly, you know, dropping slacks to each other on our team, sending notes, keeping an eye on what local newspapers are covering and what the national critics are talking about. Really just keeping an eye on everything at all times. It's nuts. And what's the travel like for yourself and your fellow editors who are out on the road?

2:56Yeah, it gets wild. It's not great for the body. Yeah, totally. When you're traveling like that. Usually it depends on the city. If it's kind of a restaurant-dense city, we're going there a few times, you know, going to L.A., for instance, for four or five days, coming back to revisit if we need to. Chicago, New York, we're here, so it's a little easier on us. But, you know, we've got kind of a list of 20, 30 cities that we keep an eye on and are just trying to stay on top of things. Yeah, and I think it's interesting. Like, you know, some years you have, like, two restaurants in Detroit. And this year there's no Detroit and there's no Portland.

3:32either portland which was like you know back in the old days of ba 2015 i mean everywhere those are the cities that ba leaned into the the two portlands so how do you how do you think about spreading it around the country because i i recognize the challenge yeah i think there's there's two parts to that the logistical challenge of budget and and time and and not being able to to hit everything which is a real shame but you know it's the nature of the industry it's the nature of the business. It's hyper ambitious to kind of hit every city that we want. And so we had to start making tough choices.

4:07And sometimes it's, we'll go to a place because we've heard of, you know, some promising openings and some places are just not ready. Yeah. And having to make that call. Completely. It's not that we love these places less. It's just that we found something elsewhere that really rose to the occasion. Yeah. So in general, I mean, were there any cities that really surprised the team this year? We have a restaurant from Hawaii on the list. I think that came, well, that definitely came from a lot of heavy research that our team did in our summer issue, our August issue. We featured the kind of local food scene of Hawaii.

4:46And in that process, months ago, our editor, Jennifer Hope Choi, she discovered this restaurant that was really speaking to kind of the diaspora of Hawaii and all the flavors that are happening there. And, you know, it's not an easy place to get to. You can't just, you can, some people can just hop on a plane. So, but this restaurant speaks to what's happening in the state and it makes it a real destination. And so that's something that I think will surprise some people. Great. Well, we'll get to Giovetti, the restaurant you speak about. And let's talk about the list because I think there's so much to cover from this amazing package.

5:24It's gorgeous. You shot a beautiful package. I got to see the PDF, so the print version of it in advance. And your art team, bravo to you guys. They're amazing. Nice work. I just love their work. BA's looking amazing. Nice work there. Thank you. But let's start at Feld in Chicago. This is one that you personally wrote. And it's clear from the write-up that this was a pretty divisive restaurant. I have had many friends in my life, a couple at least, say, you have to go to Feld, you have to go to Feld. It's been on my radar. Joey, what did you find interesting about Feld? Well, so Chicago's my hometown, and the fine dining scene there is really just always at a high level.

6:04You know, it's the home of the James Beard Awards currently for the Restaurant and Chef Awards. And so it attracts a lot of talent. There's a lot of investment in the restaurant scene and Feld kind of opened last year with a lot of buzz and almost immediately kind of became center to, you know, big opinions. Both on Reddit and local critics, you know, right out of the gate three months in, I think, or three weeks in rather. It was the subject of just a lot of, you know, trash talk, which may or may not have been deserved. Sure. And then as formal reviews came in, those reviews were mixed to great.

6:45And so it was just kind of hard to figure out what's going on here. What's the trash talk centered around? Is it price point? Is it about the style of service? Well, it was largely centered on it being a 30-course tasting menu. Oh, yeah. Which is nuts. Wow. That's ambitious. So I can see why a brand new restaurant that is operating at a really high level, it becomes an easy target. You know, on a 30-course tasting menu, there are bound to be misses, right? And it's not cheap, right? It's pretty pricey. But, you know, the chef, Jake Potashnik, Chicago native, who had worked in Global Kitchens, he really took the criticism in stride.

7:26And instead of kind of getting defensive about it or, you know, lashing back at the critics, he got to work. He dialed in. He tweaked his flavors. He also showed his process a lot. I think that that speaks to his temperament, where he kind of invited people into the kitchen and also via social media to his various farm trips with his team. And you don't see a lot of chefs utilizing social media in that way. So it got me, it piqued my interest. So I had to go try it. Are there any highlights from the meal? I know it's like 30 courses. Well, it's dialed down to like 20, 25. Okay, okay. Good for him.

8:03Yeah. And it's a really cool restaurant. a lot of the expediting and finishing of the dishes happen in the center of the dining room. Really open air in that regard. And you're not just dealing with one server. Every server kind of touches the table. So there's like a really fun choreography that's happening as you're experiencing your meal. And the dishes themselves are light but really concise. And there's like a real vision. It sounds really silly to say this, but like my memory of the last meal that I had there was this just lightly poached, perfect cube of turnip in like a Benton ham broth.

8:46And it was amazing. It was beautiful. It was stunning. And it was such a unexpectedly simple but perfectly executed like mid-palate dish. And that spoke to me of, you know, his kind of restraint. Yeah. Yeah. And calling out a turnip is cool. And I think that's like something that makes a tasting menu really shine when a vegetable course with a beef broth or with a pork broth really, really, really stuns. And I have to say that tasting menu dining is not really my thing. But to kind of see that really clear aesthetic and really clear point of view in such a calm atmosphere. And it was very apparent how dialed in the staff were to the experience.

9:34That's what made it onto the list. Let's move on to the sisters Anna and Lydia Castro at Akamaya in New Orleans. I mean, Akamaya is a place that I really want to visit, and you call it out as one of the country's best. Tell me a little bit about it. Oh, man, it's amazing. I had the pleasure of dining there last year, shortly after it opened. Ana and Lydia are awesome chefs and just so warm and just so full of true hospitality spirit. And the restaurant is beautiful. It's really stylish. It's got a bit of kind of Mexico City with New Orleans airs. So really beautiful place to dine. It's coastal Mexican with a little bit of reference to other parts of Mexico utilizing Louisiana ingredients.

10:21So really lovely. I think my favorite dish was the chochoyotes, which is a kind of like thumbprint masa dumpling. And I know that the menu changes often enough where the medium in which the dumpling is presented is different. But I had a really like savory tomato broth preparation when I had gone because it was the height of summer. And it was so supple and pillow-like and beautiful. And again, another calm kitchen. Everybody just seemed to really respect each other's space and how they work together and passed off plates to finish to other parts of it. And that's something that I just like love observing when you have an open air kitchen and you kind of get to witness that, the theater of dining.

11:04It's part of assessing a restaurant. And I like, there's a sharpness here with the BA staff when looking at restaurants. It's not just the dish, the food on the plate. You know, it's about style of service. It's about spaces. It's about pageantry or lack of pageantry, you know. I really like that. And in the write-up, I think Eleazar wrote it for that piece. It was really calling out how New Orleans is a city that has a really, really clear regional food ways. and this restaurant is not necessarily tapping into that. This is a regional Mexican restaurant in New Orleans. And it's like people need to pay attention that New Orleans has an incredible Mexican food.

11:41Yes, yeah, yeah. And that speaks to the sisters' point of view. It's their background and their style of cooking is just inviting. Yeah, and let's zoom on a bit because I wanted to bring up the topic of looking at other reviews because there was a terrific Akamaya review in the New York Times from the new co-chief critic Tejal Rao, which dropped maybe four or five weeks ago. And, you know, by then you likely probably had picked this restaurant and you're at the disadvantage where you're not a weekly review. You have to sit on these picks for a long time. What do you think about that when you see one of your restaurants, you know, given this big national platform months ahead of your list?

12:23Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think because we know that it's already on our list, and that we can't help the timing. There's not much we can do about that. It is great to see our tastes affirmed by our peers. Yeah. Because our lists are looking at the best new restaurants. We're months ahead of other people visiting and kind of coming to these conclusions. And, you know, we're dicing and splicing our opinions internally by December, really. So all of this is to say that we love a review. We love seeing them and kind of confirming and comparing. Yeah, sure. But ultimately, they come a little too late for our timeline in terms of, you know.

13:09Well, you have to set up the photo shoots. I mean, there's a print publication you have to deal with. It'd be one thing if they had a story about a restaurant that we had that we were also working on. Yeah, that's it. You know, a specific narrative. That's when it becomes like, oh, man, I wish we could have moved a little quicker. Yeah. But in this case, I loved that review and it really captured the spirit of the restaurant. And yeah, it's just nice to see more love for the restaurants that we love. I totally agree. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Let's move to Los Angeles. Out of so many openings in one of the buzzier cities in America for new restaurants, you land on two, Camellia and Kamal.

13:47Tell me about landing on those two to represent Los Angeles on this list. L.A. is just always going to be kind of that perennial restaurant city. Totally agree. And it's always exciting. It's always got something going on. You know, if we allowed it, there'd be like seven restaurants on this list from L.A. That just doesn't make for a very democratic list. Two in this case, they both speak to different ends of the spectrum as an experience. You know, Kamal is a little bit more casual. It's in a marketplace. It's a little bit more counter service, you know, but there's such a clarity of vision in terms of this specific style of Mexican cuisine.

14:28And then you have Camellia, which is a little bit more polished, a little closer to fine dining with a real global sensibility with like French and Japanese fare. And really dialed in technically. But they both speak to L.A. right now. Yeah. Right. You know, this kind of every person dining experience that is Kamal that is really accessible and really fun and exciting and instills a sense of discovery. You know, L.A. is the home and land of Jonathan Gold. And, like, that's kind of the spirit that it operates in. And then you have this, like, really great restaurant that is also very deserving.

15:09and how do you kind of split the two when they're both different experiences at the end of the day? Yeah, and I wanted to ask that question about the two because you're thinking about a market and representing it well. And it's smart that you chose these two restaurants as contrasts in the city. Yeah, and you want to show off style, right? You want to show off like different aesthetics. Aesthetics and style of service, all of that. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. If you're one of those last minute shoppers, you might know the feeling. Ideas are running low and the clock is ticking.

15:41Here's a fun idea, Aura Frames. Aura Frames is the solution with a GIF that feels personal, a little curated, and sent with love. And a GIF that can be purchased in no time with a few clicks of the mouse. Aura Frames are great. They sent me one to check out and it was really cool and dumb simple to set up. I loaded photos using the app and it was displaying them instantly. There are no limits to the amount of photos you can load and you can customize messages with each photo. And here's the deal. You can preload an Aura frame with photos and have it directly sent to that special person in your life, gift-wrapped and all.

16:18There will be no price tag, and you can include a personalized message. Think about it. All those photos from this past summer's family reunion delivered in a digital frame. That is pretty cool. For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get$35 off Aura's best-selling Carver Matte Frames, named number one by Wirecutter, by using promo code TASTE at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code TASTE. The deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout.

16:57Terms and conditions apply. Hi there, it's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on Three Things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey link in our show notes. So Joey, tell me about the selection of Vinay in Minneapolis.

17:36The focus is Hmong cuisine with a really talented chef expressing the cuisine in an interesting way. And I went to college in Wisconsin and got to try a bunch of Hmong cuisine while there. And it sounds like there's some exciting things happening here. Yeah. Chef Yia Vang is like BA favorite. We've been covering him for years. You know, he had Union Hmong Kitchen years ago. and then COVID hit and had, you know, there were pop-ups and he's always been central to being the, an ambassador to his people's cuisine. Uh, and this is, this review was written by Kate Casson and she spoke highly of its kind of deeply personal storytelling.

18:13You know, his, Chef Vang's family come from this refugee camp in Thailand called Vinay. And, and that, you know, the, He named the restaurant after that to kind of honor his family's history and immigration history and what that represents in the modern day. And doing it in a city like Minneapolis represent, you know, it's not a cuisine that has a huge stage. And he's building his own stage. Yeah. So, Joey, I love seeing a place like Lenox on the list. It's a restaurant in Seattle that pays tribute to New Yorican cuisine, which is at the heart of many New Yorkers' historical cuisine. And a chef is serving it 3 ,000 miles away.

19:01So tell us a little bit about Lennox and about this cuisine. Well, I'll zoom out a little bit and talk about the list as a whole. This year, we found a narrative thread of homecoming within all of these restaurants, whether it's memories of home or how you bring, how you share home. And Lennox speaks to that theme and that mission. You know, the chef Johnny Reyes is really sharing his heritage on a plate. You know, his family from Puerto Rico, roots in New York, now settling in Seattle, and finding the narrative thread through food about all of these things. And it's less about New Yorican specifically and more about here's a little taste of New York, here's a little taste of Puerto Rico, and here's a taste of Seattle and bringing that all together.

19:50And, you know, I've used this word a lot, but like clarity again, just like understanding the story he wants to tell with his food. Very cool. Well, let's return to Honolulu and talk to him about Giovetti, which you set up a little bit earlier. But it's a restaurant that is from a chef with a deep, deep bench of skills from the Italian, you know, lexicon of cooking, but is using Hawaiian flavors and produce, using the Chinatown neighborhood that it's located in Honolulu to do something very special. And I'm so happy that Hawaii gets on the list. It's one of, I think Honolulu is an incredible food city.

20:27You can make it there. Tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, it was kind of an exciting pick from just months of research for this big package that we did in August about Hawaii from the local perspective. And our editor, Jen Choi, was on the ground with a whole team, honestly, covering the Hawaiian foodways and what is going on in the island. And Hawaii has always represented this kind of crossroads of flavor, you know, just waves of different diasporas coming through and how those people are represented in the various fusion cuisines, which, and I don't want to say that is like pejorative. No, we braced it.

21:09That's what it is. And this is just kind of the next phase of that. You know, it's fun to see like Italian and Chinese kind of combine. one of the dishes that we had discussed was like a mapo gnocchi and like, yeah, wait. I want that combination. I want that. Give me that. Yeah, totally. And I feel like I've not come across that. Yeah. I really like, you're like, oh, of course I've seen that. But no, I actually have not seen that. And it just feels natural for Hawaii. It feels right. Right? Yeah, I mean, Honolulu, you go there in like the Cantonese restaurants, the Korean restaurants, the ramen shops.

21:42You could be in any of those. Filipino, Portuguese. Yeah. These flavors are everywhere. It's a real, you spoke well about how it has waves of cultures coming in. And everybody is accepting of that and adaptive. And that's what I think Giovanni speaks to. Let's end in New York. There's many other picks and you have to read the list online or buy the magazine. Let's buy magazines, people, guys. Let's buy magazines. And not just at Hudson News when you're flying. You know, you can buy a magazine in many places. Yeah. Seek out the BA October issue. It's a terrific issue. I love the cover. Thank you.

22:20And you guys are doing great work over there. But in New York, you have Haas Snack Bar, which, you know, there's deafening buzz about this restaurant. I feel like there's restaurants that come like once or twice a decade like Haas that have a pedigree from pop-up to brick and mortar. And you read about the lines and they're real. And there's been lines, people ending up at 4.30 for several months. There's been no dying of buzz. And it seems like an obvious choice, but maybe not because there's so many great restaurants. I still haven't been. Yeah, yeah, totally. I haven't been either. Yeah, we share that.

22:56Yeah, no, the reservations go up. And reservations in New York are and have been an arms race. And, you know, they're snatched up within, I think they're open like three weeks out and then they're gone. Yeah. So it is kind of a walk. They encourage walking in, but they don't open until 530. So people do line up at four and the line goes out the block. And, you know, it's not a big place, but it's exciting. It's kind of the new evolution of wine bars, which is happening here in New York. And there are a lot of kind of modern wine bars that are now, not now, but certainly taking food more seriously than before.

23:40Whereas, like, it was like olives and breadsticks and like something. And the anchovy. Yeah, right. As a checklist. Haas, like, really changes the game in that regard. You know, it's Vietnamese and French and, you know, Pan-Asian. And it's always different. And it's never the same. And like it captures that kind of New York vibe of like, oh, you're sharing a table with strangers and, you know, or so I've heard. Yeah, no, right. It's funny. We're speculating. You know, Liza's been and is friends with those folks. So she's spoken about it on the show. But I've not been and I got to try. I got to try.

24:15What about other New York City restaurants? You live here and I just can't let you leave without hearing about some other restaurants. I mean, speaking of wine bars, it just opened recently. But I really love Lei Wine Bar in Chinatown. Just really stylish. I love the cuisine. It's like a really tight list of Chinese style snacks and like charcuterie. Like there's, what is the ham? They have a shaved ham that is in the style of this like really traditional Chinese variety that we can't import. But it's served with like seasonal fruit and it's like really just the perfect salty sweet bite to have to pair with wine.

24:59Their wine list is incredible, just really smart. And then I live in Brooklyn. I love Leland's in Prospect Heights. Just a really nice neighborhood spot that very seasonal. They change things up. It's Filipino inflected. It's really celebratory of like seasonal produce and just a really cozy spot. And you also edited and conceived of the Best New Bars list. Yes. Which was dropped this summer. So tell us about some of the bars. I don't want to let you go and hear about the bars. Yeah. So the Best New Bars list happens concurrently with Best New Restaurants. So Alizane Zontag leads the Restaurants Project and lead bars.

25:40And we share notes a lot because sometimes we get the conversation of like, is this a wine bar? Or is this a restaurant? Like, how are we going to split the difference here? But the Best New Bars list is nine bars this year, and they span New Orleans, New York, Philly. So a few other cities that very little overlap in that regard with the restaurant list. New York, we featured Schmuck from the team who previously ran Two Schmucks in Barcelona, which was a globally recognized bar. um here it's got more of a kind of a living room party vibe um i've seen the photos i haven't been it's it's the name is cool yeah it's cool um it's very cool it's maybe too cool yeah i'm i've aged out yeah yeah right now but two of us but it's great but you have to know that when you go in because you can't be like oh man this is like some you know tiktok baby yeah it makes it makes it just easier to like decide yeah yeah it's not for me but i i really appreciate what smuck is But it is for me.