Best New Restaurants In NYC, L.A. & More

Gem

Flynn McGarry, who started his culinary career at age 11 with a pop-up in his parents' house in the San Fernando Valley, is at the helm of this restaurant opening on the Lower East Side. There are two spaces: the living room, which is open during the day as a café and coffee shop; and the dining room, which will host an 18-person dinner party most nights. There are dishes like caviar tarts with caramelized sour cream and potatoes braised in yogurt and served with a mussel-stock sauce and fried potato skins. 

Rita

Mary Ellen Amato, who previously ran the kitchen at sandwich destination Court Street Grocers and put in time at now-closed Saltie, is behind this Spanish-inflected all-day café. Located in Red Hook, the resto serves salads featuring escarole and radish with sourdough crumbs and an anchovy vinaigrette. It also has a goat cheese and egg breakfast sandwich, as well as a porridge made with grits, sweet potato and chile-garlic mojo. Expect wines and small plates to join the lineup in the evenings once a liquor license goes through. 

Basta

New York City's kosher restaurant scene typically doesn't draw attention from those who don't keep kosher. That's soon about to change as Raz Shabtai, who was previously at Nur, is offering Middle Eastern kosher dishes in his new Murray Hill spot. The all-kosher menu features items like chraime, fish cooked in a piquant tomato sauce with chickpeas and fingerling potatoes, and a spinach and feta dish named after Jerusalem's famed market Machane Yehuda.

Triple Beam Pizza

Nancy Silverton and Matt Molina (of ERB) are helping spread the Roman pizza gospel with this spot in Highland Park. Like in the Eternal City, pizza is sold by weight here. Glasses of wine to go with it are $8 apiece. There's not much seating, but it's worth any wait.

Montrésor

Partners Ann Booth Luly and Lisa Long have managed to create a small replica of France in Studio City. The menu keeps with classic French bistro staples, like short ribs with potato purée, mussels with white wine and profiteroles for dessert. 

Nyum Bai

This Oakland newcomer celebrates the food and music of 1960s Cambodia and prides itself on creating authentic Cambodian dishes chef Nite Yun grew up on. Items like kuri moan feature curry made in-house with locally sourced organic ingredients.

Augie's Montreal Deli

Canadian American Lex Gopnik-Lewinski has brought a slice of Montreal to Berkeley. There are sandwiches filled with smoked meat (Montreal's signature deli meat and a cousin of pastrami), dill pickles and three poutine options, including one for vegetarians.

Bar Biscay

The team behind popular seafood resto mfk. have a new "Spanish brasserie." Featured in West Town, Bar Biscay's menu draws from both Spain and France for inspiration in dishes like pea and pepper sofrito, several pintxos, and tete de porcelet (roast pig's head).

Kinship

The second part of this two-part concept (Next of Kin, a more casual spot is next door) is now open, and chef Marco Bahena's menu aims to please just about any palate, from waffle fries with honey butter to a Thai curry bowl and a Moroccan spiced lamb shank. 

Alhambra

The St. Regis has a new dining option with this new Mediterranean restaurant. Because this is a hotel, it's open for three meals a day; though, dinner is the most intriguing with bomba rice with shrimp, saffron and mussel broth, and a lamb shoulder tagine that swaps the traditional couscous for polenta scented with orange-flower water and finished with chermoula.

Maison Kayser

It is rare that the opening of a chain restaurant or bakery is worthy of excitement, but the first opening of French-based Maison Kayser is an exception. Scurry to the District for Eric Kayser's baguettes, which are consistently excellent, as are all the pastries.

Night Heron

This new project from Agricole Hospitality, the team behind Coltivare, is serving bowls of congee with local mushrooms, bacon and a poached egg; salt and pork ribs with sumac and lemon; and Singaporean chili clams. Those shareable dishes go with a cocktail menu that offers updates on classics like a salty dog, a shandy, and a highball.

La Centrale

This multistory complex at the Brickell City Centre is dedicated to the foods of Italy. There's a fast-casual pizza spot, a gelateria, a fish restaurant named Pesce, a wine cellar called Enoteca stocked with 4,000 bottles and a market brimming with ingredients from Italy.   

Devra Ferst is a food writer, editor and cooking teacher based in Brooklyn. She cares much more about babka than any one woman should. Follow her on Instagram at @dferst.