The Best New Restaurants to Try This Winter

As the holidays pass and the days get shorter, it takes a little more convincing to head out to a new restaurant. With a slate of hotly anticipated restaurants gearing to open their doors in the coming months, we’ve rounded up eight worth extending the celebration for well into the new year.

Many of these are second acts from our favorite restaurants. They include a Laotian noodle bar in Oklahoma City, a vivid celebration of South Asian street food in DC, and a surf-and-turf extravaganza in a restored church in Charlotte. All three are from the minds behind Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurants of 2022.

The season has already kicked off with a series of promising openings. Chef Joe Flamm debuted Il Carciofo, his ode to Roman-style cooking, in Chicago’s Fulton Market. Detroit now has Vesper, a wine bar and bookshop. The team behind Denver’s Alma Fonda Fina is spotlighting Mexican spirits and seafood at Mezcaleria Alma. And the luxe wood-fire-focused Crane Club opened its doors in New York.

We track openings year-round in the lead-up to our annual Best New Restaurants list. These are the ones we are most excited about this winter.

This list is organized alphabetically by city. The opening dates below are subject to change, so check restaurant websites and Instagram accounts for updates.

Madeira Park

Atlanta, GA

Opening: January

It’s been 15 years since Atlanta restaurant industry veterans Steven Satterfield and Neal McCarthy opened the contemporary Southern spot Miller Union. Since then, it’s become an iconic institution in the city’s dining landscape. They’ve earned accolades, including a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast for Satterfield in 2017 and a Michelin service award in 2023. Now, they’re finally opening another restaurant—a wine bar in partnership with local sommelier Tim Willard of Dive Wine. The menu features seasonal Southern cooking from Satterfield, designed to pair with hard-to-find bottles and by-the-glass options. For nibbling, there will be cheeses from local favorite Capella Cheese and snacks like panisse fritters and daily fish crudo. To make a meal out of it, more robust options will include simply grilled or roasted meat and fish with rotating seasonal vegetable sides.

Leluia Hall

Charlotte, NC

Opening: February

This Charlotte newcomer from the same team as Supperland (one of Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurant of 2022) is also located in a former church. Leluia Hall is a steakhouse emphasizing seafood, and comes from Jeff Tonidandel and Jamie Brown, the husband-wife duo behind beloved Charlotte mainstays like Haberdish and Reigning Doughnuts. Executive chef Chris Rogienski from Supperland is developing a menu with raw bar features like seafood towers and ceviches, takes on classic sides like a Caesar composed of briny sea beans, and steaks sliced tableside. The road to opening Leluia Hall, as seen on the restaurant’s Instagram, reads a bit like an HGTV project. In the midst of Tonidandel and Brown’s multiyear quest to renovate this historic 1915 space, they also saved a nearby landmark, the Leeper-Wyatt building, from demolition by moving it next door to the restaurant.

Cafe Yaya

Chicago, IL

Opening: February

Cafe Yaya comes from the team behind Michelin-starred Galit, the restaurant known for its decadent Middle Eastern cooking. Here, chef Zach Engel and Andrés Clavero are embracing a more casual, counter-service all-day model inspired by the sidewalk bistros of Tel Aviv and Paris. In the mornings, Lincoln Park locals can revel in the handiwork of pastry chef Mary Eder-McClure—savory potato bourekas; fig, goat cheese, and za’atar-stuffed challah; and sticky walnut baklava. For dinner, the restaurant will serve an à la carte menu offering classic bistro dishes inflected with Middle Eastern ingredients and cooking techniques. Green tomatoes will be dressed with zhoug remoulade and duck confit with lentils and Swiss chard will get a pungent boost from preserved lemon. For diners who want to start the night at Cafe Yaya and move to dinner at Galit, the two are right next door.

Lugya’h

Los Angeles, CA

Opening: February

Alfonso “Poncho” Martinez and Odilia Romero began selling tlayudas—a Oaxacan dish consisting of a large, crisp tortilla smeared with lard, black beans, and Oaxacan cheese, and crowned with meats like chorizo and flank steak—out of their home kitchen in 2010. By 2016, the pair were operating a widely beloved pop-up in the front yard of Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo, a nonprofit organization for which Romero is a cofounder. Now, they’re moving into more permanent digs at the forthcoming Maydan Market in West Adams. Lugya’h by Poncho’s Tlayudas is the first culinary partner at the new market hall from Rose Previte of the Michelin-starred DC restaurant Maydan. The 10,000-square-foot market will feature locations of the group’s restaurants, Maydan and Compass Rose, and five local LA food partners. At Lugya’h, Martinez and Romero will expand on the Oaxacan street food that earned Martinez a James Beard Award semifinalist nod for Best Chef: California earlier this year. In addition to tlayudas, Martinez will spotlight various dishes from the Oaxacan highlands. On the weekends, marketgoers can expect tamales and blood sausage.

Cafe Zaffri

New York, NY

Opening: February

It’s been a busy few years for the team behind New York mainstays Raf’s and the Musket Room. In February, they will open their third restaurant, Cafe Zaffri, in The Twenty Two, a London-based hotel and members club making its US debut in Union Square. The all-day restaurant is centered around Levantine cooking, drawing on executive chef Mary Attea’s Lebanese heritage. Executive pastry chef Camari Mick will be turning out her sought-after pastries in the morning, as well as bread and desserts (like a tiramisu with date syrup and maleb) by night. The savory side of the menu will consist of spreads like chicken liver mousse with cardamom, pistachio, arak, and fig, small plates such as roasted squash with dates and dukkah, and skewers with flavor combos that include striped bass and black lime or veal tongue and saffron. As with the team’s other restaurants, expect a well-designed room. They’ve again tapped the design firm Post Company to curate an old-world opulence replete with lush velvet drapery, marble mosaic floors, and brass accents.

Sunn’s

New York, NY

Opening: December

Chef Sunny Lee has spent several years popping up at wine bars around New York. The much-loved roving operation is called Banchan by Sunny, and now the time has finally come for Lee to open her very own spot. She describes her new Chinatown restaurant, Sunn’s, as “a little place for banchan and wine.” There are 16 seats in the dining room and eight at the counter, and if the chef’s loyal following is any indication, they will fill quickly. Pop-up favorites like kimbap, hotteok, and sesame-crusted mochi cake will be on the menu, as well as new dishes like a play on gamja tang (a pork bone and perilla stew). With support from Grant Reynolds, the cofounder of Parcelle Wine, there will be well-curated wine, soju, makgeolli, and light Korean lagers.

Bar Sen

Oklahoma City, OK

Opening: January

Chef Jeff Chanchaleune’s favorite dish is his mother’s Lao chicken noodle soup, a dish called khao piek sen, characterized by its use of shredded poached chicken, aromatics, and rice noodles. This and other soups like it will anchor the menu at Bar Sen, a Laotian noodle bar landing in Oklahoma City’s Plaza District next door to Chanchaleune’s first restaurant, Ma Der Lao (one of Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurant of 2022). Sen means “noodles” in Lao, and while that is where the majority of the menu will focus, Chanchaleune wants Bar Sen to be just as much a bar as a restaurant. As such, there’s a full menu of Asian beers, sake, and cocktails with Lao flavors, as well as bar bites like chicken karaage with charred tomato jaew, lemongrass beef jerky, and spicy cucumber salad.

Tapori

Washington, DC

Opening: January

At Tapori, chef Suresh Sundas and restaurateur Dante Datta will celebrate South Asian street food spanning Kerala to Nepal. Three years after opening their first hit, Daru (one of Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurants of 2022), the duo is debuting their newest spot in the H Street corridor, a 20-minute walk away. Tapori, which means “vagabond” or “rowdy” in Hindi, will have painted bold graphics on the walls, a 20-person communal table, and an open kitchen. Sundas and Datta are teaming up with chef Baburam Sharma to develop a menu of dishes such as pani puri, dosas, thukpa (Tibetan noodle soup), and paddu (fluffy fermented rice dumplings). To drink, Datta has created a bar program with tiki-leaning cocktails that spotlight ingredients like kashmiri chile, hibiscus, chaat masala, and jackfruit.