Battle-tested: One website’s favorite new restaurants

The best new restaurants of the past 18 months “have one thing in common: tenacity,” said Hillary Dixler Canavan in Eater.com. The pandemic tested everyone in the food world, and some of the survivors even reimagined what dining out could be. Dhamaka New York City Chef Chintan Pandya is “redefining Indian restaurants in America,” and his latest venture, an homage to rural fare, was an instant hit. “Dhamaka brings crowds but doesn’t pander to them,” turning a $190 rabbit feast and specialties such as chile-laced goat testicles into crowd-pleasers. Kasama Chicago Why can’t a restaurant be part French pastry shop, part Filipino gastropub? The husband-wife duo who run humble Kasama play to their individual strengths. Genie Kwon makes jamón-topped Danish.Tim Flores has created a “musttry” Chicago sandwich by piling together shaved pork adobo, longganisa (a Filipino sausage) and giardiniera (pickled vegetables).

Albi Washington, D.C. Chef Michael Rafidi’s Levantine restaurant delivers everything that “makes a special-occasion restaurant sizzle”: originality, top-tier service, and “food that ignites conversation.” It starts with the open hearth.

Baobab Fare Detroit America’s largest Black-majority city needed an East African restaurant like this one. Hamissi Mamba’s cooking made his pop-up operations wildly popular, and now he has a corner spot where okra stew is becoming a signature and the divine smell of nyumbani—beef simmering in a tangy tomato sauce—is ever present.

Oma’s Hideaway Portland, Ore. “A reminder of what Portland dining can be at its best,” Oma’s feels like a perpetual house party, Jell-O shots included. But every dish on Thomas Pisha-Duffly’s freewheeling menu is meticulously crafted, from the burger and the charcoal oven–baked game hen to the array of Indonesian-Chinese family specialties.

Dhamaka’s Pandya