The
BEST NEW
RESTAURANTS
in
AMERICA
I WAS SITTING IN the courtyard at Salazar
when I finally felt the spark. This was in
Frogtown, an industrial sliver of Los Angeles,
a stone’s throw from the L.A. River. It was
chilly and I was alone. When the waiter
brought my margarita, he slid a heavy pro-
pane heating tower to my table. I listened to
the tra∞c go by beyond the bougainvillea-
draped fence and fiddled with the silver-
ware. For several weeks, I had been dining
without feeling much of anything for the
meals I was consuming. Honestly, I was
starting to get worried.
There’s one ironclad rule of eating, pro-
fessionally and otherwise: You always take
yourself to dinner. And this January, as I
traveled around the country, my unavoid-
able companion was like many Americans:
cranky, anxious, angry, confused—and
dubious about the one real requirement of
the job, which is to be open to pleasure. The
news—glimpsed on the front page of USA
Todays in hotel lobbies, overheard on CNN
on monitors in airports, playing silently on
taxi TV screens—was bad. And dining out
night after night, ticking o≠ restaurants on
a list that every critic seemed to share, felt
useless and out of step.
I can’t say exactly what happened at
Salazar that shook me out of that stupor.
It had to do with the food, of course: carne
asada and al pastor in flour tortillas closer
to the supple texture of moo shu pancakes
than traditional taco wrappers; papas con
chorizo, a gloriously thick potato puree
flecked with green chorizo; chickens mari-
nated in orange juice and paprika charring
on the open grill, their smoke drifting up into
the leaves of the African sumacs. It had
also to do with the e≠ect of the margarita.
Most of all, it had to do with the tables that
were filling up in the yard outside what was
once an auto-body shop. Salazar was clearly
built with summer evenings in mind, and I
could imagine it on one of them, bathed in
sunset and filled with crowds out of a cell-
phone commercial. But right now I was in
love with the sense of refuge from the dismal
weather—the way the passing cars started to
sound as cozy as rain against a window, the
flickering of heaters across the courtyard,
laughter coming out of the dark as though
from a neighboring campsite.
That was when I felt the spark: a glow
that was like the buzz of hunger, but
not limited to my stomach. I sat very still,
to let it grow. This, the spark said, the
knowledge bolting through me as though it
were new information. This is what restau-
rants are for.DID THIS FEELING have anything to do
with the fact that Donald Trump had just
rea∞rmed his intention to build a ludicrous
border wall and deport millions of undocu-
mented immigrants, and that Salazar’s exec-
utive chef was born in Mexico City? It did.
It’s hard to say that eating tacos is a political
act—not to mention all too convenient. But
to eat at that place, at that moment, felt like a
small gesture of defiance.
More simply, in a moment of profound
truth destabilization, it felt good to be
reminded of some basic, indisputable facts:
That our nation’s dining—and, by extension,
our national culture—is indivisible at every
level from the lives and labor, sweat and striv-
ing, inspiration and creativity of immigrants
and their children. That the entire economic
infrastructure of restaurants is built on their
backs. That they have determined what and
how we eat. That there is no other credible
definition of “American food.”Brooklyn’s Aska gives the
Scandinavian invasion
a good name. Here:
scallop, its roe, unripe
pickled elderberries, and
a sauce from roasted
scallop and elderflower.90 /GQ/05.17
Aska
BROOKLYN
Scandinavian high
notes beneath the
Williamsburg Bridge.- Flowers of
Vietnam
DETROIT
A son of Palestinian
immigrants does
Southeast Asian in
Mexicantown.
Han Oak
PORTLAND, OR
Casual Korean tasting
menu collides with
Portland cool.- Kato
LOS ANGELES
A West L.A. strip mall
hosts the city’s
best-valued Asian
tasting menu.
Kemuri
Tatsu-ya
AUSTIN
Giddy, riotous
Japanese-Texan
“Austin izakaya.”
Rooster Soup
Co.
PHILADELPHIA
Israeli chef Michael
Solomonov’s
posse elevates
East Coast Jewish
diner favorites.- Salazar
LOS ANGELES
Ecstatic, escapist
Mexican food
near the L.A. River.
Side Chick
LOS ANGELES
Transcendent Hainan
chicken at the Westfield
Santa Anita mall.- Tarsan i Jane
SEATTLE
Characteristic
Catalan and Valencian
inventiveness for the
Northwest.
Young Joni
MINNEAPOLIS
Wood-fired pizzas and
Korean small plates, in
equal measure. America
in 2017 on a menu.
POWER
COUPLE- “MR. AND MRS. SMITH”
Pepper Twins, Houston
Pepper Twins, part of a budding ˆ
Sichuan empire, brings us this
numbing textural masterpiece: a
sharp, modern take on “lung of the
husband and wife”—cold brisket
and beef tendon, dressed in
sesame paste, chiles,
Sichuan peppercorns,
and scallions.
BEST OF
2017