Eating well is a gift you should give yourself this spring after that doozy of a winter. French cooking through the lens of both the West Coast and the Midwest. Hawaiian on the run in New York City. Impeccable Mexican in San Antonio. Map your meals now.
Bar Nouveau, Portland, Oregon
Chef Althea Grey Potter “cooks French food without Francophile reserve,” said Jordan Michelman at Portland Monthly about this new-ish restaurant off the well-trod paths of the Rose City. Chicken liver mousse is piped in ruffles on savory sablé cookies; a thimble-sized complimentary cocktail begins the meal for those who drink alcohol. Bar Nouveau is both retro and forward-thinking. The restaurant “reminds me of what it was like to go out to eat in Portland a decade ago, and I mean that as a compliment.”
Creepies, Chicago
Creepies may be “Chicago’s first true neo-bistro,” said John Kessler in Chicago magazine. That means the roast chicken is the “one to beat” in town, the fries “stop conversation” and a butterscotch custard has a “narrative arc in every bite.” None of this comes as a surprise for those who know Chicago’s dining scene. After all, some of the team behind the stellar Elske are running Creepies.
Huli Huli, New York City
A well-executed, delicious takeout joint is forever welcome in Manhattan. Enter Huli Huli. The new rotisserie from the team of the modern-Hawaiian Noreetuh. The menu is tight, just roast chicken shiitake-ginger sauce and fried chicken with cucumber-radish pickles. Flesh out the bird with sides like steamed bok choy and island-style mac salad, plus a choice of four sauces including the “zippy, umami scallion sauce,” said The Infatuation. Warm weather has now come to your delivery order.
Leña, Detroit
A restaurant that “places an emphasis simply on wood-fired cooking and farm-fresh ingredients,” said Lyndsay C. Green at Detroit Free Press. At Leña, the menu is succinct yet somehow pings across every kind of dish you might crave. Chicories are studded with dates and hazelnuts and rich with the manchego-like cheese Pascualino. A roasted whole fish comes with fried potatoes and mojo verde. Plop yourself at the bar for an impromptu moment, alongside salt cod croquettes, a fried chicken sandwich with Espelette mayonnaise and a glass of a crisp Spanish white.
Locust, Nashville
Open for lunch and dinner three days a week, Locust is “fully, uncompromisingly and unapologetically itself,” said Khushbu Shah at Food & Wine. The menu changes constantly, and you can be assured that what you read there is a mere suggestion of what will arrive at the table. One example: “crab omelette with curry rice” arrives as a pocket square of thin omelet, wrapped snugly around that curry rice. No messy egg half-moons in sight. Reservations open on the first of the month and tend to go poof quickly. Good things demand a touch of effort sometimes, no?
Mixtli, San Antonio
Great service is akin to interpersonal chemistry: you cannot quite describe it, but you know it when it sparks. There is an effortlessness to the service at the tasting-menu Mixtli, which rotates its dishes every few months around various Mexico-related themes. (The current theme, through the end of April, is La Vecindad, honoring the grand houses of Mexico City.) Anyone who knows restaurants knows that facile service is a calibrated performance: The ineffability of smooth, clairvoyant service requires endless detail behind the scenes to meet guests’ needs before they themselves know what they want. Mixtli is the rare restaurant where the service is the food’s equal.
Palm & Pine, New Orleans
Spend a fair amount of time in New Orleans, and you will be able to clock a New Orleans restaurant. Not simply a restaurant that happens to be located in the Crescent City. No, a restaurant where conviviality flows like a broken water main, and the food is rich, comforting and detonating with flavor. Palm & Pine, on the edge of the French Quarter, hits all the marks. On the regularly changing menu, you might find the restaurant’s take on BBQ shrimp, heady with mesquite-smoked shrimp butter, or chicken-fried quail with smothered Creole tomatoes and snap peas. You will absolutely encounter a gracious staff and the best kind of welcoming vibes.
RT Bistro, San Francisco
The new spot from Sarah and Evan Rich, the owners of the beloved Rich Table, have opened a casual offshoot. RT Bistro is designed for crowd-pleasing, so it, of course, stars a burger with Cheddar, dill-pickled onions and triple-cooked fries. But this being from the Riches, there is plenty of smart, refined cooking too. The kampachi crudo, with mandarin and chile, for example, embodies the “talent of Sarah and Evan — each ingredient is discernible, no single one dominating the others,” said Nico Madrigal-Yankowski at SFGate.
A list to savor, from San Francisco to Detroit