100 Restaurants Worth a Pilgrimage: North America & South America

By Food & Wine
Updated June 15, 2016
Photo courtesy of Restaurante 1884
F&W polled dozens of our favorite globe-trotting chefs to find out what restaurants they're dying to go to. Here, the chefs' picks in North and South America.
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Toronto: Richmond Station

Photo © Stephen Elphick & Associates/ Richmond Station

Top Chef Canada winner Carl Heinrich put his prize money toward this sophisticated New Canadian comfort food spot with house-made charcuterie and lobster tempura. His hearty meat dishes include a must-try juicy short rib-stuffed burger, served with radish salad and rosemary fries. richmondstation.ca

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Montreal: Joe Beef

Photo courtesy of Joe Beef
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The chefs at Montreal’s Joe Beef, Frédéric Morin and David McMillan, are driven by a more-is-more Quebecois passion for smoked meat, cheese and wine. The steaks and oysters are generally excellent, and there’s usually an over-the-top foie gras preparation. joebeef.ca

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Los Gatos, California: Manresa

Photo © Eric Wolfinger

David Kinch has one of the great creative minds in American cooking. He doesn’t own Love Apple Farm, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but does control its production from seed to harvest. That gives him ingredients worthy of his hyper-precise technique, as demonstrated by unique dishes such as flash-fried ravioli stuffed with beet greens and coriander ice in a soup of barely cooked tomatoes. The $175 “seasonal and spontaneous” tasting menu is one of the country’s most exciting dining experiences. manresarestaurant.com

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St-Benoît de Mirabel, Quebec: Cabane à Sucre

Photo © Aimee Bourque

Au Pied de Cochon’s pork-obsessed mastermind Martin Picard reinterprets maple-sugar-shack cuisine at this wintery pop-up 45 minutes from downtown Montreal. Open February to May, the menu is influenced by sap season and features dishes steeped in tradition, like whole-beast meat pie and pancakes fried in duck fat and served with the chef’s own maple syrup. cabaneasucreaupieddecochon.com

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Mérida, Mexico: K'u'uk

Photo courtesy of K'u'uk

In a breathtaking open kitchen, chef Mario Espinosa uses ingredients from a lush huerto (kitchen garden) to create cutting-edge Yucatán tasting menus. A recent dish combined octopus with longaniza sausage, tomatoes, glasswort and candied pumpkin seeds. kuukrestaurant.com

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Mexico City: Pujol

Photo courtesy of Pujol

Chef Enrique Olvera refines and reinterprets centuries of Mexican food behind a minimalist wood-and-glass facade. Using traditional Mexican ingredients, he has created inventive dishes like cuitlacoche (corn smut) tamales with green tomato sauce and whipped cream. pujol.com.mx

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Tulum, Mexico: Hartwood

Photo courtesy of Hartwood

There are no ovens, induction burners or even walls at this small, open restaurant on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. Here, chef Eric Werner uses only a grill or a wood-burning oven to prepare bold dishes such as slow-roasted pork belly with smoky-sweet pineapple. Drinks, like his spicy grapefruit margarita, are mixed in a hut made of whitewashed branches. hartwoodtulum.com

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Oaxaca, Mexico: Casa Oaxaca

Photo © Maura McEvoy

Reimagined Oaxacan dishes, along with some of the best mole in town can be found at the reservations-only Casa Oaxaca. Chef Alejandro Ruiz Olmedo prepares a set menu each night, as if he’s throwing a dinner party in a colonial mansion. Writers visit from all over Latin America, including Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, who often dines here and stays at the eight-room Casa Oaxaca boutique hotel a few blocks away. casaoaxacaelrestaurante.com

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Oaxaca, Mexico: La Teca

Photo courtesy of La Teca

La Teca specializes in cooking from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the skinniest part of mainland Mexico, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Chef-owner Deyanira Aquino uses regional ingredients to prepare masa-based dishes like garnachas (small masa cakes topped with meat and cheese) and savory-sweet tamales made of chicken, raisins, olives, almonds and capers.

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Los Angeles: Animal

Photo courtesy of Animal

Former caterers Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo turn out over-the-top food for hip carnivores in West Hollywood. Animal’s stoner-dude grub uses impeccable ingredients and technique, from the oxtail-gravy poutine to the Buffalo-style pig’s tails. animalrestaurant.com

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Los Angeles: Wolvesmouth

Photo © Christie Hemm

Running a roving conceptual dinner party with a set menu allows chef Craig Thornton to buy wondrous, bizarre, fleeting and expensive ingredients that are impractical for most restaurants. The event is always BYOB, and the several courses include technically challenging and visually arresting plates like venison paired with pine, blackberry beet, cauliflower, hen-of-the-woods and blueberry meringue. To find out when the next dinner party is taking place, email dimsumpup@wolvesmouth.com. wolvesmouth.com

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San Francisco: Benu

Photo courtesy of Benu

Chef Corey Lee worked for Thomas Keller for many years before striking out on his own. At Benu, Lee applies the French Laundry-gleaned skill to a brilliant Asian-influenced menu. Lee’s take on a xiao long bao dumplings flavored with lobster meat and coral, lobster consommé and tarragon is pristine and memorable, as is his version filled with foie gras. benusf.com

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San Francisco: Coi

Photo courtesy of Coi

Chef Daniel Patterson’s menus are unexpected, experimental and always ingredient-driven. His menus, which change daily, interpret his Northern California surroundings through flavor combinations like Earth & Sea: tofu coagulated with seawater, steelhead trout roe and oxalis flowers, or his Monterey Bay abalone served with new onion and pea shoots. coirestaurant.com

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Nashville: The Catbird Seat

Photo © Kari Skaslen

The hottest restaurant in this newly obsessed-over food city is a fun, elegant counter spot from chefs Erik Anderson and Josh Habiger. F&W contributing editor Andrew Zimmern is a fan: “Diners sit at a U-shaped bar as chefs (who’ve worked in some of the top kitchens in the world, including Noma, the Fat Duck and Alinea), prepare your meal—a multicourse prix fixe menu that changes weekly and is accompanied by Jane Lopes’s unique, small-batch beverages.” thecatbirdseatrestaurant.com

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San Francisco: Saison

Photo © Mark Leet

For his hearth-focused and constantly changing prix fixe menu, chef Joshua Skenes makes everything from scratch, from the butter to the pasta, which he prepares with wheat that he stone-grinds every single day. saisonsf.com

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Napa Valley: The Restaurant at Meadowood

Photo courtesy of Restaurant at Meadowood

The high style, bespoke Napa cooking at the gorgeous Meadowood Resort comes from talented chef Chris Kostow. In his superlative nine- or 10-course tasting menus, Kostow often uses ingredients from the resort’s expansive garden in creating exciting flavor combinations, like pine-cured venison, and tuna with assorted sorrels. meadowood.com

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Chicago: Next

Photo courtesy of Next

Every three months, Grant Achatz’s intensely creative restaurant transforms itself to serve food from a particular time period or theme—like Paris 1912 or Hong Kong 2036. Instead of making reservations, diners buy tickets for the complete meal, and prices fluctuate based on demand (i.e., a Saturday night reservation costs more than a Tuesday night table). nextrestaurant.com

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Chicago: Trenchermen

Photo © Derek Richmond

Provocative, molecular New American dishes by brothers Mike and Pat Sheerin often begin with a nod toward comfort food. Located in Chicago’s hip Wicker Park, the restaurant serves dishes like aged Pekin duck with pastrami sausage, rye spaetzle and parsnips. trenchermen.com

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New York: Blanca

Photo © Ed Otte

Located off the main New York City dining grid, in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Carlo Mirarchi’s high-end counter has become one of the city’s toughest reservations. This annex to the mobbed hipster-pizzeria Roberta’s seats only 12 diners a night, and serves ingeniously simple dishes such as crispy sweetbreads with sea urchin. Guests control the music by choosing vinyl LPs to complement their 20-something–course meal. blancanyc.com

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New York: Ichimura at Brushstroke

Photo courtesy of Brushstroke

At this sushi bar inside David Bouley’s Brushstroke, master Eiji Ichimura prepares nightly omakase in the Edo style—often using fish that has been cured in salt, vinegar or soy. The collaboration is through Japan’s renowned Tsuji Culinary Institute. davidbouley.com

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New York: Momofuku Säam Bar

Photo courtesy of Momofuku Ssam Bar

David Chang’s world is super-casual—loud music, no reservations, no backs on the seats and stools—and filled with intense, punchy flavors (lots of bacon, lots of spice) achieved with super-high-quality ingredients. To try the signature bo ssäm (roast pork shoulder) or rotisserie duck feast, both for groups, you’ll need to reserve ahead. momofuku.com

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Tarrytown, New York: Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Photo courtesy of Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Sustainable-food visionary and chef Dan Barber runs this restaurant on a stunning Rockefeller estate in Westchester County, which is also home to Stone Barns, a non-profit educational center and farm that grows much of the produce for the restaurant. There is no traditional menu; every day, Barber creates a prix fixe (ranging from five to 12 courses) based on what’s in season. bluehillfarm.com

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Philadelphia: Serpico

Photo © Matt Duckor

The collaboration between Momofuku veteran Peter Serpico and rockstar restaurateur Stephen Starr focuses on reconceived comfort foods, like a shaved raw daikon ravioli, stuffed with caramelized onion cream and served with oxtail consommé.

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Nashville: Husk

Photo © Peter Frank Edwards

Sean Brock—a star Charleston, South Carolina, chef—takes his ingredient-driven Southern food west. This second location of his obsessed-over restaurant Husk is housed in a converted 130-year-old mansion with an outdoor produce garden. huskrestaurant.com

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Lummi Island, WA: Willows Inn

Photo courtesy of Willows Inn

On Washington state’s tiny Lummi Island, chef Blaine Wetzel forages land and sea for his pilgrimage-worthy tasting menus. The Noma alumnus is obsessed with freshness: “People from the dining room can see chefs run out to the smokehouse, grab fish and then a few minutes later, it’s on the plate in front of them.” willows-inn.com

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São Paulo: D.O.M.

Photo courtesy of D.O.M.

Chef Alex Atala’s avant-garde experiments use Amazonian ingredients and French techniques, resulting in dishes like braised zebu (a kind of oxen) with mashed potatoes and pequi, a licorice-inflected yellow fruit. domrestaurante.com.br

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São Paulo: Mocoté

Photo courtesy of Mocoto

At this cachaça bar in the northern suburbs of São Paulo, chef Rodrigo Oliveira obsesses over the cuisine of his father’s native Pernambuco state in northeastern Brazil. The chef reinvents classics like carne de sol—a salted beef dish similar to jerky—by cooking the meat sous vide for 24 hours and serving it on a hot stone with roasted garlic and vinegary regional peppers. mocoto.com.br

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Santiago, Chile: Boragó

Photo courtesy of Boragó

After cooking at Spain’s Mugaritz, chef Rodolfo Guzmán returned to Chile with cutting-edge techniques that he applies to native ingredients. The result: dishes like the vaca: short ribs that resemble chunks of soil, served with nettle “moss.” borago.cl

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Lima, Peru: Astrid y Gastón

Photo courtesy of Astrid y Gaston

In a colonial-era house, the world-famous Lima-born chef Gastón Acurio emphasizes ceviche and modernizes dishes like roast suckling pig with tacu tacu (Peru’s version of beans and rice). His menu is full of surprises: a shot of sea urchin emulsion is served mixed with cappuccino; spring rolls are filled with spicy rabbit. astridygaston.com

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Lima, Peru: Picánteria La Norteña

Photo courtesy of Picanteria la Nortena

This is Latin celebrity chef Gastón Acurio’s modern Peruvian tavern. picanteriasdelperu.com

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Buenos Aires: Miramar

Photo © Sharon Frost

What began in 1948 as an almacén, or bulk-goods grocery store, has since become a beloved restaurant serving hearty portions of comforting oxtail soup or chorizo-laced Spanish-style frittatas.

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Mendoza, Argentina: Restaurante 1884

Photo courtesy of Restaurante 1884

South American grill master Francis Mallmann’s winery-turned-restaurant has more than 600 Argentinean wines on the menu, and is currently Mendoza’s top Malbec ambassador. 1884restaurante.com.ar

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