One cook’s list, city by city.

Start with

• Odd Duck

  Cast-iron cornbread is permanently on the menu, usually under green onion butter, and the chicken hearts come glazed in mole and doused in masa gravy.

  Bib Gourmand, 2025 · Jeff has eaten here · top of Jeff's go-to list

• Franklin Barbecue

  Franklin's brisket gets salt, pepper and nothing else, then smoke in an offset from split post oak that Chief Firewood trucks in from Smithville. Franklin was one of the yard's first restaurant customers, and Daniel Vaughn still named it among Chief's Austin deliveries in 2024.

  Bib Gourmand, 2024

• LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue

  The beef cheeks get a salt and pepper bark, four hours of post oak smoke, then a finish in beef tallow confit.

  A MICHELIN star, 2024 · top of Jeff's go-to list

• Cuantos Tacos

  Suadero comes off a choricera, the domed lard pan of Mexico City street stalls, and the cut here is brisket standing in for the thin one between sirloin and lower flank.

  Bib Gourmand, 2024

• The Austin Beer Garden Brewing Co.

  The core five here are all low-ABV lagers and ales, built to be drunk in sequence.

  Nicolai McCrary and The Austin Chronicle wrote about it

• Techo Mezcaleria & Agave Bar

  One bottle here is distilled with the nine botanicals that make gin, and another hangs a chicken breast above the clay pot still so the vapors cook it. You drink it upstairs by candlelight, out of a clay copita.

  Jeff's own note on it

• De Nada Cantina - South 1st

  Nicolai McCrary calls these "among the best margaritas in Austin", and the large ones are limited to two a head.

  8 out of 10 from The Infatuation Austin

Start with

• ATOMIX

  Junghyun and Ellia Park cook a two-star Korean tasting menu in a Murray Hill brownstone, and every course lands with a card that names the dish's history, the potter who made the plate, or the spice you have not met.

  Two MICHELIN stars, 2025 · Ligaya Mishan and Pete Wells wrote about it · not eaten yet

• Superiority Burger

  Brooks Headley builds his burger out of quinoa, chickpeas, carrots and walnuts, and he cooks it inside the old Odessa, the Ukrainian late-night diner where people landed for tuna melts and stuffed cabbage after shows at A7. The MICHELIN Guide carries the room at Bib Gourmand.

  Bib Gourmand, 2025 · Ligaya Mishan and Pete Wells wrote about it

• Lei

  The best new restaurant in America in 2026 turned out to be a wine bar on the bend of Doyers Street, with the cases stacked to the ceiling and the tables spilling into the alley. Annie Shi and Patty Lee took the James Beard for it in June. Start with the chilled celtuce under shallots and red wine vinegar, which the MICHELIN inspector calls essential.

  Best New Restaurant (James Beard Foundation, 2026) · not eaten yet

• Via Carota

  Rita Sodi and Jody Williams cook Tuscan at 51 Grove Street from late morning until late, without a break, and the dish three cooks name first is a heap of lettuce dressed with olive oil, vinegar and a little water.

  Ligaya Mishan and Pete Wells wrote about it

• Double Chicken Please

  The Cold Pizza is tequila, cheese, burnt toast, tomato, basil, honey and egg white in a glass, and it is why the queue runs down Allen Street.

  no. 35 in North America's 50 Best Bars, 2026 · not eaten yet

• Katana Kitten

  A martini built on junmai daiginjo sake carrying hinoki, and a katsu sandwich made with a fried slab of mortadella, on Hudson Street.

  no. 52 in North America's 50 Best Bars, 2026

• Sip&Guzzle

  The best bar in North America in 2026 is two bars stacked on top of each other on Cornelia Street. Steve Schneider, who came from Employees Only, runs Guzzle upstairs and pours Japanese beer and highballs into a loud room. Shingo Gokan runs Sip downstairs, a formal Japanese room where the drinks are engineered and served straight-faced.

  Three Cents Best New Opening Award (The World's 50 Best Bars, 2025) · Jeff's own note on it · not eaten yet

Start with

• Bouchon Racine

  Pierre Koffmann, who held three Michelin stars in this city, says of Henry Harris: "Henry may not be French, but what he's doing is fantastic. And, let's be honest, there aren't a lot of French chefs around now."

  Andy Hayler and Anna Sulan Masing wrote about it · 5 out of 5 from Harden's (diners' survey)

• Kiln

  There is a small insulated furnace behind the counter burning chestnut and oak logs, and the cooks reach into it for glowing embers to feed the grill (Time Out).

  Bib Gourmand, 2026 · Chetan Sharma and Jake Missing wrote about it

• Trinity

  Tom Sellers and Angelo Sato both cooked in this kitchen and both went on to hold two MICHELIN stars, which is why Adam Byatt took the guide's Chef Mentor Award in 2025 and Restaurateur of the Year at the National Restaurant Awards in 2026 (Restaurant magazine, June 2026).

  A MICHELIN star, 2026 · Angelo Sato and Jean-Philippe Blondet wrote about it

• Miga

  Two national critics reviewed this room a year and a half apart and both of them ended up writing about the same plain white bowl of ox-bone broth.

  Bib Gourmand, 2025 · Heidi Lauth Beasley and Jeremy Lee wrote about it

• The Devonshire

  Ashley Palmer-Watts spent twenty years in the Fat Duck Group and now runs a wood ember grill on Denman Street, a fuel he says is "far more challenging to cook using" than charcoal (Hot Dinners, Restaurant Online).

  no. 1 in Top 50 Gastropubs, ranked 1 (Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs, 2026)

• Connaught Bar

  The current menu, Stream, holds the same ten drinks for its entire life and rewrites their recipes as the seasons move, so Stem currently arrives as cognac infused with argan oil, Michter's rye, Acqua Bianca, Persian cordial, new-make wine and coriander bitters (The World's 50 Best Bars 2025).

  Carina Soto Velásquez and Chetan Sharma wrote about it

• Marksman Public House

  Lee Tiernan cooked at St John for a decade and then built Black Axe Mangal, and this is what he says about one dish here: "Have you ever had their beef and barley bun with horseradish cream? If not I pity you, deeply. One of the best bites in London" (Time Out, July 2024).

  no. 23 in Top 50 Gastropubs, ranked 23 (Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs, 2026)

Start with

• Brett

  Time Out named Brett the best restaurant in Glasgow for 2025, three years after Grace Dent used her Guardian column to call the 30-odd-seat room on Great Western Road "very possibly Glasgow's best restaurant."

  top of Jeff's go-to list · Jeff has eaten here

• Ka Pao

  Ka Pao cooks Southeast Asian sharing plates in the basement of the Botanic Gardens Garage, a Category A-listed 1912 motor garage saved from demolition by a local campaign, and has held a Michelin Bib Gourmand every guide year since 2022.

  Bib Gourmand, 2026 · Jeff has eaten here

• Celentano's

  Dean and Anna Parker won a Michelin Bib Gourmand within six months of opening Celentano's in 2021, held it through four guides, and in June 2026 moved the whole operation from Cathedral Square to a 60-cover room in the Arthouse hotel on Bath Street.

  Jeff has eaten here · Scottish Restaurant of the Year, 2025

• Crabshakk (Finnieston)

  An architect opened a seafood counter with a handful of tables on Argyle Street in 2009, and a Glasgow food desk credits it with pulling every other chef into Finnieston.

  Glasgowist and Joshua Barr wrote about it

• Corner Shop

  Conor McGeady opened this room because, in his words, "there's not the kind of Spanish restaurants in Glasgow that we like to see," and thirteen months later it took New Business of the Year at the 2025 SLTN Awards (SLTN).

  New Business of the Year (SLTN Awards, 2025)

• The Pot Still

  154 Hope Street has sold spirits since the 1860s, and since 1981 the single Victorian room has been Scotland's benchmark whisky pub, its gantry now holding roughly 1,000 open bottles under a deliberate house cap.

  Jeff has eaten here · Jeff's own note on it · Whisky Bar of the Year (SLTN Awards, 2023)

• The Scotch Malt Whisky Society

  Every bottle poured in this room is a single cask at cask strength, with no coloring and no chill filtration, and the Glasgow gantry runs past 850 of them open for the dram.

  Jeff has eaten here · Jeff's own note on it

Start with

• The Palmerston

  The Good Food Guide: "Lloyd Morse's kitchen takes a resolutely nose-to-tail approach, showcasing his deep love of Italian and French cuisine."

• TIMBERYARD

  Behind a big red door on Lady Lawson Street, the kitchen works from a short list of Scottish produce and lets it carry the plate, which is harder than it sounds and is what the Michelin inspector singles out.

  A MICHELIN star, 2026

• Panda & Sons

  The current menu, Transcend, is sixteen drinks built over five years of freezer work, and its first chapter freezes the water out of a spirit and swaps the ice for another flavor.

  Best Bar (Edinburgh Bar Awards, 2025) · no. 9 in Ranked 9th (Top 50 Cocktail Bars (UK), 2026)

• Dogstar

  James Murray earned a Michelin star working at Timberyard, then took a pub that had stood empty five years and put twenty-six seats in it.

  Gaby Soutar and Natasha Corfield wrote about it

• Tipsy Midgie Whisky Bar

  Colin Hinds cooked for thirty years, then stage 4 throat and neck cancer took the job away, and he planned this bar from a chemotherapy chair.

  Whisky Bar of the Year (SLTN Awards, 2025) · Jeff's own note on it

• Spry Wines

  Star Wine List made Spry a Silver Star in its UK 2026 results, on a list otherwise thick with London.

  Silver Star, 2026

• Dreadnought Leith

  Four cask lines, and the branch that surveyed the bar in February 2026 found no regular beer on any of them.

  Edinburgh Pub of the Year (CAMRA Edinburgh & South East Scotland, 2026) · Community Pub Hero Awards, Community Regular Hero (Scotland) (PubAid, 2024)

Start with

• Kin Khao

  The green curry is built on slow-cooked rabbit from a local farm, and Jeff was already ordering it in 2016. One MICHELIN Star, up some stairs by the FedEx sign on the corner of Mason and Ellis.

  A MICHELIN star, 2026

• Benu

  The quail arrives whole at the table, glazed with maple syrup and soy sauce, plated with sweet potato crepinette and black truffles. Corey Lee has been cooking on Hawthorne Street since 2010 and holds three MICHELIN Stars on the current California guide.

  Three MICHELIN stars, 2026

• Pacific Cocktail Haven

  Kevin Diedrich built the bar programs at the Burritt Room, at Jasper's and at BDK. All three closed under him. He opened this one in June 2016, with Andy Chun and Jan Wiginton as his partners. A fire took the room in February 2021. He reopened near Union Square in March 2022. In June 2026 he won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service.

  no. 41 in North America's 50 Best Bars, 2026 · Jeff's own note on it

• La Taqueria

  No rice in the burrito, so the carne asada and the pinto beans and the guacamole have to do the work. Ask for it dorado and the whole bundle goes back on the plancha until the wheat casing crisps.

  Jeff has eaten here

• Barebottle Brewing Company

  Barebottle prints a five-gallon homebrew recipe on every can it sells. Lester Koga and his partners built the Bernal Heights brewery out of homebrew competitions. They pilot-brew the finalists and let drinkers vote a winner onto the line. In 2025 it took two Gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival.

• Smuggler's Cove

  Roughly 1,400 rums on the list, spread over three floors, and one drink that arrives in a fresh coconut.

  Outstanding Bar nominated (James Beard Foundation, 2026) · Outstanding Bar shortlist (James Beard Foundation, 2026)

• Evil Eye

  Traditional mocktails, Matt Norris told The San Francisco Standard, often carry too much juice and syrup. He built this Mission bar a four-drink alcohol-free list to the same spec as the drinks list. Astrid Kane reported it in January 2024.

  Jeff has eaten here · Jeff gave it four stars himself, in 2017

Start with

• Zareh

  Tom Sarafian cooked at London's St. John and Moro and ran the kitchen at Bar Saracen, then turned his hummus into a cult jarred brand, before opening Zareh in August 2025, named for his Armenian grandfather, who cooked professionally after migrating from Egypt. It won Best Restaurant at Time Out's 2026 Food & Drink Awards, on a five-star debut review.

  Jeff has eaten here

• Flower Drum

  Gilbert Lau opened Flower Drum in 1975 and made it Melbourne's benchmark for Cantonese fine dining, and in the restaurant's 50th year the 2026 Good Food Guide (The Age) named it Restaurant of the Year.

  Restaurant of the Year, 2026 · not eaten yet

• Tipo 00

  The kitchen cooks the ox tongue for 24 hours with garlic and bay, peels it, shaves it on the salumi slicer like ham, then threads it onto skewers and flashes it on the grill before it reaches the plate.

• Taqueria Sin Nombre

  The al pastor is turned by hand rather than on a motor, because the team decided a motorised trompo dries the pork out.

• Caretaker's Cottage

  A 1914 caretaker's cottage behind Wesley Church seats about 25 people and ranked 19th on the World's 50 Best Bars list for 2025. The martini comes out of a freezer, built on house gin held near serving temperature so it barely needs stirring and lands colder and less diluted.

  Best Bar in Australasia (The World's 50 Best Bars, 2025)

• The Standard Hotel

  The publican's stated method is a "continual invisible freshen up", changing the pub slowly enough that people who drank here a decade ago come back and say nothing has changed. It has.

  Gemima Cody and Meg Watson wrote about it

• Napier Quarter

  Asked to name his quintessential Melbourne experience, Alejandro Saravia described a piece of toast: anchovies on crisp sourdough, big dollops of mayonnaise, sliced egg and salsa verde. It is on the menu before noon and after it.

  Dani Valent wrote about it

Start with

• Potong

  Pichaya "Pam" Soontornyanakij cooks a 20-course Thai-Chinese tasting menu inside the five-storey Yaowarat building where her family ran a Chinese herbal medicine business from 1910, and in 2025 it entered The World's 50 Best Restaurants at No.13, the year's Highest New Entry.

  Jeff has eaten here · A MICHELIN star, 2026

• 100 Mahaseth Si Phraya

  Chalee Kader, whose khao gaeng restaurant Wana Yook holds one Michelin star, runs this nose-to-tail Isaan house on Maha Set Road, and in March 2025 Time Out Bangkok ranked it No. 1 of the 50 best restaurants in the city.

  Bib Gourmand, 2021 · Jeff has eaten here · no. 1 in The 50 Best Restaurants in Bangkok, No. 1 (Time Out Bangkok, 2025)

• Raan Jay Fai

  Supinya "Jay Fai" Junsuta cooks every order herself over charcoal braziers in ski goggles, and her open shophouse on Maha Chai Road has held one Michelin star in every Thailand guide since the first edition in 2018, a street stall standing in a one-star list that also carries Gaggan and Nahm.

  A MICHELIN star, 2026 · Jeff's own note on it · not eaten yet

• Rung Rueang Pork Noodle (Left Shop)

  Two adjacent shophouses on Sukhumvit Soi 26 sell the same pork noodle under the same name, one family operation split down the middle by an old falling-out, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand names this side's address.

  Bib Gourmand, 2026 · Chawadee Nualkhair and Tita Honghirunkham wrote about it · not eaten yet

• Mahaniyom Cocktail Bar

  Two bartenders and a chef run a single supply chain across two floors on Maha Set Road: 100 Mahaseth butchers and dry-ages downstairs, and Mahaniyom turns the trim into cocktails upstairs, each drink named for the one ingredient it uses whole. Eighteen months after the March 2022 opening it was No. 19 on the World's 50 Best Bars.

  Jeff has eaten here · BK Magazine and Vichayuth Chantan wrote about it

• Chitbeer

  Col. Wichit "Chit" Saiklao brewed his first illegal batch on Ko Kret island in December 2012, took eight fines for it, trained more than 3,000 Thais to brew at his weekend academy, and kept at it until the law finally moved his way in 2025; BK Magazine's verdict is that "Chit Beer will never die."

  Bangkok's 15 Best Beer Bars (BK Magazine, 2025) · BK Magazine wrote about it · not eaten yet

• Tep Bar

  Asawin Rojmethatawee left a corporate job in Singapore, took over a former rice warehouse on Chinatown's Soi Nana, and opened Tep Bar in 2015 to do for Thai liquor what Japan did for sake. Ya dong, the herbal infusions Bangkok normally drinks at sidewalk stalls, comes here in flights, and five house ensembles cover live traditional Thai music seven nights a week.

  Jeff's own note on it · not eaten yet