Starting this spring, Eater and Capital One are hosting exclusive, one-night-only dinners at the year’s most anticipated new restaurants in New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The events take Eater’s insider access — you’ll hear about the most exciting restaurants across the country from us before anyone else — and bring it to life in a buzzy-yet-intimate event for Capital One cardholders. 

Dinner Party will kick off in Chicago on April 23 for a night at The Radicle, a Midwest-meets-Italian concept from the team behind Daisies. Further into the season, we’ll gather in New York City on May 14 at Dean’s, the buzzy British seafood spot from the King crew. On June 18,  we’ll head to Washington, D.C. for an evening at Rye Bunny, which marks the return of the Tail Up Goat gang. 

And it’s not just parties: Get a behind-the-scenes look leading up to each opening night in Eater’s new video series, Now Open, presented by Capital One. And subscribers to Eater and Punch’s industry newsletter, Pre Shift, will get access to exclusive interviews with the names behind these new openings.

As for the events: Seats are limited. Learn more here. 

Terms Apply. See link for more details.

Munich often makes lists of the “most livable cities,” combining an innovative, international energy with a slower, greener, and, at times, quintessentially Bavarian lifestyle. The foothills of the Alps are just an hour away, the peaks visible from different points in town, and Munich has long been a powerhouse of music, theater, and art thanks to the influence of former monarchs and dukes.  

All of those things also make Munich an excellent place to visit, especially if you’re ready to immerse yourself in the local way of life. Wander the grand boulevards, explore the parks, marvel at the Italianate architecture, and gawk at historic landmarks such as the National Theatre and Germany’s largest urban palace, home to a treasury full of old royal regalia. 

But of course, you’re here to eat. The quickly evolving culinary scene includes everything from historic taverns serving roasted pork soaked in dark beer sauce to chic contemporary bistros serving modern small plates with butter from the Bavarian Forest. After three days in the city, you’ll be considering relocating permanently.

Before you go                        

Areas to stay: All the central neighborhoods, such as Schwabing, Haidhausen, Maxvorstadt, and Isarvorstadt, have a broad selection of hotels and plenty of restaurants, cafes, and shops to choose from. 

When to visit: There isn’t really a bad time to visit Munich, but many locals decamp for the nearby ski slopes in the later winter months. There’s a substantial influx of visitors every year during Oktoberfest too.  

Getting around: Munich has a reliable public transport system, with trams, trains, and buses connecting most places within the inner city. Cycling is also a practical option with well-marked bike lanes throughout town.

Day 1: Downtown Munich

8 a.m. Classic coffee: Kick things off with a flat white and a cinnamon-loaded Franzbrötchen from Munich roaster Man Versus Machine on Müllerstraße, one of the first independent shops to bring specialty coffee to the Bavarian capital. The insulated bottles and enamel cups featuring the brand’s illustrated crocodile logo are some of the best souvenirs in town.

9 a.m. Greek breakfast: Stroll over to Crete-inspired Café Onos, where the clean white and vibrant blue interior immediately transports you to a Greek island. Order the avocado toast with crumbly feta or a warm sesame ring filled with cream cheese and honey, along with a refreshing foamed-topped frappe. Owner Manolis Kyriakakis’s family produces the shop’s thyme honey and olive oil in their home village. Both are available to buy along with a small collection of ceramics, coffee beans, and some irresistible cookbooks.

10:30 a.m. Urban art: Not far away is the Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art, located in a former substation. Since bursting onto the scene in 2016, the space has showcased diverse international names, from Brooklyn-born Alex Katz to Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Most exhibitions can be found in the main building, but the connected Kunstbunker, found in an old air-raid shelter next door, recently had Banksy’s shredded “Girl without Balloon” on display. Fine dining restaurant Mural is also located in the museum.

12:30 p.m. An alpine-inspired lunch: Eat at Weinhaus Neuner, Munich’s oldest wine bar, which plays the part with moody dark wood paneling, cast-iron lamps, and a restored cross-vaulted ceiling. Start with the smoked eel with potato and lamb’s lettuce salad, followed by the braised veal cheeks with Bohemian dumplings or the veal schnitzel with crispy pan-fried potatoes and cranberry-horseradish sauce. Of course, ask about the wines.

2 p.m. Old town: Walk off lunch by venturing into Munich’s old town, passing the famous Frauenkirche, whose domed towers are a symbol of the city; central square Marienplatz, home to the neo-Gothic town hall; and the expansive Residenz, the former seat of Bavarian dukes and kings. Drop into newly opened comic book store Splendid Comics right on the square, or admire the wooden kitchen utensils and hand-carved chess boards at Holz-Leute, a business that dates back to 1873. End at open-air food market Viktualienmarkt for a grapefruit-infused kombucha from First 8 Kombucha or a caffeine hit from third-wave coffee shop Sweet Spot. Need some midafternoon dessert? Try the sticky vanilla and rum-soaked canelé or a slice of flambeed cheesecake from micro-patisserie Marktpatisserie Lea Zapf, also in the market.

5 p.m. Downtime: Time to pop back to your hotel for a quick break and an outfit change before dinner.

7 p.m. Aperitivo: Spend your evening in the fashionable Glockenbach quarter, home to many of the city’s most happening bars and restaurants. Start with a glass of Franconian rosé at Weinbar Garbo, run by the duo behind hugely successful Austrian restaurant Gasthaus Waltz. The impressive wine collection showcases several German and Austrian producers such as Rosi Schuster, Eva Fricke, and Simon Haag; pair your choice with simple savory snacks like Viennese ham with horseradish and pickles.

8 p.m. Wine and dine: Reserve a table at understated Avin for a concise menu of sharing plates paired with wines selected by sommelier Lukas Stepper. The menu changes regularly, but recent highlights include pointed cabbage with miso butter and hazelnuts, as well as pumpkin with peanut mayonnaise and buttermilk. Grab a table on the street outside or settle into the sumptuous interior where upholstered bar stools complement the warm wood features. Look out for the events organized with different wine producers.

10 p.m. Nightcap: End the night with a matcha martini or French 75 prepared by the expert staff at the new kid on the already crowded block, Herr Bartels. The easygoing bar has an elevated industrial design with soft lighting and custom illustrations — recognizable from sister businesses Frau Bartels and Madam Anna Ekke — scribbled on blackboards.  

DAY 2: Alternative Munich   

10 a.m. Late start: A traditional Bavarian breakfast is a must for anyone visiting the city and they don’t come much better than the one at Gaststätte Großmarkthalle. Hidden away in the city’s meatpacking district, this well-trodden establishment serves salty soft pretzels, smooth wheat beer, and weißwürste (white sausages) made in the cellar below the restaurant. 

12 p.m. Boat on a bridge: Next, walk over to Alte Utting, a boat repurposed as a nightclub and event space, that sits on a disused bridge. Explore everything from the deck to the engine room, and see what events are on. The Bavarian curling (eisstockschießen) rink, outfitted with an organic mulled wine stand, is a popular choice in winter. Disembark to explore the rest of this quirky part of town, known for its innovative spaces and temporary projects. At Bahnwärter Thiel, shipping containers and decommissioned train carriages host small businesses, and graffiti artists make the most of relaxed rules.

1 p.m. Coffee and sandwiches: When hunger strikes, make a detour to female-powered cafe Mari, found in an old butcher’s shop. Or go on a sandwich run to Scandi-inspired Bageri on Adlzreiterstraße, where appetizing combos are served on olive oil-soaked focaccia or fresh bread made with rye, spelt, and sunflower seeds.   

2 p.m. Geek out: Spend the afternoon at the Deutsches Museum, one of the largest science and technology museums in the world. Founded in 1903, the impressive structure, complete with a weather station, sits on a small island once used to store wood and coal. There are around 20 major exhibition departments to choose from.

5 p.m. Riverside bar: Make your way along the eastern bank of the river, stopping for a drink at cozy Boazn, tucked away in a former public restroom next to the Ludwigsbrücke bridge. Try the aromatic Gspusi wheat beer or refreshing Spatzerl shandy. 

7 p.m. Hot tables: Run by Luis Fernando Gonzalez Cortes and his business partner Niklas Petschko, Taqueria con Salsa sees regular lines, but the tangy house-made salsas, eye-watering Mexican chiles, and soft corn tortillas are well worth the wait. Then pop across the street to artisanal ice cream shop True & 12, just over the road, for peach-basil sorbet or other seasonal scoops. Alternatively, reserve a table at Franz in Sendling for an evening of French-inspired small plates and curated wines. The bread comes with different butters produced in the Bavarian Forest.  

10 p.m. Late-night drinks: Spend the remainder of your evening in Westend, a district that’s fast evolving (up-and-coming to some, gentrified to others). Options here include intimate cocktail bar Heir Beverage House, where you should sample the Tucan made with German brandy, or Wirtshaus Eder, where freshly tapped lager and dark beer comes from popular craft brewer Tilman Ludwig.

DAY 3: Neighborhood mooching 

8 a.m. Caffeinate: Suuapinga has slowly but surely expanded over the last few years, from a single location in Schwabing to shops in most of Munich’s hip neighborhoods. Start with a cappuccino at the brand’s first space on Herzogstraße, combined with a cinnamon roll or cardamom bun baked at the brand’s central bakery. Or take your coffee to go, and stop by Julius Brantner Brothandwerk on Nordendstraße for Swabiansourdough pretzels looped by hand.

10 a.m. Park life: With carbs secured, head east towards Englischer Garten, Munich’s largest park. In winter, inclines are used for sledding, and in summer, the lawns fill with volleyball nets and picnic blankets. Walk around the lake, stop in a beer garden (Biergarten am Chinesischer Turm is the easiest to reach), and check out the views from the Monopteros, a Greek-style temple commissioned by King Ludwig I. 

12:30 p.m. Laid-back lunch: Head back out of the park and into the heart of the student district Maxvorstadt for lunch. Here you’ll find eclectic bookshops, contemporary fashion stores, and plenty of places serving quick eats. Grab a table at Umi Udon and Sandos for Japanese katsu and coleslaw sandwiches served on fluffy milk bread or handmade thick-cut noodles served chilled, in broth, or in a carbonara-style dish with egg yolk, bacon, and grated Parmesan.

2 p.m. Museums: The student district is also where you’ll find a significant number of Munich’s museums, clustered together in an area known as the Kunstareal. Head to the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism to learn more about an important chapter in the city’s history, or take in the European masterpieces at the Alte Pinakothek, where the collection of paintings spans five centuries.

5 p.m. Pre-dinner drinks: A short distance from the museums, natural wine bar Zero Dosage offers the ideal spot for a pre-dinner drink. The wine list includes a constantly changing selection of open bottles, as well as the bar’s own vermouth, made in small batches with organic herbs, spices, and fruit.

7 p.m. Final night dinner: Randale, a popular newcomer in Lehel, is a great way to experience how Munich’s food scene is evolving. Young chefs Stefan Retzer and Adrian Krieg have created a relaxed fine dining experience with five courses focused on the seasons. Recent highlights include black salsify with kimchi and apricot, and beef with radicchio trevisano and celery. It’s a perfect dinner to end your trip to this ever-surprising city.  

Athens is a city of beautiful contradictions. Michelin-starred dining rooms share sidewalk space with decades-old taverns. Modern rooftop bars overlook 2,000-year-old monuments. Everywhere you look, the past and present converge to create an unparalleled multilayered metropolis. 

Despite the city’s dexterity, travelers have long treated the Greek capital as little more than a pit stop between the airport and a ferry to the islands. But over the past few years, it’s emerged as a destination in its own right, not only for its star attraction, the Acropolis, but for the small, intimate pulses that fill everyday urban life: quiet morning coffee in a secret courtyard, the scent of bitter orange trees lining the streets, the sounds of celebration spilling from restaurant doorways. 

Athens has been a power player in Western civilization for more than 5,000 years, giving history buffs plenty to see and do around town. But right now also feels like the perfect moment to experience the dining scene at its most intimate and intoxicating.

Before you go

When to visit: Athens enjoys mild weather for much of the year, but it’s worth avoiding the peak summer months, when high temperatures close outdoor archeological sites and heavy crowds overwhelm the streets. Catch the Athens Epidavrus Festival, which takes over venues across the city from spring to fall, and look for food festivals and open-air events that fill the shoulder seasons. 

Area to stay: Consider the Psyrri neighborhood, which feels fresh and artistic, despite the ancient sites only a few minutes’ walk away. There are plenty of hotel options, like the Bellen Athens or Acropolis City Life. Look for a room on the top floor to secure a view of the Acropolis.

Getting around: There’s no need to rent a car. Walking around Athens is the best way to explore the city, and the subway system is quite handy. If you ever need a car, rely on apps, such as Uber, or private transfer service like the Greek Taxi.

Day 1: From downtown streets to sunset views

9 a.m. Coffee and breakfast: Start your first day with a leisurely stroll to Picky, home to one of the city’s most charming outdoor patios. It’s a lush space to enjoy specialty coffee, smoothies, and a generous breakfast menu of shakshuka, acai bowls, and Greek kagianas (scrambled eggs with tomato and feta). 

11:15 a.m. Shopping for stylish home souvenirs: Walk through Psyrri toward the historic, now gentrifying Plateia Anexartisias (aka Vathi Square) in search of unique souvenirs. Anthologist is the main draw for tablecloths and runners featuring traditional Greek patterns, alongside handmade ceramic plates, bowls, and water jugs that bring a distinctly Greek touch to your home. Lunch isn’t for a few hours, so head downstairs from the showroom for a snack at Zanoubia, a Syrian spot offering some of the city’s best falafel.

12 a.m. History is waiting: Just a short walk away, you’ll find the National Archaeological Museum, Athens’s largest, oldest (established 1829), and most important museum. It houses more than 11,000 exhibits spanning from prehistoric antiquity to the 4th century CE, including plenty of cooking utensils, agricultural tools, and depictions of ancient Greek daily life.

2:30 p.m. Time for lunch: Right next to the museum you’ll find To Rini, an interesting bistro where chef Marina Chrona blends tradition with modern Greek gastronomy. The minced rooster ragout and slow-cooked goat are pure comfort food, especially alongside a bottle of Greek wine.

4 p.m. Coffee and dessert to go: After lunch, stop by Portatif for a coffee and a piece of the red velvet cake. The fluffy sponge and rich cream cheese frosting will only make you want more. 

6 p.m. City views with a stunning sunset: You can summit Lycabettus, the highest hill in the center of Athens, in three ways: on foot, by cable car (from Kolonaki), or by car. At the top, you’ll find a small church dedicated to Saint Georgios and the Lycabettus Theatre, which hosts a variety of events every summer, but the real reward is the sweeping panorama view at sunset. Be warned: It’s often swarming with canoodling couples.

8:30 p.m. Seafood for dinner: Descend to the posh Kolonaki neighborhood, home to high-end boutiques and Papadakis Restaurant, where celebrity chef Argiro Barbarigou delivers the flavors of her hometown on the island of Paros. Start with the octopus with honey and fried potato chips, followed by the kakavia (fisherman’s soup) or one of the groupers (classic with lemon fricassee or modern with truffles). Papadakis is known for hosting famous customers, like Jean Paul Gaultier and Carla Bruni, so keep your eyes peeled.

11 p.m. A drink to end the day: Head back to the heart of Athens, where many bars stay open until late, and follow the voices to Baba Au Rum (No. 27 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list). Customers spill onto the street, enjoying cocktails that showcase local ingredients. Try the tsipouro-based Lost Lovers or the experimental Unapologetic Skyline featuring feta cheese — which is better than it sounds. 

Day 2: Markets, Museums and Open-Air Cinema

9 a.m. Coffee and plants: Pull up a designer chair next to a large fiddle-leaf fig or rare monstera plant at Minu, a multiconcept green space near the Thissio train station. Expect specialty coffee, turmeric lattes, and spirulina smoothies, alongside seasonal brunch items ranging from tuna tostadas to Basque cheesecake.

11 a.m. Shop the central market: Walk 10 minutes through Monastiraki Square to reach Varvakios Agora, the central food market, likely the loudest place in downtown Athens. Vendors from around the country crowd into the space, which has been the market’s home since 1886, competing for attention with shouts that echo through the aisles. Outside on Evripidou Street, you’ll find spices like boukovo (crushed red pepper flakes) and herbs like oregano and thyme from the Greek mountains — ideal souvenirs to enhance your next stew.

12 a.m. Visit an island without leaving the city: Walk up bustling Panepistimiou Street to the Museum of Cycladic Art, where you can learn about the civilizations that flourished in the Aegean Sea and Cycladic islands. See the famous marble figurines, vases, and everyday tools. Afterwards, grab some refreshment at the Cycladic Café, which is set in a beautiful indoor garden.

2 p.m. A lunch to remember: A 15-minute walk to the charming Ilisia neighborhood will deliver you to Cookoovaya, where chef Periklis Koskinas, born and raised on the island of Corfu, delivers a seafood-heavy, seasonal menu. Consider the bianco (fish cooked with potatoes in a creamy, peppery broth) or the bourdeto (fish soup, full of caramelized onions, dyed crimson by generous helpings of red pepper).

4 p.m. Explore the streets: Walk along Ermou, Athens’s main shopping street, where you’ll find a mix of buskers, international fashion brands, and everyday essentials. Look for Alexandrakis, one of the area’s oldest shops, established in 1860. Or try Aiolou Street (which intersects Ermou) for the legendary textile sellers overflowing with colorful rolls of silk, linen, and lace. Stop at Matsouka for high-quality chocolates and traditional Greek products. And hunt through the Monastiraki flea market for antique ceramics, handwoven rugs, military memorabilia, rare first editions, and vintage toys. If you need a break, the unique courtyard at TAF (the Art Foundation) is a great stop. Then head back to your hotel to freshen up.

7 p.m. Fine dining above ancient ruins: Return to Monastiraki and head to Astiggos Street, right next to the ruins of Stoa Poikile, where you’ll find Makris Athens, a Michelin-starred restaurant led by chef Petros Dimas. The menu focuses on modern Greek cuisine, and the kitchen sources fresh vegetables and herbs from Dimas’s family farm in Corinth almost daily. Choose one of the three tasting menus: the eight-course Genesis ($135), 10-course Utopia ($194), or 9-course vegan Physis ($147). Expect playful items, like mushroom soup served in a cappuccino cup, alongside entrees like lamb aged for seven days, served with wild asparagus. The glass floor in the basement reveals part of ancient Athens beneath your feet.

9 p.m. Movie under the stars: After dinner, head to Cine Thision or Cine Paris, two of the city’s most beloved open-air cinemas (open early May through late October). Both offer spectacular Acropolis views alongside movies in English or Greek (with subtitles). Grab a pack of popcorn or some nachos, order a local beer or a Greek digestif like ouzo or tsipouro, and enjoy the show.

11 p.m. Japan meets Athens: If you’re still in the mood for more, Birdman is a Tokyo-style bar and grill where you can relax to the sounds of Japanese jazz or Salsoul disco while sipping cocktails inspired by East Asia, like the signature Ume Bloody Mary. Should hunger strike, Birdman serves one of the best burgers in the city, and it’s known for skewers featuring unconventional-for-Athens cuts.

Day 3: Ancient landmarks and contemporary Athens

8 a.m. Quiet coffee below the Acropolis: Start as early as possible to have the whitewashed alleys and blooming bougainvillea of Anafiotika to yourself before the crowds arrive. Stop for a morning coffee at Anafiotika Cafe and try the traditional strapatsada with scrambled eggs, tomato, feta cheese, and herbs; or order some Greek yogurt with fresh fruit and nuts, and enjoy the rare silence.

1 p.m. A quick refreshment: Only a few minutes down the hill, Little Tree Books & Coffee is a perfect place to regroup. The small cafe and bookstore invites customers to browse the shelves for cookbooks (mostly focused on Greek cuisine) and Greek literature translated into English, while sipping a house-made lemonade.

9:30 a.m. Ancient Athens and must-see sights: Once you’re well-fueled, get in an early visit to the Acropolis Museum, and take time to explore the archaeological remains of the ancient neighborhood that stretches underneath. Then pass by the Odeon of Herodes Atticus along Dionysiou Areopagitou Street, and climb the Acropolis to make your obligatory stops at the Parthenon, Erechtheion, and other iconic monuments. Be sure to book tickets in advance.

2:30 p.m. Greek lunch with a twist: Ateno Cook & Deli reimagines Greek cuisine, not only in flavor but in presentation. Order the signature moussaka, gemista (stuffed tomato), or the “hidden” Greek salad. Pair your meal with a glass of Greek wine from the award-winning list.

4 p.m. Coffee, dessert, and a walk: Stroll through Mitropoleos Street for a quick stop at 72H, a new-age bakery popular among locals for its soft, chewy cinnamon rolls. Then head to Syntagma Square to watch the impressive changing of the presidential guards at the Greek Parliament, which takes place every hour. Then enjoy the shade beneath thousands of Washingtonia palms and eucalyptus in the National Garden. 

5:30 p.m. A quick, classic bite: You can’t leave Athens without tasting souvlaki. O Kostas is one of the last old-school spots in the city center, producing juicy skewers of pork or beef swaddled in warm pita. Join the crowd of local construction workers, suits, and students for a simple, satisfying snack, before heading back to your hotel to get ready for the evening.

7 p.m. Evening stroll by the water: Hop on the shuttle bus to visit the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in the city’s southern suburbs. Explore the park and canal on the grounds, see the new home of the National Library and the Greek National Opera, and check out any public lectures, exhibitions, or film screenings.

8:30 p.m. Farewell dinner: Head up to the two-Michelin-starred Delta Restaurant inside the SNFCC, considered the best restaurant in Greece by La Liste. Head chef George Papazacharias presents a 12-course menu (about $280) in which dishes are rarely what they initially seem. The sea urchin, for instance, is actually a potato and squid ink shell around a filling of bottarga, sea buckthorn, and pickled rosehip. The “edible insect” for dessert — a caterpillar made of chilled chervil, served with a soft cookie flavored with preserved nobilis pine — is a memorable last bite.

11 p.m. One last nightcap: Take a taxi to Line Athens, ranked No. 8 on the World’s 50 Best Bars. Set inside one of Greece’s oldest art galleries, the bar offers signature cocktails that might blend Irish whiskey, fig, coconut whey, and spices for a light, refreshing finish to the trip.

For over 20 years, Florida chef Eric Fralick dreamed of Kinjo, his Tampa restaurant that’s billed as “itameshi wafu Italian” cuisine. Opened last August, it serves dishes such as akami “spaghettoni” — lean bluefin tuna that’s cut to resemble pasta noodles and then served with a bagna cauda cream sauce — and a take on vitello tonnato enhanced with sake and black garlic.

Living in Japan in the early 2000s, Fralick fell in love with an Italian restaurant in the city of Shizuoka, where he ate Italian food, but with Japanese influences, like pastas made with uni and the fermented soybeans known as natto. “It really reminded me of home,” says Fralick, who grew up in upstate New York and started his cooking career in Italian fine dining. Even while running the sushi restaurants Noble Rice and Koya, Fralick wanted to return to Japanese Italian, and Fralick and his wife opened Kinjo in August of 2025. 

The goal is “bringing those influences together in a creative way that doesn’t mar either cuisine,” Fralick says. His chawanmushi — Japanese steamed egg — features Parmesan broth and guanciale; his cappelletti is stuffed with ricotta, maitake mushrooms, pickled daikon radish, and balsamic vinegar. 

Across the country, there’s a growing crop of Japanese Italian restaurants, with Kinjo in Tampa; Ama and Ciaorigato in San Francisco; Miso Mozza in Providence, Rhode Island; and Itameshi in Albany, New York, all of which have opened within the past year. They join earlier examples of the genre such as LA’s Orsa & Winston, which opened in 2013; Washington, D.C.’s Tonari and New York City’s Kimika, which both debuted in 2020; and Montclair, New Jersey’s Pastaramen, which opened in 2023. 

There’s some variation in how these restaurants describe their concepts. Some call themselves “itameshi,” a Japanese term that literally means “Italian meal” but that has expanded to also refer to Japanese Italian fusion. Others opt for the term “wafu Italian,” with “wafu” an umbrella term that means “Japanese-style.” Others yet present themselves as various creative riffs on “Italian and Japanese.” All circle the same cultural collision, which has a long history in Japan and which has seen a surge of renewed interest in Tokyo in recent years. 

Though European influences began to enter Japan in the late 19th century after the country opened its ports, it was the American occupation in the post-World War II period that gave rise to dishes like the ketchup spaghetti known as Napolitan, explains Sonoko Sakai, author of Wafu Cooking. The restaurant Kabe No Ana, credited for being the birthplace of wafu pasta, opened in Tokyo in 1953 and started serving spaghetti with ingredients like mentaiko and shimeji mushrooms. With Japanese inclusions such as natto, or shiitakes sauteed in soy sauce and sake, or sprinkles of nori, the pastas were “nothing that you would find in an Italian restaurant,” Sakai says. But today, tourists in Japan queue for hours for carbonara udon, considering it a must-have. By the time Orsa & Winston opened in LA in 2013, “diners in LA were globally literate,” chef and owner Josef Centeno said via email. “Travel, media, and access to information had expanded expectations. People were less concerned with strict categories and more interested in perspective.” The balance of cuisines at Orsa & Winston felt “natural,” he said.

In the past five or six years, this kind of fusion has become increasingly familiar to diners. Tonari opened in Washington, D.C. in early 2020 with the goal of educating the city about wafu Italian food, though its space dictated the concept to an extent: It was previously an Italian restaurant with a wood-burning oven that seemed a shame to remove. “What about wafu Italian?” recalls partner Daisuke Utagawa. At the time Tonari opened, pre-pandemic, “the mentality of the customer and the restaurant scene were totally different,” Utagawa says: People were more interested in discovering new-to-them cuisines.

While Japan is known for its traditionalist approach to Neapolitan pizza — in which pizza-makers study in Italy and use only imported Italian DOP cheese and tomatoes to create pies that rival the source material — Tonari wanted to go more wafu, drawing inspiration from the slabs of pizza toast found in the retro coffee shops known as kissaten. Enter Tonari’s Detroit-style pizza. It’s made with flour imported from Hokkaido, which gives it the right amount of chew for its thick crust, and features toppings such as the requisite brick cheese alongside corn and Kewpie mayo cod-roe cream, or Cheez Whiz with soy sauce- and mirin-braised prime rib. There are pastas, too, including a take on the mentaiko spaghetti that was popularized by Kabe No Ana; they’re made with pasta noodles that are also sourced from the restaurant’s Japanese ramen manufacturer. “Our customers are people who want to try different things,” Utagawa says. It’s comfort food by virtue of the format, “but it’s in a different way,” he says.

For chef Robbie Felice, learning about the history of wafu Italian food represented a major career turning point. He’d been cooking classic Italian food, even earning a James Beard nod for his Viaggio Ristorante in Wayne, New Jersey. But he wasn’t catching the eye of traditional media to the extent he wanted. “They didn’t give a shit about me or my Italian restaurants because I was in New Jersey,” he says. The pandemic offered an opportunity to step back and find a way to “stand out and be different.” 

In 2021, Felice started hosting a series of exclusive, speakeasy-style Japanese Italian omakase dinners around the country, where he piloted dishes like cacio e pepe gyoza fritti. The series was a hit, and he eventually settled his wafu Italian concept down in Montclair, New Jersey, opening Pastaramen in 2023. Though Felice considers Montclair one of New Jersey’s more “foodie-centric” towns, it’s still a town dominated by Italian: There are literally 10 Italian restaurants within a close radius of his restaurant. 

Felice acknowledges that while he could go more “out there” if he were cooking in NYC, his approach in Montclair reflects “what [he knows] the Jersey clientele likes.” Take his shrimp scampi ramen, a menu staple. It has sake and ponzu in addition to white wine and shrimp paste to intensify the seafood flavor; though the noodles are ramen, not pasta, it’s topped with garlic breadcrumbs and fresh parsley. “To take a favorite recipe that’s on every [Italian] menu across the country and make it Japanese Italian, I knew it was going to be a home run before we even did it,” he says.

While the presence of genre-blurring Japanese Italian restaurants is perhaps unsurprising in the country’s major dining hubs, the push into smaller cities and towns offers proof of just how far Japanese food has made it, becoming as familiar to Americans as Italian food; sushi is as much universally appealing “kid food” now as a plate of spaghetti. “I think it’s the two favorite cuisines of the world,” Felice says. “Everyone knows Italian and everyone knows Japanese.”

Similarly, Itameshi opened in Albany, New York, in August as a joint venture from the owners of local Italian restaurant Pastina and Japanese restaurant Tanpopo. The concept is “definitely new for Albany,” says bar director William Hoschek. Although udon Bolognese with whipped miso-ricotta might prompt initial confusion from diners, “when people sit down to eat, it’s pretty accessible,” he says. “All the dishes are really Italian in composition, which people in Albany are no stranger to.” Some hesitance remains around less familiar dishes. The squid ink spaghetti with uni-butter sauce, for example, isn’t ordered as much as “the more blatantly Italian dishes,” Hoschek says. This novelty can have its perks, though. 

In Hoschek’s assessment, one reason consumers don’t go out as much is because they can cook well and make good cocktails at home; thus, dining out feels more special when the food isn’t as simple to replicate with store-bought ingredients. A recent survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers found that 68 percent of participants were planning to cut back on restaurant dining in 2026 due to rising costs. In this ecosystem, in which dining isn’t a constant but an occasional luxury, “having a unique concept and being more of a destination … definitely is in our favor,” Hoschek says.

Utagawa of Tonari offers a different assessment of the American dining scene today. “It’s not as exploratory,” he says. Though wafu Italian isn’t what diners expect of either Italian or Japanese food, both are individually familiar. The combination, then, can potentially hit a sweet spot of being both comforting and novel.

The tricky balance for restaurants today is presenting something new, but also being sure that people will like it. Two things are certain though: Diners love Italian, and they love Japanese. Put them together, and of course there’s an audience for that.

If you’ve ever ordered an abalone dish at a restaurant in the U.S., that pricy sea snail probably came from this farm in Santa Barbara, California. The Cultured Abalone Farm is one of only two red abalone farms that commercially grows the tender shellfish (and the other farm in Monterey, California buys seed abalone from them). “So any abalone that you eat started here,” farm manager Andie Van Horn explains. “We really want to make abalone [a] California icon again.”

The farmed abalone are fed a diet of fresh seaweed and kelp, with about 30,000 pounds of kelp being placed in each of the 450 tanks every week. Once ready to harvest, large tanks of abalone and urchin are drained to gather the mature sea snails, which are carefully pried off the walls of the tank by an experienced harvester. The delicate shellfish do not naturally produce blood clots, so one small cut could kill them.

The farm is also committed to helping with abalone conservation; wild populations have experienced a huge decline since the ’70s from overfishing and habitat loss. The Cultured Abalone Farm’s hatchery currently has five million eggs from white abalone, which are almost extinct on the California coastline. Out of those millions of microscopic eggs, a few hundred thousand will become larvae, and tens of thousands will make it to adulthood. Those abalone will take about four to six years to reach a harvesting size, slowly being moved to larger tanks at every stage.

Harvested abalone are packed into ice pack-filled boxes and are still alive when they are delivered to distributors and restaurants, staying fresh for four to five days.

Watch the latest episode of Vendors to learn more about how the California abalone farm is supplying this shellfish delicacy and helping with conservations efforts.

The National Magazine Awards has named Eater as a finalist in the category of General Excellence, Service and Lifestyle. 

The finalists for the 2026 National Magazine Awards, an annual recognition from the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), were announced on Thursday. 

Eater was nominated for General Excellence, Service and Lifestyle, alongside Allure, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Vogue, and Wirecutter. This is Eater’s fourth year in a row being nominated in the category, and Eater is the only repeat nominee from the past two years. 

Eater has been nominated in several other ASME categories in years past, including Lifestyle Journalism and Best Service and Lifestyle Design in 2025 for Welcome to the Chainification of America, and Best Digital Design in 2024 for Mall Food Madness, a celebratory exploration of mall dining culture. 

Eater won National Magazine Awards in 2016 for the Eater Guide to Surviving Disney World, in 2017 for the Eater Guide to Paris, and in 2022 for Filling Up, an exploration of food and dining culture across America’s gas stations.

The winners of the 2026 awards will be presented in May 19. 

Last weekend, I drank matcha with 20 people who could, according to the AI that selected them, become my new best friends. The experience was arranged entirely by a social platform called 222, which selects a group of strangers to meet up for pre-organized dinners, drinks, yoga classes, rooftop DJ sets, and more activities, all based on converted compatibility insights from a questionnaire. In this case, I was invited to attend a morning matcha ceremony with (to paraphrase the 222 app) at least two people who also “chose The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as a favorite movie.” 

We all met at Samadhi, a wellness space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, by 10:55 a.m., per 222’s prompt reminders, which — as it stressed through multiple push notifications — I could disregard at the risk of being banned from the app altogether should I choose to cancel, or in the words of the app, “bail.” 

“Do you remember that app that would charge you for not going to a workout class?” a woman, also in her 30s, asked me as we quietly shuffled in; “It kind of reminds me of that.” Another woman mentioned that she had been to almost 10 events via 222, from dinners to group exercise. When asked about what drew her interest to the educational matcha ceremony, and to 222 in general, she told me that she had an interest in spirituality, and found it difficult to meet new people as a local who doesn’t just want to bar-hop. This, she explained, felt more intentional. Another man told me he had been to around 40 of the app’s events; this made me feel both at ease, because I assumed they could tell I was new to the experience, and surprised. For whatever reason, I came into the event thinking this would be most folks’ second or third time dabbling in the app. Even though I’d been hearing more and more about 222, I didn’t realize that for some people, it’s become a main character in their social lives.  

The idea for 222 was born at a dinner party, and formally launched in 2021. As co-founder Keyan Kazemian tells me, he and co-founders Arman Roshannai and Danial Hashemi would host backyard pasta dinners for friends (and folks they thought could become friends), and encourage them to fill out “custom question cards” and “curate an environment where they could form long-lasting relationships.” The address of the house also started with the numbers 222. There is an air of sophistication in the app’s design: The color palette is mostly deep greens and creams, with a logo that looks like a swirl of whipped cream — cool-coded, ’70s-inspired graphic design. It doesn’t give “I’m swiping through the pile” energy; it gives, “I’m filling out the Big City census.”  

While it’s been on the market for over four years, it seems to be picking up steam. I found out about the app through word of mouth, because my own partner, a bartender at a restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has been telling me about the uptick in 222 dinners at their restaurant, a number that has doubled from about three reservations per week to six or so in the past year. As Kazemian explains to me by email, “In the past year we’ve gone from three cities to over thirteen.” Now, 222 is in NYC, LA, D.C., SF, Chicago, London, Toronto, Orange County, Boston, Austin, Seattle, Miami, Montreal, and Houston. 

Friend-making apps are nothing new to the business of being online (see: Timeleft and Eat With, both in the strangers-go-to-dinner app category). 222 seems to be picking up more steam, however, than Bumble BFF or the “friends only” function on dating apps because it helps folks gather around a wealth of predetermined-ish experiences, with the added pressure-reliever of group-size numbers. As my partner once told me about the time they tried Bumble BFF, “there’s just not enough people on it. You start to see repeat faces. It just felt cringe.” After about an hour at my matcha event, it became very clear that 222 is developing into its own multiverse. 

While AI uses users’ self-reported interests and goals to curate the groups who might meet up at each event, the restaurants and cafes that are selected for destinations are often suggested by users, and help feed the company’s proprietary machine learning (ML) model to suggest similar cuisines and experiences. Presently, however, there’s also a human (and business) element to where meetups take place. Kazemian listed a few of the app’s restaurant partners, including Kraam Thai, Askili Orchard, and Twilight Lounge in New York City, and Hatch and Tacolina in Los Angeles, and told me that unlike other platforms, 222 is not selling marketing tools to its restaurants, but simply “delivering them paying customers [who] will like their venues.” Those restaurants, he reiterates, are selected through anonymous qualitative and quantitative aggregated feedback from members. However, as 222 gauges the potential to partner with a space or restaurant, he stresses the importance of finding restaurants that are “intentional about giving their customers an incredible experience, [and] take the 222 partnership seriously.” 

It’s interesting to me that, ultimately, the stamp of approval for becoming a 222 stomping ground relies on a far more singular (although, initially aggregated), person-to-person communication process between a 222 staffer and restaurant. “We don’t believe in outsourcing our thinking and creativity to AI,” Kazemian tells me. “Our 20-person team here dislikes the use of AI-generated content and is seriously concerned about the rise of slop online and the bastardization of ‘creativity.’” Instead, he says, “Every part of 222 has a human curation element. Every single question we’ve chosen to ask was hand written, obsessed over, and refined by members of the team.”  

Those questions included everything from preferences for food and lifestyle to muddier questions like, “Do I believe humans are born with an innate purpose?” and “Do I enjoy being politically correct?” There were dozens of options for race and religion, with “other” always present as an option. I noticed that the only option for a transgender person was “other,” despite nonbinary, male, and female being offered for self-identification. 

As I enlisted for my own 222 experience, I listed Brokeback Mountain as one of my favorite films despite never having seen it, in the hopes of being sat next to fellow queer people instead of Ben Shapiro finance bro spawns; I put that I strongly disliked talking with people who have different political beliefs, even though I think it’s crucial to have open discussions to stop, say, descents into facism (although I’d rather not do so at a matcha ceremony). The app also asked me if I would rather listen to “Taylor Swift, Kanye West, or neither.” (I chose “neither.”) In total, the questionnaire took about 15 minutes, and it left me wondering if I responded honestly (maybe not about having seen Brokeback Mountain) or whether I made tweaks in an attempt to “beat” the survey and find the least obnoxious friend assortment for myself. At every applicable moment, I wrote “Enya” as a response. Occasionally, I wondered what the Victorians would have thought of an app like this. 

When I arrived at the matcha class, I was relieved to find that it had a first-day-at-orientation energy that folks could bond over; who can be the odd person out, when no one in the room knows (yet) how to whisk their matcha powder? The room was filled with what seemed like a mostly equal proportion of men and women, and the 10 or so people I talked with were mostly millennials in their late 20s to early 40s, with the sweet spot being early 30s (like myself). There were many fleece vests and North Face puffers, and the majority of folks I spoke with worked in tech, finance, or for a startup; more creative professions included a man who said he worked in fashion, and a woman with a spirituality podcast. One girl was so nervous she was visibly trembling; another talked on end about how she had just gotten out of a relationship; another guy casually brought along his roommate (you can, I learned, request to bring a friend to 222 events in the app) who had lived in Japan and was waxing nostalgic for the culture. All had either a degree of shyness, or, inversely, a tendency to talk over the matcha ceremony instructor who guided us in smaller groups of four as we prepared matcha for one another. As a yapper myself, I figured this proportionate blend of introverts and extroverts was made by AI design, and, for the most part, it created a non-zero (but still, shy) flow of conversation. 

The matcha-making itself went over without a hiccup, but the real chat happened after class, when a group of about a dozen or so people autonomously went next door to the neighboring coffee shop, Acre. By chance — or by AI design? — I found the only other two queer women (to my knowledge) in line, and we bonded over the desire to find cool, age-30+ sapphic spaces in the city; one of the women was a 222 first-time attendee, like myself, and the other was not only well-versed in 222 events, but the various messages (and Instagram DMs) they spawn from users. “I can send them to you if you like,” she added, laughing, “but they get pretty crazy.” 

After about an hour of talking with the larger group about the snow, and dating, and more snow, and who had podcasts, and who matched (allegedly) with Cara Delevingne on Raya once, I went home. Including the commute, I spent over four hours in the 222 universe that day — although that’s nothing, I was assured by a regular, compared to a 222 superstar user in New Jersey who often “drives in from Jersey for these [222 events], and has been to, like, over 100.”    

It would be both easy and fair to tie up this experience with an awkward bow, but it wouldn’t be very interesting. My 222 experience felt a bit clunky, perhaps because my algorithm is still fine-tuning itself. As the app explains, it typically takes five events to find your people, which also sounds fair, albeit expensive (the matcha ceremony costs around $50, although there are options for $20 events). 

We can’t escape the uncanny valley effect of algorithmic connections, but I think those of us who roll our eyes at the “cringeness” of friend-making apps are forgetting how, until recently, it was just as cringe to say that you had met your partner online. According to a recent survey, about 42 percent of U.S. adults say that online dating has made the search for a long-term partner easier. Only in this post-COVID-lockdown, post-ironic era, however, do I think we’re finally freeing ourselves from this mentality; if we’ve broken through the cringe mental barriers of Zoom cocktail parties and the pings of isolation, does it really matter how we meet “our” people? 

Some folks at my event even said that 222 dinners served as their primary weekly social outings. For me, the most rewarding part of the experience came after the matcha serving, when my ceremony partner earnestly told me that the experience helped him get over some of his performance anxiety. I don’t think I met 20-something — or even half a dozen — new people who I will ever see again, but I did meet people who had one brave, and, for my money, rare trait in common: They showed up. For what, exactly, is a question I’m not sure any of us knew how to answer.  

It’s that time of year again: James Beard Awards season has begun. After dropping this year’s semifinalists last month, the James Beard Foundation announced the recipients of its America’s Classics awards today. The category, which the foundation introduced in 1998, recognizes “independently owned restaurants with timeless appeal and beloved in their region for food that reflects the character and cultural traditions of its community.” Below, you’ll find the six winners of this year’s award.

There’s more to come soon. Finalists in the Restaurant and Chef Awards categories will be announced on March 31, while the nominees for the Media Awards will be released on May 6. The James Beard Awards ceremonies will be held on from June 13-June 15 in Chicago.

The Serving Spoon, Inglewood, California

For over 40 years, this beloved family-owned restaurant has been a busy breakfast and lunch destination, and a hub for the Black community in Los Angeles. It was founded in 1983 by Harold E. Sparks, whose grandchildren continue to run the restaurant today.

Oyster House, Philadelphia

The Mink family has been running this Philadelphia institution for three generations, preserving Philadelphia’s 18th and 19th century food traditions with its specialty dishes like sherried snapper soup and fried oysters and chicken salad.

Johnny’s Cafe, Omaha, Nebraska

Even in a steakhouse city, this one stands out: Founded by Frank Kawa, it’s been open for 103 years and has stayed in the same family for three generations. Aside from the requisite ribeyes and martinis, it’s known for its Polish vinaigrette and complimentary appetizer of peppery cottage cheese spread.

Eng’s, Kingston, New York

Jimmi Eng and his son Paul founded their namesake Eng’s in 1927 as Kingston’s first Chinese restaurant. It’s been operated by Tom Sit and his wife Faye for over five decades, continuing to serve classics like egg rolls and pu pu platters.

Figaretti’s Italian Restaurant, Wheeling, West Virginia

Sicilian immigrant Anna Figaretti’s homemade spaghetti sauce became so well-known among northern West Virginia’s Italian coal-miner community that her family was prompted to open Figaretti’s in 1948. Today, the restaurant is known for its pastas, steaks, and homemade sausage.

Bob Taylor’s Ranch House, Las Vegas

Bob Taylor’s opened in 1955 as the Ranch House Supper Club, off the beaten path of the city, with Bob Taylor himself a legendary presence. Today, Bob Taylor’s remains a time capsule of an earlier era of Vegas and still serves the grilled steaks and seafood dishes that made it famous.

Disclosure: Some Vox Media staff members are part of the voting body for the James Beard Foundation Awards.

As long as she has someone to share it with her, a banana split will be “my first choice on a menu,” says North Carolina pastry chef Savannah Foltz. Her favorite comes from Tad’s Dairy Barn, a roadside trailer in West Virginia, where the banana split is straightforward: ice cream, fudge, pineapple sauce, whipped cream. 

As much as she loves the banana split, there are ways in which she thinks the format could be improved. “My big thing is that it doesn’t have [enough] texture,” Foltz says. “It feels flavorful, but flat.” That was something Foltz, executive pastry chef at the Charlotte, North Carolina restaurant Supperland, wanted to change with her version. Each year, she offers a sundae of the year; this year, it’s the banana split. The restaurant, which is housed in a former church, bills itself as a “Southern steakhouse meets church potluck”; the menu draws heavily on reworked classics, and Foltz wanted to add complexity.

Here’s how she builds her banana split: She toasts milk and sugar to build flavor in her ice cream base, chars the pineapple for her pineapple sauce on the wood-fired grill, and replaces the strawberry sauce with a strawberry-milk crumble with bits of freeze-dried strawberries, which “add [a] really crunchy, salty element that I always feel like a banana split is missing,” Foltz says. She infuses her whipped cream with banana, and the bananas themselves are brûléed. There is fudge, of course, drizzled tableside for a bit of action. “I think that we as chefs just can’t leave something alone,” she says.

The banana split is inarguably an American classic, synonymous with the pharmacies and soda fountains that dominated the United States from the early 1900s to the 1960s and ‘70s. It’s a compelling visual of bygone, idyllic Americana, but it’s also a dessert that seemed to have dwindled in real-life popularity in recent decades; like Jell-O, it’s perhaps been more exciting as an idea than as a gastronomic reality. But more recently, pastry chefs at places like Fedora in New York City, Middle Child Clubhouse in Philadelphia, Veil & Velvet in Los Angeles, and Siti in Austin have been putting banana splits back on menus at restaurants, playing on the easy appeal of nostalgia and whimsy. In doing so, they’re making the classic dessert even better. 

For Ricardo Menicucci, executive pastry chef of Veil & Velvet in the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills, the banana split felt like a natural choice for the lounge’s 1950s glamour concept. He fills a large crystal cup with pieces of caramelized banana; adds scoops of house-made strawberry, dark chocolate, and vanilla ice cream; and tops it with a large wafer cookie, cookie dough streusel, and a showy tableside drizzle of creme anglaise. “I don’t think I need to reinvent the wheel, but I need to create something that is familiar, is decadent, and is fun for the guest,” he says. The $29 dessert is the most popular on the menu. 

And that’s not even the most extravagant recent take on the banana split: At Oak Park in Des Moines, Iowa, the $100 banana split features pistachio, banana saffron, and foie gras ice creams, along with gold foil and Armagnac caviar.

If the banana split has had a weak spot, it’s always been the namesake banana, which runs the risk of being stodgy, starchy, or downright bland. Bruleeing or flambéing the banana, as most of these restaurants now do, can be a pragmatic choice, allowing even out-of-season bananas to become caramelized and sweet. At Middle Child Clubhouse, the bananas are coated with turbinado sugar and then torched, which gives them not only flavor but also crunch. Along with peanuts and sprinkles, “it adds contrast,” explains owner Matt Cahn, as well as an “elevated” approach that’s still mostly in line with the banana splits he remembers from his childhood trips to the Jersey Shore.

For Laila Bazahm of Siti, who was raised in the Philippines and started cooking in Singapore, the banana split offers a way to play with layers of nostalgia. The bruléed bananas are meant to evoke the Filipino dessert turon, in which bananas are fried in a crispy, caramel-drizzled wrapper; coconut ice cream, pandan cream, and cherries compressed in a Singapore Sling mixture further ground the dessert in her background.

Scorfana, an Italian American kitchen residency that operates out of a Portland, Oregon jazz club, recently served a week-long banana split special that “bounced around the worlds” of Italian cooking and Americana, according to chef and owner Jonathan Wiley, with spumoni ice cream and the Italian liqueur Galliano in the pineapple topping. “Even though there were some twinges of Italian American things, it was just a big old dairy bar, soda shop, county fair dessert there,” he says, adding that he doesn’t see them often in restaurants in the area.

Especially when everyone’s had it with the “restaurant monologue,” there’s something appealing about a dessert that doesn’t need to be explained. Dessert can sometimes be a hard sell following an “already generous Italian meal,” he’s found; that’s even more the case when it’s something that he’s “hallucinated” after “walking [to] the market and buying kumquats,” he says. 

Instead, “those sort of desserts that feel a bit nostalgic are just really hospitable finales to a meal,” Wiley says. The banana split is “just so saccharine with memory and sincerity and sugar, it sells itself in a couple of spoonfuls.”

There’s arguably no more intense and fascinating restaurant city than Las Vegas. In terms of pure volume of sales, it has no equal, perhaps anywhere in the world. The city also knows how to put on a show, offering culinary spectacle at some of the nation’s greatest restaurants. This combination of money and glitz is ripe for awards-conferring organizations like Michelin. 

The last time the tire company awarded stars in the city, Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill and Nobu inside the now-closed Hard Rock Casino held stars. That was in 2009. Then the guide left Sin City and didn’t return for 17 years. Michelin’s new Southwest guide — to be released later this year — will correct that long, notable absence.

“The Michelin Guide launched in Las Vegas in 2008, in the wake of the global economic crisis,” a Michelin spokesperson said this week. “As a result, the Guide chose to remove the city from its list of destinations. This year, the time proved to be right to launch a regional edition for the Southwest, inclusive of Las Vegas.”

Michelin could change the dynamic on the Strip by reinforcing the biggest names in town like José Andrés and the late Joël Robuchon. It could also create competition among the mega resorts, as they compete for the most stars. You can imagine the pylons touting that “Caesars Palace has six Michelin-starred restaurants” or that “The Venetian has the most Michelin-starred restaurants in Vegas.”

It could also allow restaurants other than steakhouses to compete for the big, expense-account dinners that surround any major convention. (Nothing says “balling out” to clients better than dinner at a Michelin-starred omakase.) Whether they end up earning stars or not, placement in the guide could also lift off-Strip restaurants like Sparrow + Wolf — a reasonably priced, polished fine dining restaurant in Chinatown — cementing the greater city as a regional destination.

“[This] is a huge win for all of us here,” says chef Brian Howard, who owns Sparrow + Wolf. “I’m really excited for the city and to show that our culinary scene has matured over the years. When you peel the onion back, there’s some real serious cooking happening in this town.”

But Michelin’s return to Vegas isn’t just important for the city. It also marks the near-completion of the guide’s expansion across the U.S. and the total success of its pay-to-play model.

After leaving Vegas (and LA) in the late 2000s, Michelin started to expand again in 2017, adding a guide to D.C. alongside its bases in Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. Since then, it’s spread across the lower 48 states. Including guides to Canada and Mexico, North America is now about as well-covered as Michelin’s home base of Europe.

Michelin’s expansion has been driven by destination marketing organizations. Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), essentially tourism boards and visitors bureaus, use public money from hotel and local taxes in an effort to spur economic development. It’s typically a good trade-off. Alongside other projects, these organizations pay to attract Michelin guides; for instance, in Florida, DMOs from Miami, Orlando, and Tampa pooled an estimated $1.5 million for guides between 2022 and 2024. In Texas, Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin cobbled together $2.7 million for guides in 2024. Along with publicity for a city’s food scene, Michelin collaborates on award reveal ceremonies, food festivals, and other events that bring tourism revenue to a city and participating restaurants.

“[That] revenue contributes to financial or editorial investment, which is quite huge,” Gwendal Poullennec, formerly international director of the Michelin guide and now senior vice president of lifestyle at the company, told Bon Appétit in 2024. “In terms of full-time employees, paying the bills, salaries, travel expenses, and cars — my editorial expenses are bigger than some of the largest newspapers in the world.” 

The guide’s return to Vegas could be read as a huge validation of impressive restaurants, evidence of an aggressive expansion strategy by Michelin, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (the local DMO) increasingly relying on high-end culinary tourism to bring in visitors, or all of the above.

That pay-to-play model hasn’t turned off diners or restaurant owners. Michelin has won the global competition for fungible credibility, evidenced by the hundreds of shiny red placards hanging in restaurants (and the hundreds of thousands of page views garnered on Eater stories about Michelin over the years). In the same interview, Poullennec insisted the guide maintains its independence, not allowing deals with DMOs to influence its awards. 

Why has the Michelin guide become so successful in America? It’s given out lots of accolades. Michelin has mostly shed its myopic focus on a handful of cuisines (expensive, European or Japanese-inflected). Bib Gourmand awards (for affordable dining) and the guide’s “inclusion” system (previously called Plates) for non-starred restaurants (which still get placards) have expanded the type and number of restaurants that might qualify in some way. Even stars seem a bit more accessible, as places like Mexican seafood stand Holbox in Los Angeles; casual pasta-and-wine spot Boia De in Miami; and San Francisco’s relatively affordable State Bird Provisions nab them. 

“The Michelin Guide’s priority is to establish where there is culinary potential and where there is a demand in terms of traffic, tourism, and all that,” Poullennec said in the same interview. “So between the Destination Marketing Organization and the Michelin Guide, I think the road map is pretty much aligned.” The Michelin Guide adapted to America, and America adapted to the Michelin Guide. It’s a fairly happy marriage, for now.

That doesn’t mean the guide will end up in every corner of the country. This week, a spokesperson said the guide team looks for new areas to cover based on “destinations matching our demanding criteria.” Guide inspectors may not think every city or region that pays for a guide is worthy of tons of stars, while DMOs that represent areas outside of culinary centers like New York City, Chicago, and Washington D.C. may not be satisfied with a handful of winners. 

Markets for guides may also fluctuate over time. The Michelin organization tends to start in new areas by awarding a few noteworthy restaurants that people would expect to receive stars; then, every year or so, it makes a splashy recognition, like three stars for Somni and Providence in LA last year or stars for three barbecue spots in Texas in 2024. Multiyear contracts for guide coverage allow cities to secure some guaranteed publicity while allowing Michelin room to renegotiate for more investment periodically. 

The timing of Michelin’s Southwest guide is interesting. It arrives just as news reports everywhere declare the city’s dramatic drop in tourism — not unlike the fallout of the economic crisis in 2008 that originally pushed Michelin out of the city. It’s unclear what kind of deal Las Vegas’s well-financed tourism board may have negotiated now — neither Michelin nor the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority commented on that aspect.  

The guide may not dramatically transform Las Vegas’s economic fate and change the underlying issue of sky-high costs. However, it’s also becoming clear that the “downturn” may be more of a snap back to expected growth after rabid post-pandemic spending. Still, any momentum around one of Vegas’s true strengths — its dining scene — will count as a win for the city’s DMO. 

Though the bulk of Howard’s menu at Sparrow + Wolf is a la carte, he does offer a $142, five-course chef’s tasting menu that falls in line with what Michelin likes to recognize. But he’s not chasing the star. “The Michelin Guide doesn’t define us. We’re consistently busy, and I’m happy my seats are full every night,” says Howard. “The accolades are nice and an honor, but we’re not going to change our direction.” He still thinks Sparrow + Wolf will get a star.