Eater today announced the Best New Restaurants of 2022, compiling 12 months of trends and transitions in the restaurant industry across the country. These 15 restaurants — including Mesa’s Espiritu — represent the most exciting openings from September 2021 to September 2022, each defining the best qualities about dining by serving exciting, innovative, and consistently great food. Aside from having the endorsement of Eater’s local and national staffers, what binds these restaurants together is how each and every one is an utter original.

“Capital-T Trends have had the space to take root as customers crowded into dining rooms and traveled around the country, bringing their excited energy with them to red-sauce Italian joints, vibey supper club-inspired spots, and so many pop-ups turned full-fledged restaurants,” writes Hillary Dixler Canavan, restaurants editor. “At Eater’s Best New Restaurants of the year, bucatini tossed in tom yum sauce and pizza topped with vibrant green chutney aren’t gimmicks — they’re game-changers.”

Among the trends exemplified on the list are pop-up locations becoming permanent and a new moment for “fusion” cuisine, with unlikely mashups such as Pijja Palace in Los Angeles, an Indian sports bar serving classic American bar fare through an Indian lens. Among this year’s Best New Restaurants “firsts,” are Philadelphia’s Machine Shop, a bakery so good that it caused the editors to expand the definition of restaurant; Brooklyn’s Dept of Culture, the first restaurant featuring Nigerian cuisine, and Espiritu, the first Arizona restaurant on the list.

“This list is the culmination of a year of in-depth reporting on restaurant openings,” says editor-in-chief Stephanie Wu. “It’s a true joint effort between our city editors, who are consistently covering their local scenes, and our national team of writers and editors, who traveled and dined at locations across the country.”

The full list is below (in alphabetical order):

• Audrey (Nashville, TN)

• Causa / Amazonia (Washington, D.C.)

• The Chicken Supply (Seattle, WA)

• Con Todo (Austin, TX)

• Dept of Culture (Brooklyn, NY)

• Espiritu (Mesa, AZ)

• Gigi’s Italian Kitchen and Restaurant (Atlanta, GA)

• Kann (Portland, OR)

• Khâluna (Minneapolis, MN)

• Khmai Fine Dining (Chicago, IL)

• Mabel’s Gone Fishing (San Diego, CA)

• Machine Shop (Philadelphia, PA)

• Nami Kaze (Honolulu, HI)

• Pijja Palace (Los Angeles, CA)

• San Ho Won (San Francisco, CA)

Eater was founded in 2005 as a local New York City restaurant blog, and was acquired by Vox Media in 2013 after expanding into a multi-city network. Since then, it has evolved into one of America’s largest and most influential food publications, a juggernaut of award-winning service, reporting, and entertainment. In April, Eater won its third National Magazine Award, in the Lifestyle Journalism category, and was nominated for six James Beard Media Awards.

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