New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni has chosen the ten best restaurants nationwide to open between January 2006 and December 2007. He eliminated New York City from consideration as well as Portland (which the Times dining section recently highlighted) as well as a few L.A. restaurants he'd already reviewed.
Bruni is writing short reviews of each of the ten restaurants, to be published over the coming weeks in a countdown from #10 to #1, but he has already revealed the complete, unranked list, which includes the Las Vegas outpost of chef Guy Savoy (pictured above):
Central Michel Richard (Washington, D.C.) Cochon (New Orleans) Coi (San Francisco) Fearing's (Dallas) Fraîche (Los Angeles) Guy Savoy (Las Vegas) Michael's Genuine Food and Drink (Miami) O Ya (Boston) Tilth (Seattle) Ubuntu (Napa, Calif.).
Also, he lists five restaurants that didn't make the cut:
Ad Hoc (Yountville, Calif.) Comme Ça (Los Angeles) Lüke (New Orleans) Takashi (Chicago) Tinto (Philadelphia)
As you can see, the center of the country doesn't get much love. I was surprised to see no Chicago restaurants in the top ten, though one did make the top fifteen. Then again, I don't have the expense account that Frank Bruni does, so I have eaten at exactly zero of these restaurants. Any readers visited any of these? Any places you think Bruni missed?
