Four Texas restaurants bask in the national spotlight: Esquire magazine named them as America’s 40 Best New Restaurants.
Number 1 on the list was Dhamaka, an Indian restaurant in New York. Two Texan restaurants made it into the top 10.
The four Texas restaurants that make the list include a critical favorite from Dallas, as well as two restaurants from Houston and one from Austin, as follows:
- Roots southern table: Top chef alum Tiffany Derry’s restaurant is dedicated to Black Southern cuisine in Dallas (19th)
- Hestia: Chef Kevin Fink’s Live Fire Restaurant in Austin (fourth)
- March: a Mediterranean-inspired tasting menu restaurant in Houston (sixth place)
- Taste: a Spanish and Mexican inspired tasting menu restaurant in Houston (17th)
The list was compiled by four authors – Omar Mamoon, Joshua David Stein, former Esquire food and beverage editor Jeff Gordinier, and culture and lifestyle director Kevin Sintumuang – who toured the country in search of candidates.
Reported on Texas by Stein, a Brooklyn-based writer and former critic for the New York Observer and the Village Voice.
At Tiffany Derry’s restaurant, he praises the fried chicken, salted and fried in duck fat, and their unique version of shrimp and grits, which he compares to Italian-style arancini.
“Roots is clear evidence that the Black Southern cuisine of the Creole coast, incorporating elements of French, Spanish, African and Caribbean traditions, alchemical such as forced migrations and other things, does both the country’s greatest culinary heritage and its path in the future is, “he writes.
Roots is definitely catching the attention of the New York media; The restaurant has just been named one of the New York Times’ “50 Liveliest, Tastiest Restaurants of 2021”.
Both Houston representatives on the list represent a new breed of tasting menu restaurant. Stein welcomes March for his menus, inspired by different regions of the Mediterranean. “As the name suggests, March is a steady move towards the avant-garde,” he says.
He finds a similar thrill at Degust, where two chefs playfully spice up Spanish and Mexican-inspired dishes such as double-fried octopus.
Austin Restaurant Hestia, which landed in 4th place, deserves praise for its six-foot-high, wood-burning stove, where temperatures can reach 1,200 degrees. “It’s hard to believe that the same fire that cooks the halibut tenderly – held a meter above the flame and served with a shimmering mirror glaze of a brown butter sauce – for the wild char on the dry-ripened Wagyu Bavette with its sunset-red center, accompanied by lacquered potato and butter layers that are rolled up into a firm, croissant-like bun, “writes Stein.
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