The Best Restaurant Dishes I Ate This Year

It’s been an interesting year for restaurants, as they navigated diners’ shifting tastes amid an uncertain economy. And while some consider COVID-19 a thing of the past, restaurants are still adjusting to changes that emerged during the early months of the pandemic.

Through it all, the talented chefs at longstanding institutions and outstanding new openings have managed to satisfy hungry consumers, who, during an anxiety-ridden year, were often in need of the sort of comfort that only comes from a lovingly prepared plate of food. While getting settled in my new role at Eater this year, I spent more time in restaurants, seeking out innovative flavors and approaches to dining. Here are some of the meals that stood out.

Coconut escolar ceviche at Lao’d Bar in Austin, Texas

I stumbled into a colorful Austin restaurant after work on a muggy Friday afternoon the way a lot of Texans stumble into places ahead of the weekend: hot, thirsty, and on the prowl for a drink. I got a lot more at Lao’d Bar — the nam khao crispy fried rice, the Lao’d dogg, and yes, the smash burger — but it’s the coconut escolar ceviche that made me pause. A creamy coconut sauce is amped up with vinegar, peppers, and pickled red onions, all of which coalesce around slices of escolar (Ignore the critics. Escolar rules, alright?). It’s all served in the coconut shell — a win for whimsy and sustainability — and topped with fried onions.

Cat Cardenas/Eater Austin

Seafood tajin at Hamido Seafood in Queens, New York

An hour-long wait in the rain couldn’t stop my friend and me from getting into Hamido Seafood (we had things to celebrate, damn it!). The owners brought culinary erudition from their hometown of Alexandria, Egypt, and planted it in Queens, New York — to the benefit of the locals and tourists who flock to the family-owned restaurant daily. The reason so many are willing to brave the lines? Let’s start with the dizzying and glorious ability to pick from a huge assortment of fresh fish — scallops, octopus, and orata are often available — prepared any way you want it. Then there’s the pulsing energy that radiates through the cozy dining space. But it’s the seafood tajin, a blazing-hot pot of bubbling tomato and vegetable sauce with calamari, shrimp, and gigantic peppers, that makes the wait truly worth it. We ate every drop with pieces of warm pita bread and finished our meal with glasses of a house mint drink. A celebratory feast, indeed.

Kayla Stewart

Bouillabaisse and bread basket at King Brasserie & Bar in New Orleans

The hotel restaurant gets a bad rap. “Overpriced” and “undercooked” characterize the dishes served at an untold number of properties. Kimpton Hotel Fontenot’s King Brasserie & Bar counters this stereotype with a stellar bouillabaisse. Scallops, shrimp, mussels, and blue crab bob in an impossibly rich saffron broth further aromatized by oblong slices of fennel. Diced potatoes give the Provençal soup additional sustenance, as does a basket of warm house breads. Sop up the last of the broth with an epi baguette, brioche madeleines, or focaccia.

Fish stuffed with rof at Resto Le Coucher du Soleil in Saly, Senegal

“What’s this green stuff?” I asked, immediately embarrassed at the brazen way in which I questioned my dining companion Cherif Mbodji about a dish from his homeland, Senegal. But as is typical of Mbodji and so many other Senegalese people, he made me feel right at home.

Laughing — and making me laugh at myself in turn — the dapper Houston restaurateur and Dakar native explained to me that the emerald shreds poking out of my fish was rof, an herby stuffing of sorts commonly used in Senegalese cuisine. The fish was seasoned perfectly — habanero peppers, garlic, and bouillon stood out — and the spicy rof inside of it was a pleasantly jarring surprise. At Resto Le Coucher du Soleil, the rof-stuffed fish is served with cassava, cabbage carrots, and rice — beachside. Sink your toes into the sand while enjoying the family-style meal, all while marveling at the beauty that is the West African coast.

Battambong sliders at Battambong BBQ in Long Beach, California

I came across Chad Phuong — donning a sharp cowboy hat — in an Eater LA article years ago. The “Cambodian Cowboy’s” charm was clear prior to our winter meeting, but only when I bit into a Battambong slider did I truly understand the extent of the pitmaster’s aptitude in both Texas barbecue and Cambodian flavors. Tri-tip slathered with sriracha mayo, papaya carrot pickled slaw, and a house sauce is sandwiched between two golden brioche buns pierced with a wooden skewer, and topped with even more meat. It’s one of many standouts (“Twako,” Cambodian sausages, and Cambodian coconut corn are others), but perhaps most wonderful is watching the chef experience pure glee in the realms of two of his most cherished loves: his craft, and his birth country.

Kayla Stewart

Buka stew at ChòpnBlọk in Houston

ChòpnBlọk is about as nontraditional as it gets. The chef, Ope Amosu, didn’t go to culinary school; he cooked on the line at Chipotle at night while working in the corporate world by day. Jollof and jambalaya, related one-pot dishes in the Black diaspora, are sometimes served together. The mom-and-pop atmosphere that characterizes most West African restaurants in Houston is, at ChòpnBlọk, contemporary and youthful. So it’s ironic that one of my favorite dishes at the new Montrose location is buka stew — the highly traditional Nigerian red stew (of course, with an Amosu take). Served with rice and split by a row of sweet, chewy plantains, the stew I can’t stop ordering makes a promising case that Black diasporic food can be both traditional and contemporary — neither invalidating the other; instead, forming something wholly new and wonderful.

Pad cha clam toast at Little Grenjai in Brooklyn, New York

A friend and I made the mistake of going to Little Grenjai during dinner with the intention of trying their wildly popular smash burger (only available at lunch, folks!). But what initially seemed like an error turned into a happy mistake when another menu item caught our eye: pad cha clam toast. It’s the restaurant’s attempt at combining pad cha — spicy Thai seafood stir fry — and clam toast, and it’s remarkably successful. The steamed clams heated with peppers and Thai chilies, heaped upon a gently toasted hunk of thick Texas toast saturated in a chile paste broth, conjured a deep, spiritual inhale in both of us. Sopping up the silky, slightly sweet broth with the bread is non-negotiable.

Rabbit and turnip stew from Mosquito Supper Club’s Melissa Martin in Agen, France

Melissa Martin’s Mosquito Supper Club has dazzled the New Orleans community. Cajun dishes take precedence here, a testament to the chef’s regard for her Louisianan heritage. Cajun cuisine is just one of her talents, however; French cuisine is another. We crossed paths during a writing workshop in Agen, France, and I was treated to a feast of generously seasoned rabbit, turnips, and carrots, their flavors deepened by bay leaves plucked from the fresh garden at Kate Hill’s Relais de Camont. Martin’s cooking is a dream — as was that week in France — and this dish is among the brightest of those memories.

Additional photo illustration credits: Photos by Kayla Stewart