Best Restaurants 2020

Atelier Crenn, San Francisco

Tableside service at Atelier Crenn

With an artist’s sense of constant reinvention, Dominique Crenn has been bending flavors and meditating on design since her flagship restaurant’s 2011 debut. More masterfully than ever, Crenn and her team (including pastry chef Juan Contreras) mine the middle ground between intellect and emotion, between heady presentation and flat-out deliciousness. Crenn focuses the modernist kitchen on seafood and vegetables, using impeccable Bay Area ingredients while musing over her upbringing in Brittany, France, for inspiration. Stunning black-walnut tables, part of the dining room’s 2017 renovation, show off swirling wood grains that resemble turbulent cloud patterns; the effect is mirrored in tableside theatrics like platters of billowing dry ice that soon reveal tiny geoduck tarts. 3125 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, CA, (415) 440-0460,

Brennan’s, New Orleans

Gulf fish amandine at Brennan’s

Ralph Brennan and his business partner, Terry White, rescued this French Quarter monolith in 2014, shepherding $20 million worth of reconstructive surgery on a building the size of a small cruise ship. Among the city’s Creole restaurant institutions, Brennan’s now takes the lead with its balance of timeless pageantry and relevant, finely honed cooking. Executive chef Slade Rushing nails the classics — eggs Sardou laced with creamed spinach for breakfast, snapper amandine or blackened redfish for dinner, bananas Foster for dessert any time of day — but also rotates in fresh twists like frog legs with basil tempura and tomato escabeche. 417 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA, (504) 525-9711

Himalaya, Houston

Goat biryani, fried chicken, and curries 

Effervescent, always-present owner Kaiser Lashkari and his wife, Azra Babar Lashkari, turn out nearly 100 distinct dishes at their boxy strip-mall restaurant in the city’s Mahatma Gandhi District. Numerous curries, including Hyderabadi chicken hara masala coursing with green chiles, evince several regional Indian cuisines, but it’s key to order the gems inspired by Kaiser Lashkari’s native Pakistan. He excels in “hunter beef,” a preparation similar to pastrami, best served cold in thick slices with head-clearing mustard. He links the Pakistani affinity for beef with Texas in specials like his weekend-only smoked brisket masala. The restaurant’s excellent, mildly spiced fried chicken bridges cultures just as successfully. 6652 Southwest Freeway, Houston, TX,

Here’s Looking At You, Los Angeles

Beef tartare at Here’s Looking At You

Jonathan Whitener, the chef who owns HLAY with front-of-house ace Lien Ta, is arguably the country’s most creatively energized practitioner of the “global plates” aesthetic. Salsa negra, smoked beef tongue, nam jim, carrot curry, blood cake, almond dukkah, sprouted broccoli, New Zealand cockles: All have a place on his menu; all make sense in his electric, eclectic compositions; all reflect Los Angeles’s wondrous pluralism. The cocktail menu takes cues from Tiki culture but spirals off in similarly wild and amazingly cohesive directions. 3901 West 6th Street, Los Angeles, CA