Best New Restaurants

Splashy Austin eatery drops onto GQ's Best New Restaurants 2020

This splashy concept is among GQ's Best New Restaurants 2020.

Photo by Jody Horton

In crazy pandemic times such as these, it's nice to get back to something normal like a good old-fashioned restaurant listicle. On May 4, GQ delivered its Best New Restaurants 2020, an annual collection of the country's most interesting (and delicious) dining concepts.

During his 2020 travels, one splashy Austin eatery dipped its way into the heart of correspondent Brett Martin, and, thus, onto the list. DipDipDip Tatsu-Ya, the latest concept in chef and owner Tastu Aikawa's Tatsu-Ya empire, offers shabu-shabu cuisine in an intimate, jewel box of a dining room on Burnet Road.

Martin captures the extraordinary experience that is dining at DipDipDip, writing:

"Up and down the rows, everybody is very busy, watching their egg timers and poking their pots. The quarters are a little cramped. You may burn a finger or two, or lose a chicken meatball to the floor. Servers wander the rows with iPads, checking on your progress with serious expressions. It's not quite relaxing, but it is very fun and strangely satisfying, suggesting that diners, like Montessori kids, are rarely as happy as when they've been given a job to do."

In total, Texas claimed two spots on the GQ list. San Antonio's The Jerk Shack (which, ahem, also won CultureMap's Best New Restaurant 2019) is lauded for its low-key, Caribbean-inspired cuisine.

"The future belongs to places like The Jerk Shack, in San Antonio. That's where Lattoia Nicola Massey, who also goes by the name Nicola Blaque, applies her Culinary Institute of America degree to an 'artisan Caribbean' restaurant that evokes an island jerk stand, with its walk-up window flanked by picnic tables."

And as if that isn't exciting enough, San Antonio diners will have two places to sample Blaque's cuisine when her second concept, Mi Roti, opens in the Pearl Bottling Department food hall later this year.

In total, GQ crowned 16 spots across the country as the year's best. And though the Lone Star State made a solid showing, tying with New York City and Seattle, California took the most spots with four restaurants. New Orleans; Detroit; Washington, D.C.; St. Louis; Portland, Oregon; and Philadelphia each had one restaurant.

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Peak Plates

7 Austin restaurants make OpenTable's top 100 for 2024

Jeffrey's Restaurant/Instagram

Jeffrey's Restaurant is a great example of the type of fancy, well-established restaurant that made the list.

Restaurant reservation website OpenTable has issued its new list of the top 100 restaurants in America for 2024, and seven Austin restaurants have made the list. That's already impressive at a glance — 7 percent of the entire national list in just one city — but compared to other Texas cities, it's huge. Austin is the only Texas city to have more than one restaurant on the list.

The "2024's Top 100 Restaurants" list is a compilation of the most sought-after and top-ranked restaurants in the U.S. based on 14 million verified reviews on OpenTable from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024. Restaurants are not ranked, but arranged in alphabetical order by state.

Austin's seven restaurants (including several repeats from OpenTable's 2023 list) are:

Aba: Known for its laid-back, yet fancy patio and being a popular spot for visiting celebrities
J Carver's: Known for a commitment to the classic steakhouse experience and legitimately fancy dining
Jeffrey's Restaurant: Known for fine dining, a connection to Austin before its boom, and a fantastic wine program
Red Ash Italia: Known for approachable, yet high-quality Italian food with rustic touches
Sammie's Italian: Known for its romantic take on the archetype of an East Coast Italian joint
Uchi: Known for bringing Austin into the national sushi conversation and defining the scene
Uchiko: Known for a cool atmosphere and getting creative with sushi and other small plates

Austinites will probably not be surprised by this list, which names some very well-established restaurants that are all upscale. These qualities tend to appeal to similar lists, regardless of who's curating them.

It is interesting, given that the list was democratically based on user ratings, that there were not more beloved food trailers or casual spots. However, other factors that led to high rankings included alerts set and reservations made ahead — things that don't really apply to even the most awesome taco truck.

Mediterranean food was a trend among the Austin picks. Red Ash Italia and Sammie's Italian are, as the names would imply, completely dedicated to Italian food, while Aba covers a wider swath of the Mediterranean. There were also two steakhouses: J Carver's and Jeffrey's Restaurant.

As list-perusers may have guessed, Uchi and Uchiko are in the same family of restaurants, with Uchi being the more formal and Uchiko being a bit more accessible for drop-in meals and cocktails. But are two more incognito duos of sibling restaurants on the list: J Carver's and Red Ash, and Jeffrey's Restaurant and Sammie's Italian.

That could be a coincidence. It could also be a reflection of the utility of money and experience in opening a good restaurant, or a lesson about the effects of good (and expensive) marketing. Whatever it is, it doesn't sound like hospitality groups had any direct sway on how OpenTable made its choices.

This list was different from the inaugural list of OpenTable Icons, which launched in 2024. The "Icons" list chose restaurants that are getting a lot of buzz, which ended up being more subjective. It also seemed to let in — as a side effect of the process, rather than a hard eligibility rule — more new and Mexican restaurants. Two restaurants are on both lists: Red Ash and Jeffrey's.

Restaurants outside of Austin that made the Top 100 list, organized alphabetically, are:

Hudson House — Dallas
Steak 48 — Houston
Signature — San Antonio

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