best new restaurants in america 2012

Little Serow, an unmarked, 28-seat northern Thai restaurant just off Dupont Circle, makes it easy to understand why Thai is America's current "It" cuisine among chefs

At State Bird Provisions, Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski's knockout spot, brilliant things come in small packages

Bäco Mercat fills Los Angele's "low-key, chef-driven neighborhood spot" void

The Decatur, GA, branch of Cakes & Ale has the fudgiest brownies, most irresistible cookies, and richest layer cakes you've ever had—high-end takes on bake-sale favorites

Oxheart is a Houston restaurant whose unpretentious philosophy flips fine dining on its head

At the Bachelor Farmer and Marvel Bar, in Minneapolis, stellar, stripped-down takes on Nordic classics and cocktails

The 10 best new restaurants in America for 2012, selected by Restaurants editor Andrew Knowlton

How one rarefied (yet scrappy) restaurant—all 12 seats of it—embodies what higher-end dining is all about right now.

In Portland, OR, Luce's rustic dishes transport you to restaurants in Italy

Battersby is just like any other brick-walled, Edison lightbulb-lit restaurant in the hipper-than-thou culinary hotbed known as Brooklyn—but better.

In Nashville, a city of meat-and-threes, the Catbird Seat shows tweezer cuisine at its most artful extreme