For many of us around the country, spring has not yet sprung despite the calendar date. But as we await T-shirt weather, there is also a wealth of new restaurant openings to look forward to. In Chicago, the team behind the legendary Oriole is preparing to debut their first new restaurant in ten years. Down in New Orleans, the sisters behind contemporary Mexican stunner Acamaya, one of our Best New Restaurants of 2025, are opening what is poised to be the hottest breakfast spot in town.
We track restaurant openings year-round in preparation for our annual Best New Restaurants list. This spring, these eight are worth planning a trip around.
This list is organized alphabetically by city. The opening dates below are subject to change. Check restaurant websites and Instagram accounts for updates.
Heritage
Atlanta
Opening: May
Demetrius Brown debuted Heritage Supper Club four years ago as an Afro-Caribbean pop-up separate from his beloved bistro Bread & Butterfly. Now, Heritage will be a brick-and-mortar in Summerhill. Partnering with restaurateur Brandon Blanchard, Brown’s second concept draws on his Trinidadian, Jamaican, and African roots coupled with his Southern upbringing. Both the tasting menu in the dining room and à la carte menu in the lounge celebrate foods of the African diaspora and Brown’s memories of cooking with his great-grandmother with dishes like Jamaican beef patties with chili labneh, oxtail waakye with plantain, rice, and peas, and lamb shepherds pie. To drink, there are cocktails like a Haitian mule made with Haitian rum and a plantain-infused old fashioned.
Rosa y Marigold
Boston
Opening: April
From the team behind Boston-area favorites Celeste and La Royal comes Rosa y Marigold. It's owners JuanMa Calderón and Maria Rondeau's first project in Boston proper and the restaurant spotlights Calderón’s Peruvian cooking. Expect dishes like papa a la huancaina (new potatoes with creamy aji amarillo dip) and anticuchos (skewers) of chicken and shishito or beef heart, plus Peruvian-Chinese chifa dishes like chaufa de mariscos (seafood fried rice) and chancito asado, roasted pork in honey hoisin sauce. At lunchtime, Rosa y Marigold will offer sanguches, classic Peruvian sandwiches—like butifarra with Peruvian-style country ham and pan con lomito al jugo, a take on a Peruvian cheesesteak.
All Well
Chicago
Opening: April
It’s been ten years since Chicago’s two Michelin-star Oriole opened its doors. Now Noah Sandoval and Larry Feldmeier are gearing up for their next chapter with All Well, a new American bistro coming to the West Loop neighborhood this spring. Diners can opt for a five-course prix fixe in the dining room with plates like délice de Bourgogne agnolotti and stuffed quail with purgatory beans, or for a more casual experience at the 30-seat bar with an à la carte menu, served until late. (We’re eyeing the short rib sandwich with horseradish aioli.)
Olōyō
Dallas
Opening: April
Fan-favorite pop-up Molino Olōyō is settling into a permanent home in Old East Dallas come April, first with a tasting room, Olōyō, and followed by a more casual, larger dining room later this year. Chefs Olivia López and Jonathan Percival launched Molino Olōyō out of a commercial kitchen in 2021, which evolved into a taco pop-up and various residencies, earning them a nod on Texas Monthly’s Top 50 Tacos in 2024. At Olōyō, the chefs will continue to spotlight seasonal modern Mexican cooking with a focus on Texas produce from local farms and ranches now in a fine dining setting. Diners can look forward to menu items like a bay scallop aguachile and a pescado con moles, plus mezcal-forward cocktails from the attached mezcaleria.
Pez
Hudson, NY
Opening: May
Hudson locals and visitors alike were frazzled to hear that Rivertown Tavern would be closing after a 10-year run at the end of March—but for good reason. The restaurant in the boutique Rivertown Lodge is closing to make way for Pez, a contemporary Mexican spot from Efrén Hernández, the chef behind the celebrated Casa Susanna at Camptown in Leeds, from the same hotel ownership. The menu at Pez focuses on sustainable East Coast seafood presented in three sections: frio, vegetables, and caliente. Hernández is pulling out all the stops with raw bar dishes like a Jonah crab tostada with chicatana chintextle (a smoked chile spread from Oaxaca), plus hot plates like grilled dayboat scallops with smoky chipotle and seaweed butter, or a whole dry-aged Atlantic mackerel with salsa serrano and housemade sourdough flour tortillas. The desserts are equally as intriguing, like a kombu ice cream with sweet salsa macha and a flan-like jericalla custard with mole ganache and cardamom buñuelos.
Casimiro
New Orleans
Opening: April
It’s no secret that we are huge fans of sisters Lydia and Ana Castro and their contemporary Mexican seafood spot Acamaya in New Orleans, one of our Best New Restaurants of 2025. In case eating dinner at Acamaya isn’t enough, the sisters announced the opening of Casimiro, a daytime neighborhood spot just a three minute walk away, where you can eat breakfast and lunch as if you were in Mexico City. That means dishes like queso en salsa (seared queso fresco covered in a pasilla chile salsa) with tortillas, Milanese tortas, huevos divorciados, and weekly tamal specials.
Aubergine
St. Paul
Opening: April
Bjorn and Megan Jacobse are finally opening their much-anticipated French-Québécois bistro Aubergine in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood of Saint Paul after first announcing the opening for fall 2025. Aubergine started with pop-up feasts all over the Twin Cities, including a residency at newer acclaimed French restaurant Bûcheron. At Aubergine’s permanent home, the food will lean into the French cooking of Bjorn’s childhood in Lyon, incorporating locally sourced ingredients. Eggplant will surely play a starring role on the restaurant’s opening menu alongside pop-up favorites like cassoulet croquettes, quail pithivier, and choucroute garnie.
Alfie’s
Washington, DC
Opening: May
Alfie’s, the Northern Thai pop-up from chefs Alex McCoy and Justin Ahn, is making its way home back to D.C. after stints around the globe in cities like London and Bangkok. Alfie’s existed in a past life in D.C.’s Parkview neighborhood and will now permanently live in Georgetown. The ethos to cook classic Northern Thai food while embracing local ingredients will remain the same—like use of sea buckthorn in place of tamarind. Expect their greatest hits like lamb belly massaman curry, Hat Yai fried chicken, and clams and mussels with chile jam, ‘nduja, lime leaf, and sourdough. To drink, there will be natural wines and a small cocktail menu with drinks like a mango sticky rice milk punch.
Other happenings:
- Simon Kim’s Gracious Hospitality empire is growing with a three-concept, multi-level stunner at 550 Madison in Manhattan. This includes a second COTE Korean Steakhouse location, Bar Chimera for cocktails, and Sushi Yoshitake, an omakase concept with sushi legend Masahiro Yoshitake at the helm. It should open later this spring.
- Gabriela Cámara is bringing Mexico City energy to Vegas with the opening of Cantina Contramar at the Fontainebleau.
- Pizza Studio Tamaki, a cult-favorite pizza spot in Tokyo, is arriving stateside (to Manhattan’s East Village specifically).
- Johnny Spero, the chef behind the since-closed Bar Spero in D.C. (a Bon Appétit Best New Restaurant in 2023) has moved westward and is opening Passage, a new restaurant in Langley, WA at the Inn at Langley.
- Also from the same BNR class: chef-owner Sujan Sarkar of Indienne in Chicago is debuting Indienne along with two other restaurant concepts in New York’s Hudson Yards.
- After closing Birdie G’s in Santa Monica in December 2025 and stepping away from Rustic Canyon, chef and cookbook author Jeremy Fox is headed to California’s Central Coast to open Edna, a series of culinary concepts in San Luis Obispo, starting with a tasting room and market in the spring with a distillery and restaurant to follow in the summer.
- LA-based Goop Kitchen (yes, that Goop) is landing in New York City with seven locations opening up monthly from April to October after most recently debuting in the Bay Area. Cue the lines!