The First North America’s 50 Best Restaurants List Is Revealed

The best restaurant in North America, according to 50 Best‘s inaugural list of North America’s 50 Best Restaurants, is Atomix. The New York City fine dining restaurant from husband-wife team Junghyun (“JP”) and Ellia Park has been serving an innovative tasting menu of Korean cuisine since it opened its doors in 2018.

For those paying attention to the awards circuit, it’s probably not a huge surprise to see Atomix take the crown. Its impeccable dishes and hospitality earned the restaurant two Michelin stars in 2021, and it ranked 12th on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2025 (down from a high of No. 6 the prior year); Atomix was the only North American restaurant to make the World’s top 50.

“This is a dream; I’m in the clouds. This [win] is not just for me and for us and our restaurant, it’s for our country too,” Ellia said immediately following the announcement at a glitzy awards ceremony at the Wynn in Las Vegas. “When we first moved to the US, we never thought we could be on this stage,” JP added. “We’re just working hard and trying to make better food and build some community, which we love.”

North America’s 50 Best Restaurants, which celebrates restaurants in the United States, Canada, and parts of the Caribbean, is a much anticipated addition to 50 Best’s roster, and one that’s been in the works for many years, said William Drew, director of content at 50 Best. “We felt that North American restaurants were not getting much of the spotlight on the global list.” Restaurants throughout the continent showcase an exciting “diversity of culinary styles,” he adds. “The menus of the restaurants on the list have elements going back to influences all over the world.”

Indeed, “North American cuisine” defies definition and eschews generalization. The huge geographical area is a collection of cultures and communities, large and small. And the strength of this list—which has no set criteria for inclusion (beyond geography) and is compiled based on the votes of 300 anonymous gourmets, journalists, and restaurateurs selected by eight regional Academy Chairs—is the wide swath of cuisines represented. (Disclosure: Bon Appétit editor in chief Jamila Robinson is a 50 Best Academy Chair.) In addition to Atomix’s Korean, restaurants on the list draw inspiration from Senegalese, Haitian, Filipino, Thai, Taiwanese, Italian, French, and Mexican traditions.

The common thread running through the winners, illuminated through a series of talks and presentations leading up to the awards ceremony, is their chefs’ and founders’ deep passion for their heritage and dedication to telling their personal stories through food.

“It’s been great to see this building of North American cuisine as all these different points of view,” said Kyle Connaughton, chef and co-owner of SingleThread in Healdsburg, California (No. 8 on the list). “I love to see that young chefs are going to get great training, and then they’re coming back [to their cities or hometowns]. They’re very proud of where they are and are really showcasing the local cuisine, the cuisine culture, the artisans, the craftspeople, the agriculture…It’s [evoking] that sense of place, creating restaurants that could only exist where they are.”

As many of the week’s speakers made clear, the North American story is very often a story of immigrants—a story of leaving, and a story of coming home. “The food industry doesn’t exist without immigrants. In the back of every Michelin star restaurant is a bunch of people from the Caribbean, people from Mexico, people from all over the world,” Christopher Binns, a farmer and co-owner of Stush in the Bush, a “garden to table dining experience” in St. Ann, Jamaica, (number 49) said in a video presentation during a 50 Best Talks event on Wednesday. “It’s the backbone of American food, of the American dream.” And for Binns and his wife, chef Lisa Binns, being the children of immigrants is “always going to be a point of pride.”

“Stush in the Bush is our home. It’s a place where love grows and reaches deep into your soul. It is an experience rooted in local, inspired by seasonality, and cemented in creating conscious connection,” Lisa said. “While we can be inspired by and informed by external [and foreign practices], the memory of Caribbean foodways, intentionality of expression, flavor, heritage, and authenticity are the keys.”

50 Best recipient Gregory Gourdet, James Beard Award winner and chef-owner of Kann in Portland, Oregon (No. 27; and a Bon Appétit Best New Restaurant of 2023), echoed Binns’s sentiments in his own talk. After years of honing French technique at Jean-Georges in New York City, then cooking pan-Asian cuisine in Portland, Gourdet realized: “I had been immersing myself in everyone else’s traditions, but not my own. I was learning everyone else’s story, but not mine,” he said.

At Kann, Gourdet serves diners Haitian flavors and dishes created with local, seasonal ingredients from the Pacific Northwest. His menu invites you to look with him back at his origins and ancestral tradition while celebrating the gifts of his current home. “The American dream is a bridge between where you come from and where you’re going,” Gourdet said.

Where are we going? Chefs and restaurateurs present at the event are optimistic that this personal approach to cooking will only grow. “I’m excited to see chefs telling their own story,” said Afua “Effie” Richardson, managing director and co-owner of Dakar NOLA (number 6). “Instead of just cooking someone else’s food and doing it well, how can they create something on their own?” Such was the case for Dakar NOLA’s chef Serigne Mbaye, who spent nearly a decade cooking French food—in culinary school and French restaurants, including Atelier Crenn (number 46)—before embracing his roots. “To see that I’m being recognized for cooking food that my mom used to cook when I was younger, that itself is a blessing,” he says.

“We’ve learned from other restaurants and chefs that if they push forward what they want to do, they can make change with their food,” said Ellia Park following the awards ceremony. “And [by representing Korean food], we feel like we’re giving more hope to chefs in our country that they can do more in the world.”

North America’s 50 Best Restaurants

Below, find the entire list. If you’re keeping count: Two Caribbean restaurants made the list, Buzo Osteria Italiana in Barbados (No. 41) and Stush in the Bush in Jamaica (No. 49); Canada received 10 nods; the US had the most representation, with 38 restaurants. Of those, New York (13) and San Francisco (7) dominated.

While men have long taken the spotlight in North American restaurant scene and 50 Best’s lists, women received more recognition this year. Nineteen of the recipients have women chefs or owners at the helm, many of them part of husband-wife teams. (The entries in bold below indicate restaurants with women in leadership roles.) Women also received many of the year’s special awards: Moon Rabbit’s Susan Bae is Best Pastry Chef; Vanya Filipovic of Montreal’s Mon Lapin is Best Sommelier; Kalaya’s Chutatip ‘Nok’ Suntaranon is Best Female Chef. The Champions of Change Award was also earned by a woman, Asmeret Berhe-Lumax, founder of the organization One Love Community Fridge in New York City.

Note: New York’s Eleven Madison Park and San Francisco’s French Laundry have previously topped the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list and are therefore considered the Best of the Best and were ineligible for inclusion in the North America rankings.