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Not that we needed any more proof that NYC's restaurant scene is delectably excellent, but Bon Appétit released its annual list of America’s Best New Restaurants today, and not one but two Manhattan spots made the cut: Lei, an intimate wine bar in Chinatown, and Kabawa, chef Paul Carmichael’s rollicking Caribbean restaurant in the East Village.
The magazine’s editors and scouts traveled across the country and visited hundreds of restaurants before selecting 19 openings from between March 2025 and March 2026. To qualify, a restaurant needed more than excellent cooking: Bon Appétit also considered hospitality, design and whether the overall experience brought something genuinely distinctive to American dining.
By that measure, Lei is having one heck of a year. The 28-seat Doyers Street spot won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in June and this latest honor should make its already elusive reservations even harder to snag.
Opened by restaurateur and sommelier Annie Shi, who is also a partner in King and Jupiter, Lei pairs a nearly 1,000-bottle wine cellar with regional Chinese cooking from chef Patty Lee, formerly of Mission Chinese. Its ever-changing menu draws from Chinese home cooking and has included dishes such as handmade cat’s-ear noodles with cumin-scented lamb ragù, salted mustard greens with green chickpeas and steamed shrimp with ramps and Chinese celery. The wine list is appropriately encyclopedic, but the atmosphere is wonderfully cozy with flickering taper candles, a coveted window perch and views over one of Chinatown’s most charming, crooked little streets.
Over in the East Village, Kabawa is no stranger to accolades either. The Momofuku restaurant, set in the former Ko space on Extra Place, is led by Barbados-born chef Paul Carmichael and serves a celebratory, deeply personal exploration of Caribbean cooking.
Dinner takes the form of a choose-your-own prix fixe menu, with dishes that may include pepper shrimp, cassava dumplings in Creole sauce, black bass curry and slow-roasted goat. Music, mosaics, rum and vivid flavors combine to make the meal feel less like hushed fine dining and more like an extremely polished Caribbean party. Kabawa has already been named the best restaurant in New York by the New York Times and the best restaurant in the country by Food & Wine this year.
Bon Appétit’s latest nod merely confirms what New Yorkers have learned the delicious way: if you see an open reservation at either spot, grab it first and figure out your plans later.