Carolina Bazán and Rosario Onetto’s restaurant Ambrosía, most recently #20 on the Latin America 50 Best Restaurant List, is one of Chile’s best restaurants, yet their smaller, more vibrant offshoot that opened this year might even be better. Bazán spent a year working at Gregory Marchand’s restaurant Frenchie in Paris, one of the driving forces of the bistronomy movement, and it clearly had an impact on her. While the original Ambrosía, way out in Vitacura, has a closed kitchen and way more seats, which limited interactions with the lovely hosts, the intimate bistro has just 30 seats, most of which surround the open kitchen. The food is playful, designed for snacking on small plates like steamed buns and dry aged beef while drinking one from one of Santiago’s best wine selections. ambrosiabistro.cl

Ricardo Zarate is back and he is better than ever. After disappearing for awhile the Peruvian chef returned with Rosaline, which serves humble and family-inspired traditional Peruvian dishes alongside local-inspired “street food.” The restaurant is named for the chef’s mother and takes inspiration from the foods of Zarate’s childhood in Peru. A highlight of Rosaliné is a seafood bar focused on ceviche, one of Zarate’s most beloved dishes. The menu, constructed to encourage diners to share with one another, is split into into sections including snacks, land-based dishes, sea-based dishes, soil-based dishes, and BBQ-style plates. Highlights from the Pachamama (land-based) section include Juane de Chancho, an Amazonian-style pork belly tamal and lomo saltado, sautéed filet mignon, roasted tomatoes, braised onions, and a sunny side up egg. rosalinela.com.

Despite not having a permanent restaurant space thus far, you would be pressed to find a more enticing dining experience anywhere in Colombia than Proyecto Caribe. Chefs Jaime Rodriguez and Sebastián Pinzón have spent the past year running pop-ups in Cartagena and elsewhere around Colombia while researching the foodways of the country’s Caribbean region. Regional products used mostly by rural Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, long ignored by the rest of the country, such as queso de capa from the Magdalena river town of Mompós, hormigas culonas from San Gil, and sun dried shrimp from Guajira find their way into adventurous tasting menus. In 2018, they move into a permanent taller, or workshop, in Cartagena with a 30-seat restaurant and space for classes and research. Facebook page.

Former Alinea and Next chef Dave Beran, one of the biggest names in the U.S., has opened one of Los Angeles’ most anticipated restaurants in years. The opening has been overshadowed by the much more hyped Vespertine, but the 18-seat tasting menu restaurant, has been steadily earning followers. We’re betting that of the two, this is the one that remains for the long haul. Set beside a fish sandwich shop on the second floor of a Santa Monica food hall, of all places, the beautifully executed kaiseki-style menu includes 20+ courses of Southern California ingredients that reveal one of the country’s best chefs coming into his own. dialoguerestaurant.com.

Paraguayan Sofía Pfannl and Peruvian José Miguel Burga met while working at Lima’s renowned restaurant Central, where she was a stagiare and he was a sommelier. After getting married they moved to Asunción to open Pakurí, where they could use their experience for creative takes on regional products in traditional dishes. The space, built out of shipping containers and glass that surround a large patio, is fresh and bold and provokes a lively atmosphere for enjoying a long lunch or night out with negronis infused with local herbs or natural wines. The food is unpretentious, with seasonal menus that include dishes like vegetable ceviche, grilled river fish like boga and surubí, and sweetbreads. Facebook Page. 

The latest concept from culinary duo Chef Hugo Ortega — who won this year’s James Beard Award for Best Chef Southwest — and partner/restaurateur Tracy Vaught of H Town Restaurant Group, Xochi located on the ground floor of the new Marriott Marquis Houston, though don’t let that fool you. Xochi focuses on food of utmost culinary tradition in Oaxaca and does it beautifully. Made in-house queso fresco and Oaxacan string cheese, nixtamal and tortillas, moles, fresh-ground spice blends, and house–roasted and ground cacao beans for the house-made Mexican chocolate are some of the featured menu highlights, as well as Oaxacan classics like tlayudas and mezcal. Facebook Page.

Despite its enormous size, São Paulo has lacked an artisanal bakery comparable to those of other major metropolises. Iza, owned by Izabela Tavares, has changed that. Like a Brazilian Tartine, Tavares experiments and actively studies long, natural fermentation and using different types of flour in her small production kitchen in Vila São Francisco. Her Pão da Casa is a rustic, country loaf made of a mix of white and whole wheat flours, plus a rotating mix of specialty breads that may include black olive focaccia, panettone, poppyseed sourdough with Sicilian limes, or cacao with toasted hazelnuts. Tavares’ breads are so popular, and the batches are so limited, that she asks that orders be made in advance as they otherwise sell out. izapadariaartesanal.com.br.

Chef Diana Dávila’s Logan Square restaurant stands out in Chicago, a city where there’s a great Mexican restaurant for almost every stop on the L. Her self-owned antojería, which in Mexico translates to a place for small cravings, allows her to be playful, re-imagining family recipes through a Midwestern Mexican lens. The result is Dávila’s own style; she might use peanut butter to make a sauce to serve with lengua (beef tongue), or use the creamy walnut sauce best known for chiles en nogada to top pork albondigas (meatballs), or pair fried chicken with churros, which we think is genius. Young, bold, and vocal about her cooking and her heritage, we are watching the evolution of this chef very closely. mitocaya.com.

After leading Mugaritz’s development kitchen for the better part of a decade, Oswaldo Oliva and his wife Elizabeth Chichino returned home to Mexico to open Lorea, as well as it’s excellent, more casual sibling Alelí. It’s an exciting time for the DF’s restaurant scene and the Colonia Roma restaurant has managed to set itself apart from any other fine dining restaurant in the city while still being driven by Mexican produce. The innovative tasting menus peel back some of the layers of Mexican cuisine, often uprooting it from the way things have always been done, and rebuilding it in ways only someone that spent so much time with Andoni Luis Aduriz can do. Expect to hear much more about Lorea as it evolves. lorea.mx.