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Here Are Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs of 2019

Atomix partners Ellia and Junghyun Park. He is one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs for 2019. Photo: Melissa Hom

Today, Food & Wine released the 2019 edition of its Best New Chefs list. In her introduction, Jordana Rothman writes that the honorees this year represent “the culmination of this decade of radical change” in restaurants. She writes about chefs committed to cooking “rooted in identity,” setting the scene with the egusi, the melon-seed stew from West Africa, that Kwame Onwuachi serves at his Washington, D.C. restaurant Kith/Kin. Those chefs iclude Onwuachi, fresh off his first James Beard nomination; Nite Yun, who was born in a refugee camp and runs Oakland’s celebrated Nyum Bai; and Paxx Caraballo Moll, who cooks “Asian criollo” food at Puerto Rico’s Jungle BaoBao. New York is represented by Junghyun Park of Atomix, which serves, Rothman writes, “a luxurious interpretation of Korean royal court cuisine never before seen in the U.S.” It is, in short, a list that makes you hopeful and hungry for food in America today. Here’s the full thing:

Kwame Onwuachi — Kith/Kin (Washington, D.C.)
Misti Norris — Petra and the Beast (Dallas)
Mutsuko Soma — Kamonegi (Seattle)
Matthew Kammerer — Harbor House Inn (Elk, California)
Nite Yun — Nyum Bai (Oakland)
Caroline Glover — Annette (Aurora, Colorado)
Paxx Caraballo Moll — Jungle BaoBao (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
Junghyun Park — Atomix (New York City)
Brandon Go — Hayato (Los Angeles)
Bryan Furman— B’s Cracklin’ Barbecue (Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia)

Here Are Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs of 2019