The 16 Most Anticipated Restaurant Openings of Fall 2017

Fall is always a busy time for restaurant openings, and this year is no exception. Generously defined by Eater here as everything from today to the end of the year, the fall’s most exciting openings will lead the dining conversation for the rest of the season — and into next year. Still, a few things stick out about this year’s crop:

• After breezy all-day dining defined the first half of 2017, many chefs are betting you’ll want to spend your money on capital-D Dinner again. We’re talking tasting menus galore, and in cities not necessarily known for the genre, like Los Angeles, Detroit, and Oklahoma City.
• There aren’t a whole lot of New York City openings to get genuinely excited about right now. It’s nice that there’s a new Robuchon coming. Good for Masa Takayama for finally bringing his Vegas-approved Tetsu to Tribeca. And hooray for Midtown Manhattan on getting an Aviary. But where are the big new ideas? Maybe the lull is due to ever-skyrocketing rents. Maybe it’s the calm before some sort of storm. Or maybe it’s that little can compare, anticipation-wise, to team Torrisi taking over the Four Seasons (and, as the critics see it so far, knocking it out of the park).
• It’s a banner year for LA openings. While the first half of the year saw eagerly awaited debuts like Felix, Rossoblu, Kismet, and V E S P E R T I N E, the back half of 2017 promises more, with openings from big-name chefs like April Bloomfield and David Chang, plus major debuts from David Beran and Jessica Largey.
• This season seems blissfully free of fast-casual get-rich-quick put-it-in-a-bowl order-at-the-counter plays. The future is still fancy chains, make no mistake about it, but it’s nice not to have to slog through PR-manufactured talking points about why this chef’s dream has always actually been opening a rotisserie chicken and salad place.

In the guide below, restaurants are presented in the projected chronological order of their debut — but of course, the art of opening a restaurant involves a lot of moving parts, and delays happen. Read on to get a preview of the restaurants you’ll be hearing about this fall.

The Restaurant You’ll Wish Was In Your Neighborhood:

Theodore Rex

Location: Houston
Key players: Justin Yu
Target open: Late August 2017

Theodore Rex could be America’s next great restaurant. In the space that was home to his once-lauded Oxheart, chef Justin Yu has decided to ditch the tasting-menu format that earned him a James Beard Award and a place on Eater’s national 38 — but not the intensity or creativity he brought to the food. Expect experiments in fermentation and preservation to yield exciting results, like the tomato toast that will surely break Instagram. But more than that, Yu wants to make a warm, convivial, fun dining experience, in the vein of Perfect Restaurants like Clown Bar in Paris and Manfreds in Copenhagen.

“It’s a very personal project,” Yu says. “A place like Oxheart has a timeline on its life. I want this to stand the test of time.” Don’t be surprised to see food obsessives booking tickets to Houston specifically to check this one out. | Website

The Noodle Bar From a Brooklyn Fare Alum:

Jeju Noodle Bar

Location: New York City
Key players: Douglas Kim
Target open: Late August 2017

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A chef with experience in some of the city’s best kitchens leaves the fine dining world to strike out on his own… and opens a casual restaurant where he just cooks what he wants to, man. If this seems familiar, that’s because it’s in many ways the gold-standard origin story for hot new restaurants in the post-Momofuku age.

But it also happens to be the true story of Douglas Kim, who after stints at Per Se and Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare (and also Morimoto and Zuma) will open a shop dedicated to Korean ramyun. “I want to create something different and to focus on what I’ve learned but in a casual manner, so a lot of customers can easily access it,” he says. And while ramyun has a long history in Korea, Kim sees an opportunity to share it with American diners who might not be as familiar — but, he says, “it will have my twist.”

Besides noodle soup, Kim will also serve a concise small-plate menu, including several raw dishes, in order to stand out from other noodle shops. He’s betting that his focus on quality ingredients, his fine dining technique, and his ambition will set him apart: He’s already aspiring to be the first noodle shop in New York City with a Michelin star. | Website

The LA Tasting Menu That Could Be a Tipping Point:

Dialogue

Location: Los Angeles
Key players: Dave Beran
Target open: September 5, 2017

Fine dining fans have been waiting for this opening since chef David Beran left his post at the shapeshifting Chicago restaurant Next last year. Beran — who won the 2014 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes for his work at Next, and who was also Alinea’s former chef de cuisine — surprised many when he announced that his debut restaurant would be in a Santa Monica food hall. Where most chefs would use that space to test-drive a scalable fast-casual idea, Beran is going the opposite direction. As he put it recently: “I’m not going to open a sandwich shop for my first restaurant.”

At the 18-seat Dialogue, Beran will serve a 22-course menu to guests who have paid anywhere from $175 to $205 (ticket prices are variable). He’s keeping most food details pretty quiet, but he promised Eater LA that he won’t repeat any courses from his time at Next or Alinea, and also told Eater that he aims to balance “super, super complex” dishes with courses where “you just want to literally lay down and take a nap in a bowl.”

Dialogue comes right on the heels of another major LA fine-dining opening: Vespertine. That restaurant, which captured headlines for its decidedly ~artistic~ self-presentation and claims of otherworldliness, will no doubt be brought up in the same breath as Dialogue for months to come. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Los Angeles has long been considered lagging when it comes to these kinds of destination-dining experiences. With these openings — not to mention Manresa alum Jessica Largey’s Simone; more on that below — that argument absolutely doesn’t carry water anymore. | Website

The Tasting Menu That’s a First for America:

Eight Tables

Location: San Francisco
Key players: George Chen, Cindy Wong-Chen
Target open: Mid-September 2017

Inside China Live, a buzzy, multipurpose culinary funplex in San Francisco's Chinatown, prolific chef-restaurateur George Chen and partner Cindy Wong-Chen are almost ready to welcome guests to their anticipated Eight Tables: a 38-seat tasting-menu restaurant dedicated to the Chinese tradition of shi fan tsai (私房菜), or “private chateau cuisine.”

“My vision is a world-class restaurant showcasing the finest Chinese cuisine using hyperseasonal, premium ingredients creatively presented in a style that is all our own,” Chen says, noting this private chateau cuisine “has pervaded Chinese culinary history and recently revitalized in the great cities of China.”

With an alum of Meadowood and Saison running front of house and powerhouse design firm AvroKO doing the interior design, Chen has made it clear that he wants San Francisco — and the country — to pay attention. Besides, he isn’t shy about sharing his big ambitions for the restaurant: “We want Eight Tables to show that Chinese fine dining can be on par with the very best restaurants offering Western cuisines.” | Website

The Restaurant With Big Plans for Oklahoma City:

Nonesuch

Location: Oklahoma City
Key players: Todd Woodruff, Colin Stringer
Target open: October 2017

Chef Colin Stringer has been thinking about what it means to make “Oklahoma food” for a long time. The Eater Young Gun was co-chef and co-owner of the acclaimed dinner club Nani. Now he and local restaurateur Todd Woodruff are teaming up to dive headfirst into Oklahoma cuisine with the 20-seat Nonesuch, the first tasting-menu-only restaurant in the city.

Stringer will serve an eight- or 12-course menu to diners sitting at a U-shaped counter; currently, both menus will be priced under $100. Stringer says he’s focusing on ingredients found in and around Oklahoma, and approaching them with ideas from the New Nordic movement — borrowing from René Redzepi’s foraging obsession and the desire to imbue dishes with “a sense of time and place.” In OKC, that might mean nerding out on persimmons or a specific breed of duck. Like so many chefs right now, Stringer’s excited to have a wood-burning oven next to his combi. He says the food isn’t modernist, but he’s not afraid of using modernist techniques if they suit his purpose.

“We really don’t know how people will respond,” Stringer says. “Our hope is just to stay full and to create food that’s as good as the food that we love when we travel, the food we're inspired by.” | Website

The Restaurant for Food Nerds:

Supra

Location: Washington, D.C.
Key players: Malkhaz Maisashvili, Jonathan Nelms
Target open: Early fall 2017

D.C. diners have already fallen for khachapuri, and now, thanks to first-time restaurateur Jonathan Nelms and pedigreed Georgian chef Malkhaz Maisashvili, the city will have the chance to do a deep dive into the world of Georgian cuisine beyond the iconic boat-shaped cheese bread.

At Supra — the name of the restaurant, but also a traditional Georgian feast — Maisashvili will prepare regional Georgian foods, but from his own perspective. “The dishes will mainly be prepared in the traditional ways, but we chefs always put our own personality, our own ideas, and our own interpretations into everything we cook,” says Maisashvili, known for his work on the TV show Treasures of Georgian Cuisine and as the chef at the Georgian embassy in Washington. “But there will be no doubt this is Georgian food.” Besides several varieties of khachapuri, Maisashvili’s also excited to offer chakhokhbili, a chicken dish served with an herby tomato sauce, and gebjalia, which he’ll prepare with house-made fresh cheese, mint, and “a sauce with some secret ingredients.”

Nelms, who fell in love with Georgian cuisine as an exchange student in Moscow (where he fondly recalls Georgian food being “as common as Mexican and Italian restaurants are here”), believes D.C. has never been more ready for Supra. “I’ve lived [in D.C.] 15 years and the restaurant scene and general vibe of downtown D.C. has exploded in those years,” he says. “One of the great things about Georgian food is that it’s very accessible... If someone wants to come in and they’re not an adventurous eater, they can have a chicken or beef kebab and a khachapuri; it wouldn’t be ‘exotic,’ but it would be new, and it would be what you can get in Georgia.” | Website

The Long-Awaited Solo Album:

Simone

Location: Los Angeles
Key players: Jessica Largey
Target open: October or November 2017

Simone is one of the most eagerly awaited restaurants this year. Chef-owner Jessica Largey hit delays on the road to opening, but it hasn’t changed the facts on the ground: 1) Largey is the Eater Young Gun and James Beard Award-winning chef who made her name as the chef de cuisine of Manresa. 2) Simone is her solo debut. 3) It will be a vivacious double-duty restaurant in LA’s burgeoning downtown Arts District.

Simone promises a lively bar scene, plenty of tables for a la carte dining, and three nights a week, Largey will offer a tasting menu at the six-seat chef’s counter in the kitchen. Largey calls Simone “a departure from [her] fine dining background.”

“We’re going to be operating on the high level I’m accustomed to, but the food will cross a whole spectrum of experiences,” she says, from bites at the bar to large-format dinners to tasting menus. “I just can’t wait.” | Website

The Tiny Restaurant With Huge Goals:

Albena

Location: Detroit
Key players: Garrett Lipar
Target open: Fall 2017

Albena is small: 344-square-feet small; only eight seats at the counter small. And despite its location in a hotel, the restaurant is not connected with any other kitchen or restaurant space, which means the entire operation — prepping, cooking, cleaning — will happen in a space smaller than an Ikea model apartment.

But chef and Eater Young Gun Garrett Lipar has huge ambitions. “We’re looking to define Great Lakes cuisine and really push the boundaries here,” he says. To him, that means connecting with the region’s farmers and producers, and showcasing their work (and his own technique) over the course of a 90-minute tasting menu. Lipar hopes the local ingredients will transmit a sense of Midwestern place, as in a dessert that visually represents the landscape and terrain of the Great Lakes.

If it sounds like something that would fit in, philosophically, at René Redzepi’s Noma or Virgilio Martínez and Pia Leon’s Central, Lipar’s in agreement. “It’s not unlike the story being told elsewhere in the world, but we think our voice can be louder,” he says. “We think we have a great shot at being on a world stage: showing that Michigan and this Great Lakes region has some really high-quality producers. We have all intentions to try to be one of the top 100 restaurants in the world.” | Website

The Restaurant That Won’t Be Pigeonholed:

North Spring

Location: Los Angeles
Key players: David Chang
Target open: Fall 2017

Why does the umpteenth Momofuku restaurant deserve a place among the season’s most exciting openings? Because this one is entirely new. Chef-founder David Chang says his Los Angeles debut will open without any repeat iconic Momofuku dishes — that means no pork buns. “There is a reason we are not bringing any Momofuku there,” he says. “We want to make something specific for Los Angeles.”

What that means, exactly, is still evolving as he works on getting the restaurant open, hopefully by the end of the year. Eater’s heard rumors of Chang going full Korean with North Spring, but the chef says that’s not accurate. “If anything, we want it to be boundary-less, in terms of culture,” he says. “We’re just trying to make straightforward food — and whether [diners] want to see the seams into some other culture, they’re welcome to do that. But we’re not trying to toe that narrative.” In the end, that might make it a deeply Momofuku project after all. | Website

The Midwest Restaurant With a Big California Crush:

Pacific Standard Time

Location: Chicago
Key players: Cosmo Goss, Erling Wu-Bower, Josh Tilden, Paul Kahan, Donnie Madia, Terry Alexander
Target open: Late fall 2017

Cosmo Goss and Erling Wu-Bower wanted to open their own restaurant. The longtime One Off Hospitality vets pled their case to boss Paul Kahan, and in the end, Pacific Standard Time was born. It’s a collaboration between Kahan’s hit-making group (Publican, Nico Osteria, Dove’s Luncheonette) and the freshly formed Underscore Hospitality. “We wanted to succeed and fail on our own,” says Goss, reflecting the ideals of partners Wu-Bower and Josh Tilden.

Beyond the big names attached, what stands out most about the California-inspired Pacific Standard Time is how it differs from other buzzy Chicago restaurants right now: It doesn’t have a tasting menu (like major hits Smyth & the Loyalist or Elske), and it’s not dark and brooding (like Roister). Instead, the space will be light, bright, plant-filled, and open for lunch, dinner, and the hours in between. “There’s a type of LA/SF dining style that’s absent in Chicago,” says Wu-Bower. “It’s relaxed, leisurely, vegetable-based, pasta-based, flatbread-based; food that’s part of a cultural conversation.” | Website

The DC Double-Header:

Brothers and Sisters and Spoken English

Location: Washington, DC
Key players: Erik Bruner-Yang, Pichet Ong
Target open: Late 2017

If there’s one thing chef Erik Bruner-Yang consistently delivers to D.C. diners, it’s fun. In the land of power lunches and steakhouses, Bruner-Yang burst onto the scene with his upbeat ramen shop Toki Undergound — it consistently drew crowds since debuting in 2011, but Bruner-Yang left in 2016. Then Bruner-Yang opened Maketto, a combination restaurant and retail space that earned a coveted place on Eater’s 2015 Best New Restaurants list and got Bruner-Yang long-listed for a James Beard Award.

Now he’s opening two new restaurants in the Line hotel, and in no way does this sound like a standard, make-some-money-doing-a-safe-hotel-restaurant play. Acclaimed pastry chef Pichet Ong will tackle desserts for the projects, and mixologist Todd Thasher will be doing drinks.

Brothers and Sisters reflects what a restaurant would be “if I were opening an American restaurant in either Japan or Taipei, but catering to Japanese people or Taiwanese people,” Bruner-Yang says. “Everything for me has to have some type of cultural context or story, so how do we create that dialogue and still be accessible to a wide range of people?” He’s thinking french toast, but made with Japanese milk bread, or soup in a bread bowl, “Panera-like,” but with Taiwanese coffin-bread. The restaurant will serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, and offer “tea time” options. There’s also a Brothers and Sisters Bar in the hotel.

Then there’s Spoken English, which will actually sit inside Bruner-Yang’s main kitchen at the Line. There, Bruner-Yang will take inspiration from Japanese tachinomiya — standing-room-only bars where folks gather over drinks and bites in an energetic, often small, space. The resulting restaurant can fit 14 folks standing at a long table (Bruner-Yang promises lower tables and chairs for those who do need or want to sit) and will feature Peking duck, whole chicken yakitori, tempura, and housemade soba and udon. The whole dining experience should only take 30 to 40 minutes. Bruner-Yang envisions Spoken English as the first or last stop during a busy night out. “It’s almost like a restaurant speakeasy,” he explains. “Everyone [will be] just standing around having a really good time.” Sounds fun, right? | Website

The Restaurant Where Every Damn Thing Is Local:

A Rake’s Progress

Location: Washington, DC
Key players: Spike Gjerde
Target open: Late 2017

The Line hotel also brings James Beard Award-winning Baltimore chef Spike Gjerde down to D.C. A Rake’s Progress marks Gjerde’s district debut, but the ethos will be familiar to anyone who knows about Gjerde's near-maniacal devotion to truly local cuisine — the chef doesn’t even use citrus at Woodberry Kitchen, because it isn’t part of the mid-Atlantic foodways. But while Gjerde is bringing his intensely farm-driven approach to D.C., the style will be a little different.

“In D.C., we’re in a beautiful, elegant, spectacular space,” he says, noting that his Baltimore space is more rustic and industrial. “We want that to reflect in the cooking. The sourcing is part of our DNA, but what we choose to put on the plate and what we don’t is driven by a sense of a little more luxury and finesse.” He’ll have an (on-trend) hearth; he’ll spit-roast meats, and he’s excited about cooking with wild game and presenting whole-roasted small animals like rabbits for carving in the dining room.

“When you’re in Baltimore, D.C. is that city down the road that you look up to,” he says. “It’s a big deal for me to go down there. I hope we fit in, I hope we’re accepted. It’s not a given. We really have to show them something and deliver. There’s some pressure, we’re not going in with anything but a lot of humility.” | Website

The Extremely Serious Delicatessen:

Larder

Location: Cleveland
Key players: Allie La Valle-Umansky, Jeremy Umansky, Kenneth Scott
Target open: Early December, 2017

A word about sandwiches: Besides being awesome, diners in this, the year of our lord, 2017, know that when chefs put their minds to it, sandwiches can be so much more than just a sad desk lunch. Sandwiches are a ~medium~. There’s Mean Sandwich in Seattle, from the team that brought Jersey City the pioneering restaurant Thirty Acres; there’s Turkey and the Wolf, which Eater’s national critic Bill Addison pointed out as a New Orleans dining highlight; there’s Cochon Butcher (NOLA, Nashville), Lardo (Portland), Noble Sandwich Co. (Austin), Fred’s Meat and Bread (Atlanta), and many more.

Soon Cleveland’s Larder, a self-described “curated delicatessen and bakery,” will join the fray. “We are working to channel the delicatessen of yesteryear, something that you would have seen a hundred years ago as essential,” says co-owner/larder master/forager Jeremy Umansky, who held a similar position at Jonathon Sawyer’s Cleveland restaurant group.

Umansky and his co-owners, chef de cuisine Kenny Scott (a former Trentina sous chef) and pastry chef/baker/CEO Allie La Valle-Umansky, are making everything from bread to charcuterie to pickles in-house. And while the menu and space might feel traditional, there’s plenty that feels utterly now: Umansky and Scott tackle pastrami using koji and sous-vide cooking; minimizing food waste is a huge priority.

But the team stresses that, at the end of the day, they want it to be comfortable and welcoming to all — even those that don’t care about the wild mushroom ketchup. “A lot of the practices and places we’ve worked have been for the rich and for the people that have money to spend on eating out,” says Scott. “We’re trying to open a place where everyone can come and enjoy good food.” | Website

The Breakout Vehicle:

Birdsong

Location: San Francisco
Key players: Chris Bleidorn
Target open: December 2017

Chris Bleidorn has an impressive CV. He was the chef de cuisine at Atelier Crenn, worked for years at Benu, and did a stint at Alinea. Now, he’s opening his first restaurant, where he’ll offer a tasting menu and a la carte options to San Francisco’s spoiled-for-choice fine dining public. “Heritage cuisine” and “Pacific Northwest cuisine” act as dual themes — not so much in terms of style, since there isn’t really a defined PNW style, but in terms of ingredients.

That means connecting with producers in Washington and Oregon as well as in the Bay Area; it also means wood-fired cooking, fermenting, dry-aging, and working with wild game, all of which Bleidorn sees as part of his quest to show “the truth in cuisine.” Birdsong, he says, is “inspired by natural habitat of the past” and will strive to achieve “harmony of the past and present.” It’s all pretty lofty, but if there’s anywhere in the country where diners would turn to a tasting menu to have an “experience that’s exciting but very real to what is being lost today,” it’s San Francisco. | Website

The Restaurant That Just Wants You to Have a Good Time:

Beholder

Location: Indianapolis
Key players: Jonathan Brooks
Target open: December 2017

Before we talk about Beholder, we should probably talk about Milktooth. Chef Jonathan Brooks’s smash-hit Indianapolis debut swept him onto the national stage. Checking in on the restaurant just before its two-year anniversary, Eater’s roving critic Bill Addison wrote that Milktooth “redefine[d] daytime dining for America.” The restaurant “exemplifies how a talented chef can transcend confining notions of success,” Addison wrote. “A world of possibilities is suddenly as clear as day.”

Where Milktooth explores the potential of daylight fare, Beholder will be Brooks’s take on a fun night out. “We want it to be sexy, delicious food,” he says, speaking also for his business partner, Josh Mazanowski. “We want people to feel sexy and comfortable in the space.” The cooking will definitely be more refined than what his fans are used to at Milktooth, but Brooks will continue to focus on the ingredients and culinary traditions of the Midwest. He’s especially excited about the wine list, and wants his restaurant to be a place where Indianapolis diners can explore wine at a reasonable price and without feeling intimidated.

While Brooks says he tossed around the idea of doing a tasting menu, for now, he’s focusing on creating a neighborhood restaurant that he hopes will generate enough interest to become an Indianapolis destination. If a tasting menu feels right, he’ll give it a go, but “if people are having a good time, we’ll leave it as is.”

“We’ll push the boundaries, it will be fun, energetic, loud, comfortable, yet making really great food,” Brooks says. “Not a lot of people have tried that in Indianapolis. I have no ambitions more than that.” | Website

Eater’s also tracking...

Northeast and Mid-Atlantic

All’s (pretty much) quiet in the Northeast, but keep an eye out for ex-Bar Tartine chef Cortney Burns’s 2018 debut in the Berkshires, and Eventide’s expansion from Maine to Boston this fall. In New York City, Hometown Bar-B-Q gets into the fried chicken game, possibly as soon as September (Hometown Fried Chicken), and two alums of the Keith McNally empire are trying their own hand at doing a French brasserie (Frenchette). Also in New York, acclaimed Italian pizzaiolo Gino Sorbillo will follow up his stateside debut, Zia Esterina, with a full-fledged pizzeria opening in September. Another expansion to look forward to in NYC: Michelin-decorated Japanese chef Toru Okuda is opening the first American location of his eponymous kaiseki tasting counter (Okuda), which has locations in Tokyo and Paris. D.C., already well represented above, also has Kwame Onwuachi’s return to look forward to; after a tough run at Shaw Bijou, the Top Chef alum can soon be found cooking at the new InterContinental.

Southeast and South

There’s a lot happening in the Carolinas: Joe and Katy Kindred aim to open Hello, Sailor, their eagerly awaited follow-up to essential North Carolina restaurant Kindred, in October. “Crazy as it may sound,” says co-owner Katy Kindred, “We are finding fun bridges in both design and menu between the Fish Camp history of the North Carolina foothills and 1950s and ’60s Coachella Valley/Southern California.”

A Chef’s Life star Vivian Howard plans a pizzeria in Wilmington, North Carolina (Benny’s Big Time Pizzeria), her first restaurant outside of her Kinston home base, while serial restaurateur Brooks Reitz will open a red-sauce-plus-pizza joint in Charleston (Melfi’s). Also in Charleston: The Xiao Bao Biscuit moves in a new direction with Tu.

Heading west to Nashville, a new restaurant from Rolf & Daughters chef-owner Philip Krajeck will also serve wood-fired pizza. And shooting over to Louisville, The Mind of a Chef star Ed Lee will debut Whiskey Dry, a bar and restaurant with an impressive social mission built into its operations.

But Virginia is the state to watch as 2018 approaches. This fall, chef Travis Milton will open a restaurant in St. Paul before turning his attention in the new year to Shovel and Pick and Simply Grand, two restaurants in Bristol where he’ll explore Appalachian cuisine.

Midwest

In Chicago, the unstoppable Boka Group will open two new restaurants: Expect Somerset, helmed by 2014 Eater Chicago Chef of the Year Lee Wolen, in mid-September, and Bellemore, led by 2015 Eater Chicago Chef of the Year Jimmy Papadopoulos, in October.

Elsewhere in the Midwest: Indianapolis restaurateur-hero Martha Hoover gives her son David full reign over the kitchen at Crispy Bird, a full-service Southern-inspired restaurant with a particular focus on fried chicken. Kate Williams’s highly anticipated Detroit restaurant Lady of the House bows, while elsewhere in Detroit, Katoi will reopen August 28 after suffering a devastating fire earlier this year. And chef Max Hardy returns to the Detroit scene in a big way: In August he debuted River Bistro, and next he plans for a rotisserie chicken spot to open this year. But the opening to watch is Honey, his 120-seat African-inspired restaurant expected to open next year.

West

Grain nerd and open-flame evangelist Kelly Whitaker (of Basta in Boulder and formerly of Bill Addison-approved Denver pizzeria Cart-Driver) plans an ambitious new Denver restaurant called the Wolf’s Tailor; he’s shooting for the end of the year. This fall, former Betony chef Bryce Shuman will open Primrose at the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas. San Francisco powerhouse Dominique Crenn will debut a wine bar (Bar Crenn), while Lazy Bear’s David Barzelay will finally open his more casual, cocktail-driven True Laurel in October.

In the Pacific Northwest, longtime Eater National 38 member Kachka has expansion plans for Portland; and a Canlis alum plans a much-needed destination restaurant for vacation spot Port Townsend (Finistere). In Seattle, soba master Mutsuko Soma crowdfunds her way to transforming Art of the Table into Kamonegi.

After what feels like years of rumors, April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman bring their rock-and-roll-meets-meat-and-nice-veg aesthetic (oh, and a Beastie Boy) to LA with Hearth & Hound, opening in September. Fellow New Yorkers Will Guidara and Daniel Humm are hard at work on the Nomad, a new location of their Manhattan hotel and restaurant. Angelenos can also look forward to yet another import: The merry breadmakers of Tartine Manufactory, the hit SF bakery and restaurant, partnered with Arizona’s pizza legend Chris Bianco to bring an ambitious multiconcept space to DTLA; given the project’s scope, it’s hard to believe projections put the opening this fall, let alone in 2018. Meanwhile, Jessica Koslow’s huge second restaurant Tel, dedicated to the foods of the Jewish diaspora, has also been pushed to next year. Still! LA! So much!

Read More: Eater’s Fall Preview 2017

Hillary Dixler Canavan is a senior editor at Eater.
Editor: Erin DeJesus

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