Food & Wine names its 2026 Best New Chefs class

Food & Wine Best New Chefs 2026 names 14 chefs across 10 restaurants, revealed Tuesday night at ZZ's Club in New York with Joel McHale hosting.

The list runs from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. Omar Tate and Cybille St. Aude-Tate take the honor for Honeysuckle in Philadelphia; Carlos Delgado for Causa and Masako Morishita for Perry's, both in Washington, DC; Zachary and Hannah Welton for Weltons Tiny Bakeshop in Charleston.

Charlie Mitchell earns recognition for Saga in New York, and Zubair Mohajir with Rishi Kumar for Mirra in Chicago, two very different rooms that both made the cut this year. On the West Coast, Quynh Nguyen and Gian Carlo Reinardy of The Paper Bridge in Portland and Melissa López of Barra Santos in Los Angeles round out a class heavier on pairs and partnerships than solo names, a shift the magazine has been tracking for a few years now.

A class built on partnerships and small rooms, not solo star power.

A list built on kitchens, not just names

Several winners trained under chefs the award has already recognized: Food & Wine's editors pointed to lineages running through Nancy Silverton, Daniel Boulud and David Chang, part of the point of a list now in its 38th year. Two of this year's honorees, Omar Tate and Cybille St. Aude-Tate, are also James Beard Award nominees, giving Honeysuckle back-to-back seasons of attention.

The dinner drew restaurateurs and media alongside the winners, and this year's celebration is open to the public for the first time in the award's history, a $395 ticket replacing what had been an industry-only room.

What the list tends to predict

Best New Chefs has a track record of flagging cooks before wider fame catches up, and this year's spread of small, partner-run rooms over big-brand kitchens fits a pattern also visible in this year's StarChefs Rising Stars class. Whether any of the 14 open a second restaurant, or a cookbook deal, on the strength of tonight's title is the question worth revisiting in a year.