Devoted followers of the Detroit West African pop-up Little Liberia will quickly have the ability to take pleasure in chef Ameneh Marhaba’s cooking at a brick-and-mortar restaurant. Marhaba rapidly constructed a following in the neighborhood when she began sharing her Liberian and Lebanese dishes in 2016 at festivals and venues like Brewery Faisan. In 2022, Marhaba gained the Hatch Detroit contest, which offered funding for the opening of Little Liberia. She suspects this would be the first Liberian restaurant within the metropolis. Little Liberia sits on the identical block of Woodward Avenue the place an rising variety of African eating places like Baobab Fare and Yum Village have opened in recent times. Marhaba tells Eater she’s “excited to create an area the place our friends and fellow immigrants can expertise the essence of West Africa.” She’ll serve conventional dishes like seafood palm butter, potato greens, and chuck rice and gravy.
An off-the-cuff seafood restaurant from a star New Orleans chef
Acamaya
New Orleans, LA
Opening: Spring
Acamaya is the primary solo enterprise of chef Ana Sofia Castro, the culinary wiz behind the fashionable Mexican tasting menu spot Lengua Madre in New Orleans, which has acquired nearly each accolade on the market, together with a spot on Bon Appétit’s Finest New Eating places checklist in 2022. Lengua Madre lately closed and Castro is branching out to debut Acamaya, a extra informal Mexican mariscos restaurant that she’s going to run along with her sister, Lydia, in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood. The menu will function dishes that lean into the bounty of the Gulf of Mexico: grilled octopus in walnut salsa negra, cold-smoked al pastor cobia tostadas, and inexperienced rice with clams. The full of life, laid-back spirit of Acamaya celebrates Castro’s adopted hometown of New Orleans and her native Mexico in equal components.
A brand new undertaking from the duo behind a New York hotspot
Penny
New York, NY
Opening: Spring
When you’ve scrolled Instagram a lot previously yr, likelihood is you lingered over a photograph of the Matilda-like chocolate cake at Claud, a wildly well-liked East Village wine bar with a few of the hardest tables on the town to nab. Now Chase Sinzer and Joshua Pinsky, who met whereas working for Momofuku in 2014, are opening a uncooked bar within the house instantly above their hit restaurant. Penny will serve crudo, oysters, and cooked shellfish. Like at Claud, Sinzer is curating the wine checklist to function each basic and up to date bottles, with a highlight on champagne and white wine to pair with the nautical menu. Ian Chaplin of Edsel Co is designing the house, which may have all counter seating so friends have a front-row seat to the shucking motion on the uncooked bar. Solely time will inform what Penny’s breakout Instagram star dish may be.
A Khmer-Chinese language restaurant from Portland restaurant veterans
Oun Lidos
Portland, ME
Opening: Spring
The opening of Oun Lidos, the second restaurant from the staff behind well-liked Portland Vietnamese mainstay Cong Tu Bot, is an efficient sufficient purpose to guide a visit to Maine this spring. Oun Lidos shall be a multi-level restaurant in Outdated Port, with an all-day takeout counter providing Chinatown-style baked items, rice plates, and boba to-go. Chef Bounahcree Kim will transfer over from Cong Tu Bot to helm the kitchen and serve the Khmer-Chinese language meals of his childhood, with dishes like iced jello salad with coconut sauce and mi ka thung—a contemporary vast noodle stir fry with shredded beef, 5 spice gravy, and pickled mustard greens. Whereas Oun Lidos completes development, Kim is testing out further menu objects like a bahn chao waffle and a bao breakfast sandwich throughout a “breakfast residency” at Cong Tu Bot. The Oun Lidos staff of Kim plus Cong Tu Bot homeowners Jessica Sheahan and Vien Doubui will open the takeout counter in February with plans to debut full service later this spring.
