2026 Hot List Restaurants

Condé Nast Traveler published its 2026 Hot List on April 23, naming a new class of destination restaurants it says travelers should book around this year. (cntraveler.com) The restaurant list is part of the 30th edition of the magazine’s annual Hot List, a roundup assembled by Condé Nast Traveler’s global editors and contributors after a year of reporting on new hotels, restaurants, and cruises. (cntraveler.com; travel.yahoo.com) The rollout spotlights openings “from San Francisco to Singapore,” framing restaurants as travel anchors rather than just local dining news. (msn.com; travel.yahoo.com) That fits a wider travel-media push toward food-led itineraries. Condé Nast Traveller’s separate guide to 2026 food destinations, published in December 2025, argued that travelers were increasingly choosing cities for their dining scenes, including places outside the usual Paris-and-Rome circuit. (timeout.com) The restaurants Condé Nast Traveler highlighted this year range from small dining rooms to hotel-backed fine-dining projects with established chefs behind them. Its editors described the class as a mix of “tiny but mighty” rooms and more formal openings with “prestigious pedigrees.” (travel.yahoo.com) Among the named restaurants is Kabawa in Manhattan’s East Village, where chef Paul Carmichael leads Momofuku Restaurant Group’s first restaurant outside its usual Asian-flavored lane. Condé Nast Traveler described it as a personal showcase for Carmichael’s Caribbean cooking. (travel.yahoo.com) Another pick is La Perlita in Lima, which the magazine cast as a turn away from the city’s long association with molecular gastronomy and toward a louder, more casual taberna format. The write-up focused on dishes including tiradito, ceviche with rocoto pepper, and caigua stuffed with stewed meat. (travel.yahoo.com) The timing also lands in a crowded season for restaurant rankings and travel guides. Food-and-travel outlets including Eater, Forbes, and World’s 50 Best have all published 2026 dining forecasts or destination lists in recent months, giving new openings more power to shape where affluent travelers spend on trips. (eater.com; forbes.com; theworlds50best.com) For readers planning 2026 travel now, the Hot List works less like a local best-of package and more like a booking map: a list of new rooms, new tables, and new routes worth crossing a city—or an ocean—to reach. (cntraveler.com; travel.yahoo.com)