Feel like you’re being watched? You are — by the chefs and owners on the list of our 50 favorite restaurants of 2026. More than anyone, they notice what we order and how much we’re willing to spend. They know we want to be back in bed by 9 p.m., full of fancy pork, and it’s only possible if they abandon the tableside spiel. And yes … they can tell we’re on GLP-1s.
To make sense of this year in dining, we surveyed a dozen of those proprietors from around the country about how we eat today, from the rise of the 5 p.m. reservation to the death of the second martini. Oh, and of course, what does the A.I. future look like in your favorite dining rooms? Here’s what they had to say:
Nearly one in five Americans have tried a GLP-1. How is it changing dining?
Sachi Statz (Tin Tin, Miami): I joke about Ozempic all the time, but it does make a difference in how much people order. Before, you’d see people have a couple appetizers, a couple entrees, dessert, maybe wine and cocktails. Now it’s more like, “We’ll share an appetizer. We’ll share two entrees.” Maybe they skip dessert. Maybe they get a little after-dinner drink and call it a night.
Sarah Lewitinn (Jacaranda, Los Angeles): I tried Ozempic out of curiosity, and I was extremely surprised that I had zero interest in drinking alcohol. So when I’m seeing guests on the floor and they’re not eating as much and they’re not drinking, I know why.
Jon Sybert (Rye Bunny, Washington, D.C.): We’ve had someone working the counter say, “Hey, you guys might need a few more plates,” and they’ll say, “Oh no, we’re all on Ozempic. Don’t worry about it.” So there’s going to be two entrees and two small plates between four people and that’s absolutely fine. However people want to eat is fine by me.
So … is that why no one drinks anymore?
Daniel Patterson (Jacaranda, Los Angeles): People just don’t drink as much. It’s one of the biggest challenges. Some of it is GLP-1s, some of it is health. You have all these lovely people who won’t buy any beverages. You want them in the restaurant, but it’s hard to make it work.
Jill Tyler (Rye Bunny, Washington, D.C.): People are being more conscious. We have regulars who we’ve known for 10 years. They’re like, “We’re not drinking on weekdays anymore.” So some days they’re ordering Phony Negronis, and then they come in on the weekend and get their bottle of wine.
Lewittin: A lot of people want the experience of drinking without the drinking. They still want to feel like they’re doing something. We make all of our nonalcoholic drinks in house, and when people hear that we forage for some of the ingredients, they get excited.
Adolfo Garcia Jr. (Dolfy’s, New Orleans): I don’t feel that way here in New Orleans. Even the people who are health-conscious will come out and have a drink. But our N.A. sales are much larger than they were at my dad’s restaurants. He’s owned restaurants here for 20 years. He looked at our N.A. sales last week and was shocked.
Have we passed peak influencer? Or do you only wish we have?
Victor Santos (Tin Tin, Miami): Social media has a huge impact now. Whether it’s an influencer coming in on their own or somebody we’ve paid to come in and promote us, people will walk through the door and say: “I saw that dessert on Instagram. I saw that sandwich on TikTok. I need to get that.” You want them to come for that one thing, stay for more and then come back.
Lewitinn: We get approached all the time asking to do a collab. I’m like, “No!” I don’t need to pay you to write about my restaurant. Give me the money and enjoy it. People that pay move the dial way more than people who get a free meal.
Margarito Pérez (Paprika, Austin, Texas): There are 20 of you every day in my inbox asking for something. At first it was funny. Then it was aggravating. Maybe we can afford to do this, but I just don’t want to. I don’t think it’s too much to ask you to buy a $4 taco.
Six p.m. is the new 8 p.m., we hear. When do diners want to eat?
Jimmy Bannos Jr. (Kouklas Greek Eatery, Niles, Ill.): 5 p.m., the floodgates are open. It’s a madhouse. By 9 or 9:30 p.m., we’re winding down.
Lewitinn: They’re coming at 5 p.m. Their reservation will be at 5:30 p.m. and they’ll show up at 5 p.m. while we’re still in the middle of a meeting.
Sybert: In D.C., it turned into 6:30 p.m. five years ago. We’ve been pulling teeth trying to turn it back to, like, 8 p.m. If we can get people in after 9 p.m., that’s awesome.
Garcia Jr.: People are trying to get in at 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. You say, “What about 8:15 p.m.?” They say, “Ah, that’s too late.” Really, 8:15 p.m.? But we’re starting to get people in their late 20s and early 30s taking 9 o’clock reservations. They turn it into a night: “After this, we’re going to the bar.”
Can we leave the restaurant spiel in 2026?
Theo Adley (Heretik, Denver): We don’t spiel until we’re spieled to. I don’t think there’s much value in rubbing that kind of thing in our guests’ faces. “Have you dined with us before?” I don’t ever want to hear. It makes me feel like a dummy. I want guests to be able to take the menu at face value. And if they want to talk about it for 45 minutes, we have all the ammunition to do it.
Sybert: The most annoying thing in the world is when you sit down at a restaurant and the menu is appetizers and entrees, a very basic format, and somebody tries to talk to you about how this works. You’re like … I’ve eaten before. I actually have a fairly decent idea of what’s going on here.
Garcia Jr.: I don’t like going to a restaurant and the server says, “Have you ever eaten here before?” You say no, and they’re like, “OK, well, this is how the menu works. Our appetizers are smaller, and then our sides are meant to be ordered with an entree … ” Man, I’ve been in a restaurant before. What are we talking about
Everybody wants “value” now. What does that mean?
Pérez: You can come out and buy one taco with us for four or five dollars, and depending on your appetite, that might be enough to satiate you. If you want to make a more robust meal out of it, you can get four tacos and have a great time. You’re still looking at around 20 bucks with a drink and tip.
Ned Baldwin (Zoli, New York City): We use the expression “vibes pricing” sometimes. There’s math, and then we look around the city and ask what comparable restaurants are charging for a similar item.
Arthur Gregorian (Yerord Mas Bakery and Deli, Glendale, Calif.): If a customer pays for something and feels like they didn’t get their money’s worth, obviously that’s a problem. For example, I thought that if a burger could be turned into a luxury item that costs $40, we could do the same with basturma brisket. People got mad about that.
Will artificial intelligence come for restaurants? Has it already?
Pérez: I’m really proud to have never generated any A.I. content on social media. Our menus are Risographed by a local printer. Our big storefront sign is hand-painted. All these little elements would be a lot easier and maybe a lot more affordable if we used A.I., but I’m proud that we’ve been able to do it our own way. I briefly used A.I. to help me scale recipes, but our food relies on so many variables — how hot the pot is running, the humidity in the air, how much meat we’re throwing in — that ultimately I ditched it and went back to doing it by feel.
Adley: It’s a double-edged sword. The amount of menial stuff it’s made easier (scheduling, breaking down profits and losses, developing strategies around labor or operational issues) has been really helpful. I don’t need to spend two and a half hours drafting a month’s worth of schedules anymore. You write the rules in, you write the variables in, and there you go. If that allows my management team to make their days more efficient and spend a little more time with their families, I’m all about it. I don’t want our guests dealing with a bot, though. That’s horrible.
Baldwin: I work with and happily empower a team of much younger cooks, and it’s thrilling, exhilarating and terrifying to see the way they apprehend new information, process it and put it into practice. I keep going back to that scene in “The Matrix” where Neo sits down in the chair, they jam the thing into him and he goes, “I know kung fu.” It’s like that, but with some arcane kind of fermentation or a Japanese sauce.
Sybert: Restaurants are blessedly one of the places where I don’t know that A.I. is ever going to infiltrate in the same way it will other industries. A.I. can’t cook. A.I. can’t be hospitable. There’s no real substitute for actual human interaction.
In the era of proteinmaxxing, what is the next hot protein?
Garcia Jr.: Pork is on the up. Fifteen years ago, you could stop 20 people on the street and nobody knew what Wagyu was. Now all 20 would know. I think Ibérico pork is headed in that direction. In five years, everyone’s going to know it.
Adley: I’ve always considered mackerel to be a black-belt-level fish for most people. And there has been one on every single damn table since we opened.
Santos This community loves pork. We try to have it somewhere on the menu, whether it’s an appetizer or a main course. Trust me, if I could put pork in the dessert, I would.
Dining and Cooking