Roma tomatoes are cheap and jammy right now, feta is doing more sauce work than garnish work, and every menu I’ve looked at this week wants to cook something over an open flame. That’s the mood: unfussy, a little smoky, and happy to borrow from three continents in one dish. It’s also a huge week for restaurant openings, from a Greenwich Village tavern with five kinds of borscht to a Filipino speakeasy tucked behind a new Lincoln Park spot, so there’s plenty to book alongside whatever you’re cooking at home.
Baked feta pasta has been around since the original Finnish uunifetapasta went viral years ago, but it never really left, and this summer it’s back in heavy rotation. A block of feta roasts in a dish of olive oil and tomatoes until it turns soft and almost saucy, then gets stirred together with pasta and a splash of the starchy cooking water. It’s the kind of dish that looks like more effort than it is, which is exactly why it keeps coming back.
Budget Bytes swaps in Roma tomatoes for the traditional cherry or grape tomatoes, which roast down just as sweetly for a fraction of the cost. The real trick, wherever you get the recipe, is not skimping on the pasta water. That starchy liquid is what pulls the oil, feta, and tomato juices together into an actual sauce instead of a puddle.
Photo: Budget Bytes
The mashup recipe of the moment is a smash burger pressed straight into a tortilla instead of a bun. Seasoned ground beef gets flattened onto a flour tortilla and cooked meat side down, so the beef browns and crisps while the tortilla soaks up all that flavor before it even gets flipped and topped with cheese.
What makes this worth trying at home is how forgiving it is. If the patty separates from the tortilla when you flip it, just set it back in place and keep going, since it’s already done its job of building a crust. Top it the way you’d top a diner burger, lettuce, pickles, a swipe of Thousand Island, and you’ve got a handheld that splits the difference between burger night and taco night.
Photo: Budget Bytes
This is the copycat recipe I get asked about most, a riff on the Nobu appetizer that turns sushi rice into golden, pan-fried squares before topping them with a creamy, spicy tuna mixture. It reads as restaurant food because, well, it is restaurant food, just made accessible with a rice cooker and a skillet instead of a sushi counter.
The technique that actually matters here is the chill. Seasoned rice gets pressed firmly into a tray and refrigerated for a few hours so it holds together when it’s sliced and fried. Skip that step and you’ll end up with rice that falls apart in the pan instead of crisping into the little golden bites that make this dish worth the wait.
Photo: Cooking With Ayeh
Summer dessert doesn’t need an oven, and this vintage-style pie proves it. Strawberry gelatin, whipped topping, fresh strawberries, and a graham cracker crust chill together into something that lands somewhere between a strawberry pie and a Jello mousse, and it comes together in about fifteen minutes of actual hands-on work.
The one thing to get right is the fruit. Pat your strawberries dry before folding them in, since fresh berries release a surprising amount of moisture that can turn the filling watery. Dice them small too, so every slice gets an even distribution instead of a few lucky bites.
Photo: Suzy Hazelwood / Pexels
Gusi is a two-floor modern Eastern European restaurant and bar that just opened on Sixth Avenue, and it’s doing something I don’t see enough of in New York right now, taking pierogi and pelmeni seriously without making them precious. There are five rotating borscht preparations alone, which tells you where the kitchen’s priorities are.
Downstairs is a candlelit tavern bar built around infused vodka, natural wine, and rare spirits, while the upstairs dining room does hand-painted ceilings and original art. It’s the kind of split personality that makes a restaurant good for very different nights out, a quick vodka and a plate of dumplings, or a proper sit-down dinner.
Photo: Kuiyibo Campos / Pexels
Rumi’s Kitchen has been an Atlanta institution for over a decade, and it’s finally making its West Coast debut inside Westfield Century City. The menu is built around Persian hospitality, think shirazi salad, fried eggplant, and kabobs over saffron rice, and this location comes with two private dining rooms and a patio that overlooks Santa Monica Boulevard.
What I like about this expansion is that it isn’t a watered-down version of the original for a new market. The team has crafted menu items specifically for Los Angeles diners, which suggests they’re paying attention to what the city actually wants rather than just exporting the Atlanta playbook wholesale.
Photo: Rumi’s Kitchen
Bobo is a Filipino speakeasy opening behind Muhājir, the new Lincoln Park restaurant from the Lilac Tiger team that’s already drawing attention for its live-fire cooking and spice-route menu. Bobo takes its cues from the energy of Filipino street markets, with its own cocktail list and a la carte dishes like kare kare-style prawns and kinilaw.
The pairing makes sense once you know the team. Jacob Dela Cruz, who leads the food at Bobo, is also a partner at Muhājir, and the two spaces share an address and a point of view even though they’re doing very different things after dark. If you’re booking Muhājir, plan to wander back for a nightcap.
Photo: Muhājir
Sargent comes from the husband-and-wife team behind Lucian Books and Wine, and it’s opening right on the Eastside Beltline in the New City Properties development, alongside 3 Parks Wine and the Forth Hotel. Chef Jason Paolini is running a wood-fired, American menu with French leanings, and there’s a full bar plus a retail section stocked with books.
Named for the American portrait artist John Singer Sargent, the space seats around 150 and adds a private dining room and a covered patio to the Beltline’s growing restaurant row. Given the pedigree behind it, this is one of the more anticipated openings on this stretch of Atlanta in a while.
Photo: Karl Rayson / Pexels
Siti is chef and owner Laila Bazahm’s Southeast Asian restaurant tucked inside the Frances Modern Inn, and it’s earned Michelin recognition for bringing the culinary traditions of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines together on one menu. Dishes like lobster chili crab, hamachi, laksa, and lamb kolae give a sense of how wide that range actually is.
Bazahm runs the restaurant with her wife and business partner, Laura Freedman, and the boutique hotel setting gives it a quieter, more personal feel than a typical East Austin opening. It’s a good reminder that some of the city’s most interesting cooking is happening in rooms you wouldn’t necessarily walk past.
Photo: Siti
Terry Black’s is a genuine Central Texas barbecue institution, with locations in Austin, Dallas, Waco, Fort Worth, and Lockhart, and Nashville is about to become its first stop outside the state entirely. The Germantown location is also the brand’s largest to date at 10,000 square feet, with a spacious outdoor bar, patio, stage, and beer garden.
For a city that already takes its hot chicken and barbecue seriously, a Texas-caliber operation moving in is worth paying attention to. This isn’t a small test location either, it’s a full commitment to the market, and that scale should tell you something about how confident the Black family is that Nashville is ready for it.
Photo: Terry Black’s BBQ
Nick DiGiovanni became the most-subscribed cooking YouTuber on the platform this year, surpassing Gordon Ramsay, and his main channel has fully leaned into food entertainment, big-swing challenges, viral formats, and cinematic production rather than straightforward tutorials.
What’s worth watching is how he’s now splitting his output. His newer channel, Nick’s Kitchen, slows everything down, softer lighting, classic dishes like mac and cheese and roast chicken, made for people who actually want to cook along rather than just be entertained. It’s a smart hedge for a channel this big, and it’s worth subscribing to both.
Photo: Vitaly Gariev / Pexels
Ethan Chlebowski’s whole channel is built on a simple premise, that learning the how and why behind a technique makes you a genuinely better cook, not just someone with more recipes memorized. Episodes dig into things like why salt matters so much, how gluten actually develops, or why a smash burger browns differently than a grilled one.
With more than 1.7 million subscribers, he’s proof that there’s real appetite for cooking content that treats the audience like it wants to understand the mechanics, not just follow along. If you’ve ever wanted the science teacher version of a cooking channel, this is it.
Photo: Jonathan Borba / Pexels
This four-episode spinoff of Chef’s Table narrows the lens to noodles specifically, and it’s a smart move, since the format has always worked best when it goes deep instead of wide. It profiles L.A.’s Evan Funke, London-based Guirong Wei, Italian dried-pasta specialist Peppe Guida, and Oakland’s Nite Yun, each one approaching wheat and rice noodles from a completely different cultural tradition.
It’s still classic Chef’s Table in tone, gorgeously shot, unhurried, more interested in a chef’s personal story than in a straightforward recipe demo. If you’ve already burned through the main series, this is the most focused and satisfying spinoff so far.
Photo: Netflix
Header photo: Muhamad Guruh Budi Hartono / Pexels — free to use under the Pexels License.
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