This week, we announced the honorees of the 2026 Detroit Free Press/Chevy Detroit Top 10 New Restaurants & Dining Experiences list. The list highlights the depth and diversity of metro Detroit’s restaurant scene, with American restaurants in Detroit, a Caribbean joint Downriver, an Afghan spot in Dearborn and more. Here, we’ve gathered the full list in one place (so that you don’t have to).
No. 10: Blue Kuna Smokehouse, Plymouth
In 2016, chef Randall Kuna’s first foray into the world of sweet, smoky, fire-inspired flavors began with a line of vegan barbecue sauces made out of his home kitchen. A decade later, the brand has expanded with Blue Kuna Smokehouse in Plymouth, Kuna’s hometown. Today, the barbecue sauces sit on the counter of the cozy barbecue joint for diners to slather on racks of ribs and chewy burnt ends. At the Smokehouse, Kuna envelopes chicken, pork, beef and fish in smoke from dried cherry, apple and oak woods from a lumber kiln in Redford.
Read the full review.
No. 9: Ariana Afghan Restaurant, Dearborn
Ariana Afghan Restaurant has come to fill the void for Afghan cuisine in metro Detroit. It started in 2024 as a market on Warren Avenue, then in 2025 came the food truck, where cooks grilled lean tikka kebabs over charcoal and flipped flatbreads on a flat-top grill. Later that year, the restaurant opened, making the cuisine more widely available to diners beyond the home cook. At the restaurant, ornate dishes with colorful designs like fanciful flowers in a yellow and blue motif serve as resting places for equally vibrant dishes, like Qabuli Palau, a plate of long-grain rice with sweet, plump raisins, thin slivers of cooked carrots and a fork-tender lamb shank.
Read the full review.
No. 8: El Amanecer, Ecorse
Puerto Rican cuisine has spread its roots throughout the region in recent years. El Amanecer, the Ecorse beacon of food from el Borinquen, brings a new option Downriver. During the warmer months, the outdoor patio is a relaxed place to fill up on Puerto Rican street foods, such as alcapurrias, mashed plantains filled with ground beef and fried into cones, and empanadas stuffed with beef, cheese or shrimp. The true charm of El Amanecer, though, is its hospitality. Owner Alberto Ruiz greets each table with genuine care, and a whole lot of Puerto Rican swag.
Read the full review.
No. 7: Detroit Jollof, Detroit
If ever a case needed to be made that excellent food can be served outside the confines of the expected, it is Detroit Jollof, the newest addition to the Midtown Detroit ghost kitchen Motor City Food Co. You’ll place your order online, or at a kiosk in the sterile Motor City Food Co. vestibule. Under bright fluorescent lights with pops of blue on the walls, you order from a menu on a touchscreen. This futuristic approach yields dishes made with Nigerian cooking traditions that date back centuries. Jollof, a spiced rice dish with a distinctive reddish hue tinted by tomatoes and fiery scotch bonnets, curry powder and paprika is served alongside flavorful meats, like beef slow-cooked in a pepper sauce, baked hen quarters or spicy mackerel splashed with tomato sauce.
Read the full review.
No. 6: Chenin, Detroit
After six years operating as Albena, arguably the city’s finest dining experience, serving a multicourse tasting menu to just eight diners a night, a small space at the ground level of The Siren hotel in downtown Detroit has let its hair down. Now Chenin, a trendy new wine bar, it sheds its formality with approachable bottles of natural wines to anchor the wine program, while deep-dish pizzas (more like focaccia topped with dollops of ricotta and pepperoni rounds), fresh pastas and meaty sandwiches comprise the food offerings. Pizza bedazzled with creamy swirls of pistachio ricotta, sandwiches with thin slices of mortadella and ice cream spiked with booze. When you summarize the menu here, it comes down to food that can feel like a kid’s menu, made for adults.
Read the full review.
No. 5: Bar Gabi, Hazel Park
Bar Gabi is a homecoming for chef-owners Gabriel and Gabriela Botezan — a return to the husband-and-wife duo’s Romanian roots after years cooking in some of metro Detroit’s most prized Italian kitchens. In a region where Eastern European cuisine is sparse, apart from the remaining artifacts of Polish migration in Detroit and Hamtramck, the Botezans’ cooking reignites the senses with a fresh perspective. Flavors here are bold and bright. Langos, a flatbread that’s deep-fried to a golden, crispy, chewy funnel cake-like disk, is made savory with an herbaceous topping of tangy sour cream, salty feta and tears of fresh parsley. It’s made even more dynamic with a drizzle of the pungent garlic sauce your server will caution packs a potent punch.
Read the full review.
No. 4: Blue Goat, Royal Oak
From the family that brought us Astoria Pastry Shop, the Greek bakery that has anchored Detroit’s Greektown neighborhood for more than 50 years, comes Blue Goat Royal Oak, a modern approach to Greek dining. A new generation is keeping the Teftsis family’s hospitality legacy alive with Blue Goat, and it’s their most personal undertaking yet. The menu is entirely and unapologetically Greek. Here, servers shout, “opa!” as they ignite plates of saganaki into flames. Meatballs rolled with parsley are served on a bed of bright tzatziki and sweet, crunchy pickles and onions, and beets are a gift, like dessert at the start of your meal.
Read the full review.
No. 3: Wilder’s, Birmingham
Wilder’s is an elegant ode to the Midwestern supper clubs of yore. A part of the Chickpea Hospitality portfolio, the Birmingham restaurant is a sibling to former Free Press Restaurants of the Year Forest and Leila, and 2018 Restaurant of the Year Classic, Phoenecia. The menu is exactly what you’d expect of a callback to the underground restaurants of the ’30s and ’40s. In a Caesar salad, crisp Romaine leaves are buried under a coating of fresh parmesan curls. There’s a selection of oysters — both garlicky Rockefeller and raw on the half shell ― and steak is the centerpiece.
Read the full review.
No. 2: Tacos Wuey, Detroit
Tacos Wuey is uniquely located in a part of southwest Detroit where existing charm meets new sensibilities. Positioned a stone’s throw from some of Mexicantown’s longest-standing eateries, the new restaurant by well-known chef Eddie Vargas builds upon this pocket of town shaped by Mexican cuisine and culture. Tacos Wuey straddles old and new worlds, ushering ancient culinary traditions into a modern era, without compromising their integrity. Ingredients that are less common on this side of the border but sought after in markets throughout Mexico show up on the menu here. Guacamole can be decorated with chapulines — Mexican grasshoppers that have been toasted and seasoned with salt and lime — and tacos can be stuffed with orejas, chewy pig ears.
Read the full review.
No. 1: The Franklin Oyster Bar and Eatery, Franklin
Jay Farner and Nicole McGrail had the flicker of an idea for a neighborhood oyster bar, inspired by cities like Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, where historic homes have been reimagined as bijou restaurants. With the floorboards creaking underfoot, a former 1800s carriage shop in downtown Franklin fit the profile for the dreamy dwelling that would become a place where residents and visitors alike could slurp oysters in the evening, or start their days with a cup of coffee on weekends. And so in the summer of 2025, what previously operated for 16 years as the tavern The Franklin Grill, would become The Franklin Oyster Bar and Eatery. When it came to the oysters, delicacies for landlocked Midwesterners, it was important they’d be able to assure diners that The Franklin’s offerings would be fresh and top quality. The team turned to the Highland Park seafood wholesaler, Motor City Seafood Co., which sources the restaurant’s oysters from terroirs with the world’s best, like Canada’s Prince Edward Island and Washington state.
Read the full review.
Restaurant of the Year Classic: Clawson Steakhouse, Clawson
Restaurants across the country revere the Golden Age of hospitality, from the post-Prohibition supper club to the 1950s luxe steakhouse, a period often replicated in branding and aesthetic. Few of the original restaurants that inspire this revival live on to tell the story of the time period, let alone to continue the traditions that defined it. The Clawson Steakhouse, the Detroit Free Press/Chevy Detroit 2026 Restaurant of the Year Classic, is a relic of the late 1950s, and models an art of dining that has been lost through the sifter of time. Opened in 1958, the steakhouse has been owned by the Alex family for almost seven decades. Before that, it was Feeny’s Lounge. It has retained staffers for decades who, to some diners, feel like familiar aunts, parents or grandparents. The oversized menu and its list of steak, chops, veal, poultry, seafood and pasta has been minimally edited over the years, and the Mark James Band has been entertaining diners since the ’80s.
Read the full review.
Restaurant of the Year: Roses Fine Food, Detroit
For about six years, beginning in 2014, Roses was a sought-after brunch joint, where the frittata was froufrou, and so was everything else. The place was a joy, derivative of little more than the classic American diner and the classic American home, where recipes are passed down by family members and the smell of batter on a grill fills the air. The pancakes were the star, golden, eggy and doughy and a love letter to chef-owner Molly Mitchell’s Grandpa Richard. Like most businesses though, Roses went through an identity crisis in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic and ultimately closed its doors. In 2025, the Jefferson Avenue restaurant reopened as a dinner diner and its Second Coming feels like a grown-up version of the last, without any loss of whimsy.
Read the full review.
Interested looking back at all of the Top-10 and Restaurant of the Year winners over the year? Check out the Free Press Dining Guide.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: The 2026 Top 10 New Restaurants & Dining Experiences in metro Detroit
Reporting by Lyndsay C. Green, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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