The World’s Best Latin American Food

The CTA rumbles overhead while the chef rattles off ingredients like an auctioneer building to a close. This intimate Uptown tasting menu spins Mexican cuisine through a restless, personal lens, moving from "chips and salsa" rendered as salsa verde jelly and tortilla crumble to a lamb tartare tostada seasoned al pastor-style. Counter seats put you close enough to watch the small team work. It holds a Michelin star and landed on the New York Times Restaurant List for 2025.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The Banchets Winner · Best New Restaurant
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Norman Fenton

Plant-based Peruvian tasting menus in Shaw sounds like a premise that requires a disclaimer, yet Mita holds a Michelin star and a James Beard nomination for Best New Restaurant. The chef's team pulls from across Latin America, so the flavors run from Andean to coastal without apology. Two tasting menu lengths mean you can commit at whatever level feels reasonable on a Tuesday. The bar program is serious enough that Punch named the team among its best new bartenders.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Punch Best New Bartenders · Lou Bernard
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Best New Restaurant

The 360-plus vinyl records spinning through dinner are chef Ricardo Chaneton's, many inherited from his father, and they set the mood better than any playlist a consultant could choose. This upscale modern Latin American restaurant in Central holds a Michelin star and a spot on Asia's 50 Best list, and it's one of very few places in Hong Kong cooking seriously from that part of the world. Counter seats facing the kitchen are the ones to request.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The 50 #46 · Asia's 50 Best Restaurants
3. Eater The 38 Best Hong Kong Restaurants

A one-Michelin-star tasting menu restaurant near Plaza de Legazpi, small and minimalist, with paintings lining the walls and a playlist that shifts with each course. The kitchen leans contemporary with a genuine Latin American thread, Colombia and Mexico surfacing in ways that feel personal rather than decorative. The menu itself changes five times a year by season, so the room you sit down in one visit is a different meal entirely the next.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Chef Gabriela Chamorro spent years flying Emirates routes before trading the cabin for a supper club in her own home, which eventually outgrew the living room and landed here: a Central American restaurant inside the Anantara Downtown Dubai Hotel, ranked among MENA's 50 Best Restaurants. Terracotta walls, a birdcage bar, and an open kitchen carry the warmth of that original setup into something considerably more spacious, with pupusas and clay-pot short ribs doing the heavy lifting.

1. The 50 #43 · MENA's 50 Best Restaurants
2. Eater The 27 Best Restaurants in Dubai

The kitchen opens directly into the dining room at this Michelin-starred creative restaurant in Marbella, where the chef's obsession is liquid: pure juices, concentrates, and the essence squeezed from ingredients before the solids ever reach your plate. The cooking moves between Europe and Latin America without fully belonging to either. His wife runs the floor and the wine. A Chef's Table for four gets dishes nobody else sees.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Two counter seats wrap an open kitchen near the Sant Antoni market, putting the whole creative process at arm's length. Slow & Low is a tasting-menu restaurant with a Michelin star and a globe-trotting sensibility, pulling from Mexico, Argentina, Thailand, and Spain in a way that sounds chaotic but somehow holds together. The chefs double as servers and walk you through each dish, which at this kind of place is either charming or a lot, depending on your mood.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Eight counter seats and a semi-private room for ten make ZEA one of Taipei's more intimate dinner reservations. The chef, Argentine-born and globally seasoned, weaves Latin American technique through Taiwanese ingredients, with his partner running the front of house. The result is a small, unhurried tasting experience that feels more like a dinner party than a restaurant, and holds a Michelin star.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A bistro with a double terrace in the heart of L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue's Carré des Arts, Solelh earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand for food that earns it without making a fuss about it. The chef works an open kitchen and a binchotan grill, coaxing aged beef and squid over white charcoal while the Provençal light does what Provençal light does. A tight, mostly regional wine list keeps things grounded. Lunch here can easily become dinner if you stop paying attention.

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A chocolate sphere melted tableside sets the tone at this Latin American restaurant inside Lake Nona's Wave Hotel: dramatic is the operating mode. Warm wood, vivid color, and ceilings tall enough to lose a drone in frame a menu that roams Central and South America with a tropical lean. Small plates and bigger signature dishes share the card, and a service robot circulates among the banquettes without anyone seeming to find it unusual.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Time Out The 20 best restaurants in Orlando

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

The arepa arrives wrapped like a little gift, seared masa around a fried egg, tomato, cotija, and avocado. This all-day Latin American spot on Florida Avenue runs from morning coffee through dinner without any of the fuss, and the price point reflects that. Upstairs, an intimate room with original details fills with regulars chasing the pork empanadas and masa gnocchi with braised beef.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 15 Best Coffee Shops Around D.C.
3. Time Out The 20 Best Coffee Shops and Cafés in Washington, DC

The name is the whole idea: Guatemala City has 23 local markets, and this casual dining spot in the Cuatro Grados Norte district considers itself the 24th. The kitchen works entirely off whatever the markets yield that morning, so the menu is essentially a surprise solved fresh each day. It landed a spot on Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants list, which tracks for a place this committed to letting the produce do the deciding.

1. The 50 #42 · Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants

Colorful murals from local artists cover every wall at this plant-based Latin restaurant on East 6th, where the smell of spices hits you before the door closes. The menu is scratch-made and mostly vegan, pulling from Mexican and Latin traditions with jackfruit carnitas and al pastor tacos that don't apologize for the absence of meat. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist in 2024, which tracks with how seriously the kitchen takes the food.

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2. Tucson Foodie The Ultimate Tucson Restaurant Bucket List
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Southwest · Wendy Garcia

Michael Schwartz's waterfront Latin-inspired restaurant sits on Biscayne Bay, where the patio has the kind of views that make everyone at the table look better than they are. The menu pulls from across South America, farm-to-table in spirit, with dishes built for sharing under open sky. The drinks program is a James Beard Semifinalist, and the cocktails lean into the Florida-tropics overlap without apology. Go when the weather cooperates, which in Miami is most of the time.

1. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in Miami
2. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Romantic Restaurant · Best of Miami New Times
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

Pan-Latin cooking from Geoff Cox and Peruvian chef Diego Muñoz lands on the eighth-floor rooftop of the Source Hotel, with views of Denver spread out below like a consolation prize for anyone who couldn't get a table. The menu moves through octopus carpaccio, mushroom tacos, and crushed avocado loaded with pomegranate and quinoa, while the wine list leans South American. Westword named it a top rooftop restaurant in 2026.

1. Eater The Best New Restaurants in Denver
2. Westword The Top 50 Restaurants in Denver Right Now
3. Westword 2026 · Best Rooftop Restaurant · Best of Denver

1. Australian Good Food Guide 12/20 · One Chef Hat

A Josper grill anchors the kitchen at this Latin American fire-cooking restaurant near Smith Street, where the smoke and the playlist both run loud. Tasting menus, à la carte, bottomless brunch on weekends, tacos on Tuesdays, Wagyu on Wednesdays: they keep the calendar full enough that regulars barely need to think. The cocktails have attitude to match. It holds an Australian Good Food Guide Chef Hat.

1. Australian Good Food Guide 12/20 · One Chef Hat

The ceviche is the obvious draw, but the skirt steak with chimichurri and cheese-mashed potatoes quietly argues that this is as much a steakhouse as a ceviché bar. Anthony Lamas's Latin American restaurant on Bardstown Road has been around long enough to predate Louisville's dining boom and still fills the room on its own terms. He earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2022, which tells you something about how seriously the kitchen takes the menu.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Eater The 18 Best Louisville Restaurants
3. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Southeast · Anthony Lamas

A contemporary bistro in the Goya district where the menu splits neatly into regulars and rotating seasonal dishes, which is a more honest framing than most places manage. The chef folds in Mexican and Peruvian influences without making it feel like a theme, and the torrezno, a fried pork snack, has quietly become the thing people order twice. The Michelin Guide has awarded it a Bib Gourmand, and the room fills accordingly.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater The 34 Best Restaurants in Madrid, Spain

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

Mariposa is a sit-down Latin grill on a Sedona hillside, drawing from Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, with a menu built around steaks and seafood off a wood-fired grill. It comes from the chef behind a small Sedona restaurant empire, and the red rocks outside are doing a fair amount of the work. Expect a proper dinner at a proper price, with a patio where everyone ends up angling their chairs toward the scenery.

1. Foodist Awards 2025 · Winner · Uniquely Arizona
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Mystical Sedona, Arizona

Coconut rice arrives in a cast-iron skillet at this creative taco shop on Larimer, which should tell you this isn't a strictly traditional taqueria. The menu roams through Latin American and international territory, everything served family style so the table fills up fast. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, and a second location followed soon after. Come hungry enough to share a few things.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The Infatuation The Best Restaurants In RiNo

The skylight over the dining room does most of the heavy lifting at this Latin American restaurant and rum bar on Sansom Street, flooding plates of vaca frita with the kind of light that makes you briefly question which city you're in. The daiquiris are serious, the ceviche keeps pace, and the piña coladas have a small but devoted following. A James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist runs the kitchen.

1. Philadelphia Magazine #23 · 50 Best Restaurants in Philadelphia
2. The Philadelphia Inquirer The 76
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Emerging Chef · Yun Fuentes, Bolo

Fried green plantains stuffed with cheese and paired with a sharply herbed aji criollo set the tone at this cheerful Ecuadorian and Andean neighborhood restaurant on Central Avenue. The kitchen runs seven days a week, which is convenient when you need a proper seco de pollo on a Tuesday. An old-school institution in the best sense, the kind of place where the regulars have strong opinions about the brunch menu and are not shy about sharing them.

1. Mpls St Paul The Best Restaurants in the Twin Cities
2. Eater 38 Best Restaurants in Minneapolis and St. Paul

The coffee here is sourced directly from Guatemala, and the Latin-inspired food menu follows the same ethos. This West Highland coffee shop takes its name from the tradition of gathering around food and drink, which explains a lot about the room: murals on the walls, a crowd that includes Central American immigrants and neighbors who've clearly been coming since week one, and a general feeling that someone thought hard about what welcome looks like.

1. Westword 2023 · Best New Coffeehouse · Best of Denver
2. 5280 Denver's 25 Best Coffeeshops
3. Westword 2026 · Best Latino Third Space · Best of Denver

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The cocktails here are built from kitchen scraps, tinctures and syrups made from what most places throw away, which tells you everything about how seriously this modern Latin vegan restaurant takes its zero-waste kitchen. The menu swings from Yucatecan pumpkin-seed dips to a jackfruit Cubano, and the seitan carne asada crunchwrap is an unironic love letter to Taco Bell that somehow works completely on its own terms.

1. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Atlanta Right Now
3. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants Around Atlanta

Chica is a Latin American restaurant inside the Venetian, and its weekend brunch plays out in a dim, purple-lit room with a DJ, which makes the eggs benedict feel slightly illicit. It's a sit-down meal at resort prices, with arepas arriving by the basket and a chocolate skull that gets set on fire at the table. Eater and The Infatuation both put it on their Las Vegas brunch lists, which seems fair given the pyrotechnics.

1. The Infatuation The 16 Best Brunch Spots In Las Vegas
2. Eater The Best Brunches in Las Vegas

1. AAA Four Diamonds

Wicker fans spin overhead, leather sofas line the walls, and colorful tile covers the floor in what amounts to a fantasy of old Havana in downtown Los Angeles. DAMA is a full-service Latin American restaurant where the tropical cocktails at the central bar are keeping pace with the kitchen, and the front patio is dense with greenery. The menu runs from aguachile to lamb chops to paella meant for sharing.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The Infatuation The 19 Best Restaurants In Downtown Los Angeles

Wicker lampshades throw a warm glow over the high-ceilinged dining room at this Latin American restaurant in District 1, where the kitchen swings between Mexico and Argentina with tacos and empanadas that have pulled in a loyal following fast. The chef behind it has a Michelin Bib Gourmand to show for the effort. It reads relaxed but runs professionally, which is a combination rarer than it sounds.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

The bi-level dining room turns heads before a plate arrives, all warm light and an open kitchen pulling focus. Seven Reasons is a contemporary Caribbean restaurant drawing from Venezuela, Peru, and the islands, with portions generous enough to make a point. The cooking leans bold and colorful, the kind of place where a dessert list actually earns your attention. A James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic · Enrique Limardo

The name means butcher's shop, which is exactly what the dining room feels like, minus the sawdust and with considerably better wine. This tiny Palermo Soho parrilla riffs on Argentine steakhouse classics, grilling provoleta with pear and greens and finishing sweetbreads with honey, corn, and black garlic. The team behind nearby Niño Gordo runs it, and the place has the same instinct for knowing exactly which rule to break.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Industrial bones warmed up with wood and bright Latin American art set the tone at this Fox Point restaurant, where the menu roams from Guatemalan to Portuguese without much apology for the mileage. The bar runs lively, the small plates change with the seasons, and the paella arrives with enough shrimp, mussels, clams, squid, and chouriço to make ordering anything else feel like a mistake you'd regret quietly.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

A Franco-Paraguayan couple runs this creative restaurant near the Rhône, housed in a building old enough to have opinions about it. The chef brings South American instincts to modern French cooking, with a sharp eye for how a plate looks before anyone touches it. Stone walls, high ceilings, and a hostess who makes the room feel like a party rather than a service. Lunch lets you build your own menu; evenings belong to the chef.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Three floors of tropical greenery in the middle of DIFC, where the Amazon rainforest aesthetic gets taken very seriously and the bar keeps pace with the dining room. The Latin American menu wanders from sushi to grilled meats, which sounds chaotic but tracks with the Amazon basin's many communities. First-floor tables face the open kitchen; the panoramic terrace is the move for a cocktail before or after.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Bar Team – Middle East & Africa

Bolivian pop music at full volume is the first thing you notice, the second being the line of regulars who already know their order. This tiny Woodside counter serves Bolivian street food and traditional dishes, with saltenas, the crimped pastry pockets full of soupy chicken or beef filling, doing a lot of the convincing. The peanut soup is as comforting as it sounds, and the fried chicken sandwich brings genuine heat.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A restored Andalusian mansion in the Valle de Lecrín is not the most obvious place to find contemporary tasting menus with Latin American undertones, and yet here we are. The chef trained under Thomas Keller and brings a creative, international sensibility to the table, with his partner running a warm and polished front of house. Lunch runs shorter; dinner goes the distance.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A medieval town of old stone and half-timbered houses is a fitting backdrop for this modern dining room, where the cooking is precise on the plate but genuinely indulgent in spirit. The chef is local; his wife is from Lima, and the occasional Latin American note drifts onto an otherwise French-leaning menu. Beef pressé with foie gras, a caramelised millefeuille laced with hazelnut and vanilla caramel: the food knows exactly what it wants to be.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Sitting at 900 meters above La Bresse in a proper Vosges chalet, Le Couchetat is a hotel-restaurant where a Norman chef and his Chilean pastry-chef partner have quietly spliced the mountains with South America. The kitchen leans into local produce, then veers sideways with a sweetcorn emulsion or churros with dulce de leche, because why not. A more traditional set menu keeps the purists happy too.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The chandeliers are made from repurposed wine and cocktail glasses, which tells you something about the room before you've even sat down. Sucre is a Latin American and Mediterranean restaurant set in a former concert hall in Soho, all high ceilings and ornate bones, with an open parrilla doing the heavy lifting on the menu. The team is genuinely charming, the flavors run bold, and the pre-theatre menu makes an evening in the West End feel almost affordable.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Felipe Bronze's signature is on the menu at this open-grill restaurant inside the Rosewood São Paulo, built into what was once a maternity hospital, which is either poetic or ironic depending on your mood. The cooking travels broadly across South America, leaning on live fire and sourcing that takes itself seriously. The terrace, overlooking the converted historic complex, fills with the kind of crowd that books ahead and dresses accordingly.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The enclosed courtyard at the back was once a monastery, which adds a certain irony to the open kitchen where meats cook over fire and smoke. This Latin American brasserie inside a boutique hotel runs from ceviches and shrimp cocktail through to churros, with a serious gin selection alongside the wine list. The team are notably warm, which helps when you're deciding between a second cocktail and dessert, or both.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Amador is a Spanish-leaning dinner spot in a Chinatown strip mall where parking is more of a rumor than a policy. Every table gets five house salsas with tiny spoons and droppers, so you'll be dosing your own food like a very delicious science project. You can graze through margaritas and croquetas before karaoke next door, or commit to the tasting menu. It's been on The Infatuation's list of the 25 best restaurants in Las Vegas.

1. The Infatuation The 25 Best Restaurants In Las Vegas
2. The Infatuation The Best New Restaurants In Las Vegas

1. AAA Approved

1. Eater Best Las Vegas Coffee Shops for a Caffeine Fix
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in the Las Vegas Arts District

All-black walls with iridescent orange accents set the mood at this Latin American cocktail bar and small-plates spot on the northwest side. Argentine and Chilean wines arrive in penguin-shaped ceramic pitchers, and the cocktail list leans on pisco and yerba mate. DJs spin from a booth in the center of the room, a fire pit runs along one wall, and the whole thing gets progressively better after midnight. Book ahead if you want a seat at the bar.

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2. Eater Best Vibes

Café de olla arrives in a clay mug at this Latin-inflected coffee shop tucked into a converted bungalow in Montrose. The traditional Mexican brew, steeped with cinnamon and piloncillo, is reason enough to visit, but empanadas and tamales with plantain chips make a reasonable case for staying through lunch. Laptops outnumber idle hands on most afternoons, and the horchata keeps the non-coffee crowd from feeling like an afterthought.

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A downtown Latin restaurant where the salsa section gets its own dedicated menu real estate, which tells you something about priorities. The chef, a Wilmington native, does BLT arepas and blackened tuna over cilantro-lime quinoa alongside tacos and tostadas at lunch. Sunday brunch draws a crowd large enough that you'd be wise to plan ahead. The vibe is casual and local, the flavors are bright, and the room moves.

1. Eater 18 Essential Restaurants in Wilmington, North Carolina

Wepa Cafe started as a food cart parked at local breweries and has since grown into a multistory restaurant in Garden City with a rooftop patio, which is a fairly dramatic promotion for a cart. The menu is Puerto Rican, with mofongo and pastelón, a lasagne that swaps plantains for pasta. It's a casual, order-at-your-own-pace spot, and 5 percent of annual profits go to rebuilding homes in Puerto Rico. Eater lists it among Boise's 30 essential restaurants.

1. Eater The 30 Essential Boise Restaurants

1. Eater Best New Restaurant · The 2025 Eater Chicago Award Winners
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Steakhouses

1. Vancouver Magazine 2026 · Bronze Medal · Restaurant Awards: Best Latin American
2. Vancouver Magazine 2024 · Honourable Mention · Restaurant Awards: Best Latin American

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Matilda is a River North restaurant that puts Mexican and Peruvian cooking in one kitchen and lets them argue it out on the plate. The guacamole arrives as a roasted avocado you mash yourself at the table, which feels like homework you'd happily do. The wine list is entirely Mexican, tequila and mezcal run the cocktails, and a hidden door leads to a speakeasy, because of course it does. Eater lists it among Chicago's best Mexican restaurants.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

Fried corn arepitas topped with pork cracklings set the tone at this Venezuelan bistro tucked into Bywater. The chef spent years cooking other people's food across town before opening a place rooted in family recipes from home, and the menu reads like the argument he was building the whole time. Cachapa, tiradito, good cocktails, warm room. The kind of neighborhood spot that makes you feel like you found something before everyone else did.

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1. Eater A Complete Guide to Dining in LoHi

A crepe shop where a slice of choco flan cake sometimes ends up folded inside the crepe, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe. Olla Olla runs both sweet and savory, leaning into a Latino-meets-French sensibility that feels natural rather than gimmicky. The parking lot doubles as a venue for live music and markets, so on any given weekend the crowd is half here for breakfast, half for whatever else is happening.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Place for Crepes and Community · Best of Phoenix

1. Seattle Met Pumpkin y Mamey Canela Roll · The Best Things I Ate This Year

1. The New York Times 2018 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review