The accolades just keep coming in for Kemuri Tatsu-ya, the Texas-meets-Japan hybrid restaurant that opened in early 2017 and has since won a James Beard Award nomination and a spot on Bon Appetit's Best New Restaurants list. This morning, they received a new honor, being named as one of the 10 Restaurants of the Year by Food & Wine.
Kemuri joins a handful of restaurants from across the country (including Houston's Better Luck Tomorrow, Seattle's Junebaby and Los Angeles' LASA) on the prestigious list, which was compiled by Food & Wine restaurant editor Jordana Rothman. The research, which she says took her across 37,000 miles during the past six months, involved stepping into America's best dining rooms and undiscovered gems—tough gig, we know. Out of the countless restaurants she visited, she found something special at Kemuri Tatsu-ya, where chefs Tatsu Aikawa and Takuya Matsumoto have been wooing Austinites for over a year.
"The place feels like a house party," Rothman says of Kemuri, noting that the BBQ Tsukemen is the one dish that "sums up the spirit" of the restaurant. And, perhaps, her highest compliment: "At Kemuri, Aikawa and Matsumoto offer an interpretation of first-gen life that is personal, provocative, and a damn good time." We'll cheers with some sake to that.
Check out the full Food & Wine list here, which will also be in the upcoming print issue out on April 13.