Best new restaurants in America (Austin: 2014, school, fencing)

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#1 and #13.

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13. La Barbecue
Austin, TX

Everything You've Heard About Texas BBQ, but Better
There are only two kinds of barbecue joints. One has been around forever and each time you visit you’re praying the pitmaster hasn’t retired and the meat gone all to hell. The other kind has just opened and you know in your heart it’s not as good as the old kind, even though everyone is talking about it. La Barbecue is the exception, new and as thrilling as Cowtown Rodeo.

It isn’t pretty, that’s for sure. It subscribes to the new school of barbecue aesthetic, which means it’s almost a dump. You enter a compound with a dirt floor and chain-link fencing, pick up your food at a trailer, sit at a picnic table under what could be a second-hand revival tent, and hope the clouds overhead don’t spit cold rain on your ribs. All that’s missing is a junkyard dog. The barbeque is some of the best ever, as good as barbecue gets, maybe better if you’re talking brisket and beef sausage, the foundations of Texas barbecue.

That sausage, much like a knoblewurst and probably German in origin, is smoky, coarse, chewy, spicy and meaty, so good I nearly skipped the brisket, I was so full. That would have been heartbreaking. The brisket is so exquisite you can ask for it lean, usually a mistake, and it will come out soft and savory, not even close to dry. Get a slice on the fatty side and you’ll be asking yourself if this might be the greatest beef you ever ate.

1. Qui
Austin, TX

Tasty Texan and Uplifted Asian Cooking On the Other Side of Austin
On the long-overlooked east side of Austin stands the most fascinating new restaurant in America. Thanks to Paul Qui and other local chefs, what used to be the toughest part of town is now the tastiest. Qui's high-end restaurant could be mistaken for a sushi bar but isn't one—you'll realize it's more than that when you see the vast, gleaming open kitchen where he prepares food displaying an array of Asian and Texan influences. Most unusual and daring are dishes from the Philippines, where Qui was born. These include dinuguan, a pork-blood stew containing mushrooms, meat, and potato gnocchi. The pork blood didn't shock me, but the gnocchi did—do they really make pillowy pasta in the Philippines? His Ode to Michel Bras pays homage to the famous foraging French chef and is one of the best vegetable dishes of the year, a compilation of fresh and pickled products such as cucumbers, radishes, black-fennel fronds, wood sorrel, roasted garlic, and onion jam, all suspended in a cool turnip-dashi puree. (The shocking price: $9.)

Qui's talent is prodigious, and his food is filled with both subtle shadings and sheer sensationalism. You might be offered a preserved green peach or the belly of a sea bream. Local tastes are well represented, too. Texas-bred Wagyu rib eye and dry-aged côte de boeuf. There's also beef tartare, which wanders far from cattle country—it's spiced with kimchi. The dining area, as well as the freestanding building, is reminiscent of the two Austin sushi spots that made Qui famous, Uchi and Uchiko. Qui has blond-wood slats inside and out, which is very Japanese, and white stucco outside, which is very Southwest.

A blazingly original cross-cultural dish is his taco of sea eel, scrambled eggs, trout roe, and kale. The same goes for his uplifted version of halo-halo, the Philippine iced drink—this one is stuffed with pumpkin custard, rice pudding, candied pecans, and passion fruit. You're unlikely to have eaten a taco anything like this one or sipped a halo-halo quite so upscale. If Paul Qui isn't the most fearless chef in America, he's surely the most confident.