50 Best New U.S. Restaurants

Seattle: Joule

One of the city’s most disarmingly personal spots is Joule, which resembles a petite Continental café that just happens to serve both esoteric sparkling sakes and Korean kimchi. After bonding in the kitchen of Alain Ducasse in New York, Seoul-born Rachel Yang and her half-Tunisian husband Seif Chirchi moved west and opened a place of their dreams in the eclectic family-friendly Wallingford neighborhood. That’s them in the open kitchen—she adding a dollop of crème fraîche and French refinement into a hearty Korean beef soup; he garnishing an impeccably grilled dorado with a gingery sweet-sour eggplant and a pungent burst of roasted lemon and almond piccata. Dinner for two $60.