Best Restaurants of 2009 (US)

Without much fanfare, the Pacific Northwest has become one of the most exciting foodie destinations in America. Between Seattle and Portland, there are an increasing number of top-notch, chef-driven restaurants-and Mark and Marjorie Fuller's Spring Hill in West Seattle is at the top of that list. Mark shows respect for the region's amazing seafood (Kumamoto oysters, Dungeness crab), but also has the culinary skill to play with texture and flavors. His food manages to be beautiful without being ornate. The sleek space, which Marjorie works with confidence, and the dazzling open kitchen only add to the lofty dining experience

Cakes & Ale
254 West Ponce de Leon Avenue, Decatur, Georgia
404-377-7994

At the age of 27, Billy Allin gave up his job as a money manager and enrolled in culinary school. After graduation, his cooking skills landed him gigs at renowned restaurants, including Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Watershed in Decatur. With his farm-to-table cooking philosophy fully established, Allin and his wife, Kristin, decided it was time to open "the restaurant where we would want to eat," he says. That restaurant is Cakes & Ale (from a phrase in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night meaning "the good things in life"), located east of downtown Atlanta. The couple's ideal restaurant turns out to be a 50-seat neighborhood spot where the kitchen staff often answers the phone when you call to make a reservation, and a chalkboard announces the daily menu, which features simple, precise dishes like braised rabbit grits with saba vinegar and spring onion; buttermilk-rhubarb fool; and the addictive arancine here

Bar Jules
609 Hayes Street, San Francisco
415-621-5482 barjules.com

"How many bowls of clam chowder can you make before you lose your mind?" That was the question Jessica Boncutter asked herself just before quitting her job at a popular San Francisco oyster bar. After she resigned, she headed for London to take a break and hang out with friends-and that's when inspiration hit. "All of my friends were opening restaurants over there, and I said to myself: If they can do it, I can do it." When she returned to the Bay Area, she got to work on Bar Jules, a bohemian lunch and dinner spot in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The chalkboard menu, consisting of fewer than ten dishes, is big on California produce and sustainable ingredients, which, to be honest, is nothing new in San Francisco. What is new is that there's no mantra on the menu, no stuffiness in the dining room-and there are no reservations. Chef Boncutter's simple food includes everything from a perfectly cooked wood-grilled burger to the lamb stew below. One thing you won't find on the menu? Clam chowder.

No. 7
7 Greene Avenue, Brooklyn
718-522-6370; no7restaurant.com

The walls are brick and plaster. The ceilings are pressed tin. And the waitstaff is straight out of an American Apparel catalog. In short, it's a quintessential Brooklyn neighborhood joint. But the first sign that No. 7 is doing things a bit differently than your average hipster restaurant is the fried broccoli appetizer: an entire head of broccoli covered in an impossibly crisp tempura batter and paired with a hummus-like black bean sauce and a dill and grapefruit salad. It's a mishmash of disparate ingredients that somehow succeeds. The same goes for the deconstructed romaine salad (romaine heart, mozzarella-wrapped quince, lemon) and the pumpkin-seed-crusted tofu featured below. The risk-taking, slightly theatrical menu comes from chef Tyler Kord (left), who worked at Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Perry St before opening No. 7.

Woodberry Kitchen
2010 Clipper Park Road, Number 126, Baltimore
410-464-8000 woodberrykitchen.com

In the early 1990s, long before sustainable, local, and organic became the calling cards of chefs everywhere, Spike Gjerde was showcasing the abundance of the Chesapeake Bay. With the opening of his latest spot in the historic Clipper Mill complex-a brick-and-wood space that has the look and feel of a restored farmhouse-Gjerde takes his farm-to-table commitment to the next level. A wood-burning oven is the centerpiece of a kitchen that turns out dishes like roasted Rappahannock River oysters and a Roseda Black Angus Farm hanger steak,