It's a celebration of the most creative from concept-driven fast casual hangouts to ultra-luxe fine dining destinations. The competition has been running since 2009, and has seen winners from all over the world. Last year, Title, an Italian American restaurant in Kuwait, and Coffee Bar in Haiku, China, won Best Overall Restaurant and Best Overall Bar.
This year, 46 spots in the U.S. alone compete with each other and the rest of the world for the No. 1 spot. The competition has regional categories, global categories and overall winners for each region.
Regional categories are things like cafes, hotels and standalones, which are restaurants that aren't part of a chain. Global categories get more specific with things like ceiling design, as crazy as that sounds, lighting and even club/night venues.
Everyone's goal is to be an overall winner, which is broken down like this:
- Best American Restaurant or Bar
- Best Asia Restaurant or Bar
- Best Australia & Pacific Restaurant or Bar
- Best European Restaurant or Bar
- Best Middle East & Africa Restaurant or Bar
- Best Overall Restaurant
- Best Overall Bar
Ralph's is a members-only club on the top floor of the Crescent Hotel in Fort Worth. We'll likely never step foot in this lounge where talks of debutante balls are the norm, but we can admire photos from the club's competition entry page. Rottett Studio is behind the design.
Le PasSage, Nuri and Catch were all back-to-back openings in Dallas that welcomed a new wave of design to our restaurant scene. For weeks, all anyone could talk about was how the CEO of Smoothie King spent $20 million on Nuri so he and his business friends had somewhere to go that was "unlike anywhere in the world." It was designed by AvroKO and Coeval Studio.
Rockwell Group and ID Studio 4 have had great success with the upscale steak and Japanese seafood restaurant Catch at its plot in Uptown in the recently revived Maple Terrace.
Le PasSage was an exciting new opening with a next-level bathroom, designed by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture. The restaurant itself is fashioned to look like a traincar and evokes a murder mystery on the Orient Express vibe.
All shortlisted finalists can be viewed on the entries page. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony at EPIK Dubai, UAE, on Monday, Oct. 27.
Anyone can technically enter the competition, but their project must have undergone renovations or have been opened from Jan. 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025. The spaces are judged by some of the most influential hospitality and media companies in the world, which this year includes dozens of judges from restaurant and hospitality groups worldwide.
