Overview

• The Times’ America’s Best Restaurants 2025 names only 50 nationwide, placing Mawn and Meetinghouse in select company.
• Mawn in Bella Vista earned praise for dishes like wild boar prahak and banh chow crepe salad, with the menu described as a wide-ranging tour of Southeast Asian flavors.
• Phila Lorn won the James Beard Emerging Chef award in June and was named a Food & Wine Best New Chef this week, as he readies Sao, a Southeast Asian oyster and crudo bar, to open Wednesday in East Passyunk.
• Reservations at Mawn are scarce, with about 1,300 dinner seats released monthly that sell out in minutes and lunch lines stretching down the block.
• Meetinghouse in Kensington was singled out for elevated tavern cooking—its stacked green salad, hot roast beef, and pork-and-beans—and for Tonewood-brewed house beers in the former Memphis Taproom space.