Anyone who’s eaten Max Natmessnig’s food will know he’s one to watch, and it was no surprise to hear the Vienna-born chef announced as the new head chef of Alois, the fine dining restaurant of Dallmayr delicatessen in Munich. He joined in October and serves a 17-20 dish menu in amuse-bouche portions, plenty to get the true sense of each plate and Natmessnig’s outstanding skill. His style has its roots in the classical but reaches beyond in terms of flavor - he pairs langoustine with satay and pandan, char with chives and buttermilk - breaking boundaries even in cooking of this level, and showing off the fruits of his impressive CV, which includes Steirereck, Oud Sluis, Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, and Lech’s Rote Wand.

Chef-owner of Philadelphia’s Her Place, Amanda Shulman, used to sneak into kitchens as a student journalist on the pretext of writing about them. After an 18-month stage at Marc Vetri’s trattoria Amis, she realized she’d found her vocation, and with Her Place has created a new way to dine out. It began as a New York pop up for friends, growing into a community of hundreds. After stints at Momofuku Ko and Joe Beef, she reinvented the concept in Philly, and Her Place is now a “not-restaurant dinner party restaurant” with 24 seats, two sittings a night, and the original vibe of friends discovering and enjoying food together. The menu, which changes weekly, is deeply personal with Italian, French, and Jewish influences - lobster pain perdu, stone fruit with whipped cheese and speck, strawberry profiteroles. It’s also one of Bon Appétit’s 50 best restaurants of 2022, while she’s a James Beard nominee. Brava, Amanda.

Moroccan-Spanish chef Zineb Hattab is as refreshing as any palate cleanser, mixing Mexican flavors from her time at New York’s Cosme with Swiss produce, at plant-based KLE in Zurich. How about tostadas with hazelnut and corn, or kohlrabi with ancho chilli and macadamias? Or try ravioli with cream and pistachio, or squash, Morello cherries, and curry. Her Moroccan roots come through in each dish, especially in desserts such as lemon meringue pie using Moroccan verbena and Swiss lemongrass, and meringue with violet and orange blossom. KLE has succeeded in freeing vegan cooking from worthiness to focus the pleasure of the dining experience.

Amsterdam talent Joris Bijdendijk, the chef behind the Rijksmuseum’s RIJKS and the younger Wils, is known for his sense of humor as much as his commitment to making a name for his homeland’s cuisine. He is determined to raise the profile of Dutch food internationally and shares these ambitions in one of his cookbooks, A Kitchen for the Low Countries. Both his restaurants use prestigious Dutch ingredients such as Zeeland salt, caviar, and seafood, side by side with the international flavors that have passed though the trading city of Amsterdam for centuries. At RIJKS there’s beetroot millefeuille with Tomasu soy beurre blanc, and radish with ponzu broth and Dutch ginger. Wils serves a fire-focused menu cooked over a fire pit and in a wood-fired oven. At the other end of the food spectrum is the tinned soup brand, Snert, he launched during the pandemic, giving away 10,000 tins to food banks.

Tel Aviv’s Raz Rahav has recreated Israeli cuisine for the 21st century with his tasting menu restaurant OCD, where he preps and plates each of the 19 courses for 19 diners seated at his counter. Rahav is committed to sustainability and seasonality and draws on food and history from across Israel, the Middle East and the Mediterranean, serving Israeli caviar, Ashkenazi dumplings, buckwheat puffs, miso hummus, bay leaf crème brûlée and olive oil marmalade. He is as obsessive and compulsive about his menu as he was in 2016, when OCD opened.

As her father was the owner of the legendary bouchon Le Mercière, Marie-Victorine Manoa grew up with the food of Lyon. In her Paris restaurant, Aux Lyonnais, a small historic establishment and part of the Ducasse group, she serves Lyonnais-inspired dishes refined in a contemporary way. Onion stuffed with Bresse chicken, chicken liver cake with bone marrow, spatchcocked partridge with roast liver and buttered cabbage, and Pommes Anna with smoked eel and artichoke. Manoa’s food goes well beyond the Lyon of the past to become something truly authentic and her own. We look forward to watching her evolve even more.