An exciting new addition to the Mexican capital which digs deep into tradition. Chef Diana López del Rio leads her Mux research kitchen as a celebration of the country’s rich and diverse cuisine, highlighting lesser-known dishes and hopping from region to region depending on the season. This gives us a menu that’s both original and authentic. There’s rice mole from Jalisco, garnachitas from Oaxaca, and a mezcal list to impress even the most knowledgeable drinker. “Cooking is an act of kindness,” she says. “It is a lot of responsibility and based not only on the technique but on what that dish can generate in a person.”

A British chef in a French restaurant in Japan together give us one of 2021’s most elegant and sophisticated openings. Daniel Calvert launched Sézanne in the Four Seasons Tokyo in July and his reputation for precision-led French cuisine and flawless produce has translated across borders - he was previously at Hong Kong’s Belon - with ease. Calvert, who has also worked at Thomas Keller’s Per Se and Epicure in Paris, calls his food timeless rather than traditional, and mixes French essentials such as comté and Normandy butter with local venison, chicken and seafood.

Fi’lia is already successful in Miami and Nassau and its “honest Italian” cooking is breaking boundaries at its newest location in Dubai. Head chef Sara Aqel, 25, is Palestinian-Jordanian and trained in Italian cuisine under Massimo Bottura. At Fi’lia on the 70th floor of the hotel SLS Dubai, she’s bringing diners a story of real Italian womanhood - nonna, mamma and figlia - with rich and rustic flavours such as 18-hour veal ragu, vitello tonnato, and sea bass carpaccio. Pitched as the “region’s first female-led restaurant”, the team is 70% women. “Most of our grandmothers never had a platform where they could do it as a profession, earn from it, shine as stars in cooking. Their talent wasn’t taken seriously,” Aqel has said.

The latest restaurant from Arkady Novikov, an entrepreneur at the vanguard of Russia’s culinary landscape who owns over one hundred restaurants around the world. At Artest, chef Artem Estafiev uses Russian produce and fermentation to turn out modern food rooted in tradition. Dishes include Far Eastern crab with black quinoa and portobello mushrooms in carrot oil, followed by halibut and cauliflower in champagne sauce, then classic shoyu or filet mignon with parsley root, nettle, mustard, blackened vegetable glaze and beef garum. He also masters vegetarian cuisine with dishes such as oyster mushrooms and potato dumplings with cauliflower and guinea fowl egg yolk in a cheese sauce.

Let’s be up front: Plénitude is likely to climb very high indeed on La Liste in no time at all. Fish stock, caramelised lemon and lemon balm, ginger, dried plankton powder, aliotis juice, brown butter, oyster, lemon oil and wine vinegar...this isn’t even a dish but the description of the Number 9 broth that is served with turbot, sea potatoes, hazelnut and caviar. Arnaud Donckele, known from the Vague d'Or in Saint-Tropez, advances the “symphony of sauces” and his are outstanding - carefully devised, expertly crafted, truly refined. He deserves any success he finds; first because sauces are the soul of French cooking, secondly because there are books packed with forgotten sauce recipes, some based on fresh truffles or vintage Madeira, all ripe for rediscovery by Plénitude.

Tantris was the gourmet restaurant in Germany, a place where chefs such as Eckart Witzigmann, Heinz Winkler and Hans Haas first convinced Germans of the pleasures of fine dining. It went on to influence the tastes of at least two generations of gourmets across Germany and remains iconic in the country’s culinary history. Forced to reinvent itself after the chef's retirement, Tantris is banking on renewed success with the French cuisine of Virginie Protat. Her cooking is pure enjoyment, with finely crafted sauces and dishes prepared and sliced at the table. A true success!