As part of the New York Times' food section's initiative to become more national in its scope, we have a full rave review of the Michelin three-starred Atelier Crenn, and fresh accolades for Verjus and Oakland's Sun Moon Studio. Also, the Food & Wine Best New Chefs list has dropped, and it includes an Oakland chef.

Call it part of the "boom loop" — actually, please don't — but San Francisco and the Bay Area are inching back into the national food conversation after several years in which we've been largely ignored. And with that comes a new Best New Chef honor from Food & Wine, a full review from the New York Times of 14-year-old Atelier Crenn, and the inclusion of two Bay Area restaurants on the Times' 2025 Restaurant List.

The Times' now annual Restaurant List is a bit of an odd thing. It's part "best new restaurants" around the country, but actually doesn't try to be comprehensive, and not all the restaurants are new. It's part "50 best in the country" although it's not really that either and is far too narrowly focused. And it's part "where to eat now" in terms of capturing a certain buzz and food zeitgest across the country, though, again, not comprehensive or trying to be.

Last year, the list bestowed attention on Quince, which had just reopened after a yearlong renovation and maintains three Michelin stars, and Four Kings in Chinatown, which opened to immediate acclaim and attention, both locally and nationally, and continues to be very popular.

This year, the spotlight moves to two other local restaurants that have gotten the Chronicle's seal of approval, Oakland's Sun Moon Studio — which critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan named her best pick for last year, and which got a Michelin star this year — and, Quince's French bistro offshoot Verjus, which means the Quince team is just reaping all the attention over at the Times.

Times critic Eleanore Park writes that Sun Moon Studio chefs Sarah Cooper and Alan Hsu "bring levity to the 12- to 14-course menu — whether it’s a soulful housemade water kimchi paired with halibut crudo and discreetly ornamented with puffed buckwheat and kumquat, or lap cheong snuggled inside a cloud of steamed brioche." And as she writes in a follow-up blurb, calling it her restaurant of the year, "Sun Moon Studio in Oakland, Calif., made me emotional (in a good way). I deeply hope tasting menus are going in this direction because, aside from the attention to details and absolute skill, eating there is joyous. And when’s the last time you were able to call a tasting menu fun?"

And of Verjus, critic Brian Gallagher writes that the 2.0, post-pandemic version of the wine-bar-cum-restaurant "is exactly the restaurant the city needs: cosmopolitan, grown up and delightfully non-tech."

Meanwhile, LA-based critic Tejal Rao filed a full review of Atelier Crenn which (spoiler?) is a three-star semi-rave (like the Chronicle's former system, the Times star ratings go up to four stars, with three being "excellent" and four being "extraordinary"). She raves about a number of chef Dominique Crenn and pastry chef Juan Contreras's dishes, calling them "unreasonably pretty." She also says that an amuse course titled Kir Breton — a delicate sphere of cocoa butter encasing cold apple juice with creme de cassis — on the menu since Atelier Crenn's beginnings, remains a quiet stunner.

Her only complaints were about the dessert courses being "a little lean" and leaving her wanting more — rare for a multi-course tasting experience! — and about a salad that comes after the savory courses, "like in France," which she calls "a thoroughly cute idea" but ultimately unsatisfying.

Over at Food & Wine, Oakland chef Steve Joo joins the prestigious 2025 class of Best New Chefs. Joo's four-year-old, tofu-centric restaurant, Joodooboo, has expanded its offerings to full dinner service over time, and won a rave from the Chronicle's Cesar Hernandez last year, as well as a spot on this year's updated Top 100. And Food & Wine writes that "Joo's ambitions remain grounded in feeding people with care," and they rave about his house-made banchan, and his carefully made tofu that is "silky, nuanced, and jiggly."

Joo is the first Bay Area chef to appear in a Food & Wine Best New Chefs issue since Horn Barbecue's Matt Horn and State Bird Provisions Gaby Maeda made the cut in 2021.

The Best New Chef honor, presented almost every year since 1988, has previously been given to the likes of Thomas Keller, Gary Danko, Nancy Oakes, Traci Des Jardins, Corey Lee, James Syhabout, former Saison chef Joshua Skenes, and State Bird Provisions Executive Chef Stuart Brioza, back in his Rubicon days.

Related: Sun Moon Studio, Kiln, and Sonoma's Enclos Are Big Winners of New Michelin Stars for the Bay Area

Photo of Sun Moon Studio by Teo Crider via Instagram