14 Celebrity Chefs Share Their Favorite Meals Of 2024

For all the famous chefs out there busy overseeing their own kitchens, penning cookbooks, or creating visual pleasures for all to see on TV, it's hard to imagine they even have time to get out to eat at a restaurant. While in town for the New York City Wine & Food Festival, Chowhound asked 14 celebrity chefs which meal of 2024 was the most memorable of them all. While some of the chefs were able to immediately single one out, others had so many to choose from — it became "Sophie's choice," as Jet Tila admitted.

The ultimate answers were a kaleidoscope of global cuisines that dotted the map from New York City to Los Angeles, Chicago, Montana, and even as far as Singapore. Many of them are hot new restaurants, while others are ones that have remained popular for several decades. Pull up a seat as we reveal all the delicious meals these chefs had in 2024, and will have you scrambling to get a reservation at one of these spots in 2025 and beyond. Bon appétit.

By the age of 12, Marc Murphy had already called such cosmopolitan cities such as Paris, Milan, and Rome home, which planted a seed and a belly with a love of Italian and French cooking. While he envisioned being a race car driver, his creative juices ended up being reved-up in the kitchen. After sharpening his knives in Europe, he later opened Landmarc and Ditch Plains in New York, while regularly judging others' skills on "Chopped" and "Chopped Junior." Murphy recently started a new concept at the former Landmarc space — Marc179, which is only open three days a month. For the remaining days of the month, Chef Murphy keeps plenty busy, but still finds time to eat out. His favorite meal of 2024 was at Ernesto's, situated between the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Ernesto's features Basque-inspired dishes, and was opened in 2019, as Chef Ryan Bartlow's first solo venture. The menu features pintxo snacks like croquettes and toasts filled with shrimp and sausage, and entrees with duck and a variety of fish. Murphy recommended a trio of them — the Bacalao en Salsa Verde with Spanish salt cod, the rabbit and rice dish Arroz de Conejo, and the tripe one Callos de Joan.

With an open mind and discernible palate, Andrew Zimmern has traveled the world and back in search of "Bizarre Foods," and ones that bring him great comfort. The 4-time James Beard Award-winner and expressive TV personality is always in search of new flavors and great meals, and in 2024, narrowed down his favorites to Somaek in Boston and Veau d'Or in New York City.

Somaek opened in March of 2024, and chef Jamie Bissonnette's restaurant has already been singled out by The New York Times as one of the country's 50 best. Zimmern personally believes the Korean restaurant is one of the best to debut this year, and found "their banchan is out of this world."

Veau d'Or ("the golden calf") was a long-standing beloved Upper East Side French bistro that first opened in 1937. After being shuttered for five years, Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr resurrected it for a new generation in 2024. Zimmern applauded the duo, saying what they're doing "is just absolutely incredible and they've reinvented the cuisine of my childhood. My father used to take me to Veau d'Or, and so there's a lot of emotion involved in eating there."

A Los Angeleno by way of Long Island, Antonia Lofaso channeled her Italian heritage into the popular restaurant Scopa Italian Roots. Lofaso is also a partner in the Latin-inspired restaurant Dama, as well as cocktail and eclectic small plate spot Black Market Liquor Bar. For her favorite meal of 2024, Lofaso had her "mind blown" by what she encountered at New York's Atoboy. "All the flavors of Korea that you love, but they're just doing so much with it," Lofaso said. "When you eat Korean food it's so comforting and so refreshing, and so fatty. It's so good. This was so refined, so delicious, I was really blown away."

Borrowing part of its name from the Korean for "gift," Atoboy opened in NOMAD in 2016. Its focus is the concept of banchan — small side dishes served with every Korean meal. The restaurant offers a four-course prix-fixe menu, and when Lofaso dined there, two of those courses were still fresh on her mind. "The Korean fried chicken was off the charts good. They [also] did this mussel and noodle dish, it was [a] cold mussel noodle dish," she noted. "They chopped the mussels and turned it into a relish if you will, versus having large pieces."

As a native of Florence, Italy, Gabriele Bertaccini is a bona fide Tuscan chef who has brought a lot of the old country's flavors to his new one — America. Bertaccini specializes in culinary events, through his Il Tocco Food company, and provided dining experiences for the likes of Oprah, the Clintons, and Cher. He has more recently been making moves on the airwaves, co-hosting the cooking competition show "Ciao House" alongside Alex Guarnaschelli.

While Bertaccini is Italian to the core, he is very much in love with American culture and its landscape. That's part of why he chose the meal he had at Blackbird in Bozeman, Montana as the best he had this year. Bertaccini praised the food he had there as being "very much inspired by this general theme of connected to the land. A lot of meat, foraging, the breads are amazing, it's a very beautiful executed menu." Open since 2009, Blackbird serves up creative salads, fresh pastas, and pizzas that can be topped off with farm eggs, fennel sausage, or prosciutto.

Chef Jet Tila knows a thing or two about Thai cuisine. He's a scion of the family that opened some of the first Thai markets and restaurants in America, and today is an ambassador, storyteller, and innovator of the cuisine. When pressed to name his favorite meal, Tila found the question both difficult to answer, and an unfair one as well. He settled on Rodded, a cash only restaurant in the Thai Town neighborhood of Central Los Angeles. He also brought along fellow friend and co-star Bobby Flay for a taste of home in his hometown.

Tila sees Rodded as a sort of diamond in the rough, saying, "Nobody knows, nobody cares where it is, you might not make it back alive, but you're gonna have a fantastic duck noodle soup meal, and he [Flay] was blown away." Rodded's menu is loaded with plenty of other Thai noodle dishes like pad Thai and pad see-ew, and fried goodness in the forms of wontons and bananas.

Being the daughter of a cookbook editor helped Alex Guarnaschelli find an early love of food, which turned into a lifetime love of cooking. Guarnaschelli has forever been perfecting that skill, in French kitchens, at Butter Restaurant in her native New York, as well as in numerous cookbooks of her own, where she often shares tips like how to make juicy turkey hamburgers. One place that Guarnaschelli really loves is Marco Canora's Hearth in New York City.

Open since 2003, Hearth is a cross between a wine bar and an Italian in spirit restaurant. Nestled in the bustling East Village part of Manhattan, the laid-back vibe inside transports diners to more casual environs. Hearth's menu keeps up with the seasons, where dishes in the fall feature such ripe ingredients such as autumn squash and pumpkin seed pesto. If choosing from the a la carte proves too daunting, Hearth also offers a four-course, nine dish, family-style tasting menu.

Marcus Samuelsson is truly a worldly man. He was born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, and has been making diners happy stateside since 1994. Samuelsson has been putting service on with a smile with delicious meals at Red Rooster Harlem as well as his other ventures. The chef is "always chasing flavors," and the ones he encountered at the restaurant Kasama in Chicago made for the best meal in 2024.

Tim Flores and Genie Kwon are not only partners in life, but also at the kitchen of their restaurant and bakery that means "together" in Tagalog. Opened in 2020 — and sold out of food on day one – Kasama went on to become the first Michelin-starred Filipino restaurant in the world. During the day, diners order up pork-friendly plates and sandwiches, as well as sweet and crunchy croissants from the bakery. At night, it turns into a reservation-only restaurant, where a tasting menu gives eaters a modern twist on Filipino cuisine.

For a chef who became widely known thanks to a reality show called "The Restaurant," it's no surprise Rocco DiSpirito had a lot to say about his favorite one — Torrisi. The top New York City Italian restaurant by Major Food Group and its co-founders Rich Torrisi, Jeff Zalaznick, and Mario Carbone, opened in 2022 in the Puck Building, not too far from the famed Little Italy district. DiSpirto gushed that "it's a little bit of a callback. It's very modern in its own way as well, because it's unpretentious fine dining which is very much what people are looking for these days."

DiSpirito is a fan of everything on the menu, and praised the wine and service running at the highest level. He was particularly taken by the tortellini with fresh tomato, as well as the duck with a mulberry glaze. Chef Torrisi admitted that this duck recipe was originally inspired by DiSpirito's own variation of the meal.

With the motto of "Peace. Love. Pasta," it's no wonder chef Scott Conant always seems to be smiling. The James Beard Award-winner has put his Italian touch into delicious dishes at Scarpetta, and currently does the same with his restaurants Cellaio and The Americano. He also has brought his sparkling personality as a judge on "Chopped," and has taken on the challenge repeatedly to "Beat Bobby Flay."

In the summer, Conant traveled to one of Anthony Bourdain's favorite food destinations — Singapore. There, Conant had a meal at Meta that he remarked was "really special." The two-star Michelin restaurant has been open since 2015 and is already at its second location. Meta's new digs have an open kitchen, where diners can watch chef Sun Kim as he fuses his Korean heritage with Japanese and Western culinary techniques to create a 12-course tasting menu. Kim also loves to collaborate, and has shared his kitchen with the likes of chefs Michihiro Haruta and Gaggan Anand for special dinners.

The marriage of a donut and a croissant, aka The Cronut, became the viral dessert sensation of the past decade. Creating a new unique flavor each month must be a daunting task for its creator, Dominique Ansel, but he has proven time and time he's more than up to the task. When he takes a break from his own kitchen, he often enjoys the delicacies culled from other chefs. In 2024, a meal at Café Carmellini not only spoke to his taste buds, but to his lineage. Ansel loved its beef tongue. He called it "excellent," and reminisced that "It's almost like a childhood memory for me."

The opulent two-story restaurant in New York's NoHo area opened in November of 2023. James Beard Award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini rounds out his focused menu with seafood bites such as Japanese Sardine Toast and Calamari Calabrese, and entrees like Risotto del Giorgio and the tripled pleasure Duck-Duck-Duck Tortellini.

Geoffrey Zakarian sharpened his chef skills and knives across Europe, and made a name for himself in the kitchen at many of New York's best restaurants. He went on to land his special touch to numerous restaurant projects, including making-over The Palm Court at The Plaza Hotel. Today, his signature smile, and winning white hair make the rounds on TV as a judge on "Chopped," and the voice of reason on "The Kitchen." As for eating out, he also gets around to many restaurants. Just don't ask him to pick which of the many was his favorite of 2024. "A meal is only memorable for two reasons. It's really not about the food. It's rarely about the food. It's about the people you're with," Zakarian explained. "If the restaurant feels good, the lighting's right, the service is compatible. Everything works, and you like it. So, it doesn't have to be the best food. It has to be like, 'Wow, I'd really come back here again.'"

When pressed to provide an example that fits his mantra, he singled out a restaurant owned by an acquaintance — New York's The Corner Store. The trendy spot has been hit up a couple of times Taylor Swift, and Zakarian was almost more impressed by the staff's graciousness as he was with the food.

When one thinks of chefs synonymous with South Carolina, Kardea Brown's name surely rises to the top of any list. Brown is of Gullah/Geechee descent, and it's influenced her tasty dishes that she shares on her Food Network show "Delicious Miss Brown." While she often prepares and cooks her own steaks, with porcini crusts and reverse searing them , she's not adverse to having someone else do the work for her. When pressed to name her favorite meal of 2024, Brown copped that it was a new one in her hometown of Charleston — Marbled & Fin. "Their ribeye steak is incredible. I've never had anything prepared so well in my life," she said, adding, "In a steakhouse, that is the best steak I've ever had in my life."

Marbled & Fin is the first steakhouse concept by The Neighborhood Dining Group, whose portfolio also includes Minero, Delaney Oyster House, and The James. The restaurants offers a wide array of steaks that are either wet or dry aged, as well as tasty and expensive Wagyu beef from Australia and Japan.

Robert Irvine's mantra is "nothing is impossible," and by the looks of his achievements, it seems that everything's on the table for him (including a nice side of olive oil-poached mushrooms). The chef and entrepreneur has namesake eateries in Las Vegas and the Pentagon, a line of protein bars, and prepared foods found in grocery stores. Irvine couldn't pin down a singular spot to crown his favorite of 2024, as he noted he has "a different philosophy on food. It's the people that you're with that make the evening what it is." He added, "as long as you have the people around you [that] you love and you want to talk to, I think that's the best experience."

Some of the more memorable experiences he mentioned was the fine-dining establishment Victoria & Albert's, located within Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa in Florida. On the flip side of the world, Irvine is also a charitable man who gives a lot of his time to support the military. One of the best meals he ever had was when he went to Afghanistan and Iraq to cook up burgers, dogs and chicken for the troops. He gushed, "I'm cooking with my heart for people I love."

Cleveland native Michael Symon has channeled his rich heritage of Mediterranean and Eastern European roots into a delicious career as a chef. His resume includes the restaurants Lola, Mabel's BBQ, Roast, Bar Symon, Angeline, and B Spot Burgers, as well as being a familiar face on the Food Network and as the former co-host of "The Chew." Symon couldn't single out favorite meal of 2024, but his favorite restaurant of the year is Shukette in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. Symon admitted that he and his wife Liz eat there often, and noted "I don't think there's a better restaurant in New York right now."

Shukette is an offshoot of executive chef Ayesha Nurdjaja's restaurant Shuka. This newer, more intimate Middle Eastern restaurant opened in July of 2021, and the dinner only spot has been a hot spot ever since. Not far from the famed High Line, locals and tourists drop in to rip a variety of delicious breads into freshly made dips like hummus and labneh. A popular entree is Fish In Cage, which looks like it sounds, and pairs well with a side of shawarma spiced fries.