Phila Lorn Named One of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs of 2025

From left: Chef Phila Lorn; a bowl of khao soi at Mawn. / Photography by Michael Persico, originally in “A Noodle House With No Rules Is Exactly What Philly Needs Right Now”

For 37 years, Food & Wine magazine has been putting together their list of the 10 best new chefs in the country, and for 37 years (with the exception of 1992 when, for some reason, they did a Best New Restaurants list instead), they have consistently sought out and found some of the most groundbreaking, paradigm-shifting, industry-defining chefs in the country. We’re talking Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud in 1988 (the list’s first year), Tom Colicchio in ’91, Marc Vetri back in ’99, Anita Lo and Wylie Dufresne in 2001, Tyson Cole (whom we’ve already talked about once today) in 2005, and David Chang in 2006, just two years after he opened the first Momofuku. And that’s just a sample.

But today, Philly’s own Phila Lorn got added to that list. He was chosen as one of Food & Wine’s 10 Best New Chefs for 2025, beating out countless other deserving contenders in a search that stretched across all 50 states. Here’s the full list, in no particular order:

• Phila Lorn – Mawn, Philadelphia
• Mariela Camacho – Comadre Panadería, Austin
• Vinnie Cimino – Cordelia, Cleveland
• Aretah Ettarh – Gramercy Tavern, New York City
• Kelly Jacques – Ayu Bakehouse, New Orleans
• Steve Joo – Joodooboo, Oakland, California
• Telly Justice – HAGS, New York City
• Yotaka Martin – Lom Wong, Phoenix
• Colby Rasavong – Bad Idea, Nashville
• Jordan Rubin – Mr. Tuna, Portland, Maine

And that is a strong list. These people? They’re shaping the future of the industry, deciding how we eat today and what we might eat tomorrow. In the past, chefs who made this list went on to found empires, invent whole new styles of cuisine, and shape the conversations we have around food and restaurants. Being one of the 10 that the F&W editors pick each year is a big deal.

And what makes this whole thing even cooler? In the 37-year history of the Best New Chefs list, Philly has only shown up a handful of times. There was Vetri in ’99, like I mentioned above. Susanna Foo got a spot in the list’s second year. Jim Burke, Eli Kulp, Camille Cogswell, and Amanda Shulman have also been among the recipients. And while I apologize if I missed anyone as I scrolled through the last 37 years of winners, suffice it to say that there’s basically been like a half-dozen Philly chefs chosen since 1988. And now Phila Lorn is one of them.

Oh, and literally as I was writing this, I got word that Mawn has also been included in the New York Times list of the 50 Best Restaurants in America that was just released, putting it in the company of joints like Verjus in San Francisco, Dōgon in Washington D.C., Baltimore’s The Wren, four spots in Manhattan, a Chicago barbecue restaurant, and Modern Bird in Traverse City, Michigan.

Also, Mawn wasn’t the only Philly restaurant to make the list. Meetinghouse in Kensington also got tagged, which is great for three reasons.

One: Two is more restaurants than one. It’s actually twice as many, which is awesome.

Two: Meetinghouse is a fantastic, small, neighborhood restaurant that is incredibly good at what its doing, but doesn’t need to brag about it. Places like that don’t usually get ink from the national press. This changes that.

Three: Having Mawn and Meetinghouse listed together as two of the best new restaurants in the city is a bold statement about what kind of restaurants are truly shaping the scene right now. Small spots, BYOs, neighborhood joints with limited menus and really good beer, places where the food is both intensely good and intensely personal — these are the places that matter right now. And I could not agree with the NYT editors more. Which is not something I’m generally comfortable saying out loud.

So anyway, just to recap, in case you haven’t been paying close attention to Phila Lorn’s year: That now makes a James Beard Award for Emerging Chef back in June, getting named a Food & Wine Best New Chef today, having Mawn listed as one of the 50 Best Restaurants in America at the same time; and, tomorrow, he and his wife Rachel will be opening their second restaurant, Sao, on East Passyunk.

That is a busy summer, to say the least.

But Phila absolutely deserves it. Mawn is a 32-seat BYO that sells out every single night. He and Rachel and their crew kill it consistently, with graceful service and a menu that is utterly unique to their lived experiences. They are small-time operators playing a big league game, and they are Philly through and through.

So huge congrats to Phila, the Mawn team, and the crew from Meetinghouse. If you’re curious, here’s the full feature on all of the chefs in this year’s Best New Chefs cohort. And if you just want to read what they had to say about Phila (which I totally understand), here’s his closeup, courtesy of Food & Wine.

For the NYT story on the 50 Best Restaurants in America, you can check out the full list right here.

And if you thought reservations at Mawn were hard to get before this? Just imagine what it’s going to be like now.