Esquire's Best New Restaurants
Esquire names Houston's West African eatery to best new restaurants list
It’s a ChòpnBlọk world, and we’re all living in it. The Houston restaurant is the only Texas representative to make Esquire’s list of The Best New Restaurants in America, 2025.
Published Monday, December 1, the list includes 33 restaurants from across the country. New York City leads the list with seven representatives, followed by greater Los Angeles, which earns six spots, including Restaurant of the Year for RVR, an izakaya in Venice, California.
The quality of the restaurants they’ve discovered has put the magazine in a celebratory mood.
“This year at Esquire we’ve seen dozens of new restaurants like this, places where spectacular food is coupled with a damn good time — where ambition and abandon meet,” Joshua David Stein writes. “These are the places you hate to leave, but when you do, you leave full. Full of some of the most deeply personal food you can remember eating, full of joy and ideas and hope. You stumble out, way past your bedtime, practically dancing in the street.”
Turning to ChòpnBlọk, Stein notes that founder Ope Amosu has already partnered with Houston hip-hop legend Bun B and the Rockets — and hints that more locations may be on the way. Still, it’s West African restaurant’s creative fare hat sets it apart.
“Recent years are littered with the carcasses of failed fast-casual concepts. But Ope Amosu’s ChòpnBlok seems destined for success, borne on the tide of seven tremendous rice bowls,” he writes. “The rices range from the Ghanaian fried rice known as waakye — pronounced ‘watchee’ — to diaspora-bridging jollof jambalaya. Along with the rices come ikoyi shrimp or yaji vegetables finished with yassa curry or red stew and plantains.”
Reached for comment, Amosu sent the following text to celebrate his restaurant’s success.
When we say “Africa to the world,” these are amongst the reflections we envision.
Being named one of Esquire’s Best New Restaurants is bigger than us. It’s a win for our community, our culture, the diaspora. We’re grateful to see our West African cuisine and narrative taking up space and shifting the conversation around what American dining at its best can be. And to do this while reppin’ ‘the H’… Man!!! Hol’ up!!!
We move with the flavors, stories, and traditions that shaped us. It’s what we know and how we will continue to show up.
I’m humbled in the best way and still locked in… ten toes down! Our community and the city of Houston just caught another win and it feels right! What an honor!
In 2024, Esquire named Afro-Mexican restaurant Late August as its only Houston best new restaurant. In 2023, it named Montrose restaurant Nonno’s Family Pizza Tavern as its Pizza Joint of the Year.
First opened as a stand at the Post Market food hall downtown, Amosu opened ChòpnBlok’s first standalone location in Montrose on October 1, 2024 (Nigerian Independence Day). It features a West African-inspired design by Zainob Amao of AMAO Creative in collaboration with Gin Braverman of Gin Design Group.
Being included in Esquire is only the latest national recognition for ChòpnBlok. In September, the New York Times named it one of America’s 50 best restaurants. Last month, the Michelin Guide named it one of five new Houston restaurants to receive a Bib Gourmand designation.
