Another Utah restaurant is getting national recognition with the release of The New York Times “Restaurant List,” featuring “our 50 favorite places in America right now.”

Junah, the Japanese-Italian fusion restaurant in Salt Lake City’s Central Ninth neighborhood at 916 S. Jefferson St., is the only Utah restaurant to make the list this year.

“It may have surprised Salt Lake residents when the chefs Felipe Oliveira and Hiro Tagai, who opened the ramen bar Koyoté in 2024, followed that hit with … a fusion restaurant," wrote The Times’ Becky Hughes.

Some of the dishes Hughes highlighted from Junah’s menu were the pork and beef ravioli shaped like gyoza in “gravy-like” brown butter demi-glace, the tagliolini in a creamy sauce with mentaiko and shiso on top, and a tuna tartare special served on “deeply golden” cubes of potato pave.

When it came time for dessert, Hughes praised the sliced honeydew melon, cured in sake for three days, and “shaped into a perfect, electric-green rose.”

When Oliveira spoke to The Salt Lake Tribune shortly after Junah opened, he said you don’t always have to follow tradition in cooking.

“As long as you do it with love [and] care, and make sure that what you’re serving is the best you can make for your guests, the end product will be something that will be appreciated,” Oliveira said.

To compile its list, The Times sent 16 reporters and editors around the country. The restaurants on the list marked “new” opened since The Times finished reporting last year’s list, Brian Gallagher wrote in the article. The restaurants on the list range from weeks old to decades old, he wrote.

“We pay for all of our food, and we don’t accept freebies,” Gallagher wrote.

Last year’s list included Cosmica, an “Italian diner” also in Central Ninth, and it was the first time in this decade that a Utah restaurant had been included on the annual roundup.

To make a reservation for Junah, visit OpenTable.