Best New Restaurant

Nuevo Latino gets funky at this new outlet for Michael Cordúa’s cooking, located in the back of a shopping mall in the Galleria area. At his nearby fine-dining restaurant, Américas, Cordúa uses traditional South American and Central American dishes as jumping-off points for exciting upscale presentations. Here at Amazon Grill, he shows us a more casual side, with lower-priced entrées, big salads and interesting soups, like the Latin American-style seafood gumbo. The signature dish here is Chicken Amazon, corn-crusted chicken breast served with a cream sauce, sautéed vegetables and Peruvian rice. Non-exotic beef and chicken sandwiches and soups like chicken noodle also are available for the non-foodies at the table. It’s a walk-up counter format just like Cafe Express, and there’s a good reason for that: This location used to house a Cafe Express. But now there are plantain chips and chimichurri where the baguettes and olive oil used to be.