The Best American Food in the United States

Heather Earnhardt's Southern-inflected restaurant now lives inside a historic coastal hotel in Tokeland, having migrated from its Capitol Hill origins. Cozy breakfast anchors the day, surrounded by farmhouse antiques and tchotchkes that feel genuinely accumulated rather than styled. Big buttery biscuits and fried chicken carried over from the original, joined by fried oysters from nearby Willapa Bay and local fish gone cornmeal-and-grits.

Rows of cloudy jars exhaling tiny bubbles line the production kitchen at this small-batch pickle shop and weekend rice-bowl counter in Berkeley. Saturday and Sunday bring a three-course menu built around a maximalist rice bowl piled with the shop's latest ferments: kimchis, citrusy pickles, miso-braised greens. Drinks run to yuzu kombucha or warm ginger amazake. It may be the most Berkeley restaurant of all time, which is saying something.

All the seating is outdoors, which means Sam's Log Cabin operates like a neighborhood backyard that happens to serve breakfast. The kitchen lives in an actual log cabin, the pergola is draped in greenery, and the menu runs hearty, with cornmeal pancakes and corned beef hash doing the heavy lifting. Ask about the weekly specials, which tend toward seasonal pancakes and scones. Albany's not a destination, but on a sunny morning this patio makes a persuasive case for itself.

Spam musubi sits by the register for grab-and-go, which tells you exactly what kind of place this is. Diamond Head General Store is a Hawaiian plate-lunch counter in San Bruno where the mochiko fried chicken arrives craggy, peppery, and portioned for two people with ambitions of feeding one. Shave ice rounds out a menu that runs on comfort and not much pretension. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best fried chicken spots.

Hamburguesa Bar is a casual SoMa burger counter from the same crew behind Pie Punks, which explains why the beef gets a surprising amount of attention. The Black Label stacks an eight-ounce patty with truffle butter, mushroom ragout, demi-glace, and white American cheese, a pile that sounds excessive and somehow isn't. It comes with a side salad, a small gesture toward moderation that everyone politely accepts.

Cherry and oak wood smoke is the throughline at this Berkeley barbecue shop, where the char siu and the smoked chicken land somewhere between American pitmaster and Hong Kong roast house, with a detour through Indian curry along the way. The team behind Huangcheng Noodle House in Oakland built the concept around a father's love of American barbecue, and the collision of those three kitchens is less confused than it sounds.

Posters advertising long-gone menu items like cottage cheese salad hang alongside the candy display at this Mission District diner, which has been around forever and looks exactly like it. Wood booths, a lunch counter, and the kind of simplicity that produces genuinely fluffy flapjacks and a patty melt on marbled rye. The city's Legacy Business Program keeps the bones intact, which means new ownership changes nothing a regular would notice.

Wood-paneled walls and a parking lot that fills before most people have checked their phones: Harlow's is an old-school Tempe diner that hasn't felt the need to update anything. Booths pack in early birds and retirees at dawn, then hand off to the hangover crowd around nine. The coffee is black, the burritos are large, and the servers are the kind who remember how you take it. Phoenix New Times named it one of the ten best brunch spots in Phoenix.

The bright yellow building in Phoenix's Melrose District is hard to argue with at 7 a.m. Joe's is an old-school diner with booths, round group tables, and road signs on the walls, the kind of place where the coffee is black and nobody's trying to impress you. Weekends bring a line out front, which the regulars seem to take as confirmation rather than inconvenience. The biscuits and gravy and oversized burritos do the heavy lifting.

The menu lives on a board, the pits run on post oak and mesquite, and the building used to sell gasoline. This is a barbecue counter in a converted gas station on Loop 410, and it's been going strong for decades. All meat is cut to order, the brisket sandwich arrives on cottony white bread that's somehow exactly right, and Mimi's potato salad, a family recipe, is the side you don't skip. The Michelin Guide has it listed.

A gas station with a grill inside and a rack of nudie magazines by the register, which explains both the name and the bumper stickers you've been seeing since you crossed the bridge. The move is a breakfast sandwich on a freshly baked biscuit the size of a softball; get there early, because the line forms fast and the biscuits run out. Fried chicken fills the gap when they do.

Black Briar is a gastropub in the old Bar Takito space on North Morgan, which means it has 110 seats and a menu that wanders from raw oysters to venison tartare without apologizing. Snail toast shares the page with handmade cavatelli, so nobody has to commit to a single personality. There's a U-shaped bar for the solo diners and an open kitchen for anyone who likes to watch dinner get argued over.

This is a Hillcrest slice shop where the walls are covered in vintage New York memorabilia, in case the folded slices left any doubt about where its loyalties lie. The pies are classic New York style, with a build-your-own list that runs from broccoli to ricotta to eggplant. A slice, salad, and drink combo costs about nine bucks, and the room is roomy enough that nobody eats standing up. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

The fried chicken biscuit comes with a wooden skewer through it just to hold the whole thing together, which tells you something about the kitchen's ambitions. This Southern-Southwestern brunch spot from the family behind Lo-Lo's Chicken and Waffles leans into the occasion: tableside bananas Foster, a full cocktail menu you can nurse past noon, and a cheerful indoor-outdoor room that has enough energy to feel like a party without scaring off anyone's parents.

The smell of butter hits before you've even read the menu, which is a fine way to start a weekend lunch. Butterjoint is a casual neighborhood spot in Oakland doing sandwiches, pierogi, and baked goods with a serious hand. The rolls with roasted cipollini onion butter and the vinegar pie, a Depression-era custardy thing with a crunchy top, are reason enough to come. Colorful booths in the bar section fill up fast.

Carlyle Club sits on the Chicago River and runs a menu that can't decide between a steakhouse and a sushi bar, then declines to choose. Dry-aged steaks share the table with raw bar towers, handmade pasta, and a wagyu cooked over binchotan. There's a small sushi counter for the committed, plus hand rolls at the bar for everyone else. Expect an all-day, expense-account kind of room where a burger and a lobster pie coexist peacefully.

The beef on weck here is the reason Buffalo has strong opinions about sandwiches: a massive rib roast, sliced to order, piled onto a kummelweck roll with enough jus to make you look confident or foolish, depending on your shirt choice. This is an old-school deli counter, the kind that locals treat as a civic institution. The corned beef and roast turkey are solid detours, and the snickerdoodles are comically oversized, as advertised.

A former pop-up that found a permanent home inside Au Lounge in downtown Oakland, Chef Smelly's draws on Creole family recipes to put out Cajun-spiced seafood and soul food. Garlicky Dungeness crab and blackened shrimp anchor the menu, and the platters run large enough to qualify as a commitment. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top seafood spots. Dress accordingly: this is crab-cracking, garlic-breath, no-apologies territory.

Chicken and dumplings with celery-flecked, black-pepper dumplings gives you a sense of how Covey thinks about American classics: familiar enough to order without squinting at the menu, just a little more considered than you'd expect. It's a neighborhood restaurant that tips toward the elegant side, with a late bar menu of small bites that makes it equally useful for a quick glass of wine before heading home.

The broccoli rabe sandwich with tomato jam and melted provolone on a griddled sesame torta is the kind of thing that makes you question every sandwich you've ever eaten. This Brookline sandwich shop runs on the conviction that bread choice is not a casual decision, and the team's fine-dining background shows in every layered, deliberately toasted result. The New York Times put it on their Boston list, which feels about right.

Rows of smokers out front and a cooler stocked with Fanta set the tone at this Grant Park BBQ shop, which leans into Georgia's anything-goes approach to smoked meat. Pork shoulder gets a splash of vinegary Carolina sauce, brisket and turkey come naked or sauced, and the mac and cheese is made with shells and sharp Cheddar. Local beer pours from the taps, cornhole and bocce fill the yard, and Oakland Cemetery is a short walk away if you need to walk it all off.

The balcony patio goes by its own name, Carnelian Bay, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Fremont cocktail bar and diner. Margaritas come in disco balls, Jell-O shots taste like homemade jam, and pimento cheese arrives on fried saltines. The steamed burger at happy hour has a cult following among people who take their diner food seriously while pretending not to.

The brisket here is done in the Texas Hill Country style, low and slow until the bark sets and the fat renders into something close to silk. Edge Craft is a barbecue joint just west of downtown Oklahoma City, with a menu built around the expected canon plus daily specials that tend toward the inspired. The sides list runs longer than most spots bother with, collard greens and smoked elote alongside the usual coleslaw. Come hungry and plan to deliberate.

The meat-and-three is Nashville's quieter religion, and this old-school soda shop on Elliston Place is one of its oldest temples. Red leather booths, a soda counter, fried chicken, whipped potatoes, turnip greens, and pies that have had the same baker for over thirty years. The milkshakes and banana splits bring in a different kind of regular. The New York Times named it among Nashville's 25 best restaurants.

The restaurant sits on an actual working farm in Los Ranchos, which keeps the farm-to-table premise from being purely decorative. Farm & Table is a new American dinner spot where the sourcing is local in practice, not just on the menu header. The kitchen has launched several notable careers over the years, and owner Cherie Montoya has brought alumni back for guest appearances. Expect a relaxed, pastoral room with food that earns its provenance quietly.

Five Bar keeps its dinner and brunch menus to exactly five entrees each, which sounds like a gimmick until you're actually sitting with fried Gulf shrimp in a downtown room full of exposed brick and local art. Half coffee shop, half full-bar restaurant, it runs happy hours, wine Wednesdays, and a weekend jazz brunch with a build-your-own bloody Mary bar. The kind of place that makes a short menu feel like confidence rather than laziness.

Florence Jones Kemp started this soul food institution in the front room of a two-room apartment, serving hot dogs on, as she put it, "a hot dog and a prayer." Decades later, she and her daughter Victoria are still running the kitchen together, with fried chicken, candied yams, braised oxtail, fresh-baked rolls, cornbread, and pie holding down the menu. The James Beard Foundation gave Florence's an America's Classics award, which about covers it.

A bright red food cart parked in Napa, Joella's built its reputation on a fried chicken sandwich that audibly crunches when you bite it. The chicken is fiery and sweet at once, tucked into a sesame-topped potato sourdough bun with peppers and ranch slaw. The craggy nuggets with hot honey and cool ranch are the move if you're skipping bread. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the Bay Area's best fried chicken spots.

A former Marine and a former basketball player walked into an empty storefront in the historic Greenwood District, and the result is a wing shop where the attorney co-owner still keeps his day job. The Oklahoma Dry Rub and the Mack, a recipe nobody's sharing, are the regulars' picks. Kimberly usually runs the counter herself, which gives the whole operation a family-kitchen feel that's hard to fake.

Madi is a bright, casual daytime spot on Grand Avenue that treats lunch as a bonus round and shuts the kitchen at 2 p.m. The menu runs on playful California cooking, which here means a half-pound patty melt on grilled sourdough and a chipotle chicken melt with pickled jalapeños. Expect counter-service prices, no dress code, and a brunch crowd lingering over the last of their coffee.

Atlanta takes its lemon pepper wings seriously, and Magic City, the city's most famous strip club, has been quietly central to that argument for decades. The wings are small, seasoned deep into the bone, and come with a blue cheese dressing good enough to make you mourn the missing celery. The crowd runs from music executives to athletes to travelers killing time before a flight. Wings are available to go, for the bashful or the principled.

Whole hog barbecue is the organizing principle here, which means every part of the pig goes into the pit and comes out smoked, pulled, and chopped together. It's a proper Tennessee barbecue joint, loud and casual, the kind of place where the smoke follows you home. The New York Times put it on their Nashville list, and the brisket and jalapeño cheddar sausage give the pork plenty of company.

Turquoise booths and a menu that hasn't needed rethinking in decades: this Scottsdale franchise of the national pancake-house chain has been the neighborhood's default breakfast spot for a long time. The Dutch Baby, finished with lemon and whipped butter, is the order that regulars treat as non-negotiable. Griddle-focused, diner-priced, and reliably packed on weekend mornings with people who had the good sense to arrive early.

The breakfast burrito, Santa Fe will tell you, was invented here. Palacio is a casual adobe cafe where the signature move is ordering "Christmas-style," meaning both red and green chile sauces blanketing your burrito at once. The room feels like someone's well-loved dining room, which is more or less the point. The paninis pull a surprising crowd too, the Cuban Reuben among them, but the chile sauces are what keeps regulars from ever really leaving.

A red neon sign flicks on outside when the burgers start flipping, which tells you most of what you need to know about this greasy spoon parked in the literal shadow of Bryant-Denny Stadium. The walls are buried in Alabama memorabilia, including an actual stadium seat and a confiscated orange construction flag, because no orange survives near this building. The menu runs on the same devotion: burgers and breakfasts named after championship counts.

Bacon-wrapped meatloaf with a tomato jam glaze is the signature at this Southern comfort food and craft beer spot just across the river from campus. The patio is the main event on game days, and the menu leans hard into the classics: prime rib rolls, collard greens, sweet potato tots, biscuits. It's the kind of place where the sides could carry the whole meal on their own, which in Alabama is not considered a problem.

The spicy fried chicken sandwich here comes dressed with apple slaw and pickles, hot enough to make you notice but not so hot you regret your choices. This casual counter-service chicken shack on Hayes Street keeps a line at lunch, though two self-serve kiosks move things along. Wings come with drum, flat, and tip still attached, which purists appreciate. Outdoor tables handle the overflow when the compact room fills up.

The Back Bar's sunsets over Currituck Sound are their own argument for showing up early. This is fine dining with a Southern drawl, the kind of place where shrimp and grits comes with bay scallops and red-eye gravy, and the wine list was built by an actual sommelier. Fancy enough to mean it, relaxed enough that Duck feels like the right setting. An old-school Outer Banks institution that the locals treat accordingly.

Tomato aspic on the menu, and they're not sorry about it. The Colonnade is an old-school Southern supper club on Cheshire Bridge where servers have your order memorized before you sit down and the regulars fill the room like furniture. Fried gizzards share a menu with Gulf shrimp, the yeast rolls demand a second order, and the coconut icebox pie is not optional. The New York Times named it one of Atlanta's 25 best restaurants.

The hot dog shop that's been feeding sand-dusted beachgoers at Wrightsville for decades, Trolly Stop runs a tight menu: pick your dog (beef-pork Southern, all-beef Northern, smoked turkey, veggie, smoked pork sausage) then pick your toppings. The Carolina dog, dressed with deli mustard, chili, and coleslaw, is the low-key litmus test for first-timers. The Surfer and the Mexican dogs are there for anyone who wants cheese and bacon doing most of the heavy lifting.

The aquarium smoker in the window tells you what kind of place this is before you get through the door. Uncle John's is a South Side Chicago BBQ shop running one of the city's rarest traditions: pork hot links and rib tips cooked in a plexiglass box, fire controlled by hose, a technique tracing back to Delta pitmasters who came north during the Great Migration. The New York Times named it among Chicago's 25 best restaurants.

An old poi factory turned roadside Hawaiian food spot on the Windward Coast, run by native Hawaiians who have been feeding people here for a while. The kanaka nui plate arrives loaded with pretty much everything the kitchen makes, and the warm kulolo with haupia ice cream is the kind of dessert that ends the conversation. Pull off Kamehameha Highway and eat outside; the atmosphere does a lot of the heavy lifting.

With Love, Always is a retro diner off the Strip that started as a parking lot pop-up and now draws lines for smashed onion burgers with lacy, crispy edges, finished with a creamy sauce and shoestring fries. It's casual and loud in the good way, packed with families fresh from practice. The soft serve comes with a pickup ticket, so your custard arrives after the burger instead of as soup beforehand. It's on The Infatuation's list of the 25 best restaurants in Las Vegas.

White tiles, pastel trim, and a cartoon burger grinning at you from the wall set the tone at this retro counter-service burger joint on downtown Mesa's main drag. The team behind Tacos Chiwas and Espiritu kept things deliberately simple: a short menu of semi-smashed burgers, hot dogs, loaded fries, and aguas frescas. The Sonora burger, stacked with griddled cheese, chiltepin, and bacon, is the one people talk about.

This is a cafeteria-line Jewish deli where you grab a tray, slide it past the steam tables, and let a man pile corned beef onto rye until it stops resembling lunch and starts resembling a load-bearing wall. The walls are papered in old newspaper clippings and notes from Chicago big shots, a nod to when deals got brokered between bites. Prices are easy, the dress code is whatever you wore to work.

The smoker out back is a salvaged propane tank, and the brisket it produces comes out in thick, wide folds that smell of mesquite and barely hold their shape. Eric's is a cafeteria-style BBQ joint in Avondale where the wood-only smoke method is a point of pride, and the smoked turkey and dry-rubbed ribs carry it through. Sides like cheese-dusted elote keep the backyard cookout spirit intact. Phoenix New Times named it among the top 50 restaurants in the metro.