The Best Restaurants in the United States

A small Uptown sandwich shop where the menu is short and the pork is the whole argument. The porchetta here comes out of the oven crackling-crisp on the outside and genuinely juicy inside, piled onto ciabatta with arugula and a pink peppercorn Kewpie mayo. The room is tight, the menu is tight, and the cravings that follow are not. A counter-service spot that keeps it simple and lets the roast pork do the talking.

Murals cover the walls of this Whittier neighborhood taco spot, and the name delivers exactly the disclaimer it promises: yes, tacos, but also slow-braised rabbit barbacoa in mole over heirloom masa, and beef cheeks in pasilla negro adobo with handmade tortillas. The chef has a Food Network face and the kitchen to back it up. Named one of Denver's 25 best restaurants by 5280, it's the kind of Mexican place that makes ordering feel like a commitment.

The amber glow through the windows at night is the first thing you notice, and then all the people inside, clearly mid-splendid-time. This is a neighborhood restaurant done with genuine ambition, the kind where the cowboy rib-eye with cracked pepper butter sits on the same menu as Dover sole and creative cocktails. Webster Groves is a quick drive from the city, and regulars treat it like their dining room, which is a compliment to everyone.

Every dish arrives in a metal pie tin, which sets the tone: this is a casual, communal American restaurant in RiNo where the whole point is ordering too much and arguing over the last of the mac and cheese. The menu runs from cornbread muffins to whole fried fish built for pulling apart into tacos, and the cocktails are tangy and strong enough to make everyone agreeable about sharing. Come with people you like, or you'll be negotiating with strangers.

Beef heart on a skewer is not a timid opener, but El Chullo's anticuchos, marinated and grilled dense and chewy, set the tone for a traditional Peruvian restaurant that doesn't hedge. The Melrose location on Seventh Avenue is cozy and colorful, the kind of room where a Pisco Sour tastes better than it has any right to. Lomo saltado, ceviche mixto, and arroz chaufa round out a menu that takes the Lima-meets-Canton fried rice angle seriously.

An old-school neighborhood butcher and sandwich counter in the Sunset, where the meat is weighed after slicing so your Italian sub doesn't tilt the table. That discipline produces something balanced rather than heroic: the Toscano lines up salami, coppa, provolone, and pepperoncini like they've been rehearsing. In-house roasted turkey, ham, and pork fill out the case, and on Tuesdays the Zinfandel-marinated tri-tip is the move.

A smashburger shop built into a shipping container alongside Two Pitchers Brewing Co., Lovely's has a menu that reads like a love letter to drive-through nostalgia. Picnic tables and string lights fill the dog-friendly outdoor space. The fried onion burger, a riff on the Oklahoma classic George Motz made famous, cooks the patty right into thinly sliced onions so the beef fat goes everywhere it should.

Pinball machines and white walls set the scene at this Potrero Hill sandwich shop, where the menu runs on East Coast bodega logic: Kaiser rolls, poppy seeds, and a bacon-egg-and-cheese that doesn't apologize for itself. Pastrami swaps in for the pork if that's your move. Ask for the lacto-fermented hot sauces, which bring enough acid and heat to make everything sharper. Casual, low-key, and named among the Bay Area's better sandwich spots by the Chronicle.

Every sandwich at this sandwich shop contains pork, which tells you almost everything you need to know. The signature is porkstrami, a brined and smoked pork butt that earns its place alongside coppa, salami, and mortadella in the loaded Salvatore, served hot on a Dutch crunch roll. Turkey and roast beef exist if you insist. Old-timey novelty sodas handle cleanup duty. Bring your appetite and leave your dietary restrictions at the door.

A Hong Kong-style cafe in Quincy where the French toast oozes with creamy egg yolk and the ji cheung fun comes loaded with beef brisket or curry fish balls. The menu pulls from classic cha chaan teng tradition and gives it a modern, careful reworking. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod and a Bon Appétit best new restaurant mention, which explains the regulars making the trip from the city.

The chef's pastry background explains why the flan de erizo and the croissant sobrasada roll have each turned heads at Seattle Met. This tapas bar on 12th Avenue riffs on Galician cooking, leaning into the Pacific Northwest's seafood to find where Spain's northwest and Washington's coastline overlap. The menu takes liberties, in a good way, and the sherry list is longer than you'd expect. A James Beard semifinalist in 2024.

The upstairs Bullock Room, named for Tom Bullock, the first African American to publish a cocktail recipe book, tells you everything about how seriously this Lafayette Square bar and restaurant takes its history. Seasonal cocktail menus have drawn inspiration from roller derby and Dolly Parton, which is either chaotic or inspired depending on your mood. The burger, loaded with chorizo jam and pub cheese on a challah bun, holds its own alongside the drinks.

Arched doorways, white tablecloths, and filigree pendant lights give this Loyal Heights Middle Eastern restaurant the feel of a neighborhood place that knew exactly what it wanted to be and never wavered. Hummus plates, mezze spreads, kebabs, and family-style platters fill tables that tend to fill early. The hummus topped with lamb and pine nuts has its own cult following, which is saying something in a city that eats a lot of hummus.

A globe-hopping dinner spot in Old Town Scottsdale built as a love letter to Anthony Bourdain, which means handmade pasta shares the menu with egg yolk nigiri and bison ribeye without any of it feeling like a theme park. The warm, conversation-friendly room earns its vibe. The bar team applies something closer to lab technique to the cocktails, and the mocktail program picked up a Phoenix Magazine Best of the Valley nod, which is a sentence Bourdain would have found deeply funny.

The menu changes constantly, so on any given night dinner at this neighborhood restaurant might land on Filipino braised pork, lamb biryani, or smoked chicken pappardelle. Beyond the dining room, the team runs cooking classes, farm dinners, and a grocery program, which gives the place a slightly utopian community-hub energy. The focaccia with whipped garlic butter has a reputation that precedes it, which tells you something about the level of care going into everything else.

The menu at this Mexican restaurant changes constantly, which is either the chef's restlessness or a sign that he has a lot to say. Emanuel Corona draws on Puebla, Mexico City, and Oaxaca for cooking that moves between tlayudas and chiles rellenos, beef cheek barbacoa and lamb birria. The room on South Second Street carries the quiet weight of a place that has meant something to this neighborhood for a long time, under more than one name.

Steamed momos are the anchor here, plump Nepalese dumplings served with a tomato-cilantro sauce that splits the difference between salsa and chutney. Bini's Kitchen is a casual counter spot, the brick-and-mortar home of a catering operation that built its reputation on those dumplings alone. Combo meals let you mix in vegetarian stews and grilled meats, and the whole thing stays firmly in lunch-money territory. The Howard Street location is the one with actual seats.

Luce is a small Italian trattoria on East Burnside, with a checkerboard floor, floor-to-ceiling windows, and shelves of jarred things that make it feel like a mini-mart from a more graceful era. Antipasti run a few dollars, pastas come in half portions, and the house wine arrives in little tumblers. They don't take reservations, so the plan is to show up and look relaxed about waiting. It has made both the Eater and Portland Monthly best-of lists.

The dinner-party vibe is not an accident: Scout's grew out of an apartment pop-up, and the casual energy, upbeat music, and focused menu still read that way. Both chefs came up through fine dining around St. Louis, and the cooking shows it without announcing it. Vegetables get the same attention as the pasta, and the menu stays short enough that everything on it clearly earned its spot.

This is a Filipino supermarket with a food court attached, so dress for a cart and bring a stomach with a plan. Grill City turns out whole squid, skewers, and chicharones fried to order, while a steam-table station carves slices off a roast pig. Do a lap of the aisles before committing, then stop at the bakery by the exit, where the ube is so thorough it borders on a personality.

A neighborhood restaurant where the owners greet you like they've been expecting you, African Grill and Bar serves a broad sweep of regional African cooking, not just one country's repertoire. Jollof rice, oxtail stew, black-eyed pea dishes, fish stew, and several kinds of porridge all share the menu. Regulars tend to work through it methodically, which is a reasonable life goal.

A bright red neon sign marks this Sichuan restaurant tucked into a Tempe strip mall, where turquoise booths and mural-covered walls set the scene for lazy Susans loaded with mapo tofu, braised eggplant, and the Chongqing-style spicy chicken that Phoenix Magazine named one of Arizona's top dishes. The batter is thin and shatters, the peppercorns do their characteristic lip-numbing work, and the portions are large enough to make you reconsider your afternoon plans.

The house-made tortillas holding together the tacos here tell you what kind of place this is: a casual, all-day Mexican eatery in NoHo where the cooking is straightforward and the room stays bright and airy from morning through dinner. Larger plates are built for sharing, and the churros at the end feel less optional than the menu lets on. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks with the crowd that fills it without making a fuss about it.

The dining room at Stanly Ranch, Bear is where Napa's farm-to-table seriousness meets a chef with a genuine sense of play. The cowboy ribeye arrives with huitlacoche, corn's funky fungal alter ego, which tells you the kitchen isn't just sourcing beautifully but thinking sideways. California produce anchors everything, but the culinary references roam freely. A named Discovery on The 50 list.

Freshly baked pita lands on the table almost before you've settled in, which is either a warning or a promise at this upmarket Lebanese restaurant in the Flatiron. The name means "tell me" in colloquial Arabic, and the format backs that up: sharing plates built around hot and cold meze, hummus in several moods, baba ghanoush, fattoush, falafel. Mains like seared lamb chops reward anyone who holds back.

José Andrés brought his Spanish tapas restaurant to the third floor of the Cosmopolitan, and the room has the kind of energy that makes you order more than you planned. The menu leans modern, built around small plates, and the kitchen flies ingredients in from Spain to back up the claim. Jamón Ibérico, gambas al ajillo, croquetas, pan de cristal con tomate: the classics are all here, done without apology.

Leather, iron, and glass fill the dining room at this upscale Japanese izakaya on Madison Avenue, where the sharing format means robata skewers and pristine sushi on shaved ice arrive at the table more or less continuously. The black cod wrapped in hoba leaf has become a signature across the brand's global outposts. Desserts, meanwhile, have their own Instagram following, which tells you something about the clientele and the lighting.

A 30-seat Eastern Mediterranean spot in Cambridge where the pantry does a lot of the heavy lifting: house spice blends, regional olive oils, grape molasses. The meze-forward menu leans Lebanese in spirit, with dishes like shish tawouk and eggplant fatteh that taste like someone cared about every sourcing decision without needing you to know it. Small, snug, and quietly serious about what's on the table.

French classics served in a dining room that looks out over Lake Michigan, with escargot, foie gras, and steak frites on a menu that hasn't chased any trends and isn't embarrassed about it. Lake Park Bistro is the kind of formal French restaurant Milwaukee keeps in its back pocket for anniversaries and quiet celebrations, where the room does a lot of the heavy lifting and the kitchen handles the rest.

The hidden back garden patio is reason enough to book a table, but the kitchen earns its own case: a farm-to-table wine bar in Capitol Hill that's been sourcing from local farmers since before that phrase appeared on every menu in Denver. The wine list leans toward sustainable, off-the-beaten-path producers, and the food shifts with what's actually growing nearby. Regulars treat the wintertime cassoulet like a seasonal event.

The move here is mon nhau, Vietnamese bar food that runs to pork-stuffed chicken wings, snails in salted egg yolk, and fries drowning in brisket and garlic butter. The pho shots, vodka and beef broth, set the tone for everything else. This Harvey Park kitchen and bar keeps the pho and bánh mì around for the cautious, but the menu's whole subtext is that caution is overrated. Bring people you like enough to share a three-liter soju tower with.

The twice-cooked pork here is the thing to order first: thin, crispy cutlets in a glaze that toggles between sweet wine and sharp vinegar, a signature dish of China's Dongbei region. This casual Chinese cafe in University City has become a go-to for regional cooking that doesn't smooth its edges for anyone, with bold Chengdu chicken and hot crisp fish rounding out a menu that makes the drive from anywhere in St. Louis feel like a reasonable life choice.

Northern Thai cooking in a city that already loves Thailand but tends to stop at the central-region classics. Chiang Mai focuses on the distinct traditions of the north, and three aunties running the open kitchen with unhurried precision are the main event. The bronzed pork sausages and green papaya salad are there for the familiar, but the menu goes further than most St. Louis Thai spots dare.

The charcoal smell hits before you've found your seat, which is a fine way to set expectations at this intimate dinner spot on Delmar. The open kitchen keeps things honest, the lighting keeps things romantic, and a dessert cart actually wheels around the room like it's 1974. Dishes are stripped back on purpose, a few components, no fuss. The clay pot Negroni is a good place to start deciding you'll come back.

A server in a druidic robe strikes the floor with a staff, lifts a smoking lantern, and produces your cocktail from inside it. The theatrics are a genuine feature, not a phase. Frazer's is a comfortable neighborhood restaurant in Benton Park, the kind that holds steak frites and pork schnitzel alongside a rotating specials board and a serious seafood selection, while the bar is clearly having the most fun in the room.

Roasted corn lands on the table before you've even opened the menu, which is a good sign at this Peruvian restaurant tucked into Old St. Charles. Chef Andrew Cisneros runs a menu built around ceviche, fried seafood, and slow-cooked pork, with shortbread alfajores from a local bakeshop closing things out. The room draws a crowd that looks genuinely happy to be there, which in St. Charles on a weeknight is its own kind of achievement.

Yunnan province cooking, where the flavor map runs spicy and sour rather than rich and savory, is the whole point at this fast-casual spot. The chef grew up near the borders of Thailand and Vietnam, and her handmade dumplings, chile eggplant, and lime-ginger peanut salad taste like it. A veggie sampler lets you graze across most of the menu in one go, which is lucky, because narrowing it down is hard.

The mini cheese empanadas arrive flaky outside and molten within, and the sampler plate is basically the menu's argument for ordering one of everything. Mayo Ketchup is a casual Puerto Rican and Dominican spot on Olive Street where the tostones come topped with avocado and pickled onion, the taquenos are cheese pulled through pastry dough, and the sauces range from guava to herbaceous cilantro. A good place to lose track of time deciding what to eat next.

The xiao long bao arrive as tightly pleated, hand-folded pouches that release a rush of pork broth the moment you bite in. This is a casual noodle and dumpling shop where Sichuan heat is the organizing principle, landing not just on the tongue but behind the eyes. The chile oil wontons and dry-rubbed wings deliver real numbness, the satisfying kind you talk about afterward. Ramen and other noodles round things out, though the spice-forward dishes are what most people can't stop thinking about.

The main dining room of this old-school red-sauce Italian spot is encrusted in crystals, which tells you everything about the vibe before you've ordered a drink. Leo at the bar will talk you into a sambuca shot, Isabella will remember your order from last time, and the owner himself is probably seating you. The menu hasn't changed in years, and nobody's complaining.

A cool marble bar greets you before you've even found your table, and the room behind it, skylighted and hung with art, reads as elegant without being airless. This is a polished American dining room in Kalorama where the menu follows the seasons and the service stays warm instead of formal. The martinis are serious, and the pastry program gives you an actual reason to stay for dessert.

The salsa bar alone could justify a visit: nearly a dozen house-made salsas, each in its own small cup, running from tangy pineapple to smoky morita to a bracingly fresh serrano. Casa Corazon is a gourmet Southern Mexican restaurant tucked into a small red building on Phoenix's 16th Street corridor, where the menu leans into regional dishes and pairs naturally with Mexican wine or a fresh-fruit margarita. Eater counts it among Phoenix's best.

The Ninfarita has been mixed the same way since the early 1970s, and Houston would riot if that changed. This Navigation Boulevard Tex-Mex institution is credited with bringing fajitas into the national conversation, a fact locals mention with the quiet pride of a sports championship. Order the tacos a la Ninfa, the original play, and the frozen margarita that started the whole legend.

Villa Arcos is a small red shack on Navigation in the East End that serves breakfast tacos wrapped in foil, the way nature and the neighborhood intended. The flour tortillas are soft and stuffed past reason, and you order a couple at the window for a few bucks. Politicians, construction crews, and recent Montrose arrivals all stand in the same line, which is about as bipartisan as Houston gets before 9 a.m.

Carts trundle through this spacious Cantonese dim sum hall on weekends, and by midday the entrance is already a bottleneck of people clutching numbered tickets. Point at what rolls past: lacquered duck, chewy lo mein, dumplings, fried wontons. The servers are moving fast and the tables are crowded and dimly lit, and the whole operation hums along in cheerful, productive disorder. Phoenix New Times handed it Best Dim Sum in 2025.

Jackfruit quesabirria tacos with plant-based mozzarella are the headline at this vegan Mexican taco shop in the Arcadia neighborhood, a casual counter-order spot where the menu reads like any solid taqueria, right down to the bucket of Modelos. Burritos come stuffed with rice, beans, fries, and your pick of plant-based protein, which is either very 2010s or exactly what you wanted. The kind of place carnivores get dragged to and then quietly admit was fine.

The consommé-soaked, cheese-crisped birria taco is the reason this place exists, and most tables seem to know it. Kiké's is a taco shop that grew out of a food truck into a full brick-and-mortar with a bar, which means you can now chase the drip with a proper drink. Carnitas and al pastor round out the menu for anyone who needs convincing, but the birria is still running the room.