The Best Restaurants in the United States

Nashville hot chicken shop tucked inside TRVE Brewing on Broadway, where the menu runs from classic spicy tenders to a green chile heat option that leans decidedly Colorado. The sandwiches are big and juicy in the way that requires a full stack of napkins and no white shirt. Vegan versions and a lineup of sides round things out for groups who can't agree on anything except that they're hungry.

The menu has a section called "America's Popular," which tells you everything you need to know about where the kitchen's heart actually lies. This counter-service Sichuan spot runs a long list of chile-heavy, mouth-numbing dishes built around Sichuan peppercorns, and the portions are sized for sharing. Come with people, order widely, and leave the safe column alone.

This is an upscale but easygoing California restaurant on Highway 101 in Solana Beach, where the produce is local and seasonal and the salads get more attention than most people give their entrees. Expect a chopped salad with soppressata in it and soup you'll order on purpose. Dress is beach-adjacent nice, and the room is full of locals who treat a Tuesday lunch like a small occasion. It holds three AAA diamonds.

Perched on the second floor of Pike Place Market, this compact seafood and Northwest restaurant has views over the market rooftops to the bay and a menu that leans quietly Italian these days. Lunch sandwiches, including a surprisingly good catfish, carry the same care as the dinner plates, which reflect the freshest ingredients the market below can offer. Dinner adds up fast, but nobody seems to mind much.

Nora's is an off-Strip Italian restaurant, the kind of red-sauce room locals have kept going for about as long as the Strip has been reinventing itself. The garlic bread is a dollar and bottomless, which tells you what the kitchen thinks of your appetite. Portions come out sized for sharing and then ignored. It holds AAA Three Diamonds, and the pasta everyone talks about only shows up at dinner, so plan accordingly.

SumoMaya is a Scottsdale fusion restaurant that treats brunch as a team sport, with unlimited shared plates and desserts and one entree per person, so pork al pastor pad Thai shows up at the same table as a carne asada scramble. Pan dulce and mini churros kick things off, and the bottomless drinks come with a two-hour limit and no switching mid-session. It's AAA Three Diamonds, in case you needed permission to order a third round.

Ropa vieja made with mushrooms instead of shredded beef sounds like a compromise until you're actually eating it. This Cuban restaurant on Moody Street leans into the roasted-meat-and-tropical-cocktail side of the menu, with drinks running toward guava, smoky rum, and tobacco notes. On a warm night, the patio is where you want to be. A James Beard semifinalist in 2024, it also holds Boston Magazine's Best Cuban nod.

Mazor is a casual River West spot named for the ear of corn, and the menu behaves accordingly: tetelas, tacos, and tostadas, all built on masa, with a short list that suggests nobody here is hiding behind options. The chef pulls from both Mexico and Guatemala, where he grew up, and the food stays unfussy while still feeling like an occasion. Come in whatever you wore to work, and expect Eater to have already told your friends.

Beaumont's American Tavern is a 200-seat Lincoln Park restaurant that took over an old Halsted Street space and filled it with the kind of menu your grandfather would call "proper food." Downstairs runs on pub burgers, shrimp and grits, and fresh pasta, while a steakhouse called the Bull Moose sits upstairs, which is a lot of square footage for a tavern. Expect mid-range prices and a sticky toffee pudding built for sharing.

Cat kitsch lines the shelves at this neighborhood restaurant and bodega in Raleigh, where a team of five local culinary figures pooled their talent and built something that feels both familiar and hard to place. The menu reads Southern but veers into duck-fat fried wings with harissa and honey, cornbread with curry leaf butter, and charred cabbage over tofu pesto. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List, which tracks.

By the Sea is a big Mediterranean-leaning restaurant on Orange Avenue in Coronado, done up in white oak, rattan, and cobblestones shipped over from Italy, which is a lot of luggage for a seaside lunch. The menu runs to seafood platters, a meze spread built around house-fermented pita, and a dry-aged rib-eye for anyone who wandered in from the golf course. Expect resort-town casual with a reservation habit, and cocktails that arrive smoking.

Carne and Hueso is a sit-down Mexican restaurant in North Park, run by two sisters cooking Indigenous dishes from Puebla, Jalisco, and Oaxaca. The moles come in blanco, negro, and rojo, and the birria follows a recipe from their grandfather's place in Guadalajara. Weekend brunch hands the first dozen tables free pan de muerto, which is a real incentive to be the person who arrives early. The bar leans on Mexican spirits and house syrups.

Fried catfish on white bread with hush puppies or collard greens on the side, served out of a former fast-food shell on East Colfax, is the whole pitch here, and it lands. This is a counter-service soul food spot where the staff are warm and the portions are not modest. Barbecue, chicken gizzards, and Sunday-only chitlins round out a menu rooted in Oklahoma tradition that the team is clearly not shy about.

Warm broth arrives first at this seven-table multicourse speakeasy on the Cumberland River, and whatever's in it will probably confuse you before it convinces you. Scallops, paprika, and strawberries, say, or horseradish oil wrapped around aged tuna belly with local melon. The chef's palate is the whole point: combinations that read like a dare on paper land as inevitable on the plate. The New York Times named it to their 2026 Restaurant List.

Taiwanese bubble tea chain Chatime lets you build your drink from the ground up, dialing in sweetness level, swapping to dairy-free, and piling on popping pearls or lychee jelly until it's exactly your problem. The UNLV-adjacent shop pours milk teas, fruit teas, and brown sugar pearl drinks to a crowd that has strong opinions about boba. A second location in the Arts District is already in the works.

Chef Fei is a casual stir-fry restaurant inside the Westfield UTC mall, which is not where you'd expect a wok to be doing its best work. It's the first U.S. outpost of a China-based chain with more than 200 locations back home, where pork gets top billing. Here the menu leans toward beef, including a wagyu stir-fry with broccoli and bell peppers. Eater put it on its list of the best new restaurants in and around San Diego.

Twelve seats, a polycultural farm and vineyard outside the city, and ceramic dishes thrown from clay dug on the property: the scene is set before the food even arrives. Chef Tae Strain runs a tasting menu where the farm supplies much of what lands on the counter, with Korean-inflected technique quietly threading through each course. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List, and the Burnt Hill wines poured between courses are made right outside the window.

A 24-seat Japanese listening den in the Arts District where the only soundtrack is vinyl and the TVs run anime on loop. Ring the buzzer, join the wait list, and eventually find yourself inside walls plastered with Japanese posters while the cocktail program works through whisky, sake, tequila, and shochu. From the team behind Nocturno, it drinks like a speakeasy that got very specific taste very fast.

The dining room alone causes arguments: depending on your table, you're sitting in sun-drenched whimsy, blood-red velvet, or the amber spill of an open Basque grill. Dalia is a Spanish restaurant that treats Spain as a starting point rather than a period piece, so calamari stand in for noodles in a riff on dan dan, and patatas bravas arrive as lacquered, shatteringly crisp pavé cubes. The New York Times named it to their 2026 Restaurant List.

Don Maguro is a casual Japanese spot in a Mira Mesa shopping center, where the kaisen don comes with nori sheets, an egg yolk, and a clear fish bone broth, so lunch turns into a small DIY project. The soup can be sipped alone, poured over the last of the rice, or mixed with the yolk first, a choice that feels weightier than it should. Eater named it one of San Diego's best new restaurants.

Dubu Tofu is a casual Korean soft tofu stew spot in Rancho Bernardo, from the team behind Sot BBQ. The rice arrives in a metal pot on a wooden stand, scooped out so the bottom can crisp and blacken, then barley tea goes in at the end for a soup course nobody asked for but everyone finishes. The kimchi pancake is roughly frisbee-sized. It made Eater's list of the best new restaurants in San Diego.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop Kitchen is a casual, order-at-your-leisure daytime restaurant where the dishes are named after affluent zip codes, so the Brentwood Chinese chicken salad and the Montecito turkey wrap come with a built-in sense of real estate. It's the brand's first sit-down outpost, set in a marble-and-glass former salad chain with striped banquettes, a patio, and yuzu ginger tonics that can become spritzes. Eater named it one of the best new restaurants in San Diego in October 2026.

House of Mandi is a Yemeni restaurant in the Gaslamp where you eat on red-and-black floor sofas at low tables, under murals of Sana's brick towers. It's the San Diego branch of an Anaheim original from Little Arabia, and the halal menu runs on slow-cooked lamb, including a haneeth that's traditionally cooked underground. Wear socks you're proud of, and bring people who'll share a platter.

The Strip's most surreal fast-food experience: an In-N-Out Burger on a rooftop terrace three stories above Las Vegas Boulevard, with no drive-thru in sight. Same Double-Doubles, same divisive fries, same prices as every other location, just with a view that most chains can't manage. The company store inside sells branded gear for anyone who needs a hat to remember the occasion.

A twelve-course tasting menu on Melrose where each course somehow feels like a different restaurant made it, in the best possible, wait, a genuinely different key. Daniel Patterson, who built his name at Coi in San Francisco, is back in fine dining here alongside a former music producer and a pastry chef whose desserts read as slightly unhinged in the most compelling way. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List, and the room earns the attention quietly.

Kirkwood is a steakhouse on the Katy Freeway that doubles as a love letter to a former Oilers receiver turned car dealership king, complete with a replica of the Astrodome's ceiling overhead. Expect leather and velvet booths, prime rib, a tenderloin carved tableside, and a gin cocktail that arrives by bar cart. Eater put it on its September 2026 list of Houston's best new restaurants.

The flaming saganaki arrives tableside, and in Niles, Illinois, that feels correct and necessary. Kouklas is a big, boisterous Greek eatery in Chicago's inner-ring suburbs, with a menu to match: wood-fire grilled octopus, spicy tirokafteri, souvlaki, and a Greek salad that makes you wonder about the lamb's provenance. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List, which tracks for a place this mission-driven about making suburban Greek food something people drive for.

A French-Cajun bistro built around a sub-basement that nobody knew existed until construction crews found it, two levels below the street with old stonework still intact. The team leaned in rather than filling it with concrete, so you can eat your way through a Cajun-and-French-inspired menu deep underground like some kind of delicious urban spelunking. Ground level is technically the third floor, which is a good conversation starter if the food leaves you speechless.

Eagle Harbor sits at the doorstep, Lake Michigan looming in the mist beyond. This 22-seat tasting menu restaurant in a town of roughly 400 is where Carlos Salgado, who ran the celebrated Taco María in Orange County, relocated with his wife to reorient that kitchen's ethos around Wisconsin's seasonal harvest. Sweet corn, sour cherries, and morels meet heirloom corn from Salgado's native Mexico. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List.

The menu is written in Tagalog, and the owner will happily talk you through it. Lasang Pinoy is a Filipino family restaurant in Rogers where the chef in the kitchen learned to cook from his mother, who still stops by. Lumpia, lechon kawali, chicken adobo, and whole fried snapper on the specials board all land on lazy susans for big groups. The New York Times named it to their 2026 Restaurant List. Karaoke is available, if you need the full evening.

A dark-roux gumbo the color of old leather opens the case for this coastal Southern restaurant in a light-filled two-story house in artsy Fairhope. The kitchen leans into Louisiana Cajun tradition rather than the tomato-stewed Mobile Bay norm, and the crowd that fills it knows the difference. The New York Times put Little Bird on its 2026 Restaurant List, which tracks with the technically minded cooking on offer.

Long Weekend is a Western-themed restaurant in Lazybrook/Timbergrove with a big backyard playground, so the kids run themselves ragged while adults hold fire-pit custody with a cocktail. Steaks come off an oak-fired grill, buttery rolls and beer-battered onion rings fill the gaps, and the pizza list swings from braised rabbit to pepperoni with hot honey. Evenings get crowded, so the daytime cafe is the calmer play.

The roof collapsed, the years passed, and Lotus of Siam finally came back to its original Commercial Center address. This is the Thai restaurant that Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, once called the finest Thai meal he had ever eaten, citing its sweep across regional dishes rather than the usual Americanized playbook. The room has been modernized and the menu refreshed, but the classics that built the reputation are still on it.

Six tables, one hanging cactus, and a mole that traces the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade. Mesa Agricola is a counter-service taco and burrito spot in Escondido where the chef grows most of his corn about 12 miles away and mills it for the handmade tortillas. The menu looks spare until you read it carefully. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List, which for a six-table lunch spot feels like a pleasant plot twist.

Modern Kabob is a casual counter-service spot in Linda Vista, run by an Iraqi-American mother and her four sons, which means nobody is getting away with a lazy hummus. You order at the counter and carry your own tray, so wear whatever you like. The menu covers falafel, shawarma, kabobs, small lahmacun pizzas, and a smoothie list long enough to need its own tab. The baklava comes from a family recipe.

Mr. Charlie's is a fast-casual vegan burger counter in Hillcrest, part-owned by Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, which explains the name on the wall and possibly the volume of the playlist. The menu is burgers, cheeseburgers, fries, and Tindle plant-based chicken, with jalapeño-cilantro, chipotle, and barbecue sauces doing the heavy lifting. Order at the counter, expect a quick, cheap-ish meal, and bring zero interest in whether it's real beef.

Slushy machines churn Technicolor drinks behind the bar, which sets the tone for this Northern Thai restaurant occupying the storied space where Pok Pok once stood. Earl Ninsom runs the room and the kitchen turns out gai yang chicken with a chargrilled, fish-sauce funk and a khao soi that makes you keep reaching for the bowl. It landed on the New York Times Restaurant List in 2026.

Pali Wine is a winery tasting room with a real kitchen attached, now in Hillcrest after a rent hike pushed it out of Little Italy. The pours come on tap or by the bottle, and the menu leans casual in a way that suits sipping: battered cornichons with ranch, a smoky fish dip, and a shaved roast beef sandwich with an au jus that apparently simmers for three days. Eater put it on its new restaurants roundup for October 2026.

An avocado-green century-old house in Cloverdale with purple tablecloths and an empty birdcage or two sets the mood for this plant-forward Southern dinner spot run by a local nutrition professor. The menu leans hard on Alabama ingredients and zero-waste cooking, so your steak might be squash, and the chimichurri is made from carrot tops. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List. Go easy on the 124-proof Judge Roy Bean.

A wood-fire grill is the kitchen's only heat source at this New American dinner spot on Church Ave, which means nearly everything carries a thread of smoke. The chef Vinnie Cimino draws loosely from the Istrian Peninsula, an ancestral touchstone for many Ohioans, and the seasonal menu shifts accordingly. Grab a communal table near the garage door, which swings open in warmer months. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List.

Sugarfish is the sushi spot where you stop making decisions, since the Trust Me omakase sends out a set procession and the kitchen does the thinking. It's a casual, mid-priced room in Little Italy, with a sushi counter in the back and tables filling the rest. The rice is loosely packed and still warm, and the Los Angeles original's following means a line is a plausible plan.

Swells is a sourdough bakery on India Street in Little Italy, where a window into the dough room lets you watch strangers' future toast get kneaded. It's a takeout counter, so no seating and no dress code beyond shoes. The loaves ferment for a day and a half or longer, and the sourdough cookies exist for anyone who finds bread too responsible. They still work the farmers markets where this all began.