The Best Restaurants in the United States

Wine barrel, shaped booths fill a historic brick mill building that once housed some of Walla Walla's more reverent fine dining. Salted Mill is a casual bar and restaurant now, the kind where locals fill the counter after a long day of tasting and nobody speaks in hushed tones. The menu leans into the mood, with gochujang-glazed swordfish and duck fat fries that make no apologies for themselves.

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.

Tile walls and an open loft in a converted beauty school bounce noise around a room that stays open later than most of its neighbors on this stretch of Riverside. Wooden City is a casual restaurant with pizza on the menu, though the beet ravioli with goat cheese and pistachio has apparently been converting skeptics, and the blistered peppers with sausage tend to outshine the pies. Seattle Met named it among Washington's best restaurants.

The floor-to-ceiling windows face the Bay, and if you time it right you'll be watching the sunset over the Golden Gate while eating wild mushroom gumbo. This old-school vegetarian restaurant at Fort Mason has been around forever, loosely affiliated with the San Francisco Zen Center, which explains why the dining room feels so unusually calm. The menu takes a global approach, and a vegetarian can order anything on it without scanning for fine print.

The dining room is painted red, yellow, and blue, Colombia's flag colors, which tells you something about what's coming. Mägo is a fine dining tasting menu spot in Oakland where the vibe skews deceptively loose, Latin pop drifts through the room, and the cooking traces the chef's Colombian roots through arepas, fried yuca, and corn pancakes, all finished over a wood-burning hearth with a steering-wheel crank. Pretension-free tasting menus are rarer than they should be.

A family-run taqueria that operates out of an actual home and specializes in tacos al vapor, steamed beef head tacos in five cuts, from cachete to the gloriously fatty labio. The consomé, simmered from cow skull, arrives velvety and shimmering and pulls double duty as a dipper or a hangover cure. Weekend mornings bring goat birria and menudo. Cash, counter service, no fuss.

A French bistro tucked into a working Sausalito shipyard, where the servers wear mechanic coveralls and the menu runs to escargot, frisée with lardons, and quiche. The theme commitment is complete enough to feel charming rather than corny. Patio tables face the water and fill fast, which is the whole point, so book ahead if you're coming with a group and hoping to eat outside.

A cilantro aioli that the team describes as the shop's green sauce equivalent ties together every bánh mì on the menu here, a small downtown San Jose sandwich counter with house-made bread and a thing for Italian porchetta as a filling. String lights are about the extent of the decor, which is fine, because the room is easygoing and the sandwiches are doing the decorating. The San Francisco Chronicle has flagged it among the top Vietnamese spots in the Bay Area.

The menu changes every week at this small Vietnamese deli in Oakland's Fruitvale neighborhood, which keeps regulars coming back to see what chef Paulette Tran is up to. Banh mi are a constant, stuffed differently each time, and a beef rice porridge with ginger and green onions turns up often enough to be considered a regular. The room has plants, local embroidery, and a TV looping Vietnamese street vendors on infinite repeat.

Hand-pulled noodles in every thickness the kitchen can justify anchor the menu at this spacious Uyghur restaurant in downtown Menlo Park, the kind of place where pots of mint tea and flaky meat pastries share the table before you've made up your mind. The cuisine comes from Xinjiang, sitting somewhere between Central Asian and Chinese, and the room fills with long communal tables that make it feel like a feast even on a Tuesday.

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.

Original Joe's is an old-school Italian-American red-sauce house in North Beach, all leather booths and portions sized for people who plan to eat leftovers tomorrow. The menu runs from pasta to steaks to burgers, so a table of eight with eight different moods can all find something. It has been family-run forever, which explains why a preteen sulking in the corner booth barely draws a glance. Prices are fair, and no one dresses up.

Sam Wo has been around forever, which in San Francisco's Chinatown means it has survived earthquakes, closures, new ownership, and the slow creep of chow mein tourists. It's an old-school Cantonese noodle house where the move is the steamed rice rolls stuffed with char siu, served with a swipe of hot mustard that will clear your sinuses immediately. The tea program has gotten an upgrade, with oolongs and pu-erhs now on offer, though the rice porridge with fried doughnut remains unchanged and deeply comforting.

This is a counter-service pasta spot on Bryant Street whose menu stops at pasta, a seven-layer chocolate cake, and wine, which is about as many decisions as a weekday afternoon can handle. There's a corner of secondhand cookbooks to browse while a bowl of sausage ragu cools slightly. It suits two friends with nowhere to be and a shared reluctance to check email. Prices stay casual, and so does the dress code.

The mahjong lounge in back tells you everything about the vibe at this Penn Quarter American Chinese sit-down. The menu runs from crab rangoon spiked with Old Bay to mapo tofu that takes the spice seriously, and the Chongqing chicken arrives buried in chilies as a statement of intent. Fresh noodles and leek fondue give the lo mein a comfort-food pull that's hard to argue with. Fun, loud, and not pretending to be anything else.

The looming white-domed oven is the centerpiece of this tiny Astoria storefront, which has the brisk pace of a slice shop but the latticed oriel windows and warm arabesques of a Cairo street. It specializes in feteer, flaky layered pies pressed with ghee and folded around fillings, the basturma version packed with heavily garlicked air-dried beef. The New York Times named it among New York's 100 best restaurants. Steinway Street already has its Little Egypt; now it has a destination.

Amador is a Spanish-leaning dinner spot in a Chinatown strip mall where parking is more of a rumor than a policy. Every table gets five house salsas with tiny spoons and droppers, so you'll be dosing your own food like a very delicious science project. You can graze through margaritas and croquetas before karaoke next door, or commit to the tasting menu. It's been on The Infatuation's list of the 25 best restaurants in Las Vegas.

Vegan Japanese in the Mission, where the menu reads like an argument that tofu never needed meat to earn its place. Cha-Ya has been around forever, with roots in Berkeley's produce-obsessed dining scene, and the cooking stays rustic and unfussy: brothy soups, deep-fried tofu in mushroom-seaweed dashi, sushi rolls packed with pickled and steamed vegetables. Sidewalk tables if you want to watch Valencia Street do its thing.

James Syhabout of Commis runs this casual Thai-inflected counter spot in Temescal, where the menu swings between a spicy chicken sandwich lacquered in Thai chile oil and garlic noodles that somehow taste like a Bay Area institution. The cooking splits the difference between street food and comfort food, and it does so without making a big deal about it. Cash-friendly prices, a busy room, and nothing on the menu that needs a long explanation.

The Taishan roast chicken arrives head-on, carved tableside by a server wearing two layers of gloves who tears it apart with her bare hands. This Cantonese restaurant in Chinatown is one of the few places left that stays open deep into the night, which means the 2 a.m. crowd runs from solo diners working through a clay pot of eel rice to the chefs from Four Kings. Named among San Francisco Chronicle's top Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area, it earns the spot at any hour.

The tomato soup arrives under a dome of puff pastry in a bowl so hot you'll burn your fingers just reaching for it. This is a classic French bistro in the heart of Yountville, the kind of place with walls so covered in stuff you need a second visit to take it all in. Braised meats, goat cheese salads, an enclosed patio that works even in gray weather. It fills up fast during harvest season, so book ahead.

Carnitas by the pound, sold on weekends only from a weekend-only stand beside the railroad tracks in East Oakland. The Morales family runs this outdoor operation Saturdays and Sundays, and the lines snake long enough that selling out is routine rather than a surprise. A few communal tables let you eat on the spot, or you can take it all home. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best tacos and best Mexican restaurants. Get there early.

The barbacoa tacos dorados here leave a pool of vivid red oil on the plate that stops first-timers mid-bite. This casual Antioch taco spot specializes in guisos, proteins slow-simmered into something silky, ordered as tacos or thick, crispy gorditas. The San Francisco Chronicle put it on their short lists for both best Mexican restaurants and best tacos in the Bay Area, which for a strip-mall counter in the East Bay is a statement worth noting.

String lights zigzag above the patio out back, where counter-service Taiwanese food and soft serve draw crowds to this Emeryville spot. Fried tofu skins that look remarkably like Wheat Thins share a table with grilled corn and fried chicken in a citrusy Sichuan peppercorn sauce. The housemade sparkling oolong and an unconventional sake list give you something to argue over while you wait for a seat.

A taco stand parked in front of a beauty salon on Broadway, which tells you everything about Vallejo's relationship with pretension. The suadero gets seared on the flat top until the edges crisp up, and the al pastor's adobo punches well above its price point. Grilled onions and chiles come on the side. You eat at a picnic table or over your trunk, and the San Francisco Chronicle has called out both the tacos and the broader menu as among the Bay Area's best.

A food truck that does one thing: pav bhaji, the Mumbai street staple of spiced, buttered vegetable gravy served with soft, toasted rolls for scooping. The bhaji gets its richness from Amul butter, and the locally made pav handles like Parker House rolls. Spicy, cheesy, or both are your main decisions. Order extra bread regardless, because the gravy always wins the race. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top South Asian and top vegetarian spots.

The fish sauce arrives in a jumbo jug, which tells you most of what you need to know about the spirit of this place. Banh Cuon Tay Ho is a Vietnamese takeout counter in San Jose's Senter Road corridor, built entirely around banh cuon, the soft steamed rice rolls stuffed with peppery pork and dried shrimp, then loaded with fried spring rolls, yam fritters, fermented pork, and prawn cake. One dish, done obsessively.

A cenaduria is a Mexican dinner spot built around comfort food, and this East Oakland home restaurant does exactly that, anchored by tostadas raspadas, thin bubbly planks of fried corn piled with meat, cabbage, crumbled cheese, and a sizzling salsa roja. Pozole, tacos dorados, enchiladas, and tortas ahogadas drowned in tomato sauce fill out the menu. The San Francisco Chronicle has called it one of the best Mexican restaurants in the Bay Area.

A lunch window on Vine Street where the herbs arrive in what can only be described as quantities. The team behind it came up through Chez Panisse, and their California produce fixation reads clearly in the Middle Eastern menu: falafel with a serious crunch, flatbreads buried in mint and dill, yogurt spiked with broccoli and dill. Takeout only, which keeps things honest. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best Berkeley and best Bay Area Middle Eastern 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.

The steamed-up windows are the first sign you're in the right place. Hon's is a no-frills Cantonese noodle house in Chinatown, been around forever, and the wonton soup is the reason: thin noodles, plump pork-and-shrimp dumplings in a clear broth with a deep, funky dried-shrimp backbone. The scallion pancakes are hard to skip. Lunch crowds move fast, solo diners fit right in, and the whole thing costs almost nothing.

The complimentary focaccia that lands at your table before dinner is spongy and faintly sweet, closer to a savory pound cake than anything you'd expect for free. This rustic Tuscan restaurant in downtown Fairfax does freshly made, rib-sticking pasta alongside a porchetta sandwich at lunch that justifies the name on the sign. Marble countertops inside, wood benches out front for when Marin decides to behave weather-wise.

Woven Messob baskets hang from the ceiling at this Ethiopian restaurant on Adeline, and the room is clearly built for a party, with a long bar, plush chairs, and a fully adjustable lighting rig that suggests someone once had serious ambitions for the space. Order the meat and veggie combo and let the kitchen do the rest. The 100% teff injera crumbles a little differently than you might expect, which is its own small education.

Manakish are pizza-sized Lebanese flatbreads, and this fast-casual spot in Walnut Creek has built its whole identity around them. The menu runs from simple za'atar to meat-and-cheese loaded versions, plus wraps, bowls, and kebab plates, with weekend brunch on top. Patterned tiles and Turkish mosaic chandeliers give the room more personality than the format usually bothers with. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top Middle Eastern restaurants.

The back patio, hidden behind a fast-food-plain interior, fills with ferns and afternoon light in a way that catches most first-timers off guard. This counter-service Mediterranean spot on California Avenue has been an old-school institution for decades, turning out Jordanian-style shawarma and vegetarian combo platters at prices that feel almost apologetic. The halvah bars and butter cookies come from a local confection maker and taste like it.

The sugar-crusted barbecue buns have a following serious enough to cause shortages. Ming's Tasty is a no-frills dim sum shop in Oakland's Chinatown, the kind where takeout orders go out the door in stacks and the breakfast and lunch crowds spill onto the sidewalk. The fried shrimp balls are famously frilly and bouncy, the siu mai lands every time, and the line, when there is one, moves faster than you'd expect.

Nasi lemak is the organizing principle here, the Malaysian national dish built around coconut rice with its constellation of sides. This quick-service counter in downtown San Jose plates it with Mamak-style fried chicken, an overnight spice-and-curry-leaf marinade under a thin cornstarch crackle that happens to be gluten-free. The San Francisco Chronicle put it on both its best San Jose restaurants and best Bay Area fried chicken lists, which is a tidy double for a $13 plate.

Free-range chicken runs the whole show at this cozy Vietnamese pho shop in San Jose's Vietnam Town. The cơm gà rô ti, a rotisserie chicken rice plate, arrives with tomato-flavored rice, a sunny-side up egg, and chile sauce, plus a small cup of chicken soup on the side because apparently that wasn't enough food already. The San Francisco Chronicle has named it among the top Vietnamese spots in the Bay Area.

A dim sum restaurant attached to a Sunnyvale Ramada Inn sounds like a punchline, but the kitchen-feed TV looping footage of cooks pulling noodles and stir-frying greens sets the tone quickly. This is a spacious, serious dim sum house with a sunroom and patio, serving har gow, barbecue pork buns, and chicken feet glossed in sweet sauce. The house chile oil quietly runs the whole operation. Black charcoal buns filled with salted egg custard are the crowd favorite.

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.

Oxblood marble and decorative molding dripping in merlot tones have replaced what the Chronicle once described as a middle school production of Camelot. This old-school Italian red sauce restaurant on Taraval has been around forever, and a lengthy remodel hasn't loosened its grip on the classics. Regulars who never open the menu fill the room by six, and if you ask the kitchen nicely about the veal saltimbocca, it will appear.

A thatched-roof hut stands in the middle of the dining room, which tells you this Ethiopian restaurant on Saratoga Ave is not going through the motions. The vegetarian combo arrives as a mosaic of colors on injera, and the kitfo, spiced raw beef tartare, is the thing regulars order without looking up. Honey wine comes in painted bottles. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best Ethiopian spots.

Inside Grand Central Terminal, this vast all-day French brasserie runs from the pre-dawn commuter rush straight through to a late-night dinner crowd, 365 days a year. The scale is genuinely staggering, which means walk-ins are usually fine, a minor miracle in Midtown. The menu swings from a lobster omelet at breakfast to classic brasserie fare at dinner, with the room itself doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

Maroon is a sleek, clubby Afro-Caribbean restaurant at the Sahara, built around a custom jerk pit you can smell before you find your table. The hip-hop runs loud enough that anything important should wait until dessert, if not the car. Expect jerk chicken, braised oxtail, and bachelorettes on their way to Magic Mike next door. Book about a month ahead, or call in a favor.

Tesiny is a small raw bar and charcoal grill on a South Philly block of old-school institutions, a short walk from an abandoned garage, which is not the setting oysters usually ask for. Inside, velvet chairs and late-90s R&B give it the feel of a very good bar mitzvah afterparty. Stop in for a drink and a snack or stay for dinner, though expect a sit-down price, not a counter-service one.

A French cafe that does breakfast and lunch by the book, then quietly pivots at dinner into something else entirely. The chef spent time doing pop-ups before taking over this spot, and his French-Haitian dinner menu carries that earned confidence: Haitian epis perfumes a beef patty, djon-djon gets English peas and local mushrooms, and the kitchen-driven cocktail list includes non-alcoholic drinks worth ordering on purpose.

A Taiwanese home-cooking spot in Bayside so far from the subway that getting there is its own commitment. The chef, owner, and entire staff is one woman, Mei Lee, so ring the counter bell and wait. She'd rather you didn't spread the word. The New York Times put it at number ten on their 100 Best Restaurants list, so that ship has sailed. Beef noodle soup, lion's head meatballs, and broth poured to the rim say everything the bare room doesn't.

A googly-eyed metal tiger on the wall and a wooden tableau glossing the definition of "hangry" set the tone at this Thai street food spot in downtown Danville, where the vibe is more family dinner than date-night theater. Khao soi and pumpkin curry are the reasons regulars keep coming back. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the top Thai restaurants in the Bay Area.

Murals of desert landscapes and the Nasser family carving shawarma off vertical spits cover the walls, which tells you most of what you need to know. Abu Salim is a counter-service Middle Eastern spot on Haight Street, casual in the way the neighborhood demands. The hummus runs soft-serve creamy and the Ramallah-style falafels shatter cleanly. Portions lean generous, and the kitchen covers shawarma plates, vegetarian combos, and salads with evident care.

The logo is a Ramones seal riff, and the walls are buried in band stickers and prints, so the vibe is established before you order. Aburaya is a karaage shop in Oakland's Temescal that goes deep on one thing: thick boneless thighs marinated in shio-koji, dredged in potato starch for a crunch that actually holds. The seasonings and dipping sauces, garlic miso powder, sansho pepper, miso ranch, are where the kitchen puts its personality.