The Best Restaurants in the United States

The outdoor tables on Baker Street are as close to a Parisian sidewalk cafe as Cow Hollow gets, which is either charming or delusional depending on your mood. Côte Ouest is a French bistro where weekend brunch brings smoked salmon benedict on an open-faced croissant, and a Kir Royale seems less indulgent than it should at noon. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top French restaurants.

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 chef here trained in fine dining and then opened a Japanese curry shop in a Burlingame strip mall, which is either a pivot or a philosophy. The curry is built on three-hour caramelized onions and two dozen spices, and it eats like something that took considerably longer than it costs. Katsudon and a buttery corn soup round out the short menu. Casual, counter-service priced, and named among the Bay Area's best Japanese spots by the Chronicle.

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.

The move at this Japantown Korean soup shop is kalbijjim, braised beef short ribs served tableside while a torch melts a crown of cheese over the meat and chewy rice cakes. It's theatrical in a way that feels earned rather than forced. The New York Times named it among San Francisco's 25 best restaurants, which tracks with the line out front most evenings. Go hungry and order the beef soup alongside; it's not a one-dish situation.

The menu at this SoBo District Italian trattoria has barely changed since Sonny Dalesandro inherited it from his dad, which is either the point or the proof. Family recipes anchor the kitchen, and regulars who've been ordering the same thing for years show no signs of reconsidering. Comfort is the operating philosophy here, stated plainly and delivered without ceremony.

Soup dumpling shop where the windows let you watch the pleating happen before the steamer basket lands on your table. The xiao long bao are supple and broth-heavy, and the pork and crab version goes a shade yellow from the crab fat, which tells you everything you need to know. Noodle bowls and dry-fried pork chops round things out. Modern, sleek, always busy, and named among the Bay Area's best Chinese restaurants by the San Francisco Chronicle.

DOG is a walk-up window just off Town Square that sells breakfast burritos and nothing else, in two flavors, vegetable or meat, spicy or not. Modifications are not a conversation you get to have, which is a relief if you've spent the last hour scrolling AllTrails for the perfect hike. The burritos are huge, cheap enough to split, and heavy enough that you'll be quietly renegotiating your route before you've finished.

A casual neighborhood restaurant tucked into a shopping center that has no interest in looking like a destination. The chef is a committed wild-foods forager, so after monsoon season the menu fills with mushrooms and greens pulled from the nearby mountains. The rest runs sandwiches, pizzas, and enchiladas alongside a solid draft beer list, all without any of the Santa Fe adobe-and-turquoise performance. There's a butcher shop a few doors down if the mood strikes.

Handmade dumplings folded in a bright counter-service spot inside the Westside Paper complex, a refurbished industrial sprawl on the west side of the city. The menu is compact on purpose: soup dumplings, potstickers, buns, a few noodle dishes. The New York Times put it on its list of Atlanta's 25 best restaurants. Order the lamb and cilantro dumplings if they have them, and they'll tell you if they don't.

A golden dragon installation anchors the back of this sprawling Alameda dim sum hall, where Lazy Susans spin constantly and the noise level confirms everyone is having a good time. Siu mai and har gow are done right, and the golden shrimp rice rolls, crunchy fried shrimp wrapped in chewy rice noodle sheets, are the kind of thing you keep ordering before the last plate is gone. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top dim sum spots.

Hunanese cooking in Berkeley, built around peppers and a kitchen with a particular way with fish. The poached fillets arrive with green peppercorns and pickled chiles that mean business, and a cracked coconut on the side functions as both a prop and a practical necessity. Portions run large at this casual, share-everything Chinese restaurant, and the sticky rice steamed with pork ribs and corn has developed something of a following.

The wet burrito arrives plate-sized, drowned in enchilada sauce, and piled with cheese, sour cream, and guacamole, which tells you almost everything about El Rio Verde. It's a divey neighborhood Mexican spot where the staff has been around forever and Tulsans tend to bump into a neighbor before they've ordered. The menu runs from fajita omelets at breakfast all the way to fish soup at dinner, but most people are here for that burrito.

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.

Finish 30 of the bar's 100-plus tequilas and you earn a plaque on the wall, which tells you a lot about the spirit of this colorful downtown Mexican restaurant. The puffy tacos pull regulars back, and the kitchen keeps vegetarians genuinely in the mix rather than as an afterthought. Drag brunch and lucha libre nights fill the calendar between the serious sustainable sourcing. A neighborhood place that takes its fun as seriously as its food.

Near Lake Merritt, Enssaro is a roomy Ethiopian restaurant that covers the full range, from slow-cooked lamb in berbere and ghee to kitfo rolls that wrap spiced beef tartar inside spirals of injera. The menu is mostly traditional, but it takes the occasional contemporary detour, Ethiopian nachos among them. A spiced, sweetened tea, hot or iced, is the move if the heat builds up.

Duck confit on a ginger waffle, finished with a sunny-side-up duck egg, is the kind of thing that makes you reconsider every breakfast you've eaten before it. This is a breakfast shop that treats classics as a starting point rather than a destination, stacking French toast with blueberry Danish flavors and running Benedicts in half a dozen directions. The daily specials are always worth asking about, and the room fills early.

Shrimp and grits on a menu that also swings through duck and quail in the colder months signals a kitchen that takes its eclecticism seriously. Evangeline's is a dressed-up dinner spot in Tuscaloosa Galleria that has been the default venue for every graduation, anniversary, and retirement dinner in the county for what feels like generations. The cocktails and the crème brûlée both get mentioned in the same breath, which tells you something about the priorities here.

The red-drenched dining room and prix fixe menu of "Asian Italian" dishes at this East Nashville spot signal that something genuinely odd is happening here, in the best way. A trio of industry vets serves garlic noodles from a vintage lunchbox and caviar over French onion dip, then hands out red-checked bibs when the gochujang short ribs arrive. The bit never quite tips into exhausting, and the New York Times named it among Nashville's top 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.

The steamed taro buns here are shaped like little pigs, which tells you something about the mood. This is a neighborhood dim sum house in the outer Richmond where the har gow are fat with filling and the siu mai are delicate enough to make you forget the trek out Balboa. The menu stretches well past brunch into roast squab and clay pot brisket, and the prices run noticeably gentler than downtown.

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.

Fleurette is a dressy French-Italian dinner spot where the portions run large and the bone marrow turns up in more dishes than you'd expect. The room feels like an art museum, with floor-to-ceiling windows and sculptures hanging overhead. Getting there means driving to the far end of a business park, where the valet may be the only living person in sight, which somehow adds to the atmosphere.

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.

Frankie & Wally's is a Coral Gables sandwich shop where the cold cuts are shaved so thin they nearly vanish, and the shredded lettuce is there to soak up the oil and vinegar before the bread can. A Padrino has more layers of mortadella, salami, and ham than anyone will count. It's a counter-service, no-dress-code lunch, and the line knows this. Miami has plenty of hot pressed sandwiches, so this one's the cold, quiet exception.

Sheepskin-draped chairs, candles everywhere, and vintage travel posters give this French bistro the feel of a Chamonix chalet that somehow materialized in Aspen. The menu plays it straight: foie gras terrine, bubbling cheese fondue, savory crêpes. It's the kind of après-ski stop that quietly becomes dinner, then a second bottle of Bordeaux. Reservations open 60 days out and fill fast, so treat that calendar alert as non-optional.

Gold flower fixtures hang from the ceiling of this grand San Leandro banquet hall, where the projectors are always ready for the next big event and the dim sum carts have been replaced by tablets. It's a multigenerational scene, grandparents and kids at the same table, tea steaming alongside turnip cakes. The strawberry taro balls, crunchy outside and custard-oozing within, tend to stop conversations mid-sentence.

A French bistro in Richmond where the steak frites is the answer whether the question is date night or Tuesday. The wine list is short, approachably priced, and chosen with genuine taste, which pairs well with a charcuterie spread that doubles as a reasonable case for skipping an entree. The chef behind it also runs a wine shop and a bakery nearby, so clearly one project was never going to be enough.

Guanatos is a tiny, unfussy Mexican grill in National City where lunch means a tostada piled with ceviche or octopus, then something heftier like a torta or a mound of fries buried under carne asada and marlin. The service is friendly in a way that suggests nobody here is in a hurry. On weekends there's fish soup, which the regulars treat as medicine, and the Eater lunch list has noticed.

A smoothie shop and casual Ethiopian eatery sharing the same strip-mall storefront in Fremont, which sounds like a contradiction until you're sitting under the art with a flavored latte and a plate of lamb tibs on injera. Breakfast runs to spiced fava beans and jalapeño-flecked scrambles, and the apricot smoothie does real work against the heat. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best Ethiopian spots.

The walls are covered in graffiti from happily drunken guests, and over a thousand bottles of Iberian, Italian, and French wine climb to the ceiling of this West Miami tapas bar. It channels the chaotic warmth of a Sevillian taverna: string lights, live music every night, cold cuts, garlic gambas, and a Saturday-only paella that regulars plan their weekends around. The New York Times named it one of Miami's 25 best restaurants right now.

The menu at this Israeli fine dining room lists a dish as "Horrible Hammer smashing herbs and flowers on meat," which tells you everything you need to know about the energy here. Chef Eyal Shani's Las Vegas outpost pulls from Tel Aviv by way of Japanese and French technique, but the real point is that dinner turns into a dance party, and the tile-and-warm-wood room is built to look lived in just enough to make table-dancing feel earned.

Perched at the water's edge in Emeryville with a full view of the San Francisco skyline, this dim sum restaurant leans hard into old-school banquet hall grandeur, crystal chandeliers, guardian lion statues, and furniture that screams wedding reception. The classics anchor the menu, barbecue buns, siu mai, lotus leaf sticky rice, and the salt and pepper calamari that nobody expects but everyone orders twice. Dim sum runs into the evening, which is rarer than you'd think.

A takeout window on Hyde with over two dozen sauce options for chicken wings, which is either a gift or a crisis depending on your decisiveness. The Korean buldak runs genuinely hot, and the lemon pepper wet fans of "Atlanta" will recognize the reference. Cheeky aphorisms and house rules cover the windows, so there's something to read while you decide. Cash in hand, no seat required.

The tandoor oven is the move at this Indian restaurant on Cerrillos, where the chicken wings come out broiled over mesquite and finished with yogurt, garlic, and ginger. The dining room runs large and the service is unhurried and polished. If you like heat, say so; the kitchen will happily adjust. A weekday lunch buffet draws a steady crowd. The chef came up through Los Angeles, New York, and the Caribbean before landing in Santa Fe, and the cooking shows the mileage.

The lunch buffet has been a Tulsa institution for decades, with the owner still at the door to greet you himself, which sets a tone. This is a sit-down Indian restaurant where you pile your plate with naan, pakoras, and a rotating spread of curries, biryanis, and kormas. Most people overlook the dessert corner, but the kheer and mango custard are worth doubling back for before someone else clears the tray.

Hanging ivies, bamboo lanterns, and a menu that opens with raw blue crab tucked into an Isaan papaya salad, which is either the dish that converts you or sends you to the safer side of the menu. This Thai restaurant in San Carlos leans hard into northeastern Thailand, where the food runs funky, sour, and intensely aromatic. The grilled pork jowl with its house fish sauce dip is the kind of thing regulars order before they sit down.

Isla Detroit is a fast-casual Filipino spot in Sterling Heights, with rice bowls, noodle bowls, and entrees drawn from the cooking of Iloilo. You order at the counter, so no one will ask how your evening is going. The pastry chef co-owns the place, which explains the ube cakes in that unapologetic purple, and the Buko Halo-Halo for dining in, a tower of crushed ice, milk, and jellies. Eater has listed it among metro Detroit's top restaurant desserts.

An izakaya tucked into a Concord strip mall, with the emphasis firmly on kobachi, the small bites meant to be eaten slowly alongside sake or shochu. The menu front-loads little plates that pair well with drinks, while heartier bento sets and grilled meats occupy the back half for anyone who came hungry. When you order a shochu sour, the proprietor walks over and squeezes the citrus at your table, which sets the tone immediately.

Jackson Drug is a restored soda fountain, the kind with swivel stools, Art Deco ceiling tiles, and tilework underfoot that looks cleaner than most of the town's good intentions. It's a casual, cheap-ish diner dinner, with a burger from local beef, tater tots, and milkshakes sized for a small ranch. Families and sunburned hikers fill the stools, and The Infatuation lists it among Jackson Hole's best restaurants.

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.