The Best Restaurants in the United States

Metal skewers pulled from an open flame and left to rest on the grill's upper rack, that's the move at this Indian barbecue spot in Fremont. The menu is deliberately short: paneer, chicken, and mutton skewers, plus rice and biryani. The grilled chicken comes drenched in a creamy, smoke-kissed white sauce that doubles as a biryani condiment if you're paying attention. The San Francisco Chronicle put it on their Top 100 list.

String lights stretch across a patio hung with art made from repurposed tools, which sets the tone for Spread Kitchen, a Lebanese-inspired restaurant on the Sonoma Highway where lemons show up in nearly everything. The chef's citrus fixation runs from the whipped feta and beet dip through the fried cauliflower to the tahini drizzled over the za'atar fries. The San Francisco Chronicle put it in their Bay Area Top 100.

All-black walls with iridescent orange accents set the mood at this Latin American cocktail bar and small-plates spot on the northwest side. Argentine and Chilean wines arrive in penguin-shaped ceramic pitchers, and the cocktail list leans on pisco and yerba mate. DJs spin from a booth in the center of the room, a fire pit runs along one wall, and the whole thing gets progressively better after midnight. Book ahead if you want a seat at the bar.

G-Love is a Northwest 21st Avenue restaurant that Portland Monthly calls the city's most Californian, which is a dry way of saying the vibe arrived from San Francisco and unpacked. The signature is a half avocado crusted in seeds to look like its own skin, stuffed with tuna poke, caviar optional. It's a sit-down dinner with a little coastal swagger, and it landed on the magazine's iconic dishes list and its 50 best.

Akar is a Malaysian fine dining room in Clayton with concrete walls, sparse decor, and the lighting of a place that expects you to lean in. There's no menu online and reservations happen by phone, which in this economy counts as an aggressive commitment to mystery. The curries run rich and layered, the roti arrives in flaky sheets, and the plates cost real money, so dress like you made the call on purpose.

Echo is a listening lounge in the Arts District where the vintage McIntosh sound system is treated like the guest of honor and the room is arranged around it, living-room style. Wednesdays bring soft jazz or lively blues, and other nights a resident DJ spins classic rock or hip-hop. Cauliflower ceviche tostadas and a mound of papas bravas buried under grated cheese keep everyone busy between songs. Nobody here is trying to shout over anything.

Mai Lee is a family-run Vietnamese restaurant in a Brentwood strip, and it has been around forever. The menu runs past 300 numbered, made-to-order dishes, so ordering feels like a long-form exam you can't fail. Regulars will point you to the St. Paul sandwich, a St. Louis oddity involving egg foo young and white bread. Casual, unfussy, and priced so you can try several numbers.

Mestiza is a counter-service taqueria with orange booths and blue walls, and the angular windows make lunch feel like a slightly cheerful boat trip. It grew out of the taco nights at sister restaurant Malinche. You order at the register, get a free potato taco, and then spend a while negotiating with the tray of salsas. Spit-roasted pork and a cheesy alambre are on the menu, and so is a cactus option for vegetarians.

The Stellar Hog is a small South City barbecue joint with a hand-painted celestial ceiling, which gives you something to look at between ribs. It feels like a neighborhood bar where the Budweiser flows freely, then got a psychedelic makeover and let the kids in. The chipotle-honey ribs and brisket come out glossy and well barked. Sunday on the patio is beef rib territory, so clear your afternoon.

Almost everything lands on a banana leaf, and most people eat with their hands. This Chettinad Indian restaurant in Mountain View specializes in the cooking of Tamil Nadu, which means bold spice, rice noodle cakes soaking up mutton curry, and chicken 65 in a shade of red that means business. The kitchen opens for breakfast daily and runs unlimited thalis on weekends, when the room fills fast with people who already know exactly what they're ordering.

The enchiladas are why people come back to this California Indian restaurant in Sausalito, draped in cheese, yogurt, tamarind, and a curried house sauce that shouldn't work as well as it does. The owner is a regular presence at the tables, cheerfully fielding questions about why the menu also includes Jamaican jerk chicken. There is exactly one dessert. You order it.

The dining rooms are draped in lush plants and Mexican folk art, and for a moment you forget you're in a neighborhood off North Loop. This fine dining institution has been around forever, making the case for regional Mexican cooking long before it was fashionable, with dishes rooted in Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz, and the Yucatan. Dress accordingly, order the cochinita pibil, and let the room do what it does.

Salt-and-pepper fried chicken wings and wok-fried noodles are the draws at this casual Cantonese spot on the west side of Houston. It has been a neighborhood staple long enough that regulars tend to know what they're getting before they sit down. Save room for the Hong Kong milk tea and the deep-fried French toast, which arrives drowning in butter and condensed milk, which is exactly the kind of ending a meal like this deserves.

Durian tiramisu is either the bravest or most reckless dessert call in Fremont, and Kin Len commits to it without apology. This dim, chic Thai restaurant and bar reads like a stylish neighborhood spot until the food arrives and reframes the whole thing. The menu swings wide, from spicy octopus carpaccio to banana blossom fries, and the cocktails keep pace. They do serve pad Thai, but it comes draped in oversize river prawns, just so you know where you stand.

The tlayudas here come folded rather than open-faced, crisped over a charcoal grill in a way that most Oaxacan food trucks in the Bay Area simply don't bother with. La Jacaranda is an outdoor food truck parked inside a sprawling open-air market on Alum Rock, with canopied communal seating and a menu rooted in Oaxacan tradition. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best restaurants in San Jose, which is a lot of credit for a truck with a charcoal grill.

A small pasta counter tucked above the Pike Place Market Atrium, where the menu changes every couple of weeks based on whatever the market has going. The lasagna stays, the tomato sauce pasta stays, and everything else rotates through combinations like pappardelle with venison ragù or gemelli with caramelized pears and gorgonzola. The chef grew up in Turin, and it shows in the kind of quiet confidence that pairs orecchiette with Penn Cove mussels without making a fuss about it.

The Depression dog, a Chicago hot dog variant that arrives with fries piled right on top of the bun, is a good reason to find this counter-service hot dog stand on Armitage. Redhot Ranch uses natural-casing sausages, which means an actual snap when you bite in. The smash burgers are a serious value. The same owners run 35th Street Red Hots near Sox Park, same menu, if that's closer.

Shelves of cookbooks by Sanjeev Kapoor line the walls, which tells you exactly whose restaurant this is. The celebrity chef's global chain lands in Santa Clara as a fine dining Indian restaurant covering both Northern and Southern regional ground, with the kitchen leaning into contemporary spins on each. The shaam savera, spinach dumplings stuffed with cheese and pooled in tomato gravy, is the signature worth ordering. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best South Asian restaurants.

A mother-and-son food cart in a Milwaukie food park, turning out Guyanese cooking that's rare in Portland and rarer nationally. The namesake bakes are fluffy, slightly sweet fried-dough pockets stuffed with anything from salt cod to Nutella, so lunch and dessert can share a single pastry. Curry and chow mein reflect Guyana's Indian and Chinese roots. It's cart-priced, with covered seating nearby, and Eater has put it on its list of the best in town.

The pisco sours here taste like someone in Lima is personally offended if they're made any other way. Casa Zoraya is a cozy Peruvian restaurant in the Piedmont neighborhood where ceviches arrive looking almost too composed to eat, and beef heart skewers on the starter menu separate the curious from the cautious. The back patio earns its reputation on a warm evening.

A tree grows through the middle of the second-floor patio, which tells you something about the vibe here. Kettner Exchange is a bi-level progressive American restaurant in Little Italy where Asian techniques quietly run the kitchen, and the rooftop draws a crowd that came to be seen but stays for the food. Downstairs buzzes; upstairs breathes. The menu moves between crispy rice and dumplings with enough conviction that you forget this place doubles as a nightlife destination.

This is a big, bright, counter-and-table Mediterranean cafe in Brickell where breakfast and lunch have stopped pretending to be separate meals. Jerusalem bagel plates, harissa chips, and a rice bowl share a menu with malawach churros, and limonana, the mint lemonade, goes with all of it. It's casual enough for shorts, and it's busy in the way that suggests half of Brickell has already decided what they're ordering.

Servers in ties and vests refill your water after every sip, and warm focaccia arrives before you've fully settled in. Mucca Osteria is a downtown Italian restaurant operating on the old assumption that hospitality is the whole point, and the kitchen keeps pace: handmade pastas with a silky bite, burrata draped in long-aged prosciutto, scallops over Parmesan fonduta. A room that makes you slow down without making a fuss about it.

Plant-based pan-Asian on Belmont, where the menu reads like a dare and the cocktails keep pace. Norah is a lively, colorful restaurant where pad Thai nachos and vegan rangoons share space with a whole roasted cauliflower drowned in red curry. A gochujang-pink mezcal margarita or a coconut-pandan Negroni handles the rest. The kind of place that makes skeptics stop explaining themselves.

The daily specials list at this non-traditional Japanese restaurant changes constantly, which gives regulars a reason to sit at the bar and work through it systematically. Uchi originated in Austin and landed a block from RiNo, bringing a range that runs from happy hour nigiri to wagyu on a hot rock. The room stays loud and full most nights, so an early arrival is less a tip than a necessity.

The cheese trolley rolls whether you ordered it or not, which sets the tone for this French restaurant inside Houston's Thompson Hotel. The cooking is modern and refined, with Texas ingredients folded in quietly, Gulf shrimp here, pecan-muscadine gelée there. Small plates, proper entrées, theatrical desserts, the kind of room where the meal takes a while and nobody seems to mind.

The Pappas family has spent decades feeding Houston burgers, barbecue, and Tex-Mex, so an ode to their Greek grandmother feels like a long-overdue plot twist. This casual Greek restaurant dishes out keftedes, calamari, souvlaki, and seafood youvetsi, but the desserts are where things get interesting: baklava cheesecake and brûlée panna cotta sit alongside a cocoa-soaked chocolate cake that has no business being that good.

Yellow booths, green walls, and neon lighting make Tambayan look like someone decorated with pure enthusiasm, which turns out to be the right call for a Filipino homestyle restaurant that spent years as a pop-up and food truck before landing a permanent spot on Camelback. The halo halo, layered and rainbow-colored, is the dessert equivalent of that same energy. Phoenix New Times named it the city's top Filipino restaurant.

Javelina is a casual counter-style spot in Northeast Portland where frybread does the heavy lifting, as tacos with bison chili, as the bun on the powwow burger, or tossed in cinnamon sugar. The chef is quick to point out that wheat isn't native here, so the rest of the menu sticks to First Foods like elk, wild rice, and blue corn. Eater lists it among Portland's best, and Esquire counted it among 2025's best new restaurants in America.

1748 Bakehouse is a neighborhood bakery-cafe on Springfield's Main Street, where the pastry case holds rotating galettes and hand pies and the soup-and-sandwich combos handle lunch. The specials sell out before noon, so anyone who spotted a danish on Instagram should plan accordingly. A fleet of strollers usually parks outside, and the highchairs scattered inside suggest the staff saw this coming. The Infatuation lists it among Jacksonville's best restaurants.

This is a fast-casual Cuban cafe, the kind where you order at the counter and eat a medianoche at your desk by 12:30. The recipes started as a grandmother's and now run to nearly ten locations around Jacksonville. The fried queso blanco cubes with guava sauce disappear fast, so the kitchen keeps re-baking pastelitos, which are hard to find elsewhere in town. Iced café con leche is the move, and the guava matcha is for the brave.

The beef noodle soup here has a peppery, slow-built broth that earns its reputation quietly. This is a Taiwanese-Chinese casual spot in Irvine, the kind of place where the noodles, crispy pork chop over rice, and spicy wontons keep the room perpetually full. A few Sichuan dishes round out the menu, including a beef tendon with garlic sauce that regular customers seem to order without looking down. Fast service, warm room, zero pretension.

A converted warehouse downtown that's been standing since before anyone alive can remember, Acqua di Dea is an elegant Italian seafood restaurant that leans hard into occasion-dining energy, all high ceilings and happy noise. The menu runs from whole grilled branzino to ossobuco for the table that always orders steak at a fish restaurant. Dress up a little; this is the kind of place where no one is underdressed and everyone knows it.

Chandeliers and vibrant Afghan artwork give this small Fremont kabob shop the feel of a classy living room, which sets up the food nicely: deeply comforting, made from scratch, and the kind of thing Bay Area diners drive across several zip codes to find. The mantoo and chapli kebabs are the draws, and the dimpled flatbread comes by the slab, built for sopping. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top South Asian restaurants.

A small Afghan restaurant in Concord where the narunj palow arrives looking simple and proceeds to misbehave. The signature rice dish hides a lamb shank somewhere beneath saffron-tinted basmati, with caramelized orange peel lending a faint bitterness that makes the tender meat taste even richer. The habanero chile paste on the side is not decorative. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top South Asian tables.

Every cocktail on the menu comes in a spirited or spirit-free version, which sounds like a gimmick until you're sipping something smoky and elaborate at midnight with nothing to dread by morning. This plush cocktail lounge inside the Dubbel Dutch Hotel leans into big ice, smoked drinks, and deadpan drink names, "garnished with disaster" being an actual garnish note. A James Beard nominee for Best New Bar in 2025.

AJ's Jazzy Grill is a casual Creole counter in Tremé that began as a food truck under the Claiborne bridge, which explains why everything tastes faintly like a backyard cookout. There are a few tables and some TVs, but the real business is takeout and delivery. Come in sweatpants, order the sweet potato pie the chef's mom bakes, and don't bother pretending you're stopping by for the atmosphere.

Fourteen stools, one narrow counter, and a line that forms before the coffee even brews. Al's is a breakfast diner that has been squeezed into a ten-foot-wide Dinkytown storefront since what feels like forever, and the room has not meaningfully changed since. The bacon waffle and blueberry-walnut pancakes with Minnesota maple syrup are the reasons regulars come back, though mostly the reason is that nothing else feels quite like this at six in the morning.

The owner is often spotted bussing tables or running food on a busy night, which sets the tone for this Lower Greenville bar and American kitchen that manages to feel like it's been around forever. Cozy enough for a quiet date, loose enough for drinks with friends, it occupies that useful middle ground between neighborhood bar and proper dinner spot. An English chef handles the kitchen, keeping things grounded rather than showy.

Part cafe, part specialty grocery, Alta Baja Market anchors downtown Santa Ana with one of the largest selections of Mexican wines you'll find under one roof, alongside heirloom corn, beans, and grains worth browsing. The breakfast and lunch menu leans New Mexican and border-crossing, with green chile eggchiladas built on La Princesita tortillas. Order a michelada and you'll understand why people linger here longer than they planned.

Alyonka is a Russian restaurant on West State Street where the kitchen crew traces back to Kazakhstan, Tatarstan, and Ukraine, so the menu spans more of the map than the name lets on. Cabbage rolls, stroganoff, piroshki, and blini share space with a vegetarian borscht and a shuba built with smoked salmon instead of herring. It's a modern, easygoing room, and Eater lists it among Boise's 30 essential restaurants.

A takeout window and a handful of outdoor tables set the pace at this casual vegetarian Indian spot in a Milpitas business park. The menu runs Mumbai-style: chaat, vada paav, paneer burgers with a satisfying crunch of breadcrumbs, and combo thalis that pull the whole meal together with dal, flatbread, and rice. It feeds the lunch crowd from surrounding offices without much fuss, which is exactly the point.

The back patio is the whole reason to come: a lush, sheltered garden that you'd never guess existed from the Hayes Street sidewalk. Arbor is a casual American comfort spot with a strong lean toward vegan options, serving burgers, chile cheese fries, and the kind of mac and cheese that makes you stop mid-sentence. On a sunny afternoon the patio fills up fast, which in San Francisco means you should probably just go on the next sunny afternoon.

Part cafe, part bar, part gourmet market, Astoria spreads across a bright, bustling storefront in Detroit Shoreway where you can grab a bottle of wine and a wedge of imported cheese to take home or settle in for a full Mediterranean spread. The menu runs long, from mezze and salads to pizza and sandwiches, and brunch keeps the patio and bar seats filled well into the afternoon. It's the kind of neighborhood place that makes you feel slightly smug for living nearby.

Ba Mien is a big, casual Vietnamese dining room out on Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans East, where the menu goes well past the phở-and-spring-rolls starter pack. You can build your own rolls from grilled pork paste, fresh herbs, and crunchy vegetables, or order steamed rice rolls with peanut sauce. Come for breakfast and pair either one with French-dripped coffee and condensed milk, which is how most of the room seems to do it.

Two turntables live behind the bar at Bad Medicine, not as decoration but as the point, anchoring a listening bar built around a vintage hi-fi setup that takes the music as seriously as the drinks. It's a cocktail bar on Cleveland's west side with gastropub food to keep you planted. Original cocktails share the menu with riff classics, and smash burgers and Italian beef sandwiches handle the rest.

Fresh tortillas made from organic Mexican corn, nixtamalized in-house, anchor the menu at this gluten-free modern Mexican restaurant in Des Moines's East Village. The chef spent years in fine dining before a deep dive into masa sent him to Mexico to learn the process properly. The room is casual enough that tacos feel right, but steelhead trout with mole verde suggests the kitchen has more on its mind than just keeping things simple.