The Best Restaurants in the United States

Bayona is a Creole restaurant in a French Quarter cottage, and the courtyard out back is the move. It's all plants and cobblestones, enough of them to make a Roman side street feel underpaved. Tables here are for lingering, not turning, so you can take your time with a friend or two without being swept along by a tourist parade. Expect a proper sit-down dinner, so dress like someone who's about to be served duck liver pâté.

The communal high-top near the entrance is the first thing you notice, and on social hour nights it's the last thing you want to leave. Beckett's Table is a neighborhood restaurant in Arcadia doing Southwestern comfort food with the kind of ease that comes from a chef who's been cooking since childhood. The fork-tender short ribs and a fig-and-pecan pie that the city seems to have adopted as its own keep regulars coming back without much deliberation.

Eighteen holes of indoor mini-golf sharing a building with a full gastropub and two bars sets the tone at Birdietown, a sprawling two-level spot in Lakewood's Birdtown neighborhood. The chef is James Beard semifinalist Jill Vedaa, which explains why the food takes itself more seriously than the surroundings might suggest. Think date night, not birthday party, and come thirsty.

Blue Nile is a casual Ethiopian restaurant where dinner arrives on one big communal platter laid over injera, which doubles as the plate, the fork, and the napkin you wish you had. Come with friends and a willingness to eat with your hands. It's been doing this in Houston for ages, and the meal can end with a full coffee ceremony, which is a slower way to finish dinner than a check and a mint.

String lights, a sprawling patio, and a wedding venue next door set the tone at this cozy modern bistro tucked behind an office park in Mesa. It reads like an elegant garden party that wandered off and found a better location. The menu rotates with the seasons, leaning toward steaks, fresh seafood, and handmade pasta, with shareable starters and a dessert list worth saving room for. A Phoenix New Times top 50 pick.

Bochi Bochi is a Japanese street food trailer that started as a takoyaki cart and has since graduated to a full-size, whimsically decorated rig. The menu runs to comfort food, like fried chicken karaage and yaki udon topped with a fried egg, plus the okonomiyaki and kimchi tater tots that built the following. It moves around Boise, so check social media first, because showing up at an empty parking spot is no way to eat.

The chef caps Bosforo kebap at fifty daily, so ordering early isn't optional so much as strategic. This modern Turkish restaurant in Normal Heights serves wood-fired hummus, hand-minced beef skewers, and lahmacun alongside homestyle dishes the chef grew up on but couldn't find a reason to put on a menu until now. The room draws a neighborhood crowd that clearly got there before you.

The shokupan here is soft enough to make you question your relationship with crusts. Bread n' Chu is a Japanese-style sandwich counter on Clement Street where the egg salad is Kewpie-heavy and dill-flecked, the chicken katsu arrives with purple cabbage slaw, and the choux sandwich with strawberries and pastry cream exists primarily to be photographed. No seating, but there's a ledge by the window for exactly that purpose.

Brine is a tiny San Marco seafood spot run by a married pair who spent years serving caviar bumps out of coffee shops and distilleries before anyone gave them a door. The tasting menu is crudo-heavy and runs a dozen courses, so wear something you can sit in. Lunch is walk-in, with a grilled cheese that sneaks caviar in, and aperitivo hour and $2 oyster Tuesdays keep the bill from getting ideas.

Chandeliers hang over the shrimp and grits at this Southern comfort restaurant, which commits to the contradiction with a straight face. The menu runs through fried chicken and waffles, pimento mac and cheese, and biscuits, but the room is full date-night, not diner. The bourbon list is one of the longer ones in Iowa, which is saying something in a state that takes corn seriously. End with the hummingbird cake if you know what's good for you.

Budsi's is a sit-down Thai restaurant on a brick corner in the Marigny, a long way from the pop-up it started as. It's built for splitting things, so bring friends and let the table fill with wings, satays, and dumplings. Everyone gets their own curry or noodle dish, because sharing has limits. Going solo for a cocktail and larb is allowed, but the table does the real work here. The Infatuation includes it on its list of the city's best restaurants.

The cinnamon rolls are vegan, which almost feels like a dare. This Madison Valley vegetarian restaurant has been the city's plant-based anchor for what feels like forever, drawing brunch crowds for veg scrambles and rosemary biscuits drowned in savory gravy alongside dinner plates that tend to quiet the table no matter who ordered the steak down the street. A plant-filled atrium and a year-round patio make the room easy to linger in.

Chefs eating on their days off tend to be a reliable signal, and on Mondays and Tuesdays the counter at this compact Vietnamese restaurant on Passyunk fills with exactly that crowd. The kitchen is built around fragrant pho and bún bò Huế, the spicy lemongrass soup from the owner's hometown of Huế. Her son now runs the room alongside her, and his chicken wings have quietly become a reason to visit on their own.

Flattop smoke hits you before you find a seat at this narrow Walker's Point bar, where the beer list is serious and the food is unabashedly Wisconsin. Nashville chicken, rotating pierogies, and wings with more sauce options than you need anchor a menu of pub grub that's been fussed over just enough. The burger, a sloppy, oniony, American cheese situation on brioche, is the kind of thing you think about on the drive home.

Campana is an Italian restaurant that started as a pop-up inside a tavern and kept going until it owned the building, which is the most Portland way to get a dining room. The chef's New York kitchen years show up in the meatballs and the clam-sauce linguine, and the gelato is good enough that other Italian spots around town have quietly started serving it. It made Portland Monthly's list of the 50 best restaurants.

Castnet is a casual seafood counter in New Orleans East, where the fried shrimp po'boy comes dressed on Leidenheimer bread and the sausage version is made with Patton's. There's also boiled seafood, gumbo, and plate lunches for anyone with a different plan. A snowball stand sits on one side and a barbecue joint on the other, so the parking lot doubles as a very low-stakes tasting menu. The Infatuation lists it among the city's best.

The Kill-Bill Pork Tenderloin, a sandwich stacked with crispy tenderloin, ham, bacon, cheese, and a fried egg, tells you everything about the ambition level here. Centro is a lively Italian restaurant that's been around forever in downtown Des Moines, serving lunch and dinner to a neighborhood it arguably helped create. Pizzas, pastas, and a grilled pork chop with Chianti demi-glace round out a menu that doesn't take itself too seriously but knows what it's doing.

The spice level in a given dish can change day to day depending on which batch of Thai chilies came in, and they'll tell you that upfront. This casual Thai restaurant on 900 South regularly has a line out the door, drawn by tom yum, som tum, and curries built on serious heat. The mango with Thai custard and sticky rice is there for anyone whose mouth needs a diplomatic exit.

Chapter IV is a modern Creole restaurant from the family behind Dooky Chase, which means the gumbo arrives with a dark roux and a full cast of sausage, shrimp, chicken, and crab. The menu is long enough to stall a first-timer, though the squid ink linguine is a good place to start. Dress like you might run into someone, because by all accounts your ex, your old coworker, and half your high school class are already inside.

The "clam" dip is made from tofu, the fried fish contains no fish, and somehow none of that feels like a compromise. This vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant in Falls Church is where the chef makes her own faux meats and seafoods from scratch, turning lemongrass noodle soup and papaya salad into fully convincing arguments that the meat was never the point. Devout carnivores tend to figure this out about halfway through the meal.

Closed-circuit Burmese musicals play overhead while you eat, which sets the tone at this no-frills Southport restaurant attached to a Southeast Asian supermarket. The menu leans into the flavors of Myanmar, running through tea leaf salad, Burmese-style samosas, and a hominy soup built around beef offal. The community that built this place, Indianapolis's Chin and broader Burmese diaspora, still fills it, and the food reflects that.

The patio is strung up to feel like a beachside cabana, and on a warm Mission afternoon that illusion mostly holds. Chuy's is a mariscos spot with a burrito worth ordering, specifically the flattop version where the tortilla gets pressed and crisped on the griddle. A frosty mug or a michelada fits the mood exactly. Seats outside go fast at peak hours, so arriving early isn't overthinking it.

Hand-pressed tortillas made with nixtamalized heirloom corn anchor the menu at this contemporary Mexican restaurant in Takoma Park, where vegan-friendly cooking doesn't mean compromising on ambition. Tres moles fill the enchiladas, cashew cheese goes into the quesadillas, and the bar runs inventive mezcal and rum cocktails alongside margaritas. Brunch draws a crowd too. The team recently moved into sleeker new digs up Carroll Ave, and the upgrade shows.

Leather-bound books line the shelves, curious antiquities fill the corners, and the cocktail menu arrives as a hand-illustrated booklet, which is either delightful or a lot depending on your mood. This vegan cocktail bar in Cleveland's west side pairs its seasonal drinks with bar snacks and full plates, all plant-based, running from masa hushpuppies to artichoke "crab" cakes. A good place to linger over something clever in a glass.

A seafood raw bar, a caviar cart stocked with Thomas Keller's Regiis Ova, and a steakhouse menu beneath contemporary chandeliers overlooking Bicentennial Unity Plaza: Commission Row is a special-occasion kind of place where everything is just slightly orchestrated. The martini list alone suggests the clientele arrives in blazers on purpose. The chef came up through Cunningham Restaurant Group, and the room reflects that pedigree, polished without being cold.

Congaree And Penn is a working farm about twelve miles outside Downtown that happens to have a restaurant and a cidery attached, so you may meet a goat before you meet your server. By day it's picnic lunches and U-Pick. After dark it goes adults-only and turns into a proper Southern dinner of duck legs and short ribs, with small-batch cider on tap and a private table out in the grapevines for groups.

A specialty goods shop and sandwich counter in downtown Napa where the house-cured meats do the heavy lifting. The biscuits are a reason to come on their own, crunchy outside and cloud-soft inside, and the country ham and jam version with pimento cheese makes a strong case for eating before noon. Frozen four-packs of biscuits are available to go, for those with the self-awareness to plan ahead.

A fresh pasta shop and lunch counter that quietly changed hands and then quietly changed direction, Corridor now pulls from the wider Mediterranean rather than just Italy. The vegetable-forward midday menu shifts with the seasons, with poultry and seafood making occasional appearances. The market side still stocks house-made pastas, olive oils, and charcuterie for the take-home crowd.

A dessert shop where black sesame Oreo cake and milk bread cinnamon rolls make the case that bakery menus have been missing something for a long time. The chef bought the place after years in recipe development and steered it toward pan-Asian flavors the Des Moines scene had largely overlooked. Friday and Saturday nights flip into Midnight Munchies, with cocktails, '90s music, and customizable Cup Noodles alongside rotating cakes and cheesecakes.

Chickens turning on a spit behind glass, focaccia stacked high, and a counter so narrow that most people take their order to the curb: this is a counter service porchetta shop with Italian instincts and Charleston pork. Everything lands on housemade focaccia, from spiced salmon with whipped ricotta at breakfast to the classic porchetta with crackling, salsa verde, and provolone. A standing bar exists, technically, but the line moves and so do you.

The cracked-laminate menus at this Vietnamese restaurant in a Phoenix strip mall are entirely on purpose. Fourteen kinds of pho anchor the menu, portions are generous enough to require a to-go container, and the hot coffee with sweetened condensed milk is a good reason to linger. Prices hover around $15, the room is multi-roomed and no-frills, and the com tam dac biet piles broken rice with what feels like the entire menu on one plate.

Chaat done properly is tactile work, and this sunny Sunnyvale spot leans into that, handing you puffy bhatura to mop up simmered chickpeas or letting you crack open semolina puri with your fingertips before filling them with tamarind water. It grew out of a popular food truck, and the families who used to find it in parking lots now get a plant-filled patio instead. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best South Asian restaurants.

Den Den is a casual Korean cafe on Benefit Street, the kind of place where you order too much and nobody at the table objects. The menu runs from kimchi pancakes to bibimbap to soft tofu stew, plus a chicken karaage that has been known to make first dates feel promising. The brick dining room is cozy, and the RISD students drifting in and out make it feel like the neighborhood's unofficial canteen. It's an easy yes for parents on family weekend.

The injera arrives as the plate, not a side, and the whole table leans in to tear pieces and scoop from communal piles of stew and spiced meat. This Briarcliff Road neighborhood restaurant has been an Atlanta Ethiopian staple for ages, run by two partners who grew up in Ethiopia and cook like it. The meat platter is sized for sharing among several people and covers serious ground. There's also a full vegan menu, Ethiopian tea, and Ethiopian beer.

Dragonfly is the casual bar next door to Freya's tasting menu, built for people who want a drink but would like to be a functioning adult tomorrow. The cocktails run low-alcohol or zero, flavored with herbal teas, cucumber, and natural sweeteners, so the drinks read more like a garden than a bar. The room is done in cool blues, and shareable plates keep the evening from becoming purely liquid.

Dune Brothers is a counter-service seafood shack in downtown Providence, which is a funny thing to say about a state where nobody is more than a few miles from water. You order at the window, then carry your fried fish and clam cakes across a shell-strewn patio to a picnic table. The Jonah crab roll rotates in as a special, and a cold Narragansett or a local Yacht Club soda goes with it. Dress for a quick lunch.

Porchetta ribs and bucatini all'Amatriciana anchor the menu at this Italian restaurant on Frankford Avenue, where Greg Vernick stepped outside his usual lane to cook regional Italian for the first time. The room runs buzzy and packed, the service is tight, and the wine list leans Italian by the glass. It's a genuinely sexy room to land in Kensington, and the seasonal menu follows Italian tradition closely enough to feel considered without feeling like a museum piece.

Epi's is a family-run Basque restaurant in Meridian, built on one great-grandmother's recipes and handed down through three generations without anyone apparently wanting to change them. Expect a sit-down meal of croquetas, lamb stew with green peppers, and baby squid in broth the color of printer ink. Eater lists it among Boise's essentials, and the gateau Basque at the end is how people keep the family tradition going.

Wings here get sorted by size before brining for a full day, which is the kind of attention you don't expect from a casual wing spot. The sauces are all made in-house, and several are named after regulars, so the menu doubles as a hall of fame for people who've eaten here too many times to count. If there's a wait, the dive bar next door is right there.

Falafel x Bar is a Levantine counter-service spot that doubles as a natural wine shop, so the bottle you grab off the shelf is also your dinner plan. The patio garden is big enough for a group that would rather split snacks than commit to entrees, and the tinned fish board turns up there alongside pickled things and sumac-dusted fries. Eating in gets you the toppings bar. Lunch to-go works too, but it skips the garden.

Tucked inside a working garden nursery, this fine dining room earns its farm-to-table premise rather than just decorating with it. The menu shifts with the season and the region's producers, so what lands on the table reflects what's actually ready, not what reads well on a permanent menu. Surrounded by greenery and open to the California air, the room feels more like a destination than a detour on the way to the coast.