The Best Restaurants in the United States

A corner breakfast spot on Doyle Avenue where the menu can't decide between diner and bistro, so it lets you have both. Fluffy pancakes sit near the quiche, and the maple syrup is described, with a straight face, as "good syrup." There are potatoes in vinegar for the European mood and cubed hashbrowns for everyone else. On Fridays it quietly switches to dinner, with pasta, salads, and a short vermouth list.

Gardel is a small Argentine spot in Fox Point where the empanadas and croquetas arrive alongside a bottle of Malbec, and nobody pushes you toward the steak. Brown professors and students fill the cozy room, treating dinner as a cheap flight to Buenos Aires. They run empanada-making nights too, where you'll fold your pastry badly and the friendly staff will lie to you.

A hydroponic farm in the basement supplies the herbs and vegetables, which is either the most Old Market thing imaginable or a genuinely clever trick, depending on your mood. This comfortable, chic restaurant in Omaha's Old Market runs a produce-forward menu where the ingredients feel like the point. Ask the staff to show you the farm after dinner, because not every meal ends with a basement tour.

Brady Street's old-school Italian grocery moved across the street a few years back into a space bright enough to make you squint, but the pantry staples, the olives, and the deli counter came along for the ride. Stock up on guanciale and giardiniera, or skip straight to the sandwiches. The Human Torch, loaded with calabrese salami, capocollo, and hot pepper spread, takes its name seriously.

The peeling paint is part of the decor at this old-school Mexican restaurant in Walker's Point, a neighborhood that was majority Latine long before anyone called it up-and-coming. Menudo and pozole arrive steaming, mole and birria simmer all day, and the chile de arbol sauce runs a deep mahogany and takes no prisoners. Come hungry, come with a tolerance for heat, and come ready to build your own tacos from whatever the kitchen sends out.

Pinball machines, vintage hats for sale, and bags of Flossie cotton candy set the tone at this neighborhood deli, which leans hard into sandwich-shop whimsy, pun names and all. The menu takes vegetarians seriously, not as an afterthought but as an actual mission, with options built around wild mushrooms and goat cheese rather than just meat subtracted. Sandwiches with names like Shrooms over My Hammy, rosemary and all, do the arguing for the rest.

Locals call it "steak basement," which tells you nearly everything: it's a kinda-casual steakhouse tucked below street level in Virginia-Highland, the kind of room that hasn't tried to reinvent itself and doesn't need to. Old-school cuts arrive on heaping platters with starchy sides, and the martinis come with a sidecar so the drink stays cold. Weekend brunch pulls a crowd, but really any night works fine.

Hovan is a casual, inexpensive Mediterranean counter in Five Points, done up in blue and white, where a weekday lunch line of neighborhood office workers moves fast. Regulars get their order started the moment they walk in. When vegan requests picked up, the owners learned to make seitan from scratch for a vegan gyro, which is a level of customer service most places reserve for hostage negotiations. The catering trays turn up at everything from watch parties to funerals.

Tortillas pressed from imported blue Oaxacan corn are the foundation at this Winter Park taco shop, where the kitchen fries in beef tallow and avocado oil. The menu runs toward veal cheeks and chorizo-and-potato fillings, the kind of combinations that suggest the team grew up eating this food, not just studying it. Eater named it among Orlando's 38 best restaurants, and the regulars who show up on a Tuesday seem to already know that.

Huynh is a casual Vietnamese spot in EaDo, the kind where you order a bowl of pho roughly the size of your head and then reconsider your afternoon plans. The menu runs long, with noodle soups, vermicelli bowls, clay pot dishes, egg rolls, and crepes, and it's been a neighborhood fixture forever. Families fill the tables, prices stay friendly, and a second location is headed to Upper Kirby for the less adventurous.

Sixteen dosa configurations is the move at this South Indian casual spot inside Stoneridge Mall, where the crepes come out shatteringly crisp and the kitchen doesn't treat mall traffic as an excuse to coast. The Hyderabad bandi dosa, stuffed with chopped vegetables in a lentil-ginger sauce, arrives with a tomato chutney worth ordering extra. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top South Asian restaurants, which is a lot to carry for a food court neighbor.

The wait at Il Rione works like this: put your name in, retreat to a bar nearby, and wait for your phone to buzz. It's a New York-style pizzeria in Detroit Shoreway, and the room is that particular mix of scuffed and stylish that only works when the food earns it. The menu is short by design, built around pies, with a handful of salads and boards rounding things out. Beer, wine, and cocktails keep the same focused logic.

The menu roams from South Indian chicken 65 to Indo-Chinese noodles to biryani without feeling like it's hedging its bets, which is a harder trick than it sounds. This casual Indian restaurant in a strip mall along El Camino earned a San Francisco Chronicle nod for South Asian dining in the Bay Area. The Vijayawada biryani, where the rice simmers in a tomato-onion gravy until each grain is loaded, is the kind of dish that makes the drive feel incidental.

The pastry chef doubles as a chocolatier, which is either a warning to pace yourself or a reason to skip straight to dessert. This East Cesar Chavez neighborhood Italian spot runs on local farms and whole-animal cooking, so the menu shifts with the season. Pastas and anything with duck tend to anchor whatever's on offer. Before you leave, at least pick up some of the handmade chocolates at the counter.

Irregardless Biscuit is a tiny Southern breakfast counter in a building with roughly four tables, which is why the line tends to wander out onto Carpenter Street. The biscuits are big and fluffy, the sandwiches ride on them, and the chicory iced coffee does the heavy lifting on a hot morning. The candied bacon one is named for the previous tenant, a hole-in-the-wall breakfast spot, so getting yours to go doubles as a small memorial.

The kitchen counter of this Japanese rowhouse izakaya seats you close enough to watch the grillwork happen in real time. The menu runs to sashimi, grilled collars, and hand-doodled specials that change on a whim, sake descriptions written for humans rather than sommeliers, and on Tuesday nights the upstairs flips into a natural-wine bar that hospitality workers seem to have claimed as their unofficial break room.

Josephine is an Italian-American restaurant and bar in Avondale, and it skips the ripped-up booths and recycled bruschetta that haunt so many red-sauce rooms around Jacksonville. The owner's late grandmother watches over the dining room from a portrait, which keeps everyone's table manners in check. Expect a big caesar, truffle fries, saucy pastas, and a house negroni. The rigatoni alla vodka has been on the menu since day one.

The house falafel recipe here is so closely guarded that the family started selling it wholesale rather than let anyone reverse-engineer it at a competitor's table. This cash-friendly falafel shop sits in Anaheim's Little Arabia District and gets properly packed at lunch, so the outdoor patio exists for good reason. The baba ganoush and hummus are the moves, though the feta fries suggest the kitchen isn't precious about tradition either.

Kasra Persian Grill is a sit-down Persian restaurant that has been feeding Houston for ages, and it does so over a charcoal grill that leaves the kabobs properly blackened at the edges. Skewers of koobideh and chicken arrive next to heaps of basmati, with the dill and fava bean rice available as an upgrade you will be glad you made. Order the eggplant dip first, since it's where the evening starts to make sense.

The chef's special grill platter arrives at the table still sizzling, and within minutes half the dining room has ordered one. This Nepalese restaurant in Windsor Heights runs on that kind of contagious momentum, with a menu that spans gentle biryanis and curries on one end and assertively spiced tandoori meats and tikkas on the other. The owner is famously present, and first-timers rarely leave as strangers.

The frozen custard is the name on the sign, but the jumbo burgers are the reason regulars make the drive to the suburbs. This is a classic drive-in counter spot: charry-edged patties on soft starchy buns, draped in melty processed cheese, with a toppings menu that quietly doubles as a personality test. The custard handles dessert. The go-to move, per local consensus, is eating all of it in the car.

A pond out front sets the tone at this casual Korean barbecue spot in North Shoal Creek, where the room feels genuinely domestic in the best sense. Tabletop grills handle galbi and duck, a long banchan spread fills the gaps, and the traditional menu runs to budae jjigae, kimbap, and kimchi jeon for anyone not in the mood to tend a fire. Cold sake or yuja ade to drink, group tables throughout.

A Parisian-inspired wine bar and grocery that has been around forever, La Buvette rotates its menu of French everyday food daily: mussels, roasted chicken, house-made sausage, cheese plates, and well-priced wine. The sister spot next door handles sandwiches, charcuterie, and fresh bread. A once-temporary patio has become permanent, which tells you something about how the neighborhood feels about the place.

Lao Peng You is a tiny, no-frills dumpling and noodle spot where the dumplings arrive plump, in a dried shrimp broth, and the chile oil is homemade enough to sell by the jar. Two brothers took their grandmother's lessons and ran with them, and the noodles have a pleasing chew. Seats are scarce, so arrive early or spend the wait watching other people's dinner with open envy.

The garlic sauce at this South San Francisco sandwich shop has its own cult following, which tells you something about the commitment level here. The sandwiches are legendarily large, large enough that ordering two for yourself draws concerned looks from strangers. Bread holds everything together with more authority than the deli meats deserve. A San Francisco Chronicle pick for the Bay Area's best sandwich spots, and a genuine test of anyone nearby.

The gumbo here has been a Detroit obsession for decades, a shrimp-and-sausage situation thickened with okra and a proprietary spice blend nobody's giving up the recipe for. This is a carryout counter spot, casual and no-frills, with jambalaya, red beans and rice, and shrimp po'boys on crackly baguettes rounding out a menu that stays squarely in the Louisiana lane. Order at the counter, take it home, and resist eating it in the car.

The Iowa State Capitol dome glows through the windows of this airy, upscale Italian dining room in Des Moines's East Village, which lends the place an accidental grandeur nobody planned. Lunch runs to pasta, sandwiches, and salads. Dinner is a four-course prix fixe that reads far more serious than the tab suggests. The gnocchi are the kind that make you briefly resent every other gnocchi you've eaten.

Coral pinks and oversized floral motifs set the tone at this upscale Japanese restaurant inside Bal Harbour Shops, where the charcoal robata runs alongside serious sushi and sashimi. The sake list is extensive, and the cocktail side takes a few detours through mezcal and hibiscus without losing the plot. The room draws a crowd that treats shopping as a warm-up act.