The Best Restaurants in the United States

The squat brick building on Webb Avenue smells like Thanksgiving every single day, because Sandwich Board roasts its turkey in-house and has been doing so forever. This old-school deli counter is an Alameda institution, and regulars have been known to walk in, say nothing, and walk out with exactly what they wanted. The Dutch crunch sandwiches are the move, loaded with that carved turkey alongside avocado and pepperoncinis.

Whole roast suckling pig, ordered tableside with enough ceremony to make your neighbors jealous, is the move at this Spanish tapas restaurant in Ballston. The co-owner, Spanish himself, infuses his own spirits, and the gin and tonic is the kind of thing that makes you question every gin and tonic you've had before. Paella, croquetas, and a raw bar round things out, and the patio catches a breeze when the weather cooperates.

A Cantonese restaurant in the Cass Corridor doing all-day dim sum, which is reason enough to know where it is. Steamed pork buns, rice rolls, chive-and-garlic pancakes, Singapore rice vermicelli, and a hot and sour soup that earns its place on the menu. The room is small and unpretentious, with two- and four-tops filling fast, and the window seats offer a floor show the neighborhood reliably provides. Takeout moves quickly, too.

The kebabs come off a grill tucked inside a Persian grocery store in Longwood, which tells you most of what you need to know about the prices. Beef koobideh and chicken skewers arrive with saffron rice, and you can ask for barberries, grilled peppers, and lavash to round it out properly. The shallot-yogurt dip from the refrigerated case handles any leftover bread. Bastani and faloodeh close things out the right way.

The chile oil wontons alone have pulled people across town to this downtown Sichuan restaurant, a sister to Sichuan City out in Happy Valley. The menu runs the full range of textures the cuisine is known for: crispy, tangy, soupy, and that particular mouth-numbing heat that makes you pause mid-bite. Order generously and expect your lips to tingle for a while afterward.

Finding dim sum inside a Courtyard by Marriott near West University is the kind of plot twist you normally need a map and a tip from a stranger for. Every dumpling and bun here is made to order, so nothing sits circling in a cart, and the shrimp cheung fun wraps crunchy fried shrimp in house-made rice noodles. There's a tea list and a green tea Old Fashioned, in case lunch needs a second act.

A row home cafe tucked into Federal Hill past the point where the bar crawl runs out of steam. The owners run it with the kind of warmth that makes regulars feel like houseguests and new grads bring their parents here to look like they know the city. The menu covers a lot of dietary ground, and the parklet out front fills up fast at happy hour. Comfortable, neighborhood, and very much a known quantity to anyone who lives nearby.

The name is short for Serene Republic of Venice, which tells you exactly how seriously the team takes the concept. This South End cicchetti bar and trattoria runs a Venetian Italian menu that shifts with the seasons without abandoning the dishes regulars would notice missing. The room skews sophisticated, the kind of place where the staff actually remembers you by the second visit and seems to mean it.

The orange dining room sits next door to a movie theater, which the regulars treat as a snack-supply opportunity. Star Chaat is a cheerful, family-packed Indian chaat restaurant with a vast vegetarian menu, the kind of place where the whole wheat chaat baskets and a coriander-heavy veggie burger keep the tables full without any help from the multiplex. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best South Asian restaurants.

Biscuits baked fresh every morning anchor the menu at this casual brunch spot, where the rest of the food takes its cues from homestyle Texan cooking. The limeade, freshly juiced and apparently the whole origin story, pairs with cocktails made from Utah distillery spirits. Hearty salads and from-scratch everything fill out the menu. The kind of neighborhood spot that started at farmers markets and never lost that energy.

The mini chocolate chip cookies have their own fan base, which tells you something about how this casual American restaurant operates. Chef Lynn Pritchard built a devoted following at the original Clive location before moving downtown, and the regulars followed. The menu mixes old standbys with newer plates, the wine list is carefully put together, and the patio catches the afternoon light when Des Moines cooperates.

A cart outside a Cardenas grocery store in East Oakland, where the vendor shouts "Tacos! Tacos de canasta!" loud enough to settle the question of where lunch is. Tacos de canasta are a Mexico City staple rarely spotted in the Bay, and this stand does them straight: steamed basket tacos stuffed with chicharron, pollo con mole, or papas con chorizo, pulled from baskets lined in red picnic cloth, with pickled veggies and a chimichurri aioli that overperform for the price.

A spinning trompo in the window is the whole argument for this Mission District taco stand. Thin-shaved al pastor lands straight from the spit onto the tortilla, pineapple shard included, with three salsas on the side ranging from tangy to genuinely punishing. The tripas are the quiet move, especially ordered doraditas, fried until crispy. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best tacos in the Bay Area, which feels about right from the sidewalk.

A trompo spins outside a business park on Phelan Avenue, which is either an unlikely setting or a perfect one depending on how hungry you are. This taco trailer is run by chilangos from Mexico City, and the al pastor is their calling card: pork shaved from the vertical spit, crisped on the plancha, landed on yellow corn tortillas with pineapple and three salsas. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best tacos.

The salsa flies through the air here, literally flicked by spoon onto your tacos in a move that's part performance, part seasoning strategy. This Chavinda-style taqueria in Richmond cooks its meats together in one enormous steel cauldron, so the chorizo, al pastor, and beef all end up in each other's business. Mix and match fillings at no extra cost. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's finest tacos, which explains the weekend wait.

Mesquite coals do the heavy lifting at this taqueria in San Lorenzo, where the smoke gets into the chorizo and the asada before anything else happens. The Villa family presses tortillas by hand and wraps each taco into a paper cone Tijuana-style, with a thick scoop of guacamole tucked in. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best tacos in the Bay Area. The fatty cabeza with salsa verde is the one regulars order without looking up.

Tamales have been leaving this carryout window on Vernor since the 1950s, most urgently around Christmas when the line gets serious. The menu sticks to classic pork and chicken, with rotating specials like cheese-jalapeño, and the tamales run on the slender side, which keeps the masa-to-filling ratio honest. Call ahead and your bag is waiting by the time you arrive, which is either efficient or slightly magical depending on your day.

Taqueria Cinco is a casual Mexican spot in a city where locals joke that every closed restaurant gets replaced by another taco place. It's the one you take friends from cities with serious Mexican food, and it comes with a big patio that fills up at happy hour. Order at a relaxed pace, in whatever you wore to work. Check the address before you go, since Jacksonville has several taco spots with confusingly similar energy.

The trompo here gets more local fanfare than most politicians, and for good reason: al pastor is the gravitational center of this Oaxacan taqueria on National Avenue, Milwaukee's first sit-down location from a south-side truck fleet that's grown into something of a mini empire. The menu sprawls into tlayudas, birria de chivo, volcánes, and mulitas, with aguas frescas to cool things down after the fiery red salsa does its work.

The wheat-fiber "asada" is marinated in beer and smoke until it tastes like a backyard grill, which is a reasonable way to open an argument. This snug Oakland taqueria makes the case that vegan tacos don't need an asterisk, with in-house fillings, mushroom carnitas with real richness, and horchata that holds its own. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best tacos in the Bay Area, vegan or otherwise implied.

A stone oven dominates the floor of what was once a fast-food shell on Milwaukee's south side, turning out taboon bread and stuffed fatayer at a pace that explains the "bakery" in the name. The Jordanian and Palestinian menu runs wider than that, though: hummus, baba ghanoush, kebabs, eggs, fried cheeses, Turkish coffee. Elaborate rugs and ornate lamps make the room feel nothing like its previous life.

The menu runs to biblical length and the wall photos of dishes look like lineup shots at a precinct, but nobody in this clattery Malaysian restaurant in Elmhurst seems bothered by either. The New York Times put it on their 100 Best in New York City list, which tracks. Roti canai leaves a sheen on your fingers, and the char kway teow arrives smelling of the wok in a way that suggests Kuala Lumpur, not Queens, until you look up.

The hotel claims to have invented the Reuben sandwich, which is either true or the greatest piece of lobby mythology in the Midwest. The Committee Chophouse, upstairs in the historic Blackstone, is a proper steakhouse leaning into the full period drama: Delmonico and chateaubriand, creamed spinach, potatoes Lyonnaise. Jackets optional, expense accounts welcome, time capsule very much intended.

A deli tucked inside a gym in a business park, which sounds like a punchline until you taste the sandwich. The chef behind the counter trained at Californios, and it shows in small ways, a lemon aioli that quietly rewires a turkey-cheddar, sourdough from Petaluma's beloved Della Fattoria. A second location has since opened with more room, but the original health club stall carries on, improbably, for those who know.

A sausage bar where the cocktails come on draft and the burger is made with a Velveeta-sauced sausage patty, which tells you everything about the philosophy here. The Vanguard is a laid-back Milwaukee watering hole built around an uncommonly serious sausage program, brats and poutine and fried curds all sharing the menu with Midwestern beers and house cocktails. The crowd is here to eat well without taking any of it too seriously, which is a harder trick than it looks.

Around 500 whiskey labels line the shelves at this low-key east side lounge, with bottles coming in from Japan, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and well beyond Kentucky. The Novaks built the place around a near-singular devotion to amber spirits, but there are wines and cocktails for anyone who just tagged along. Small plates and live jazz on weekends keep things from feeling too reverent about the whole thing.

The Wylder is a downtown Boise pizza-and-cocktails spot built around a sourdough starter that's been alive for over fifty years, which makes it older than most of the staff and possibly the building's plumbing. The pies run from a white one with spicy honey to a red one with pickled chiles, and there are nightly suppers like fried chicken and a lasagna the owners won't give up the recipe for. Eater counts it among Boise's essentials.

A pour-your-own beer wall sets the tone at this food hall carved out of a former downtown mall. Peruvian chicken, arepas, pho, ramen, tortas, and pizza share the floor with cornhole and shuffleboard, so the crowd skews toward groups who can't agree on dinner, which turns out to be a fine reason to visit. Dairyland anchors the whole thing with cheese curds, frozen custard, and an old-fashioned burger that needs no introduction.

Filipino comfort food in a Cleveland area that doesn't have much of it. Tita Flora's is a sit-down restaurant in Independence filling a real gap, and the menu stays traditional: lumpia fried crisp, pork adobo deep with soy and garlic, sisig arriving on a sizzling platter, pancit noodles with your choice of protein. Halo-halo closes things out, a shaved-ice dessert piled with ice cream, evaporated milk, and assorted toppings that takes a while to work through.

House-baked rolls are the foundation here, which tells you a lot about how seriously this Italian quick-serve sandwich shop takes a chicken parm. The chef behind Lox, Stock, and Brisket kept the same formula, a tight menu done with real care, this time nodding to his grandparents' Sicilian hometown. Thick sheet-pan pepperoni pizza sits ready to go, and pasta comes with sausage or meatballs. Fast, focused, and cheap enough that nobody's pretending otherwise.

Two Tony's is a big Creole Italian dining room in Lakeview where everyone ends up glancing at the next table's plates, and the portions guarantee you'll be carrying leftovers out to the car. The seeded bread arrives in baskets and does a lot of the damage before the entrees show up. Fried artichoke hearts, stuffed mushrooms, tiramisu, and a limoncello to close, in the manner of a last supper with a reservation.