The Best Places to Eat and Do in the United States

La Loba is the restaurant in the 1 Hotel, serving Catalan small plates built mostly around seafood, which is a very Pacific Northwest thing to do with a Barcelona childhood. The dishes are rustic at heart with a few modernist tricks, like an open-faced montadito topped with cured salmon. The room is dressed up and so is the clientele, and Eater lists it among Seattle's best seafood restaurants. Wear the good shoes.

The pastry chef here is a native Sicilian who treats the menu as a rough draft, regularly inventing things that don't exist anywhere else and then pulling them before you can tell your friends. This Montrose Italian bakery covers the classics, cannoli, cornettos, breakfast, lunch, but the reason to pay attention is whatever off-menu experiment is running that week. Come with an open mind and low attachment to specific plans.

A deep-dish pizzeria wedged into the part of Michigan Avenue otherwise devoted to flagship stores and corporate chains. The focaccia-style dough gets a layer of mozzarella before baking, which builds a crunchy, caramelized crust. There's a skinny deep dish for the dough-averse, and an umbrella-shaded patio where you can nurse a spritz and forget the tourist current rushing past. Eater has named it Chicago's Best Deep-Dish Pizza.

Lankford's is a Houston burger-and-milkshake counter that has been feeding the neighborhood since before anyone thought to call it a scene. The Grim stacks macaroni and cheese, bacon, jalapeño, and a sunny-side-up egg on a beef patty, which is less a sandwich than a dare. Non-beef eaters get real options, from salmon to Impossible, so nobody has to sit there politely watching. Eater put it on its list of the city's best burgers.

Lao Pot is a hot pot restaurant in Madison Heights where dinner is a group project: everyone gets a simmering terrine of broth, a tray of thin-sliced beef or pork, and full authority over their own doneness. The room has exposed brick and lantern lighting, and there's a full bar with a weekday happy hour, plus bubble tea for the designated drivers. Order skewers and gyoza while the broth gets going, and expect to leave smelling like it.

A marinated pork spit spinning in the window pulls in foot traffic on MLK Way, which is basically the oldest form of advertising. This Chiapas-style taqueria in Berkeley orders you outside to pick up your al pastor, the ruby meat sweet and charred, with pineapple and a green oil salsa alongside. The chicken mole is a serious plate when you want it. Noah's Ark animals frolic across a mural on the wall, keeping things cheerful.

This is a casual taco spot downtown that keeps the lights on until 3 a.m. on Thursday through Saturday, and 2 a.m. the rest of the week. The menu runs from classic street tacos to the flour-tortilla "gringo" kind and quesabirria, with margaritas in flavors up to and including chamoy. Order at the counter, wear whatever survived the night so far, and come back in a few hours for a breakfast taco if the night refuses to end.

An ice cream shop that names a flavor after Lady Bird Johnson's favorite wildflower is telling you something about itself. Lick keeps things small-batch and seasonal, pulling milk and cream from Texas dairies and swapping flavors as ingredients hit their peak. Honey vanilla and horchata sit alongside roasted beets and fish mint, which is either a very brave move or a very confident one, depending on how you feel about beets.

A wall in the back pulses with colored light synced to the reggaeton, which tells you exactly what kind of restaurant this is. Lita does modern Caribbean in a Walnut Creek setting that leans hard into Miami energy, with a marble bar, gold trim, and ferns hanging over the dining room. Fish fritters, coconut curry chicken empanadas, and spit-roast jerk chicken shaved into tacos carry the menu. The cocktails keep up.

Little India is a casual Indian restaurant on East 6th Avenue that has fed Denver since before anyone worried about Y2K, and it now stays open around the clock for anyone with a lamb vindaloo emergency at four in the morning. Lunch is when the buffet runs, which means saag, dal makhani, korma, and tandoori chicken sit a few steps away and nobody has to choose between the butter chicken and the biryani. The Infatuation listed it among Denver's lunch spots.

Warm tortillas pressed at a kiosk just inside the door set the tone at this San Rafael Mexican restaurant, where the kitchen takes mole seriously enough to run seven housemade versions on the weekend buffet. The mole poblano and a red guajillo version called Mama Luisa are the ones to pace yourself toward. Cabeza de res, menudo, and pozole rojo round things out. Order a michelada; it isn't included, but it's the move.

Los Tios is a sit-down Tex-Mex restaurant that claims it served Houston's first frozen margarita, then took a firm stance on the flavored kind and settled on floaters in coupe glasses. The big indoor patio fills with friend groups and families who are clearly here to stay awhile. The tacos arrive in a C-curved shell built to hold more meat, and everything leans on corn tortillas, which is a bold choice around here.

Lotus is a casual, order-at-the-counter cafe and juice bar on Encinitas' main drag, where the menu runs mostly vegetarian and the salad list reaches ten. Names like Soulful and Spiritual tell you exactly what town you're in. You can add tofu, tempeh, or vegetable "chicken," or blackened chicken if the vegetables have been judging you. Eater has named it among San Diego's best salads.

A short staircase down from a quiet Schuylerville corner takes you into one of those slice shops that seems to exist slightly outside of time. Louie & Ernie's has been around forever, slinging margherita pies and sausage pizzas to a neighborhood that hasn't changed much either. The New York Times put it on their list of the city's 22 best pizza places, which is the kind of recognition that surprises no one who's actually been here.

Loving Hut is a casual, fully vegan counter-service spot on El Cajon Boulevard, with a menu that wanders the globe without ever touching an animal. The Heavenly salad piles shredded cabbage, fried tofu strips, and Vietnamese mint under a sweet-and-sour tamarind dressing, which is how Eater landed it on a list of the best salads in San Diego. The room is mellow and unfussy, and nobody will ask you to explain your lunch.

A strip mall Mexican restaurant where everything, walls, floors, booths, even the plates, is painted black so the food glows against it like a still life. The brothers who run Lujos took over their parents' spot and rebuilt it almost entirely. The regular menu covers tacos, burritos, and quesadillas, but there's a permanent off-menu section worth asking about, including birria enchiladas drowning in red sauce with crema and guacamole. Wash it down with the horchata.

Magnolia's is a Mexican chuchería in the Greater East End, which means ice cream is only the starting point before the chamoy, the Tajín, and the sour worms take over. Gushers can end up on a banana split, and the milkshakes come buried in fruit syrup and candy. It's cheap, loud, and sticky in the best tradition of the genre. Go after school lets out only if you enjoy negotiating with a pack of ten-year-olds.

The move here is to sit down, and keep sitting: every meal arrives thali-style, a platter loaded with a dozen-plus curries, chutneys, and small bites from the vegetarian kitchens of Rajasthan and Gujarat, and it's all unlimited. Flag your waiter when anything runs low. This southwest Houston dining room is the only US outpost of the Indian chain, and it handles vegan and gluten-free without fuss.

Sea turtles surface in the water a few feet from your table while you work through a menu that skews lighter than most oceanfront spots, with vegan and gluten-free options alongside fish sourced close to home. Mala is a Hawaiian seafood restaurant right on the Lahaina waterfront, and brunch draws a loyal crowd for eggs Benedict done several ways, including one with wasabi hollandaise that sounds like a dare and isn't.

Open rafters, pale pink tiles, and bright teal accents set the tone at this casual Chinese spot on Clement Street, where Brandon Jew runs a room that looks like it was designed on purpose, because it was. The sweet-and-sour chicken, rice-battered and stuffed into a homemade pineapple bun, is the kind of thing people come back for. Housemade sodas round out a menu that treats the nonalcoholic drinks as a feature rather than an afterthought.

Downtown Houston tends to roll up the sidewalks after five, which makes a Latin restaurant serving until 2 a.m. on Thursday through Saturday feel like a minor act of defiance. The menu wanders the Caribbean and South America, from stuffed plantains to stewed oxtail to churrasco, and the cocktails run toward a spicy-tequila margarita and a creamy, rum-laced take on a Dominican classic. Expect a mid-priced, dress-up-a-little night out.

Manchamanteles is a Bucktown Mexican restaurant named after a mole, which is a bit like naming your place Birthday Cake. The room is bright and permanently dressed for a party, and the menu is built around those sauces, sampled side by side on sopes and spooned over slow-braised pork ribs. It's sit-down but relaxed, with plenty of vegetarian and gluten-free options. Eater put it on a list of Chicago's best Mexican restaurants.

Mano a Mano is a dimly lit Italian trattoria on Milwaukee Avenue, run by the people behind the neighboring Andros Taverna and Asador Bastian, so the block is basically a family reunion with better lighting. The pastas are made in-house, with seafood-stuffed shapes and a cacio e pepe, and the focaccia arrives with stracchino. Expect a wine list with some ambition and a mid-to-upper bill, so dress like you planned this.