The Best Places to Eat and Do in the United States

The crebble, a croissant-muffin hybrid dusted in maple sugar, is reason enough to find this bakery cafe in Santa Rosa's Railroad Square. Marla started in San Francisco's Richmond District, and the North Bay got the better end of that move. Sticky buns, bagels, and rotating pastries draw a loyal morning crowd, and the team sources locally throughout. You can also find their goods at Sonoma County farmers' markets if the cafe is too far a detour.

Mart Anthony's is a family-run Italian restaurant on West Hubbard, in its third generation, and it began as a spot for the founder to hang out with friends. The walls are covered in black-and-white photos of regulars, so you're basically dining inside a very long group chat. Expect red-sauce classics from family recipes, a dozen handmade pastas, and a meatball salad credited to Nana. Come as you are, as the place intends.

This is a salad shop on La Jolla's Pearl Street, and the sizes start at 32 ounces, so nobody here is ordering a side. You can build your own bowl or pick from a long house list, with the Chinese chopped salad and its wonton strips doing the heavy lifting for people who need a salad to feel like a dare. There's a second location in Ocean Beach, and Eater has named it among San Diego's best salads. Order at the counter, then eat in the cozy room or take it down to the water.

Mas Allá del Sol is a sit-down Mexican restaurant on North Broadway where a buttered, griddled telera shows up in place of the usual chip basket. The chef once cooked for an archbishop, which sets a high bar for the enchiladas and the chipotle lamb shank. The mezcal list wanders well past Oaxaca, so plan on a slow dinner. Eater has it on its roundup of Chicago's Mexican restaurants.

This is a Korean barbecue spot on West Sahara, part of a small local chain, where a tabletop grill is the main event and you're the line cook. After 10 p.m. there's an all-you-can-eat run until 3 a.m. at a price that feels like a clerical error. The bibimbap tends to arrive as a side and quietly become the meal. It's loud, smoky, and full of people who skipped the casino buffet on purpose.

Matilda is a River North restaurant that puts Mexican and Peruvian cooking in one kitchen and lets them argue it out on the plate. The guacamole arrives as a roasted avocado you mash yourself at the table, which feels like homework you'd happily do. The wine list is entirely Mexican, tequila and mezcal run the cocktails, and a hidden door leads to a speakeasy, because of course it does. Eater lists it among Chicago's best Mexican restaurants.

High ceilings, views straight up to Vail Mountain, and a patio when the weather cooperates, this is the Colorado outpost of Nobu Matsuhisa's Japanese restaurant empire. The menu runs from composed à la carte to omakase, and on the occasional nights when Matsuhisa himself is behind the bar, regulars tend to notice. Takeout is also an option, which feels slightly surreal given the room.

A working farm in Kula's upcountry where the bees, the goats, and the kitchen are all part of the same operation. Friday evenings turn into long, unhurried tasting dinners, seven vegetable-forward courses built around whatever the farm is growing that week, mulberries, honeycomb, asparagus cut that morning. A tour of the bee museum comes with the meal, which tells you something about the pace of the whole thing.

The on-site cooking school with a loyal crowd of repeat students tells you something about how seriously this Italian restaurant takes the whole project. Pasta is made daily, the menu moves between classics and more inventive mains, and a separate casual cafe handles lunches and happy hours next door. It's a family-run operation that has quietly become a fixture on the island, without making a big deal about it.

Milk + Sugar is an ice cream shop built on the premise that your favorite desserts would be even better frozen, which is how strawberry almond cheesecake and a dulce de horchata end up in the same case. There are sixteen flavors, a quarter of them seasonal, plus a pandan-and-chrysanthemum swirl the owner added nervously and now can't keep stocked. Order it in the brown sugar waffle cone and expect a short line.

Milk + Sugar is an ice cream shop built on a simple premise: take desserts people already love and turn them into scoops. The case holds sixteen flavors, twelve permanent and four that rotate, with cheesecake and horchata among them. There's also a pandan-and-chrysanthemum swirl the owner added nervously and then couldn't keep stocked. Order it in a brown sugar waffle cone. Houstonia put it on its list of the city's best ice cream shops.

This is a sit-down Indian restaurant that happens to share a block with the Atomic Testing Museum, so you can study nuclear history and then eat something that will test your own tolerance. The menu covers north and south, with chaat, dosas, and lamb lollipops, plus a lunch buffet with a salad and chaat bar. The inferno menu ends in a curry challenge, and finishing it earns a $50 gift card. Reservations are required.

Mister Tiger is a family-run Korean restaurant on West Grand, the sort of place where the free banchan arrives before you've decided anything, including whether you like fermented fish cakes. Eater has listed it among Chicago's Korean restaurants. The galbi jjim, braised short rib with carefully carved vegetables in a broth that's sweet with a bitter edge, is the dish to order. The fried chicken and bulgogi hold their own around it.

The bubble-ring shape of a mochi doughnut, six or eight chewy spheres connected in a loop, is practically engineered for the "just one more piece" problem. MochiDot is a local dessert shop making them with rice flour for that signature springy chew, with flavors that rotate by season, running from Oreo to vivid purple ube to Lotus Biscoff. Bring someone to share with, or don't and pretend you did.

Murals that eat up the walls set the tone at this Cuban restaurant, a food truck that eventually needed more room. The Cuban sandwich comes deluxe with slow-cooked pork, sweet ham, extra Swiss, pickles, and two ham croquettes tucked inside, which sounds excessive until you're halfway through it. Seasonal mojito cocktails and a Delta 9 mocktail they've dubbed the "mo-wee-to" keep things lively. Save room for flan or tres leches.

This is a casual Korean spot on Decatur, a few miles west of the Strip, built around soondae, the blood sausage soup, which arrives hot and murky and mostly serious. Families split bottles of sake while toddlers work through noodles with a tablet propped against the napkins. The bulgogi comes out sizzling, and the whole place is cheap enough that you can call it a night out without calling your accountant.

The Italian sub here is stacked with salami, hot coppa, mortadella, and provolone on a flour-dusted ciabatta, and the bread does at least half the work. Morucci's is an old-school deli that's been a Walnut Creek fixture long enough that regulars actually comment when the line isn't out the door. A few seats inside, more outside, and the counter crew keeps things moving faster than the crowd suggests.

A wide backyard lawn gives Mother's Brewing Company the feel of a cookout that never quite ends. It's a Springfield craft brewery and taproom with a rotating roster of beers, from hazy IPAs to sour wheat ales to hard seltzers, and the lineup changes often enough that regulars still find something new to argue about. The kind of place you bring out-of-towners when you want them to think well of your city, which they generally do.

Everything at this rustic Vail gastropub passes through live fire, a nod to cooking that predates the menu trend by a few millennia. Bone marrow, wood-grilled pork, rotisserie chicken, and Santa Maria tri-tip anchor the menu, while a raw bar keeps things from getting too carnivorous. The cocktail list has names like Cougar Country, which tells you the room doesn't take itself too seriously, even if the fire does.

Hickory smoke has been drifting off this Lexington-style barbecue shop long enough that the drive-thru feels like a recent innovation, which it more or less is. Chopped barbecue and fried chicken are the main event, but the crispy pork skins sell out early and reward the punctual. Greek-style green beans turn up on a menu that could easily ignore them, and don't. Cash in, order heavy, and don't count on the pork skins if you're rolling in at noon.

A Third Ward Southern bakery built on heirloom recipes passed down through the Jackson family, with two daughters and a granddaughter keeping them going. Decorative cakes, pies, cobblers, and seasonal desserts are the focus, and the kind of place where the story behind the food is as much the point as the food itself. If you need a celebration cake that carries some actual weight, this is where people in the neighborhood come.

The chocolate Prozac cupcake is real, and yes, you can buy one. This neighborhood bakery on Broad Avenue Arts District has been a Midtown mainstay long enough that it feels like someone's very talented aunt runs it, which is a compliment. Cupcakes, cookies, and pies fill the cases daily, and the vibe skews cheerful bake sale rather than sleek patisserie. Go with a sweet tooth and low ambitions for efficiency.

The coastal redwoods here top 250 feet, and standing under them has a way of making whatever you were anxious about feel appropriately small. This 558-acre national monument northwest of San Francisco holds one of the last ancient redwood groves in the Bay Area, with about six miles of trails winding past Cathedral Grove and along Redwood Creek. Serious hikers can push into adjacent Mount Tamalpais State Park when the trees aren't enough.

Nacho Daddy is a casual Strip-adjacent Mexican spot built around one idea, which is that a chip should never be left alone to face the world dry. The plates arrive piled high with seasoned beef, yellow queso, and beans, and there are fancier versions with filet mignon or butter-poached lobster for people who like their nachos with a mortgage. A scorpion shot is available, and it is exactly what it sounds like.

NADC Burger is a fast-casual smash burger counter, and the name stands for Not a Damn Chance, which is also how you'll respond when someone suggests splitting one. The double wagyu patty comes with American cheese, onions, and jalapeños, there's a kids' version with only meat, cheese, and bun, and the beef tallow fries can go "beast mode." Order at the counter, eat with your hands, and wear something that forgives sauce.

Named for Vienna's famous open-air market, this elegant restaurant quietly makes the case that Austrian and Californian cuisines have more in common than anyone expected. Wiener schnitzel with lingonberry sauce sits a few lines above grilled game hen ringed with corn, peaches, and shishito peppers. The spaetzle is bouncy and fresh, lifted with tarragon. Service is crisp whether you're on the parklet or inside the modern dining room.

Breakfast runs until late afternoon here, which tells you most of what you need to know about the pace of things. Nectar Farm Kitchen is a casual Southern all-day restaurant with a farmhouse feel, leaning on whatever's coming in fresh from local farms. The menu moves from eggs Benedict riffs in the morning through sandwiches at lunch to plates and bowls by supper, so the kitchen never really has a slow hour.

The former Biscuitville location gives nothing away from the outside, but inside this Sichuan restaurant the menu runs deep into the province, with thirty-plus dishes built around the tongue-numbing peppercorns the region is known for. Dan dan noodles, dry pot chicken, and wontons in red oil sit alongside the General Tso's and crab rangoon for anyone easing in. The heat here is the slow, creeping kind that sneaks up on you.

The deep whiskey list is the tell: Nickel City is a cocktail bar that takes its drinks seriously without taking itself seriously. An Austin transplant now rooted in the East End, it pulls off the trick of being a genuine neighborhood hangout and a credible bar program at the same time. Hot dogs and mozzarella sticks handle the rest. A Top 10 U.S. Nominee at the Spirited Awards keeps the credentials honest.

Nobu's Coronado outpost is the upscale Japanese lounge you'd expect from a name that has its own fan club, set inside the Hotel del Coronado's renovated grounds. The room runs about 150 seats, indoors and out, and the menu leans on Peruvian-tinged sushi, skewers, tempura, and the famous miso black cod. Prices can make you do some quiet math, so dress for a dinner where the tab is a plot point. Eater lists it among San Diego's best sushi spots.

The retro rotating oven here has no cold spots, which is the explanation for the char-marked, toothsome crusts coming out of this Great Kills slice shop. The New York Times put Nonna's on its list of the 22 best pizza places in the city, and the schlep to Staten Island is part of the deal. Don't skip the upside-down triangle, built cheese-first the way brick oven places do it, and the clam slice is worth the detour on its own.

Noodle Topia is a casual Madison Heights noodle shop where someone hand pulls the noodles within view of your table, and a robot may roll up to clear your bowls. The bowls run from numbingly spicy Sichuan to a rich lamb broth, with green onion pancakes and toasted pork buns on the side. There's plenty of seating and parking out back, if you spot the easy-to-miss driveway. Eater lists it among Metro Detroit's best Chinese restaurants.

Norigami is a hand roll and crudo bar in West U that began as a pop-up and now has a theme to maintain. That theme is origami, so the menu doubles as a craft project, with neon wall graphics that coach you through the folding. Chefs assemble everything in front of you, and the signature roll goes full Vegas with foie gras, toro, wagyu, uni, caviar, and gold flakes. A speakeasy called Hidden Bar waits behind a wall.

Columbus Avenue moves at the pace of a neighborhood that has been arguing, pleasantly, about whether to have another espresso since the Beat poets were still alive. North Beach is San Francisco's Italian quarter by heritage, literary enclave by reputation, and genuinely pleasant afternoon by default. Sidewalk cafés, old-school red-sauce spots, and City Lights bookstore orbit Washington Square Park, with Chinatown a short walk when you need a change of scene.

This Mesa outpost of Novel is a small scoop shop at the end of an alley, which is the kind of location you find only if someone sent you, or if you're very committed to a hunch. Flavors run unconventional, think peppermint mocha or peanut butter and jelly, and the local collaborations rotate through. Ask for a Dough Melt, a warm doughnut stuffed with ice cream, and order the waffle version by name if you're a Parks and Rec person.

The fish on the sashimi platter came off the owner's own boat, which is the kind of detail that makes a menu honest. Nuka is a modern izakaya and sushi bar tucked into a converted auto supply shop in Haiku, where the room is low-key and the food is sharper than the address suggests. Small plates, sushi, rice bowls, and cold drinks keep things relaxed and affordable.