The Best Places to Eat and Do in the United States

Filipino cooking in a small Spring Street dining room where many tables just order the whole menu. Chef Nikko Cagalagan, a 2024 James Beard Emerging Chef nominee, runs the kitchen on induction burners and a small oven, which explains either the focus or the ambition, probably both. The dishes read like home cooking filtered through a chef's eye, precise in portion and element count, and grounded in local pork, oysters, and fish.

The restroom walls are lined with illustrated wine descriptions, which tells you exactly what kind of neighborhood restaurant this is. A cozy Columbia Heights pasta house and wine bar, Reveler's Hour runs a rotating slate of seasonal Italian small plates under arched ceilings and muted green tiles. The sommelier who co-owns the place steers you toward bottles you've never encountered, and the housemade pasta is the thing to build an order around.

A sushi restaurant in Omaha that isn't playing it safe, Yoshitomo builds on traditional Japanese technique and then quietly goes its own direction, folding local instincts into the menu in ways that read as natural rather than gimmicky. The rodeo maki, stuffed with wagyu and finished with tonkatsu sauce, makes the argument on its own. A 2026 James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Midwest.

Tucked into a strip of drab storefronts near a hair salon called Bouffant Daddy, Robin is a tasting-menu restaurant that somehow feels like a warm secret. The room is soft-lit and earthy, and the four-course format leans into Midwestern ingredients with enough wit to keep things lively. Land on the New York Times Restaurant List and earn a James Beard nomination in the same year, and the mille-feuille of amaro chocolate mousse starts to make a certain kind of sense.

The Lebanese restaurant in the 15th and 15th neighborhood keeps one of the largest Mediterranean wine and beer lists in the country, with bottles pulled from Lebanon, Morocco, and Greece. It's the kind of casual spot where a meal properly starts with dips and works toward a braised lamb shank. The chef earned a James Beard nomination in 2024, which feels about right for a room that takes traditional Lebanese cooking this seriously.

Potato-stuffed puris doused in yogurt and tamarind are the opening argument at this Indian street food spot tucked into Union Market. The room is loud and color-splashed in the way that makes you feel like you showed up underdressed no matter what you're wearing. Meherwan Irani, a James Beard Award winner for his Asheville original, brought the concept north, and the DC version has carved out its own following among the city's suddenly crowded field of Indian restaurants.

An all-day American bistro across from Rittenhouse Square where, on Sunday afternoons, some of Philadelphia's own chefs quietly eat their days off. The menu tracks regional farmers closely, and the natural wine list is among the longer ones in the city. The New York Times named it among the 25 best restaurants in Philadelphia, which the Sunday regulars already knew.

The entire room is wood-plank from floor to ceiling, which either reads as cozy or a fire hazard, depending on your mood. This West Randolph wine restaurant has been packed since forever, with regulars jostling for counter stools and close-set tables to graze through a seasonal Mediterranean menu. The plates are bold, colorful, and generously sized, and the wine list leans into the food rather than upstaging it.

The wood-roasted chicken at this Clayton neighborhood restaurant arrives with rapini and an immaculate jus, nowhere to hide and nothing to prove. Louie is the kind of Italian-leaning spot where the room feels luxurious without feeling stiff, and the seasonal pastas and pizzas do quiet, confident work. A 2026 James Beard nominee for Outstanding Hospitality, it draws regulars who treat it like a standing reservation with old friends.

Named for Lucian Freud, this 40-seat wine restaurant and bookshop in Buckhead stocks art and fashion volumes alongside a list serious enough to earn a James Beard semifinalist nod for its beverage program. The seasonal American menu runs to ricotta gnudi and caviar-topped omelets, the kind of food that pairs naturally with whatever the wine director opens next. Shelves full of books for sale make lingering feel practically obligatory.

Urbe is a counter-service Mexican spot in Uptown Park, with walls covered in bright folk art and a bakery case near the register that makes a strong case against returning to your desk. Hugo Ortega's casual place does margaritas at lunch, which the office crowd treats as a loophole. The restaurant is the kind where you order, find a table, and sneak a pastry for the road. Ortega is also up for a James Beard nod as Outstanding Restaurateur.

The building used to be a Dairy Queen, and the kitchen leans into that legacy rather than running from it. Woodford F&B is a neighborhood restaurant where the chef, a James Beard nominee, turns out unfussy food with serious technique: charcuterie with a devoted following, a brisket burger stacked high, a croque-monsieur that earns the trouble. The room is relaxed enough that no one's performing, but the cooking suggests someone back there very much is.

The kitchen is literally front and center here, open to the room so the whole team works in full view, moving like they own the place, which they kind of do. Nolia is a casual dinner spot where servers wear branded sweatshirts and the skillet cornbread arrives with a scoop of cane-syrup butter melting dramatically on top. Southern ease, exposed brick, and a menu that quietly runs gluten-free without making a cause of it. The house hot sauces are made from scratch, and one will have you fanning yourself.

The seating choices alone tell you something: big communal tables, a long bar, or low couches, all inside a roomy industrial space on North Broad. Honeysuckle is an Afro-centric American restaurant built around a prix fixe that moves from hush puppies with country ham to wagyu beef cheek and oxtail tamales without ever losing its thread. The chef earned a 2026 James Beard nomination, and the cooking shows why, course after careful course.

A French bakery tucked into a Parker strip mall, Poulette turns out croissants, kouign-amann, éclairs, brioche, and macarons from a pastry case that gets restocked daily and emptied fast. The team behind it spent years in serious kitchens, and the technique shows without the attitude. The New York Times named it among the country's top bakeries, and it's landed James Beard nominations for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker.

MĀBO is a tiny omakase counter in a Berkshire Lane strip center where the main event is chicken, cooked over binchotan charcoal, one skewer at a time. The room is hushed and softly lit, so you'll lower your voice to discuss poultry. Expect a set tasting menu, a serious sake and wine list, and a bill to match. It was a James Beard Best New Restaurant nominee in 2025.

Sado is a high-end sushi bar where the fish is dry-aged, which is a sentence that would have baffled your grandfather. Eight seats at the counter put you inches from cooks slicing with the focus of surgeons, while a full dining room handles everyone who'd rather not be watched while they chew. A six-person omakase called Pavilion hides out back. James Beard keeps nominating the chef, so budget accordingly.

Fourteen seats around a charcoal counter in the back of Chinatown's Canal Arcade, where every course of the yakitori omakase is built around a chicken that gives up everything. The chef coaxes cuts most menus never mention, oyster, heart, cartilage, into something precise and quiet. The New York Times gave it three stars, and a James Beard nomination for Best Chef followed. Wear something that can take a little smoke.

A fast-casual stall inside Houston's The Post food hall, ChòpnBlọk is the chef Ope Amosu's case for West African cooking as everyday food, not occasion food. Jollof rice, coconut curry bowls, and grilled suya skewers dusted in yaji peanut spice anchor the menu. The Michelin Bib Gourmand and a spot on the New York Times Restaurant List followed, which is a lot of attention for a rice bowl, and not undeserved.

Moon Rabbit is a dimly lit Vietnamese restaurant in the Heights where the cocktails are as much a draw as the bowls and spring rolls. The menu lets you build your own meal by picking a protein, like lemongrass pork or garlic butter shrimp, which suits anyone who has ever edited an order in the middle of ordering. Its pastry chef is a James Beard Award nominee, so leave room.

Pascaline Lepeltier, one of a handful of Master Sommeliers in the world, built the wine list here, and it shows: back vintages, unexpected producers, prices that don't require a quiet moment alone with your bank app. The food runs from composed salads to fresh pasta, all of it seasonal and sharper than the "wine bar snacks" framing might suggest. A James Beard nominee for its beverages program, and sitting at number 29 on the Times' 100 Best list.

A small fish and wine bar from the team behind State Bird Provisions, built around the anchovy in all its salty, versatile glory. The menu wanders from toast loaded with local anchovies and grated tomato to squid stir-fried with kimchi and flat rice noodles, and somehow a vanilla tamarind sundae finished with dried fish lands as dessert. The room is warm and woody, the vibe relaxed enough that the ambition sneaks up on you.

The hummus comes with schug, herb tehina, and enough conviction to make every other hummus in town feel like it needs to apologize. This is a casual Eastern Mediterranean restaurant drawing from Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, with a menu that roams widely and settles nowhere predictable. The chef behind it earned a James Beard nomination for Best Chef Southeast. Come hungry enough for babka.

This is a family-run Basque spot on Main Street where the sausage does most of the talking, in bocadillos and appetizers, with chorizo you can also take home by the pound. The menu mixes old-country standards with newer moves like beef tongue in tomato and pepper sauce. They cater too, so your next office party could finally have a point. The Ansotegui family has been in Basque Boise a long time, and the chef was a James Beard Best Chef: Mountain semifinalist in 2024.

A Lao noodle parlor that grew out of a single chicken soup too popular to stay on one menu, Bar Sen sits next door to its sibling restaurant in a dark, lively room with a sunny patio out back. The khao piek sen, thick chewy rice noodles in a rich, almost milky broth, is the founding idea and still the move. Cold beer is the drink of choice here, which tells you everything about the vibe. The chef earned a 2026 James Beard nomination and a spot on the New York Times Restaurant List.

The cachito, a soft Venezuelan ham-and-cheese roll, is as good a reason as any to find your way to this Venezuelan bakery tucked into Doral. The team blends a Latin sensibility with French-style bread baking, so golfeados and pastelitos sit alongside proper croissants without anyone making a fuss about it. A 2024 James Beard nominee for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker. Bring cash and a little patience; the line tends to have opinions.

A gold-embellished bar takes up half the dining room at this wood-fired pizza shop in North Central Charleston, facing an open kitchen and a serious natural wine collection. The pizzas lean creative, the booths fill fast with groups who came for the full spread, and there's Korean fried chicken for anyone who showed up mostly for the wine. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2026.

The building was a working stable once, and the vaulted ceilings and warm brick still carry that memory into what is now one of Minneapolis's most celebrated dinner destinations. Chef Gavin Kaysen runs a Midwestern French kitchen where the seasonal sourcing is taken seriously without being announced at you. A 2025 James Beard Outstanding Restaurant semifinalist, it draws a dressed-up but not stiff crowd happy to linger over heritage grain pasta and a very good cocktail.

Pasta at 8 a.m. is either a cry for help or a reasonable lifestyle choice, and Fiore makes a compelling case for the latter. This tiny Italian cafe on Frankford Ave grew out of a larger restaurant that shed its wood-fired oven and half its menu, keeping only what the chef does best: regional Italian baked goods, bright seasonal salads, and cacio e pepe that regulars order before most places have unlocked the door.

Set on a working organic farm and historic inn, this refined New Mexico restaurant builds its menu around what's growing nearby, from the blue corn hominy and green chile on the plate to the lavender in your margarita. The kitchen makes its own bread, charcuterie, and pickles, and the cocktail list leans on Los Poblanos' own gin. A James Beard semifinalist, it's the kind of place where the farm outside the window is also the reason dinner tastes the way it does.

A wine bar in Middleburg horse country with over 70 pours by the glass, though the food holds its own against the list. Snacks lean indulgent, and the bigger plates, duck confit, lobster curry, hanger steak au poivre, are serious enough that calling this a wine bar starts to feel like underselling it. The chef's cocktail policy runs "no fru fru," which apparently still leaves room for mezcal, Chartreuse, and Aperol in one glass.

Eastsound, on Orcas Island, is not where you expect to find a restaurant that landed on the New York Times's restaurant list, but here we are. Matia Kitchen (say "may-shah") is a small, ingredient-driven restaurant where local produce gets the kind of careful treatment that earned a James Beard nomination. The menu shifts with the season, and the cooking has a quiet confidence that the room itself, unpretentious as it is, seems entirely unbothered by.

At Anjin, guests choose their own sake cup from a wall of them before settling in around a 20-seat bar wrapped around an open cooking area. It's a Japanese izakaya where the kitchen leans on local and seasonal ingredients, turning out skewers, seared eel, and a tempura walleye sandwich on housemade milk bread that's hard to stop thinking about. A 2026 James Beard nominee and on the New York Times Restaurant List the same year.

Stained-glass windows were the starting point for the entire bar design, which tells you something about how deliberately this Eastern European restaurant was built. The menu pulls from the chef's grandmother's recipes, pierogi and pelmeni and khachapuri landing hot, and the medovik changes flavors every few months just to keep you coming back. A James Beard nominee, and Cincinnati Magazine's number-five restaurant.

Sommelier Brent Braun runs the cellar here, with a wine list heavy on Riesling, Oregon producers, and natural bottles, plus small-batch collaborations with local winemakers usually poured by the glass. The kitchen leans seasonal and vegetable-forward, the kind of room where the food earns its place alongside the wine rather than playing second fiddle. A James Beard Semifinalist for Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program, this chic Hawthorne wine restaurant draws the crowd that actually reads the back label.

The moles here travel by region, Oaxacan one night, Yucatecan the next, because the chef grew up in Zacatecas and cooks like he has something to prove about how wide Mexican cuisine actually runs. This is a proper sit-down restaurant with plated ambitions and a menu that resists the Southwestern shorthand most of Santa Fe defaults to. A James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Southwest in 2024.

The pasta here is why Mike Easton built a cult following at his old Seattle spot, Il Corvo, and it's why people now drive 20 miles north of Walla Walla to a tiny Italian dinner restaurant in a historic Main Street building. Eighteen seats, no minors, and reservations that go fast. The menu leans into nearby farms and changes with the seasons, with Italian wine and cocktails keeping pace. A James Beard nominee for Best New Restaurant in 2024.

The foie gras profiteroles have been on the dessert menu so long they've become a Portland landmark in their own right. Gabriel Rucker's modern French tasting spot on East Burnside has been doing ambitious, slightly unhinged prix fixe since forever, the kind of cooking where sturgeon pastrami with caviar shows up next to a vegetarian finger sandwich and both feel inevitable. A James Beard semifinalist, and still the room where Portland chefs go to be impressed.

Duck fat tortillas arrive alongside a smoked half chicken dressed in red chile and pepita crema, which tells you what kind of American cooking this Nob Hill restaurant is doing. The chef draws on Southwestern flavors without turning the menu into a tourism brochure, and a James Beard nomination for Best Chef: Southwest followed accordingly. The room is quiet enough that you can hear yourself change your order after the food arrives at the next table.

Ten seats, one seating, everyone served together: Chef's Table runs like a dinner party where the host happens to have a Michelin listing and a thing for caviar. It sits inside the private Astor Club on the Gold Coast, though non-members can book a spot. The tasting menu leans luxe, with ingredients that suit the hushed, gilded setting. Forbes Four Star. Jacket-and-a-good-story territory.

A marble staircase leads to this fine dining jewel box above Madison Avenue, where the whole point is caviar and the menu makes no apologies about it. Tins range from a modest Pacific Sturgeon scoop to Osetra by the 500 gram, priced accordingly. The French-inflected menu runs prix fixe or à la carte, with dishes like Dover sole in curry cream that somehow feel restrained given everything else going on.

Down a flight of stairs inside the Monterey Plaza Hotel, this fine dining room opens onto an unobstructed view of the bay, which does a lot of the work before the food even arrives. The tasting menu leans on local catch and regional produce, then pulls in global flavors, wood-fired techniques, and miso-cured fish to keep things from feeling like a postcard. Forbes Four Star, and the wine pairing is well matched to the format.

Beets buried under coals for eight hours is either an act of patience or a personality disorder, and at Francis Mallmann's open-fire Argentine steakhouse inside the Faena Hotel, it reads as both. The room commits fully: leopard-print booths, red cushions, gold on everything. The asado is serious, the proteins are large, and the bar at the far end fills with people dressed for exactly this kind of place.

The kitchen garden outside supplies much of what lands on the table at this elegant tasting and à la carte restaurant inside Bernardus Lodge, and the kitchen treats it as a point of pride rather than a talking point. New American cooking with a seasonal, vegetable-forward lean, though the lamb has its admirers. A stone fireplace, muted tones, and a patio overlooking the Carmel Valley vineyards keep the room from feeling like a hotel obligation. Forbes Four Star.

The warm English muffin that arrives before anything else has, by all accounts, developed a following of its own, which tells you something about how Mar'sel operates. This fine dining room at Terranea Resort on the Palos Verdes Peninsula pairs ocean views and a fireplace with New American cooking that takes its time. Forbes Four Star service matches the setting. Dress accordingly, and leave room for the caramel pot de crème.

The tenth floor of a downtown hotel turns out to be a fine place to stare at Walt Disney Concert Hall while José Andrés's team works through a menu of modern Californian cooking with a Spanish lean. The facade opens fully, making the room feel more rooftop than restaurant. A Forbes Four Star. Earth tones, greenery, a busy bar, and a tomato tartare that arrives looking like the beef version but absolutely is not.

A former dairy farm turned village, with white-linen tables and intimate rooms that make every dinner feel slightly ceremonial. This fine dining room sits at the heart of Fearrington Village outside Pittsboro, and the kitchen leans into its pastoral surroundings with a seasonal menu that pulls from the property's own gardens. The chocolate soufflé has become the kind of thing regulars plan around. A Forbes Four Star property.

The fireplace and rough-hewn beams set the mood before the menu even arrives. This is fine dining inside a historic stone cottage on the San Ysidro Ranch grounds, where the kitchen leans hard on herbs, fruit, and vegetables grown on the property. Patio regulars tend to order the burger; others work through a prix-fixe that runs toward hamachi and Meyer lemon. The wine list is wide and considered, and the servers know it cold.

Rows of labeled spice jars line the walls, which tells you something about how seriously this contemporary Indian restaurant takes its pantry. The chef sources ingredients from his own farm and runs a tight menu that swings between fiery naan and delicate tuna bhel without losing focus. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and landed on the New York Times' Miami list. The suburban strip-mall setting is the only thing that doesn't match the ambition.

Chancho King started as a food truck wedged into Murray Hill block parties and now has a proper casual dining room serving Ecuadorian street food, which is rare enough in Jacksonville that people drive across town for the pork sandwich. The chef is a James Beard nominee for Best Chef: South. Birthdays get a steak with candles in it, a holdover from the oven-less years, and Sundays are for build-your-own ceviche.

Dolores is a bright blue Mexican restaurant on Hope Street, cooking dishes from Puebla and Oaxaca, which is a lot of sunshine to commit to in a New England February. The bar goes well past tequila and mezcal into sotol and Oaxacan rum, and the sangria arrives by the pitcher, so bring people. The chef was a James Beard Best Chef: Northeast nominee, and you can also just sit down for tostadas and a drink.

Mesa is a casual Indian restaurant where the chef still walks over to greet every table, which is rarer than the marigolds. The menu pairs South Indian cooking with Southern comfort, so shrimp and basmati grits share a page with something called naanchos. There's no liquor license, so the drinks lean on port, sake, and vermouth, and the saffron-and-jaggery Manhattan has no interest in apologizing for it. James Beard Best Chef: Southwest nominee, 2024.

The dining room is carved from an actual downtown warehouse boiler room, all industrial bones and art on the walls. It's a meat-forward restaurant with a serious wine list, where the kitchen cures its own charcuterie, makes its own sausages, and runs through a lot of wagyu. The chef earned a James Beard nomination for Best Chef: Midwest in 2024. The crudo is a quiet argument for not ignoring the seafood.

Bluefin maguro topped with a Georgian sauce of apricots and walnuts gives you the idea fast: this is an omakase counter where the chef treats Edomae sushi as a starting point rather than a finish line. The meal builds like a composed piece, lighter sashimi giving way to richer bites, before landing on A5 Wagyu and foie gras lacquered with chocolate balsamic. The New York Times named it among Boston's 25 best restaurants.

Exposed brick, polished concrete, and soft leather set the tone before a dish arrives at this osteria tucked into Palmer Alley. The chef trained under a Roman legend and keeps the cooking rooted in regional Italy, letting seasonality do the heavy lifting. The pastas in particular are the kind that make you rethink your standing dinner plans. A James Beard Outstanding Restaurant semifinalist, and one of the Washington Post's 40 best in the area.

A small, unfussy room on Observatory Hill where Italian fine dining quietly bends the rules, folding kimchi and fried garlic into ricotta-parsnip ravioli without making a scene about it. The chef, a James Beard Award nominee, keeps the menu tight and the flavors bolder than the room's modest size would suggest. This is the kind of Cambridge spot where the cooking is doing something genuinely odd and you're glad it is.

This is the old-line Creole dining room on Royal Street where bananas foster was invented, and the servers still set it on fire at your table without losing track of your questions. It's fine dining in the jacket-and-good-posture sense, so you'll find yourself saying "powder room" without being asked. The bar program has James Beard attention of its own, and the Sazerac arrives the way it should.

The chandelier alone is worth pausing on, a sprawling coral-reef of a thing hanging over one of Seattle's most coveted oyster bar stools. This lively Ballard neighborhood spot runs on meticulously sourced oysters and a short, focused seafood menu, and the wait for a table is long enough that the tile-clad bar next door exists partly as a waiting room. A James Beard nominee for Outstanding Restaurant, it's the place locals bring visitors who ask where to eat in Seattle.

ChopnBlok is a casual, order-at-the-counter West African spot that outgrew its food hall stall and settled into Montrose. Lunch means rice bowls with braised short rib or suya-spiced steak, plus a red stew rooted in the chef-owner's childhood. The cocktail list leans on West African ingredients, so a midday meal can slide into happy hour without anyone filing a complaint. The chef is a James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Texas.

Past the vintage movie posters and through the double doors is an interior courtyard with a back wall that doubles as a 35mm projection screen, metal drive-in speakers lining the walls. It's a Californian restaurant where you can turn the sound up for dinner-and-a-movie or down to coo over anchovy-stuffed olives. Outdoor heaters handle the Mission fog. A James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurant.

Oysters and crab claws on ice set the tone at this bright seafood restaurant in Los Olivos, where the team behind Bell's in Los Alamos turned their attention to things that swim. Slide into a booth, order the shared plates, and let the wine list run deep, including their own label. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and Esquire put it on their Best New Restaurants list. Santa Barbara County has an embarrassment of riches, and this is one of them.

High ceilings, glowing brass, leather banquettes, and enough wood detailing to make you feel like you're boarding the Orient Express: Costa is a coastal Italian restaurant inside The Jasper that reads as genuinely grand without trying too hard. The kitchen leans into housemade pasta and raw preparations, pairing classic Italian technique with unexpected flavor combinations that shouldn't work on paper but land cleanly on the plate.

Canard is a loose, loud French-ish diner on East Burnside, next door to Le Pigeon, where fast food gets a sommelier. Steam burgers, garlic fries, and tartare scooped with fried saltines share the table with serious Burgundy, and the whole thing costs less than you'd fear. Eater named it one of the best new restaurants in America, which the cheeseburger-and-foie crowd seems to have taken in stride.

The team behind Oxalis opened this Clinton Hill wine bar as a casual second act, and the kitchen takes it as seriously as the cellar. Both lean Spanish: natural wines from small producers, simple seafood, grilled toast, and vegetable plates that hold their own. The bar and open kitchen anchor a cozy room that fills up fast, so arrive early or embrace the wait with a glass of something zippy.