The Best Places to Eat and Do in the United States

Vaulted ceilings and a crackling fireplace inside the Rosewood Sand Hill hotel give this fine dining room the feel of a Silicon Valley Swiss chalet, which the Patagonia-vest crowd has apparently decided is a compliment. The kitchen leans on an almond wood-fired grill and local produce, running from power-lunch sandwiches at noon to house-made pastas and steaks after dark. Simplicity is the through line, and the Santa Cruz Mountains frame every window.

A cheesecake baked to order from three cheeses, landing somewhere between dessert and a philosophical argument, is a fitting way to close a meal at this upscale Mexican restaurant in East Austin. The kitchen leans into complex sauces and careful technique, with moles and ceviches that clearly have something to prove. Cocktails are inventive enough to hold their own. The Michelin Guide has it listed among its selected restaurants.

A handful of bar seats hovering over a kitchen the size of a closet sets the whole mood at this East Village izakaya from the team behind Odo. Rustic wood counter, exposed brick, a menu that moves through sashimi, grilled fish, wagyu, and things fried or simmered over rice. The food is meant to be shared, the pacing is unhurried, and the room seats enough people to make a reservation feel like a small victory.

The booths at this Beverly Hills Hotel restaurant have been hosting power lunches and quiet deal-making for about as long as anyone can remember. The menu leans American with a nod toward Italian, built around local and organic ingredients. In the evenings, a pianist keeps things warm and a little old-fashioned in the best way. The crowd tends toward people who don't need to check the prices.

Fresh pasta rolled in-house daily anchors the menu at this casually upscale Italian restaurant in Sandy. The room lands somewhere between date night and neighborhood staple, where charcuterie boards make a reasonable case for never ordering a main course. Bone-in ribeye and seared scallops with saffron emulsion suggest the kitchen is happy to range past the pasta, which is admirable restraint given how good the pasta is.

Floor-to-ceiling windows face the Pacific from a rocky bluff at Post Ranch Inn, which means the view is doing a lot of work before the food arrives. Sierra Mar is a prix-fixe dining room where the four-course dinner menu leans hard into California seasonality, the service stays warm without hovering, and the whole room seems calibrated for people celebrating something they'll want to remember.

Tucked inside the Cherry Lane Theatre, this intimate cocktail bar and bistro from the Frenchette team runs a roving menu that moves from raw bar to steak tartare to fried frog legs with garlic butter, and somehow also a cheeseburger that regulars order without apology. Amber globe lights, curved bar, green banquettes: the room is doing its job quietly. Frozen custard or another round of cocktails closes things out. Reservations are scarce, so plan accordingly.

The roaster works in plain sight at the back of this Brazilian crop-to-cup coffee shop, which pulls beans from the Peters family farm in Minas Gerais. No flavored syrups, no blenders, just coffee, milk, and water in various combinations, which sounds austere until you taste it. Pastries come from a local bakery and empanadas round out the food side. A second location sits inside Epicenter at Agritopia.

Plants climb the walls beside murals of a fish and a rooster at this Venezuelan restaurant in Station North, where Latin music keeps the room from taking itself too seriously. The chef plates things like Caribbean scallops and stuffed arepas with a careful hand, and much of the menu skews gluten-free with strong vegan options. A James Beard semifinalist spot that Baltimore Magazine has landed on its best restaurants list.

The central bar is the anchor here, and the cocktails come first by design. Kingfisher is a Vietnamese restaurant and cocktail bar in Golden Hill where the kitchen treats the cuisine with serious technique, pulling flavors from canh chua and congee into something more considered than traditional. The Michelin Guide has it listed, and the Los Angeles Times placed it on their California 101. A dressed-up neighborhood crowd that clearly knows the menu by heart.

A U-shaped bar anchors this Danish coffee shop, where streamlined taps for cold drinks share space with a proper V60 setup and a counter lined with pastries worth stopping for. La Cabra built a following in Copenhagen before planting roots on the Lower East Side, and the East Village original still draws a crowd that treats croissants and a carefully pulled espresso as a reasonable reason to leave the house.

Deborah VanTrece's modern Southern restaurant in a Westside industrial strip is the kind of place where the bar program is as serious as the kitchen, a James Beard semifinalist on both counts. The menu takes the food your grandmother made and runs it somewhere she probably didn't, with collard dip alongside pimento cheese fondue and fried chicken arriving with a collard green roll. The New York Times put it on their Atlanta list, and the room earns the attention.

The grilled pizza here goes directly onto the flame, which does something to the crust that an oven simply cannot: a char-edged, smoke-threaded base that's thin enough to feel light but sturdy enough to carry its toppings. This is a full-menu Italian restaurant, not a slice shop, so come ready for pasta and roasted vegetables too. The room is bright, the pace is brisk, and the drinks list is short but chosen with care.

A repurposed garage on the east side doing dinner-only, with Indiana pork tenderloin and pan-fried walleye anchoring a menu that takes Midwest agriculture seriously without taking itself too seriously. The sommelier's global wine list is the kind of thing you don't expect to find alongside fried local smelt. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2025, which tracks for a room that manages to feel both neighborhood and occasion at once.

Coffee drinks topped with salted egg yolk set the tone at this all-day French-Vietnamese cafe in Fountain Valley, where the kitchen leans into the Vietnamese morning routine and the iced coffee is strong enough to renegotiate your afternoon plans. The menu runs to things like curry crab omelet, and the room fills fast with people who clearly know something you don't. A James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: California.

El Molino del Sureste is a Yucatecan restaurant where deep jade walls and patterned benches make you briefly forget you're a few minutes from Lindenwood Park. The namesake molino sits front and center, grinding nixtamalized corn into the tortillas that show up with nearly everything. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Midwest, which tracks for a place that treats a turkey-and-sausage relleno as a weeknight option.

A twenty-seat BYOB in Grays Ferry where the menu runs fewer than a dozen small plates, almost all of them seafood-leaning and swapped out with the seasons. The kitchen pairs familiar things in ways that quietly surprise you, carrots with crab, mussels over miso and chili oil. Bring something good to drink, because the food asks for it, and book ahead, because twenty seats go fast.

The burnt banana coconut tapioca pudding is a little ugly and completely beside the point, which is almost the whole story of this Vietnamese restaurant on Washington Ave. The menu runs bright and chili-forward, with shrimp cakes wrapped in butter lettuce and twice-cooked eggplant that quietly steals the table. A James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Northeast and a New York Times Restaurant List pick, it draws the kind of crowd that orders everything.

The entrance is around the corner from the address, at Florida and Mariposa, which feels like a metaphor for the restaurant itself. Ernest is a New American spot in the Mission where the chef pairs kaluga caviar with tater tots and means it. The menu is small and seasonal, with raw bar, snacks, and a few mains. Walk-ins can post up at the bar, which has a cocktail program worth the detour on its own.

A snug Georgetown lunch counter where the glass case does most of the talking: lentils with smoky eggplant, leek-and-walnut tarts, spinach-feta börek, and a dairy-free zucchini soup that has no business being that good. Order a sandwich on the crackly focaccia to eat on the spot, then quietly stock your fridge from the rest. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist in 2025, which explains why a takeout counter feels like such a considered place.

By day, Beast & Cleaver is a Ballard butcher shop where you can walk out with chops and links for the home stove. After hours it turns into a whole-animal steakhouse under the alter ego "The Peasant," running a tasting menu, which is the sort of double life usually reserved for superheroes. Steaks, house sausages, and even the salads draw a meat-minded crowd, and the chef was a James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist.

The Peking duck arrives whole or halved, which is the kind of choice that quietly tells you what sort of restaurant NiHao is. A contemporary Chinese spot in Canton, it draws from Sichuan traditions and dim sum alongside more ambitious plates, with a menu wide enough that vegetarians and serious heat-seekers end up equally occupied. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant, it landed national attention fast and has held the room ever since.

The fry bread here comes out puffy and golden, stuffed with ground beef and beans or finished with chocolate, and it gives the whole menu its name. This family-run Tohono O'odham restaurant has been an anchor in Phoenix's Melrose District long before the neighborhood got interesting, serving tacos, stews, and tostadas alongside it. The kind of spot where out-of-towners finally understand what Arizona actually tastes like.

The bread basket alone sets the tone: sheet-pan biscuits and jalapeño johnnycakes before you've even decided anything. This is a sleek Modern Southern restaurant in Summerhill, where the menu keeps one foot in tradition and one somewhere unexpected, think berber-spiced fried chicken or a dish cheekily called lamburger helper. A James Beard semifinalist and a New York Times pick, Southern National reads as a neighborhood spot that just happens to be cooking at a different level.

Bardot is a Michael Mina brasserie tucked inside Aria, a windowless black-and-white room where it's always a flattering 8 p.m. and fresh flowers cover every surface. A shellfish cart rolls past, a martini program has its own national press, and at brunch someone sings Shania Twain over the croissants. It's a dressy-casual, mid-to-upper price French spot, and it holds three AAA diamonds.

Wild Fig is a no-frills BBQ takeout counter in Summerlin that started life as a commissary kitchen, and it still has the energy of one. The smoked pastrami goes toe to toe with the East Coast versions, and the pickles are homemade. Most of it sells out by mid-afternoon, so ordering ahead is the move. A few picnic tables face the parking lot, which the people eating there have decided not to mind.

The skylight over the dining room does most of the heavy lifting at this Latin American restaurant and rum bar on Sansom Street, flooding plates of vaca frita with the kind of light that makes you briefly question which city you're in. The daiquiris are serious, the ceviche keeps pace, and the piña coladas have a small but devoted following. A James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist runs the kitchen.

Royal blue booths, an open kitchen you can pull a counter seat at, and a baked Alaska that arrives on fire make the room feel like it has something to prove, in a good way. Bludorn is a New American restaurant and bar where the menu swings wide, from oysters (some Texan) to cioppino to seafood towers. The chef is a James Beard semifinalist, and the hospitality is the kind that makes you notice it without being able to say why.

A Malaysian Indian tasting menu restaurant tucked into the Tenderloin, Azalina's trades the neighborhood's gray palette for the saturated colors and layered textures of a Penang night market. The chef grew up there, and the seasonal prix fixe traces Malaysian cooking's Chinese, Indian, Malay, and European overlaps through a California lens. A James Beard semifinalist and listed in the New York Times and Condé Nast Traveler, it earns the attention without announcing itself.

This tiny Chinatown dumpling house on Spring Mountain Road has a glass window where you can watch the staff fold your future soup dumplings while you wait, which is either entertainment or torture depending on your blood sugar. There are no reservations, and you may be asked to order before you sit, so study the menu in line. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist, and the xiao long bao are the reason the line exists.

Raku is a Japanese izakaya in a Spring Mountain Road strip mall, where binchotan charcoal and condiments come straight from Japan and the robata grill does the heavy lifting. It stays open until 1am, so the late tables fill with chefs and hospitality workers who have just finished feeding everyone else. The omakase needs a call a few days ahead, and the sake list is long enough to count as a second menu.

Vintage Vegas glamour gets a quiet update at this steakhouse inside the Circa Resort, where the chef behind Scotch 80 Prime brings a recognizable hand to the Downtown corridor. The menu runs classic prime cuts but keeps slipping in detours: lobster and shrimp potstickers, short rib with harissa, tater tots finished with poutine gravy. The crowd skews loyal, the kind who followed the chef here from his last room and haven't opened the menu in months.

Kurdish restaurant on Nolensville Pike, in the Nashville neighborhood that holds the country's largest Kurdish population, so the room knows what it's doing. Lavash comes out of the oven puffed with hot air, sesame seeds still warm, and the lamb stew arrives in its clay pot. The New York Times put it on their 2024 Restaurant List. Come with people, order more than you think you need, and plan on finishing it anyway.

Through a glass partition, you can watch the dumpling-rolling operation in full swing before you've even ordered, which makes restraint basically impossible. This bright Outer Sunset shop does stuffed dumplings, cold small plates, and a beef noodle soup so deeply flavored it reads as a direct rebuttal to the neighborhood fog. The New York Times put it on their San Francisco list, and the pig-ear salad alone will make you rethink your dumpling-only strategy.

The dough here sits somewhere between New York and New Haven, fermented with a sourdough-and-commercial-yeast blend that produces a crust that shatters at the edge and stays open and airy inside. This is a pizza shop in the Lower Haight, and it's one of the tougher reservations in the city right now. On Tuesdays the kitchen roasts a half chicken that the New York Times found worth mentioning in the same breath as Zuni Café.

Farmers and foragers sometimes drop by mid-service with morels or a jar of honey, which tells you something about how Crafted operates. This farm-to-table New American restaurant sits in Yakima wine country and takes the surrounding agriculture seriously, building a menu where the kitchen collaborates and seasons actually steer the ship. A 2024 James Beard Semifinalist, it runs a tasting menu without the stiff-backed dining room that usually comes with one.

Picnic tables covered in floral oilcloth and a menu that has almost no peer in San Francisco: Prubechu is the city's go-to for Chamorro cooking, the Indigenous cuisine of Guam. The staff will walk you through it happily, from coconut-braised beef noodles to thrice-cooked brisket skewers. Fire up the space heaters on a cool evening and the outdoor patio starts to feel, almost, like somewhere warmer.

Kase x Noko is an omakase sushi counter where getting a seat means setting an alarm for five to midnight, six weeks ahead, and then refreshing like it's a concert drop. There are three sessions a night at the bar, and they vanish almost instantly. It's a tasting-menu splurge, so dress like you earned it, and expect the chef to run the evening with jokes between courses. Nashville Scene named it Best New Restaurant in 2025.

Kouign-amann and cruffins sharing a case with proper baguettes and macarons sets the tone fast at this French patisserie. The laminated dough is serious, the espresso keeps things moving, and the whole operation closes by two, so the morning crowd treats it with the urgency the pastries deserve. A James Beard Outstanding Bakery semifinalist, JL Patisserie is what happens when French technique finds a permanent home in the desert.

A jewelry box packed in ice, opened tableside to reveal a small trove of nigiri and prepared bites, is the kind of move that sets the tone here. Kame is an intimate omakase counter where fish flies in from Japan several times a week and caviar appears less as a flourish than a habit. The chefs talk, the room stays loose, and the whole thing lands closer to a dinner party than a ceremony. A Michelin selected restaurant.

Dungeness crab in a bib is the great equalizer, and Thanh Long has been proving that since before most of its regulars were born. This Outer Sunset Vietnamese restaurant built its reputation on roast crab drowned in butter and garlic, served with noodles that are non-negotiably part of the order. The garlic situation borders on theatrical, which is exactly the point. An old-school institution that still packs the room on any given night.

Good Pie is an Arts District pizza shop that can't commit to one style, so it does New York slices, thick Detroit rectangles, and a thinner Long Island grandma pie. You can eat at the sidewalk window like it's a Tuesday, or take the nicer dining room and order a pitcher of sangria like it isn't. Lunch is easy here, gluten-free pies are on the menu, and nobody will make you pick a lane.

Two stone lions guard the front door of this North Charleston BBQ shop, which should tell you something about how the team does things. Meat by the pound is the move, built around shared combos that draw on both North Carolina Piedmont tradition and Chinese family-style dining. The hot pot collards keep people talking. Popular cuts like duck legs and ribs sell out, so arriving early is less a suggestion than a strategy.