The Best Places to Eat and Do in the United States

Craft Pita is a counter-service Lebanese spot where you order at the register, which is why the olive oil from the chef's family back in Lebanon feels like a flex. Hummus comes out velvety, the tacos wear a layer of fries like it's perfectly normal, and portions run generous at prices that don't sting. Dessert is stretchy booza, the kind of ice cream you have to negotiate with. Turkish coffee is strong, and so are the Lebanese wines.

A small Annapolis dining room built around pickling and fermentation, which sounds like a thesis until the food arrives. The roast chicken is beautifully bronzed, the steak-frites comes with kimchi-beef jus, and the crab salad on hash browns is the kind of thing that makes you forgive everyone their restaurant concepts. The bar earns equal attention. A Washingtonian top-100 pick.

A casual BYOB in Bella Vista where the adobo arrives as braised chicken in waves of vinegar and deep umami, and people tend to remember it. The Caesar gets a hit of bagoong, the fermented fish paste that makes a Filipino pantry tick, and the broccoli rabe nods to the South Philly block it sits on. Bring a bottle, bring a friend who wants to share everything, and leave the menu nowhere near unfinished.

The signature dish here is called the Whole Beast, built from leftover proteins, noodles, and produce so that nothing walks out the back door. The Heritage Table is an innovative restaurant where the chef, a James Beard semifinalist, runs the kitchen around whole-animal and whole-vegetable thinking. Saturday evenings bring a tasting menu sourced entirely from the Blackland Prairie, reservation required, which tells you the room takes itself seriously without being smug about it.

A pastrami-forward deli on Folsom where the menu reads like a roster of characters named by someone's uncle in Canarsie. The Menschkowitz throws cherry peppers into the mix; the BK goes full diner breakfast between two slices of bread. Everything arrives with thick pickles on the side, which is the correct move. Sandwiches aren't cheap, and it's takeout only, so plan accordingly.

A sandwich counter in NoPa where modifications are not on the menu, full stop. The team builds everything with enough conviction that you'll forget you wanted to swap something out, and condiments like bagna cauda mayo and artichoke cream cheese make clear this is not a cold-cuts-and-mustard situation. The shop is takeout only, but Alamo Square Park is a short walk, which is either a feature or a hint to leave promptly.

The namesake suya, smoky grilled meat with West African roots, gives this Roxbury restaurant its name and its personality. The menu runs from whole-fried snapper to okra soup with fufu to a peanut stew regulars quietly reorder every visit. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2024, which tracks for a neighborhood spot that has no business being this good and knows it.

Six food stalls share a refugee community center in Aurora, and the hours are loose enough that showing up with a plan is a mistake. On a good day you might land Burmese curry, Haitian fritters, Ethiopian doro wot, and Sudanese semolina cake in a single tray-juggling loop. The room is a folding-chair situation, not a date-night situation, but the cooking makes a strong case for itself regardless.

Loba is a minimalist coffee shop and small-batch bakery where the ovens sit behind a window, so you can watch your white chocolate curry scone's origin story. The menu rotates, the hours are short, and the seating is limited, so weekend crowds line up early to beat the sellouts. It was a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery. Come early, order boldly, and accept that the pineapple sourdough muffin may already be a memory.

A vintage Pizza Hut lamp hangs in the dining room, which tells you almost everything about the tone. This Italian restaurant in Wash Park comes from the team behind Dio Mio and Redeemer Pizza, and the menu reads like people who take craft seriously decided to stop pretending they don't also love a good bit. Red sauce shares space with squid ink fettuccine, seasonal crudo, and pizzas topped with sour cream-and-onion dip.

A walk-up burger stand on Navigation that grew out of years of pop-ups, Boo's is the kind of place where the menu fits on a napkin and that's the whole point. The smashburger comes on a challah bun from Cake & Bacon, topped with shredded lettuce, tomato, shaved onion, and a smoky house sauce that regulars already treat as non-negotiable. Crispy fries, bottled sodas, and a colorful roadside aesthetic round it out.

Pisco is doing serious work here, with Esquire naming the pisco martini among the best in the country. La Royal is a handsome Peruvian restaurant and bar in Cambridge where the menu wanders across the full breadth of Peruvian cooking, including Chifa, the country's Cantonese-inflected tradition. Ceviches are sharp and citrus-forward, and the room has a genuine going-out energy. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant.

By day it's a sausage shop slinging serious sandwiches; by night, tables get jammed into every corner of the meat case and a monthly five-course dinner runs to monkfish, duck-stuffed peppers, and scallops with corn polenta, all with punk on the speakers. A James Beard semifinalist and a Bon Appétit pick for best new restaurant, it's the kind of place Philadelphia gets very right and nowhere else quite explains.

Fresh pasta lines the shelves at this Mission storefront, the casual offshoot of the Flour + Water restaurant around the corner, but the sandwiches are the reason to pull up a stool at lunch. The cured meat option layers mortadella, salami, and provolone against a sharp pepper relish and a hit of red wine vinegar. The eggplant parm, bolstered by kale pesto and burrata, is the kind of thing you think about on the walk home.

Avgolemono on a menu full of green chile cheese fries and omelets sets the tone at this neighborhood diner tucked onto a quiet, tree-shaded block just off Colfax. Chef Zorba's has been around forever, and the regulars who walk over from Congress Park carry themselves like they've never needed to look at the menu. Westword handed it Best Soup for a Hangover, which is either high praise or a very specific clientele study.

A small Uptown sandwich shop where the menu is short and the pork is the whole argument. The porchetta here comes out of the oven crackling-crisp on the outside and genuinely juicy inside, piled onto ciabatta with arugula and a pink peppercorn Kewpie mayo. The room is tight, the menu is tight, and the cravings that follow are not. A counter-service spot that keeps it simple and lets the roast pork do the talking.

Murals cover the walls of this Whittier neighborhood taco spot, and the name delivers exactly the disclaimer it promises: yes, tacos, but also slow-braised rabbit barbacoa in mole over heirloom masa, and beef cheeks in pasilla negro adobo with handmade tortillas. The chef has a Food Network face and the kitchen to back it up. Named one of Denver's 25 best restaurants by 5280, it's the kind of Mexican place that makes ordering feel like a commitment.

The amber glow through the windows at night is the first thing you notice, and then all the people inside, clearly mid-splendid-time. This is a neighborhood restaurant done with genuine ambition, the kind where the cowboy rib-eye with cracked pepper butter sits on the same menu as Dover sole and creative cocktails. Webster Groves is a quick drive from the city, and regulars treat it like their dining room, which is a compliment to everyone.

The dining room glows in golden light, and everyone seated in it has the look of someone who waited weeks for this reservation, because they probably did. Wright's Tavern is a small neighborhood steakhouse where the French Syrah, a New York strip, and Dauphinoise potatoes form the obvious throughline, but the crab cake and shrimp scampi quietly compete for the table's attention. St. Louis Magazine named it among the city's best restaurants.

The chef sources so locally he's reportedly knocked on strangers' doors to ask about their gardens, and his mom's plot is in regular rotation. The result is a Northwest New American restaurant on Alki Beach where essentially everything on the plate comes from Washington state, no California citrus allowed. The bar runs the same way and is worth the trip on its own, and the desserts have drawn their own devoted following.

Alpino is a Corktown dinner spot dressed as an Alpine ski lodge, with a stone fireplace at the center and no mountain within several hundred miles. The menu wanders through Austria and the neighboring French, German, Italian, and Swiss kitchens, and the team makes its own bread, pasta, and sausage. It was a James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant. Reserve ahead, especially if you're angling for the summer patio.

Every dish arrives in a metal pie tin, which sets the tone: this is a casual, communal American restaurant in RiNo where the whole point is ordering too much and arguing over the last of the mac and cheese. The menu runs from cornbread muffins to whole fried fish built for pulling apart into tacos, and the cocktails are tangy and strong enough to make everyone agreeable about sharing. Come with people you like, or you'll be negotiating with strangers.

The carts are back, loaded with dumplings, chicken feet, shrimp balls, and sticky rice, and on weekend mornings a line forms outside before the doors open. Star Kitchen is a dim sum parlor tucked into a strip mall on Mississippi, the kind of room that rewards a large, hungry group with a working knowledge of chile oil. Dinner happens too, but the morning rush is the whole point.

Purple ube tortillas are the opening move at this compact Mission taqueria, where the kitchen leans Yucatecan rather than the Bay Area standard. Cochinita pibil arrives with real tart depth and habanero salsa that bites back, and a pastor negro made with black adobo keeps things interesting. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best taco spots in the Bay Area, which tracks for a place this quietly opinionated about the form.

A big live oak shades the patio, which tells you most of what you need to know about this all-day cafe and cocktail bar on West Fifth. Coffee in the morning, serious drinks by afternoon, and a menu of laid-back dishes that runs from breakfast sandwiches built around crispy hash brown patties to a Taiwanese-style fried chicken sandwich at dinner. The kind of Austin spot that makes parking feel like a personality trait, and means it.

A neighborhood sushi spot tucked into Mt. Washington's merchant village, Chiyo draws locals away from the more obvious downtown options with straightforward nigiri and sashimi alongside a few playful additions, banana tempura ice cream among them. The room runs across two levels now, with a downstairs bar and a quieter dining room below. It's the kind of place regulars have strong opinions about, and those opinions are broadly favorable.

The fireplace in the entry has been warming Wall Street deal-makers since before anyone can remember, and the wood-paneled dining room at this old-school steakhouse still reads like a set for exactly that. The boneless rib-eye that carries the house name is the move, though the lobster Newburg keeps loyalists from ever opening another section of the menu. Business casual is the unspoken dress code, and nobody seems to mind.

Beef heart on a skewer is not a timid opener, but El Chullo's anticuchos, marinated and grilled dense and chewy, set the tone for a traditional Peruvian restaurant that doesn't hedge. The Melrose location on Seventh Avenue is cozy and colorful, the kind of room where a Pisco Sour tastes better than it has any right to. Lomo saltado, ceviche mixto, and arroz chaufa round out a menu that takes the Lima-meets-Canton fried rice angle seriously.

An old-school neighborhood butcher and sandwich counter in the Sunset, where the meat is weighed after slicing so your Italian sub doesn't tilt the table. That discipline produces something balanced rather than heroic: the Toscano lines up salami, coppa, provolone, and pepperoncini like they've been rehearsing. In-house roasted turkey, ham, and pork fill out the case, and on Tuesdays the Zinfandel-marinated tri-tip is the move.

Brie tempura on the same menu as otoro nigiri tells you something about the kitchen's priorities at this laid-back North Loop sushi spot: a little of everything, taken seriously. The room leans into natural wood and blue tile, calm enough that the quality of the fish can do the talking. House wine that doesn't embarrass itself and a short sake list round things out without fuss.

A smashburger shop built into a shipping container alongside Two Pitchers Brewing Co., Lovely's has a menu that reads like a love letter to drive-through nostalgia. Picnic tables and string lights fill the dog-friendly outdoor space. The fried onion burger, a riff on the Oklahoma classic George Motz made famous, cooks the patty right into thinly sliced onions so the beef fat goes everywhere it should.

Pinball machines and white walls set the scene at this Potrero Hill sandwich shop, where the menu runs on East Coast bodega logic: Kaiser rolls, poppy seeds, and a bacon-egg-and-cheese that doesn't apologize for itself. Pastrami swaps in for the pork if that's your move. Ask for the lacto-fermented hot sauces, which bring enough acid and heat to make everything sharper. Casual, low-key, and named among the Bay Area's better sandwich spots by the Chronicle.

Every sandwich at this sandwich shop contains pork, which tells you almost everything you need to know. The signature is porkstrami, a brined and smoked pork butt that earns its place alongside coppa, salami, and mortadella in the loaded Salvatore, served hot on a Dutch crunch roll. Turkey and roast beef exist if you insist. Old-timey novelty sodas handle cleanup duty. Bring your appetite and leave your dietary restrictions at the door.

Pan Artesanal is a Mexican bakery on Fullerton where the cinnamon rolls come in tiramisú, arroz con leche, and chocoflan, which is a lot of dessert to ask of a roll. Past the conchas you'll find egg sandwiches in red sauce, chilaquiles, and tacos on handmade tortillas. It tends to sell out early and a line forms, so arrive before the pastry case starts looking picked over. Eater has it on its Best Mexican Restaurants list.

A Hong Kong-style cafe in Quincy where the French toast oozes with creamy egg yolk and the ji cheung fun comes loaded with beef brisket or curry fish balls. The menu pulls from classic cha chaan teng tradition and gives it a modern, careful reworking. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod and a Bon Appétit best new restaurant mention, which explains the regulars making the trip from the city.

A moody Old Town Scottsdale cocktail bar where the olive oil-washed dirty martini is only the beginning. The menu swings between arancini for two and a full table spread of ceviche, burrata, and pasta, and it changes often enough to reward regulars. The duck bolognese tossed with mafaldine and garlic crumble has become something of a signature. It reads equally well as a date bar or a group dinner, which is a harder trick than it sounds.

The chef's pastry background explains why the flan de erizo and the croissant sobrasada roll have each turned heads at Seattle Met. This tapas bar on 12th Avenue riffs on Galician cooking, leaning into the Pacific Northwest's seafood to find where Spain's northwest and Washington's coastline overlap. The menu takes liberties, in a good way, and the sherry list is longer than you'd expect. A James Beard semifinalist in 2024.

A chrome-and-neon diner aesthetic gets quietly serious treatment at Clyde's, where the kitchen leans on local ingredients and the menu runs from double smash burgers to seared salmon without apologizing for either. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod for Best Chef: Midwest in 2024, which feels about right for a place still bothering to finish you off with soft serve. A fine diner, in every sense the name implies.

The upstairs Bullock Room, named for Tom Bullock, the first African American to publish a cocktail recipe book, tells you everything about how seriously this Lafayette Square bar and restaurant takes its history. Seasonal cocktail menus have drawn inspiration from roller derby and Dolly Parton, which is either chaotic or inspired depending on your mood. The burger, loaded with chorizo jam and pub cheese on a challah bun, holds its own alongside the drinks.

Arched doorways, white tablecloths, and filigree pendant lights give this Loyal Heights Middle Eastern restaurant the feel of a neighborhood place that knew exactly what it wanted to be and never wavered. Hummus plates, mezze spreads, kebabs, and family-style platters fill tables that tend to fill early. The hummus topped with lamb and pine nuts has its own cult following, which is saying something in a city that eats a lot of hummus.

A globe-hopping dinner spot in Old Town Scottsdale built as a love letter to Anthony Bourdain, which means handmade pasta shares the menu with egg yolk nigiri and bison ribeye without any of it feeling like a theme park. The warm, conversation-friendly room earns its vibe. The bar team applies something closer to lab technique to the cocktails, and the mocktail program picked up a Phoenix Magazine Best of the Valley nod, which is a sentence Bourdain would have found deeply funny.

The menu changes constantly, so on any given night dinner at this neighborhood restaurant might land on Filipino braised pork, lamb biryani, or smoked chicken pappardelle. Beyond the dining room, the team runs cooking classes, farm dinners, and a grocery program, which gives the place a slightly utopian community-hub energy. The focaccia with whipped garlic butter has a reputation that precedes it, which tells you something about the level of care going into everything else.

The menu at this Mexican restaurant changes constantly, which is either the chef's restlessness or a sign that he has a lot to say. Emanuel Corona draws on Puebla, Mexico City, and Oaxaca for cooking that moves between tlayudas and chiles rellenos, beef cheek barbacoa and lamb birria. The room on South Second Street carries the quiet weight of a place that has meant something to this neighborhood for a long time, under more than one name.

Steamed momos are the anchor here, plump Nepalese dumplings served with a tomato-cilantro sauce that splits the difference between salsa and chutney. Bini's Kitchen is a casual counter spot, the brick-and-mortar home of a catering operation that built its reputation on those dumplings alone. Combo meals let you mix in vegetarian stews and grilled meats, and the whole thing stays firmly in lunch-money territory. The Howard Street location is the one with actual seats.

The Baja-style fish taco is the reason people show up at this casual order-at-the-counter seafood spot in the Outer Sunset. Rockfish comes out of the fryer in a shattering crust, and the carrot habanero salsa is bright and sharp enough to keep things interesting without just torching your tongue. San Francisco Chronicle named them among the best tacos in the Bay Area, and the regulars here behave accordingly.

Luce is a small Italian trattoria on East Burnside, with a checkerboard floor, floor-to-ceiling windows, and shelves of jarred things that make it feel like a mini-mart from a more graceful era. Antipasti run a few dollars, pastas come in half portions, and the house wine arrives in little tumblers. They don't take reservations, so the plan is to show up and look relaxed about waiting. It has made both the Eater and Portland Monthly best-of lists.

San Dong is a Taiwanese noodle house on Bellaire Blvd where the forks, spoons, and bowls are all the to-go kind, and you grab your own containers off a shelf like it's a very small hardware store. The menu is beef noodle soup and pan-fried or steamed dumplings, and a full meal for two comes in under $20. Bring cash, tip the cashier, and don't expect much elbow room.

The dinner-party vibe is not an accident: Scout's grew out of an apartment pop-up, and the casual energy, upbeat music, and focused menu still read that way. Both chefs came up through fine dining around St. Louis, and the cooking shows it without announcing it. Vegetables get the same attention as the pasta, and the menu stays short enough that everything on it clearly earned its spot.

This is a Filipino supermarket with a food court attached, so dress for a cart and bring a stomach with a plan. Grill City turns out whole squid, skewers, and chicharones fried to order, while a steam-table station carves slices off a roast pig. Do a lap of the aisles before committing, then stop at the bakery by the exit, where the ube is so thorough it borders on a personality.

A neighborhood restaurant where the owners greet you like they've been expecting you, African Grill and Bar serves a broad sweep of regional African cooking, not just one country's repertoire. Jollof rice, oxtail stew, black-eyed pea dishes, fish stew, and several kinds of porridge all share the menu. Regulars tend to work through it methodically, which is a reasonable life goal.

An all-outdoor pizza shop spread across terraced levels in Dana Point, with citrus trees close enough to brush your shoulder and a window cut into the kitchen so you can watch the wood-fired ovens do their thing. Two styles of pizza, round and square, both with serious crust credentials, plus salads and sandwiches for anyone dragged here involuntarily. It landed at number four on 50 Top Pizza USA, which is a fairly loud argument made quietly.

The burritos here come open at both ends, more like fat rolled tacos than anything you'd expect, and ordering one is a mistake because you'll immediately want another. Testal is a casual counter-service taco shop on Grand Avenue doing Chihuahuan cooking, a regional tradition that gets less attention than it deserves in Phoenix. The rajas, spicy and cheesy with roasted poblano, are a reason to make the trip on their own.

The pink storefront on the Avenue of Fashion signals the tone before you're even inside. This bakery and cafe is the kind of place that does cinnamon rolls, banana pudding cupcakes, and celebration cakes alongside a solid vegan lineup, with a family caramel recipe that's been around forever anchoring the whole operation. Chef April Anderson was a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery. Baking classes run separately at Eastern Market for those who want to take notes.

Cheesesteaks and pizza from a shop that takes both more seriously than most fine-dining kitchens take their tasting menus. Little Arthur's started as a pop-up and landed in a sunny little beer bar on Seventh Avenue, where the sourcing is meticulous and the portions are generous enough to make the prices feel fair. Mozzarella sticks and loaded fries round out a menu that reads casual but cooks deliberate.

A taqueria in a former hot dog stand, which tracks once you taste the Sonoran dogs still on the menu, now loaded with bacon, green chiles, and roasted chile sauce alongside the braised meats that are the real draw. Chef Amado Lopez, a James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist, runs a compact, casual spot where the focus shifts between slow-cooked pork and solid vegan options. Order online, eat inside, then cross the street to Bombshell Treat Bar for dessert.

A bright red neon sign marks this Sichuan restaurant tucked into a Tempe strip mall, where turquoise booths and mural-covered walls set the scene for lazy Susans loaded with mapo tofu, braised eggplant, and the Chongqing-style spicy chicken that Phoenix Magazine named one of Arizona's top dishes. The batter is thin and shatters, the peppercorns do their characteristic lip-numbing work, and the portions are large enough to make you reconsider your afternoon plans.

The menu changes every week, which is either liberating or a scheduling problem depending on how you feel about commitment. This 35-seat Noblesville bistro is the project of a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef who makes his own cured meats, cheeses, and desserts and reworks American classics with international ingredients. A James Beard Award semifinalist in 2023, he's built a genuine neighborhood following in a room small enough that the regulars all seem to know each other.

By day, the butcher counter at Curtis Stone's Hollywood steakhouse moves heritage cuts from partner farms; by night, crystal chandeliers and a fireplace turn the same room into an Art Deco dining room with a Michelin star. The wood-fired grill is the organizing principle, and the dry-aged beef arrives with the confidence of a kitchen that was also selecting the animal earlier that afternoon.

The house-made tortillas holding together the tacos here tell you what kind of place this is: a casual, all-day Mexican eatery in NoHo where the cooking is straightforward and the room stays bright and airy from morning through dinner. Larger plates are built for sharing, and the churros at the end feel less optional than the menu lets on. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks with the crowd that fills it without making a fuss about it.

The dining room at Stanly Ranch, Bear is where Napa's farm-to-table seriousness meets a chef with a genuine sense of play. The cowboy ribeye arrives with huitlacoche, corn's funky fungal alter ego, which tells you the kitchen isn't just sourcing beautifully but thinking sideways. California produce anchors everything, but the culinary references roam freely. A named Discovery on The 50 list.