The Best Places to Eat and Do in the United States

The former showroom for Vitrolite tile is now an all-day Italian-leaning cafe in Ohio City, and the bones of it still run the room: fifteen-foot ceilings, graceful arches, and walls covered in pigmented glass tile in colors that catch the afternoon light. The menu is lean and unhurried, moving from morning coffee through grain salads and warm vegetables to aperitivo by early evening, which is exactly the kind of pacing Cleveland did not know it needed.

A Vietnamese soup-and-sandwich counter tucked inside C Fresh Market, which means you might reach your table past a wall of fish sauce and dried noodles. The pho bowls are the main event, deep and aromatic, and the banh mi are packed with enough herbs to qualify as a salad. Order the wonton soup too. The name comes from north-central Iowa's area code, a quiet nod to the community that built the place.

A curry-spiced butterscotch custard pie brought two coworkers together, and now their baking operation has a loyal following that lines up at farmers markets and pop-ups across Des Moines. Pie Bird is a preorder-and-pickup pie shop, with weekly Friday handoffs at a couple of local spots, slinging whole pies, galettes, and hand pies, many finished with intricate pastry work that makes cutting into them feel vaguely rude.

Pierrot Gourmet is a French bakery-cafe attached to the Peninsula Hotel, which means it's the one place in that building where nobody asks you to dress up. Grab a seat among the brunching tourists if you like, but the to-go line is where the flaky chocolate croissants, hefty cinnamon rolls, and tarts shaped like chrysanthemums are moving. The Infatuation includes it on its Chicago bakeries list.

A century-old house on artsy Larchmere, converted into a full-service restaurant with mahogany fixtures, exposed wood beams, and a four-seat cocktail bar that makes the wait feel intentional. Seating spills onto an enclosed porch, a renovated second floor, and a patio with its own bar in the carriage house. The chef's seasonal small and large plates shift with what's good, and the cocktails are taken as seriously as the food.

The mugs lining the walls are collector pieces rescued from legendary tropical bars that have since closed, which sets the tone for what Porco is: a tiki cocktail bar that takes the genre seriously without taking itself too seriously. Bartenders in Hawaiian shirts build mai tais and zombies from proper spirits and house syrups, and the dry-ice garnishes are genuinely theatrical. A patio out back handles the overflow when the enchanting interior fills up.

Nashville-style fried chicken sandwiches from a chef who used to fence with Bobby Flay on television, now happily running a fast-casual spot instead. Viet Pham, formerly of fine dining, keeps the menu tight: hot chicken sandwiches, crinkle-cut fries, a Mexican street corn salad, and a few house sauces. The move from tasting menus to paper trays is either a pivot or a relief, and the lines suggest nobody is complaining either way.

This is the bakery that quietly supplies the bread for The Publican and its sibling meat counter, with a small storefront attached for the rest of us. Pastries start at 7am, the loaves land around 9, and the sourdough comes with a crust that puts up a fight. There's nowhere to sit, so you buy more than you meant to and eat a croissant in the car like a person with a plan.

Punjabi Kitchen is tucked inside an Indian grocery and beer store, which means you could walk right past it and just buy a six-pack. Don't. The family-run dining room doubles as a craft beer taproom, and the combination of vegetable biryani, potato-stuffed parathas, and a flight of local ales turns out to feel completely logical. El Sobrante is not exactly a dining destination, which is exactly why the regulars here look so pleased with themselves.

Puranpoli is a vegetarian restaurant in Santa Clara run by siblings, zeroing in on the food of Maharashtra, the western Indian state that gave the world pav bhaji and vada pav. The menu leans into the less-traveled stuff, too, like zunka, a chickpea flour paste sautéed with aromatics and curry leaves that tastes like someone's grandmother made it. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the Bay Area's best South Asian spots.

Thick griddled corn arepas, stuffed or served alongside shredded beef and rice, are the spine of this Venezuelan Caribbean restaurant in downtown Mesa. The team graduated from a food truck to a brick-and-mortar, and the kitchen still rolls out hot cheese sticks every morning. The patacon swaps buns for fried plantains, and the cachapa, a sweet corn pancake, earns its own detour. A bar handles tropical drinks.

Quiote's handmade blue corn tortillas are the first thing you notice, that deep indigo color doing real work before you've taken a bite. This casual Mexican restaurant in downtown Petaluma leans into the flavors of Jalisco, with each taco built around its own sauce rather than a one-size condiment bar. The cochinita pibil, slow-roasted pork in banana leaf, gets nothing but pickled onions and habaneros, which is a confident call. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best tacos.

This is a brewery taproom on Mayport Road with a wood-fire oven bolted onto the side of it, so the beer comes first and the pizza arrives like a very good rumor. The stouts run dessert-sweet, the slushies rotate, and the menu is short enough to read before your pint warms up. Expect a margherita with a pun for a name, a fig and hot honey pie, and a crowd of beachy locals who came for one beer and stayed for the rosemary parm bread.

Richard's is the restaurant tucked inside the Inn at 500 Capitol, which means room service here comes with actual cannelloni instead of a club sandwich under a steel dome. The menu is Italian-ish Northwestern, heavy on house-made pasta, and the wine list gets taken seriously, with periodic wine dinners for people who enjoy being told about soil. Think date night in a nice shirt, not a weeknight in a hoodie.

This is a Saturday farmers-and-makers market tucked under the Fuller Warren Bridge, running 10am to 3pm, so wear sunscreen and bring cash for jam. Along with the candles and produce stalls you'd expect, the food vendors include a vegan seitan smashburger stand and a small-batch Indian dairy selling mango lassi. Take your haul to the river or the skate park next door, where teenagers will ignore you gracefully.

A lounge-y small-plates spot in Lakewood where the dessert menu competes hard with everything that came before it. The kitchen leans into seasonal Midwestern vegetables with some global seasoning along the way, and the pastry work is serious enough that skipping it would be a mistake. New ownership from the group behind Cloak and Dagger brought in fresh culinary talent, and the room has found a new sense of itself since.

The squat brick building on Webb Avenue smells like Thanksgiving every single day, because Sandwich Board roasts its turkey in-house and has been doing so forever. This old-school deli counter is an Alameda institution, and regulars have been known to walk in, say nothing, and walk out with exactly what they wanted. The Dutch crunch sandwiches are the move, loaded with that carved turkey alongside avocado and pepperoncinis.

Sandwich Hut is a takeout counter in Hope that builds Italian subs and treats pepperoncini less as a garnish than a core belief. The Allitalia stacks prosciutto, capocollo, pepperoni, and provolone under a generous drift of those crinkly green peppers. There are no tables to speak of, so plan on eating it on a walk, wearing some of it, and wiping oil off your jacket sleeve like a rite of passage.

Sarima is a small bakery that shares a room with a burger chain, which is the kind of living arrangement that sounds like a sitcom premise. The pastries mix Filipino and Indian flavors, so the donuts come filled with calamansi and shrikhand cream, and the cookies borrow from kaju katli. There are a few tables, but most people treat it as a grab-and-go morning stop before work.

Naturally fermented dough and house-made pasta are the baseline here, not the selling point, which tells you something about a neighborhood pizza and pasta joint on Larchmere. The chef built a loyal following at a food hall before opening this permanent spot, and the menu stays focused: orecchiette, mortadella pizza, chicken parm, braised short ribs with polenta. Casual enough for a weeknight, careful enough that you notice the difference.

Whole roast suckling pig, ordered tableside with enough ceremony to make your neighbors jealous, is the move at this Spanish tapas restaurant in Ballston. The co-owner, Spanish himself, infuses his own spirits, and the gin and tonic is the kind of thing that makes you question every gin and tonic you've had before. Paella, croquetas, and a raw bar round things out, and the patio catches a breeze when the weather cooperates.

A Cantonese restaurant in the Cass Corridor doing all-day dim sum, which is reason enough to know where it is. Steamed pork buns, rice rolls, chive-and-garlic pancakes, Singapore rice vermicelli, and a hot and sour soup that earns its place on the menu. The room is small and unpretentious, with two- and four-tops filling fast, and the window seats offer a floor show the neighborhood reliably provides. Takeout moves quickly, too.

The kebabs come off a grill tucked inside a Persian grocery store in Longwood, which tells you most of what you need to know about the prices. Beef koobideh and chicken skewers arrive with saffron rice, and you can ask for barberries, grilled peppers, and lavash to round it out properly. The shallot-yogurt dip from the refrigerated case handles any leftover bread. Bastani and faloodeh close things out the right way.

A mounted St. Bernard stares you down from the wall, which tells you most of what you need to know. This old-school saloon in a sleepy mountain town between Snowbasin and Powder Mountain has been pouring drinks since the frontier era, and the cash-only, no-fries-ever policy suggests it's not softening up anytime soon. The staff is cheerfully gruff, the service is slow, and the burger is the reason skiers make the detour.

The chile oil wontons alone have pulled people across town to this downtown Sichuan restaurant, a sister to Sichuan City out in Happy Valley. The menu runs the full range of textures the cuisine is known for: crispy, tangy, soupy, and that particular mouth-numbing heat that makes you pause mid-bite. Order generously and expect your lips to tingle for a while afterward.

Finding dim sum inside a Courtyard by Marriott near West University is the kind of plot twist you normally need a map and a tip from a stranger for. Every dumpling and bun here is made to order, so nothing sits circling in a cart, and the shrimp cheung fun wraps crunchy fried shrimp in house-made rice noodles. There's a tea list and a green tea Old Fashioned, in case lunch needs a second act.

Sliders is a Neptune Beach seafood shack that has been feeding sandy-footed locals since the '80s, and it still has a patio with a putt-putt green, which tells you how seriously the afternoon is meant to be taken. Expect raw oysters, blackened Mayport shrimp, and fried baskets with hushpuppies on the side. Weekend Bloody Marys arrive crowned with a colossal fried shrimp, so garnish is more of a suggestion.

A row home cafe tucked into Federal Hill past the point where the bar crawl runs out of steam. The owners run it with the kind of warmth that makes regulars feel like houseguests and new grads bring their parents here to look like they know the city. The menu covers a lot of dietary ground, and the parklet out front fills up fast at happy hour. Comfortable, neighborhood, and very much a known quantity to anyone who lives nearby.

The name is short for Serene Republic of Venice, which tells you exactly how seriously the team takes the concept. This South End cicchetti bar and trattoria runs a Venetian Italian menu that shifts with the seasons without abandoning the dishes regulars would notice missing. The room skews sophisticated, the kind of place where the staff actually remembers you by the second visit and seems to mean it.

The orange dining room sits next door to a movie theater, which the regulars treat as a snack-supply opportunity. Star Chaat is a cheerful, family-packed Indian chaat restaurant with a vast vegetarian menu, the kind of place where the whole wheat chaat baskets and a coriander-heavy veggie burger keep the tables full without any help from the multiplex. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best South Asian restaurants.

Cocktails arrive in mini bathtubs and disco-ball goblets, which tells you everything about the vibe before you've touched your steak. This is a steakhouse with a set-price format: most meals come with salad, sauce, and a side built in, running from a house sirloin cap up to a 32-ounce tomahawk for the committed. The room is dim and deliberately sexy, free popcorn lands on the table first, and the whole thing is priced to feel like a night out rather than a special occasion.

Schiacciata, the flatter, crispier Tuscan cousin of focaccia, is the foundation every sandwich here is built on. This downtown Petaluma deli, market, and bottle shop loads it with prosciutto, porchetta, or a spicy spreadable sausage, then piles on broccoli rabe or burrata depending on your sandwich of choice. The shelves behind you are stocked with oil-preserved chiles and Italian pantry goods, so it's easy to leave with more than you planned.