The Best Places in the United States

Telescopes on the patio, solar panels on the roof, and a ginger bitters program that takes itself seriously: Sky Bar is an astronomy-themed bar on Fourth Avenue that lets the night sky do the decorating. The kitchen is Brooklyn Pizza Company next door, so you're eating well. Day drinkers can pull breakfast calzones and pastries into the rotation, which is a fine way to study the cosmos before dark.

A strip mall in Fairfax with walls of actual greenery sets the scene for this casual Southeast Asian restaurant covering Thai, Malaysian, and Singaporean ground with real range. Chili crab comes with soft-shells in a red sauce and sweet buns for mopping, and a fried rice pyramid topped with lump crab closes the loop nicely. The pandan castella cake keeps dessert from being an afterthought.

Dark wood booths and old-world clutter give this Irish pub on Henderson a genuinely lived-in feel, even though it hasn't been around forever. A covered deck out back shifts the mood from cozy to open-air in about twenty steps. The beer menu runs from Hoegaarden and Paulaner to local Deep Ellum pours, and the food leans classic bar with a Tex-Mex detour. Whoever programs the 80s rock soundtrack is the unsung hero of the operation.

The sprawling outdoor courtyard is what makes St. Pete's the anchor of Deep Ellum. It's a neighborhood bar that also runs a solid kitchen, which means you can grab a stool and a beer or actually eat a meal, depending on your Thursday. The scene around it has shifted for years, but the bar hasn't bothered to notice. If you've been looking for a regular's spot to call your own, the counter here has been waiting.

Shrek raves, all-trans oil wrestling, and Christmas burlesque in July: the weekly calendar at this LGBTQ bar on 7th Avenue reads like a dare. The dance floor splits the difference between intimate and actually dancing, surrounded by decor that suggests Dracula discovered neon. The back patio exists for the moment you want to learn someone's name. Karaoke, drag brunch, and gothed-out Wednesday nights fill in the gaps.

A dive bar on Lower Greenville where the TVs outnumber the opinions, which is saying something. Stan's Blue Note runs on sports, cheap pitchers, and a rotation of barstools and soft couches that makes a four-hour game feel almost reasonable. Table shuffleboard and foosball cover the gaps when nothing's on. The Cowboys will probably lose, and this is a perfectly decent place to watch that happen.

The Yelp complaint that someone left about the music not being changeable is basically the place's mission statement. Strangeways is an East Dallas neighborhood craft beer bar with a patio, walls covered in eclectic art, and a vibe that has no interest in pleasing everyone. The beer selection earned a Dallas Observer nod. Watch for flight nights and pop-up dinners when they surface.

Three outdoor patios, one of them rooftop, is a lot of square footage dedicated to a Dallas evening. Sundown at Granada is a live music bar on Greenville Avenue, sitting next door to the Granada Theater and pulling some of the same touring acts onto its own stage. Inside, the lighting is kept low in the way bars should be. The bar staff moves fast, and the kitchen punches above the usual bar-food ceiling, which makes it an easy place to stay all night.

Adobe fireplaces, dark wood beams, and exposed brick set the mood at this old-school steakhouse that's been around forever in Tucson's east side. The menu runs from steakhouse classics into stranger territory, kangaroo tenderloin among them, and the surf and turf gets a hit of Tajín that signals exactly where you are. Classic martinis arrive loaded with ice chips, and happy hour has clearly had regulars for decades.

Picnic tables under string lights, bocce ball on the lawn, and the Santa Catalinas sitting out there like they're part of the decor. This is a casual, all-outdoor spot inside a native botanical garden, the kind of place where kids vanish into a gemstone dig pit and adults happily let them. The menu leans comfort food, with scoop fries and Irish nachos doing the heavy lifting.

The weathered wood and dim light on Gaston Avenue look exactly right for a place where the blues actually shows up. The Goat is a bar and music venue where talented blues acts take the stage most nights and weekends, with karaoke folded in when the mood shifts. D Magazine gave it Best Place to Get a Beer Before 8 AM, which tells you something about the hours and the regulars.

A big patio courtyard anchors this laid-back sports bar on Lemmon, where misters and shade trees keep the crowd functional even in a Texas August. Inside it's dark and comfortable in the way a good neighborhood bar should be. The bar food runs better than the setting implies, with the pizzas pulling more orders than you'd expect. Service is quick and genuinely warm, and regulars have a way of making newcomers feel like they've been coming here for years.

String lights turn a downtown alley into a courtyard, and that outdoor patio is reason enough to seek this place out on a warm Tucson evening. The Monica is a casual Mexican restaurant where the kitchen plays with familiar forms, running tamale dough through a eggs Benedict riff that shouldn't work as well as it does. The room reads urban but unfussy, the kind of spot that pulls in a mixed downtown crowd without trying too hard.

Aerial performers suspended from the ceiling set the tone at this live music and entertainment club on Main Street. The owner is Allen Falkner, known as the father of modern suspension, so the programming leans toward the spectacular. EDM nights gave way to a rotating calendar of live acts, burlesque, and aerial shows. Tacos are available when the music's running, which is a practical detail worth knowing before you hit the dance floor.

Plywood floors and neon signs for Busch Light and PBR set the mood at this Greenville Avenue dive bar, and the mood is firmly "nowhere to be." Cheap beers, darts, and well-priced shots are about the full extent of the program, which is precisely the point. The kind of place where regulars need no introduction and newcomers feel at home by the second round.

A neighborhood bar where the kitchen runs until 1:30 a.m. and happy hour stretches to 10 p.m. on weekdays, which tells you everything about who this place is for. Service industry workers fill the stools after their shifts, drawn by strong pours and a late-night burger that gets talked about seriously. The jukebox swings from Lizzo to Jerry Jeff Walker without apology. Cash in hand, no dress code required.

Texas tchotchkes cover every surface at this sprawling Uptown bar, and a live music stage ensures you'll be shouting over something with a twang before the night is done. It's the kind of place where Texas beers on tap outnumber your options for conversation topics, which is probably the point. Big, loud, and unapologetically themed, it draws a crowd that came dressed for exactly this.

Books hang from a clothesline in the backyard, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Oak Cliff bar and coffee shop tucked into a charming old house at the edge of Bishop Arts. It doubles as a bookshelf-lined indie bookstore, with foreign titles and small-press finds sharing space with your pint. Shakespeare in the Bar happens here, as do concerts and readings. Bring the dog.

A dark, cozy cocktail bar in Oak Cliff with a faint old Hollywood atmosphere inside and a sprawling dog-friendly patio out back that leans more Sunday afternoon than Saturday night. Happy hour runs seven days a week, which is either generous or a cry for help, and the classic cocktails are priced accordingly. A tight food menu punches beyond bar snacks, with scratch-made pastas showing up alongside the usual suspects.

A tea shop on Speedway with a drive-thru and a menu that branches into something like 4,500 combinations if you're counting. The drinks lean creative and a little tropical, built around named blends like the Rainforest or the Bayou, pineapple and dark cherry meeting lime, white peach cutting through raspberry. You can get your tea as a soda, latte, chai, or snow, which covers most moods and most temperatures Tucson throws at you.

A massive patio bar tucked off Lowest Greenville where the menu is deliberately short: Philly cheesesteak, a sandwich, nachos, and that's the whole argument. The beers on tap include brews from their own By The Horns brewery in Mansfield, which gives the place a little more personality than your average outdoor bar. It draws the kind of crowd that would rather eat outside on a Tuesday than anywhere fancy on a Saturday.

Tucked deep inside the Eden Center mall, this Vietnamese restaurant operates on the assumption that you came ready to work for it. The staff speaks limited English and menu descriptions don't give much away, but the rice-cake and tapioca-dumpling appetizers, some banana-leaf-wrapped, some chicharrón-crusted with tiny shell-on shrimp, make the ordering process forgiving. The spicy lemongrass noodle soup with rustic meatballs in a rich beef broth is what regulars are usually after.

A two-story craft beer bar inside Tucson's Metal Arts Village, with a sprawling patio equipped with misters and a clear sightline to the Santa Catalina Mountains. The taps rotate through local and regional brews, and the bottle list wanders into sake and Mexican wine, which keeps things interesting. Pizza comes in from a neighboring spot, so the food situation is handled. It's the kind of place that's genuinely hard to leave once you've settled into a corner.

Thirty beers on tap and a whiskey wall that takes a minute to read: this is a gastropub in St. Philip's Plaza with exposed brick, wood beams, and a patio worth claiming on a good Tucson evening. The kitchen grinds its own burger meat, finishes it with bacon jam, and handles brunch on weekends. The bar runs late, closing at 2 a.m., which explains the crowd still there long after dinner has become a memory.

Two repurposed shipping containers in the MSA Annex form this open-air bar, with shaded communal tables, a fire pit, and a walk-in bottle shop stocked with beer, wine, and spirits. Draft cocktails rotate through things like a Mai Tai and a Cactus Wren, and the crowd tends to bring food over from the neighboring stalls rather than going anywhere near a kitchen. It's the kind of place that makes an industrial parking lot feel like a deliberate destination.

The tables closest to the bridge put you near enough to hear the river running over the dam, which sets the mood before the food even arrives. This is an upscale farm-to-table restaurant on the Finley Farms property, where some of what ends up on your plate was grown out back. The seasonal menu leans into that, and the patio alone makes a strong case for lingering over one of their cocktails well past dinner.

Glass, marble, and open-flame grills fill a room that makes clear this is a steakhouse with architectural ambitions. Downtown Detroit's Prime + Proper dry-ages its USDA Prime and Japanese Miyazaki cuts in-house before the fire gets anywhere near them, which is either discipline or showmanship, and possibly both. The wine list swings between Napa and the Old World. It ranked 65th on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, for what that's worth on a Tuesday night in Michigan.

The queso has been pulling in UT students and neighborhood regulars since before most of them were born. Posse East is a campus-adjacent sports bar on Duval with wood-paneled walls, neon signs, a live music stage, and a covered patio that fills up on game days. Outside, a lone palm tree gives it an oddly Californian silhouette; inside, it is pure Texas roadhouse. Cold beer, solid burgers, and that queso keep the cycle going.