The Best Places in the United States

Getting into this off-Strip speakeasy means ringing a football, which feels like a sentence from a fever dream, and then supplying a password you only get by booking ahead. A host in a vest and flat cap works the room while jazz singers handle the stage, and you can request an unlikely cover from the lounge. It's an Italian steakhouse in costume, so the red leather booths fill up with tourists.

Carnitas Uruapan is a casual carnitas house where the order is measured in pounds, not tacos, though a single taco is allowed. The pork follows a recipe from Michoacán, the region that more or less invented the whole idea, and it comes with cactus salad, pickled chiles, and chicharrón. Brain quesadillas are on offer for the committed. The family now runs three locations, and the one on 55th St hosts the loyal regulars.

A refurbished house on Old Shell Road that smells of house-roasted beans the moment you hit the porch. This coffee shop and bakery has been around forever, and the regulars act accordingly, arriving early enough to claim an egg sandwich on a buttery homestyle biscuit before they sell out, which happens closer to nine than you'd expect. The lemon Goodie bar is the afternoon argument for a second visit.

Casa Di Amore is a red-sauce Italian restaurant that also happens to be a tiki bar, a pairing that sounds like a dare and somehow holds together. The room glows red, with stained glass chandeliers shaped like rings of parrots, and the garlic bread comes buried in melted mozzarella. The chicken parm is plate-sized, and in summer there's an outdoor tiki bar out back for frozen piña coladas.

Casa Kenji is a Japanese-Latin sushi restaurant on Allen Parkway where the crudo arrives with stonefruit and coconut, and the ponzu has clearly been spending time with chimichurri. Expect aguachile, grilled octopus under mojo verde, and maki that flirts with caviar. The bar leans on sake, Japanese whisky, and cocktails heavy on yuzu and lychee. It's a dressed-up-a-little dinner, not a sushi-counter hush.

Patio seating looks out over the rolling Ozarks with a sliver of Table Rock Lake in the frame, which sets expectations high before the food shows up. This is an Italian restaurant where the pasta is made from scratch and the wine list is long enough to require help. The chef trained formally and spent time on the West Coast before landing here, and the cacio e pepe and burnt Basque cheesecake suggest he paid attention.

Memphis barbecue leans on the dry rub and long hickory-and-pecan smoke times rather than the sauce-forward styles that get more press elsewhere, and Central BBQ is where you go to understand why that matters. It's a lively, counter-order barbecue joint with four locations around town; the owner tends to post up at this Poplar Avenue spot, handing out plates of smoked meat like a man who never tires of the job. The smoked chicken wings are the sleeper move.

Mirror-glazed, multilayered pastries from a chef whose résumé includes Chez Panisse, Tartine, and Noma, now available at a small South Scottsdale walk-up bakery open Wednesday through Saturday evenings. Mark Chacón's desserts were already circulating through Phoenix's better cafes before he opened this shop, so the crowd showing up already knows what it wants. Top sellers go fast, which at these hours is less a warning than a scheduling note.

Champ Burger is a walk-up burger stand in the East End with no indoor seating, just a few outdoor spots and a line of loyal regulars that tends to be the main attraction. Third-pound patties of ground chuck go for roughly seven to eleven dollars, and the fries are the standard kind. The menu also stretches to vegan black bean and falafel burgers, plus an old-school Texas Size Steak Sandwich.

A former movie theater in the Solaris complex went full Alice in Wonderland and never looked back. Chasing Rabbits is a members' social club open to the public, folding a speakeasy, screening room, nightclub, arcade, and Mediterranean restaurant into one surreal evening. Members get liquor lockers and secret menus; everyone else gets the braised rabbit Bolognese and the satisfaction of finding a nightclub in Vail that actually has a theme worth committing to.

Cheaters Creamery is an ice cream truck that has the nerve to make you drive to it, which feels like a bait and switch until you're at the window deciding between black sesame and vegan mango sticky rice. You can get three scoops with a cherry on top, a milkshake blending up to three flavors, or a scoop pressed between a warm powdered-sugar doughnut. Call ahead, since the freezer's lineup shifts.

Chéri Rooftop is a French restaurant perched up the Eiffel Tower in Paris Las Vegas, which means you're dining in a replica of a landmark while looking at the real Strip. Expect Champagne, caviar cones, and a steak tartare that suits the date-night dress code. The chocolate soufflé takes an extra 15 minutes, a delay that couples tend to find suspiciously convenient. Eater lists it among its romantic restaurants in town.

The spaghetti arrives buried under shredded cheese that stays stubbornly unmelted, swimming in sweet sauce you'd never mistake for Italian. Chibog is a Filipino homestyle restaurant in Daly City where weekends mean families crowded around platters of crispy pata and lechon kawali. Solo diners can work through silog-style meal sets without feeling lost. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best restaurants on the Peninsula and South Bay.

A donut shop in Old Town Scottsdale that leans into vintage furniture and bright walls, making it feel more like a coffee shop than a bakery. The donuts themselves split the difference between cake and yeast, landing somewhere denser and breadlike, which gives toppings like strawberry shortcake crumbles or Lucky Charms marshmallows something to push against. The pizza donut and mac and cheese fritter are exactly as committed to the bit as they sound.

The oldest Chinatown in North America sprawls across 30 dense blocks, and it rewards wandering on foot more than any map can promise. Tin How Temple sits quietly on a third-floor walkup, incense thick in the air while neighbors light candles and pray. A few streets over, the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory folds cookies by hand amid whirring machinery. The lanterns and neon signs are as good as advertised, which almost never happens.

Choice Juicery is a laidback organic juice and salad cafe in Carlsbad Village, with sibling locations around San Diego County. Salads sit ready in the case at around $13, with a gluten-free wrap upgrade for a few dollars more, and online ordering means you can skip the line entirely. The menu is plant-based, so the taco "meat" is walnuts and the cobb gets coconut "bacon." Eater put it on a list of the best salads in San Diego.

A Chinatown noodle shop where the namesake bowl, listed plainly as "Chongqing hot numbing spicy noodles," does exactly what it promises with Sichuan pepper and red chile oil doing most of the talking. The menu is narrow by design, each strand matched to a mood, and the tan tan noodle soup goes richer and heartier for anyone who needs a reason to stay. Prices are firmly in the single digits, which explains why the stools fill fast.

Chroma is an all-day cafe on the Menil campus, which means your lunch comes with a lawn and a general atmosphere of having your life together. The menu wanders from a picnic plate of salads and hummus to a double-patty burger and a coconut lemongrass snapper, so a table of four can disagree without anyone sulking. The patio looks out over the grounds, and a weekday midday seat there tends to feel like cutting out of work early.

The bar side fills up on cold nights with regulars who treat the wine list like a warm blanket. This Parisian bistro on Whitaker Street keeps its French classics unfussy: bourguignon, foie gras, the kind of menu that doesn't need to explain itself. Old World wines and classic cocktails hold the room together, and the atmosphere leans convivial in a way that somehow never tips into loud. A reliable anchor in a city full of tourists chasing the same cobblestones.

The Poetry Room upstairs has a sign inviting you to sit on the floor, which tells you everything about the kind of bookstore this is. City Lights has been a Beat landmark forever, the place that published Ginsberg's "Howl" and survived the obscenity trial that followed. Today it still publishes its own titles, leaning toward poetry and politics, alongside a well-stocked general floor that rewards serious browsing.

The shop occupies a small residential corner in Brookline with room for maybe three customers inside, which explains the line of thirty-plus people stretching down the sidewalk on a Tuesday morning. This old-school neighborhood bakery turns out French and Italian classics alongside German specialties like soft pretzels and Vollkornbrot. A next-door coffee counter now handles grab-and-go for anyone with a low tolerance for waiting in the cold.

Beach Blanket Babylon ran here for 45 years, which is a long shadow to step out of. Club Fugazi has done it by turning the room into something acrobatic and immersive, with tiered table seating that keeps things intimate even when the energy runs high. The bones of a grand old North Beach theater are still very much there; the production just doesn't treat them like a museum exhibit. Good date night, good out-of-towner night, good "I forgot San Francisco is fun" night.

Coastline is a First Ward pizza bar named for the saucy edge where cheese meets crust, which tells you the team has thought about this more than you have. It turns out wood-fired Neapolitan pies alongside thin, grilled Texas-style ones, and the bartenders are the sort who remember your order by the second visit. It's casual and cozy, with cocktails that take the evening seriously. Eater's list of Houston's best pizza restaurants includes it.

The bingsu at this Capitol Hill sweet shop arrives on an unlit portable burner, which is more of a theatrical prop than anything functional, and you will make a mess. Each composed dessert stacks fresh fruit, cheesecake or brownie chunks, and a scoop of ice cream over milk shaved into long, coconut-like flakes. A sidecar of condensed milk covers for the housemade fruit sauce, which runs out of momentum before it reaches the bottom.

Flounder served in a hot bath of pepper, cucumber, and ginger is the kind of dish that announces where Cooking Girl stands on the question of restraint. It's a Sichuan restaurant with outposts scattered across Houston, so the odds are good one is nearby. The menu leans into the numbing, oily heat the region is known for, with beef, chicken, and tofu all pulling their weight. A practical neighborhood spot, not a special-occasion production.

This Sugar Land outpost is a casual Sichuan restaurant, one of a chain that has quietly spread across Houston until you're rarely more than a few exits from one. The menu leans hard into numbing, chile-heavy cooking, with the flounder in the hot diving fish as the signature, and the tofu section is long enough that vegetarians won't feel like a footnote. Dress code is whatever you wore to work, and so is the price.

Cooking Girl is a casual Sichuan spot on Heights Boulevard, one of a small empire of locations spread across Houston, so a bowl of numbing heat is probably closer than your nearest pharmacy. The menu leans hard on chili and peppercorn, with a flounder dish served in a pool of broth that arrives looking like a dare. Tofu and vegetable dishes keep the non-meat crowd fed. Expect an easy dinner at easy prices.

Cooking Girl is a casual Sichuan restaurant, and the Westheimer branch is one of a sprawling family that has put a location within a short drive of most Houstonians. The menu leans bold and numbing, with flounder in a chili broth that arrives looking like a small, spicy aquarium. Vegetarians get a real section of tofu to work through, and the check stays friendly. Bring a friend with a high tolerance, or a good water supply.

Cooking Girl is a casual Sichuan spot with so many Houston locations that you've likely driven past one this week. The menu leans hard on chili heat, with a flounder dish served in a bubbling pool of pepper and ginger, plus Sichuan beef and a fair amount of tofu for the vegetarians in the group. Expect a counter-service lunch crowd with a high tolerance for numbing spice, and a bill that stays comfortably in the twenties.

Cooking Girl is a casual Sichuan restaurant with enough Houston locations that you're probably standing near one right now. The menu runs on numbing peppercorn heat, and the hot diving fish brings flounder swimming in chili broth with cucumber and ginger. Tofu dishes give vegetarians something more interesting to do than watch. It's a no-fuss spot where you wear whatever you wore to work and leave smelling faintly of chili oil.

An old stone cottage in Georgetown with a garden patio that reads more like a faded Italian estate than a Seattle restaurant. The Corson Building runs mostly prix fixe, with a seasonal menu that shifts constantly and leans heavily on vegetables without forgetting the carnivores. Thursday nights open things up to a la carte if commitment feels like a lot. The room is spare and candlelit, the kind of place where dinner takes the whole evening and nobody seems to mind.

This is a casual White Center seafood-boil joint where Viet-Cajun means you're handed a bib and no one judges the state of your sleeves. Seafood is sold by the pound, from Dungeness crab to signal crawfish in season, then tossed in garlic butter or the house Tango sauce, which has a tamarind tang. Bring a group, since the table gets loud and the napkin supply is a fiction. Prices run friendly, and dress for splatter.