The Best Places in the United States

The spiral-tailed monkey painted on one wall gives the place its name and its vibe: a cheerful Peruvian restaurant with wood accents and geometric light fixtures that somehow feels both casual and considered. The antojitos trio is a good way in, landing beef hearts, jumbo corn, and causa on the table before you've made any real decisions. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of Berkeley's best restaurants.

This is a casino-adjacent barbecue counter where the menu is ribs and chicken and nothing is trying to be anything else. The ribs come tender but still holding together, glazed in a sticky root beer sauce with a little char. A half-rack with half a chicken runs $17.99 if you sign up for the free player's card, which counts as the closest thing to gambling here. The sides are fine. The housemade root beer is thick and creamy.

A one-person takeout operation in Berkeley where the pre-orders open at 9 a.m. sharp and are often gone before the place does. The pies are 18-inch, NY-style, with charred and pillowy crusts, and you have to plan around them rather than the other way around. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best Berkeley restaurants, which feels about right for something this inconvenient to obtain.

Turquoise glazed tiles, dramatic florals, and a sixth-floor view over Chinatown and Telegraph Hill set the tone before you've touched a menu. This is a tasting-menu Cantonese restaurant from the chef behind Hakkasan, and it carries that same instinct for precise, composed presentations of classic dishes. Come for cocktails if the full commitment feels like a lot; the view alone justifies the elevator ride.

Slim Aarons photographs line the walls at this après-ski casual spot on Bridge Street, giving the whole room the feeling of a 1960s ski-lodge fantasy your parents wish they'd actually lived. The menu leans into alpine comfort, with duck confit tacos and a wagyu burger doing most of the heavy lifting. Come sundown, the cocktails and the crowd arrive in roughly equal measure.

Parked near a gas station in North Loop, Feral is a food truck doing two distinct styles of pizza: thin, crispy sourdough rounds and pan pies with the sauce on top, both finished with garlic oil. The pan pizza is the more interesting argument. Order ahead if you're impatient, because the devoted regulars who've adopted this place keep the line moving at its own pace.

A corn-dog-on-a-stick that's been a State Fair of Texas fixture for generations, now available year-round from a permanent food truck in Klyde Warren Park, which means skipping the August heat and the parking odyssey. The batter recipe is a family secret the Fletchers have kept close, and nobody has managed to copy it convincingly. Mustard is the traditional move. Cash, a short wait, and low expectations for your diet are all you need to bring.

Rebecca Masson, the pastry chef Houstonians call "the Sugar Fairy," runs this bakery out of the Heights with the kind of conviction usually reserved for savory kitchens. Expect elevated childhood nostalgia: snickerdoodles, layer cakes, and the Couch Potato, a single cookie that somehow fits potato chips, pretzels, cornflakes, marshmallows, and chocolate chips. It's a lot, in the best sense.

For the Win is a quick-serve burger counter inside the Resort at Summerlin's food hall, where it's one of a handful of stalls sharing a roof with dim sum and an oyster bar. The smash burgers come with grilled onions, and the Brussels sprouts get fried in beef tallow, which makes the vegetable course feel like a technicality. It's a fast, casual stop where you order at the counter and eat with your hands. Eater lists it among the best burgers in Las Vegas.

Fort Point Valencia is the Mission taproom for people who came for the beer and stayed for the cheeseburger. It's a thin-patty, double-american-cheese affair on a buttered sesame bun, with enough shredded lettuce to technically cover your vegetables for the day. Grab a table outside on a sunny Saturday, order a lager, and take the pace of the afternoon as seriously as the pint in your hand.

The full bar sets Fortune Nong Jia Le apart from its Wash Park sibling, though the kitchen stays on the same page: dumplings, Shanghainese noodles, and fried rice alongside heartier plates like crispy half duck in soy reduction and pork belly with potatoes. It's a casual Chinese restaurant that trends slightly more polished than most in its orbit, the kind of place where the menu reads like someone's grandmother is actually cooking.

A vegan brewpub where the kitchen makes its own ferments, and you can buy a jar to take home if one wins you over. Nachos arrive topped with mole-braised hibiscus; a crudités spread leans on cashew queso. The rotating ferment list, cabbage-pear kimchi one week, seasonal giardiniera the next, turns ordering into a low-stakes experiment. Downtown San Jose, tucked between two bakeries, which says something about the neighborhood's current priorities.

Fresa's is a casual Mexican spot on North Lamar, easy to find thanks to a giant rotating neon chicken that does most of the marketing. The wood-grilled chicken anchors a menu of bowls and tacos for people who want to feel virtuous before noon. There's a drive-through for the days Austin heat turns the car into the only reasonable dining room. Order at the counter, keep it casual, and wear whatever survived the commute.

The live seafood tanks near the entrance set the agenda at this Cantonese dining room, where the kitchen has been turning out Hong Kong-style crab, lobster, and fresh fish for Houston since the family arrived from Hong Kong decades ago. Weekend dim sum draws a crowd that knows better than to sleep in. It's a big, bustling room, and the sweet-glazed barbecue pork alone tends to settle any argument about where to sit.

A counter-service taco joint in The Heights where the filling can come from just about anywhere on the map, including Thai-style chicken, lamb keema, falafel, and fried oysters with ranch slaw. You order at the counter, grab a frozen margarita, and land in a dining room painted a shade of orange that commits fully. The patio is the move when the weather cooperates, and the queso and hummus both turn up for sharing. The Infatuation put it on its Houston tacos list.

The Galloway Trail runs right past the back fence, so the patio fills up with cyclists and runners who've just earned something fried. This casual American bar and grill keeps things straightforward: big sandwiches, Frito pie, barbecue-sauced burgers, the kind of food that makes a two-hour ride feel like a sound investment. Sun shades cover the back-corner tables where you can hear the trail traffic rolling by outside.

A roadhouse that means it when it says farm-to-table Italian, Giaco's sits a five-minute drive from Samuel P. Taylor State Park, which matters more than you'd think by night two of camping. There's a bar up front, a cozy dining room in back, and a patio when the weather cooperates. The wood-fired pizzas run a little bready, but creative toppings carry them, and the saffron arancini with Point Reyes truffle cheese earns its place on the menu.

Giordano's is a Chicago pizza chain built around the stuffed pie, which is deep dish with a second crust sealed over the cheese and then buried in tomato sauce, like a pizza that got tucked in for the night. Slices arrive tall and heavy, so plan on a fork and a nap. The menu riffs on gyros and Juicy Lucy burgers, and Eater has named it one of the city's deep-dish picks.

Gold Tooth Tony's is a casual pizza joint built around Detroit-style pies, with a thick, focaccia-meets-sourdough crust that makes a good case for carbs as a personality. There's a Houston-style pie too, a New York and Detroit hybrid, plus pizza tots and fish and chips for anyone who came for the not-pizza. Order at the counter, wear whatever, and stay out of the arugula-pesto debate. It's on Eater's best pizza list.

The International Orange paint, chosen partly because it makes the bridge visible through San Francisco's famous fog, is the first thing you learn at the Welcome Center before walking across. You can drive it, walk it, or rent a bike and pedal over to Sausalito for lunch. San Francisco City Guides runs free walking tours if you want the engineering backstory delivered by someone who finds suspension cables genuinely thrilling.

A drum circle can materialize next to a serene Japanese garden on the same afternoon you pedal a boat past ducks on Blue Heron Lake, which is more or less how Golden Gate Park operates. The California Academy of Sciences anchors the cultural end, with a living rainforest and an albino alligator named Claude. The 1914 carousel still spins its painted lions and dragons to carnival music, and the park band has been playing free summer concerts here since forever.

A no-frills Vietnamese lunch spot on the edge of Portsmouth Square, where the best move on a sunny day is to grab takeout and eat in the park while retired neighbors argue card games at the tables nearby. Pho, grilled meats, rice plates, and vermicelli salads are the whole program, exactly as advertised. The spring rolls, fried in rice paper, come out blistered and genuinely airy in a way that's hard to explain until you've had one.

The garlic fries alone have launched a thousand detours off the freeway. Gott's is a California roadside grill doing burgers and shakes with Niman Ranch beef and seafood sourced with the same seriousness, which is more than most places in this price range bother with. The classic cheeseburger hits the produce-and-seared-beef formula cleanly, and when the soft-shell crab sandwich is on the menu, it's the move. Plenty of outdoor tables if the sun cooperates.