The Best Places in the United States

La Chaparrita is half Mexican grocery and half taco counter in Little Village, so you can pick up a bag of dried chiles on the way to eating a taco, which is efficient. The cooking happens on a comal con sombrero, the domed griddle you'd see on a Mexico City street corner. The menu runs from al pastor and asada to cabeza, crispy tripe, and sesos, and there's tepache and aguas frescas to wash down whatever you were brave enough to order.

La Loba is the restaurant in the 1 Hotel, serving Catalan small plates built mostly around seafood, which is a very Pacific Northwest thing to do with a Barcelona childhood. The dishes are rustic at heart with a few modernist tricks, like an open-faced montadito topped with cured salmon. The room is dressed up and so is the clientele, and Eater lists it among Seattle's best seafood restaurants. Wear the good shoes.

The pastry chef here is a native Sicilian who treats the menu as a rough draft, regularly inventing things that don't exist anywhere else and then pulling them before you can tell your friends. This Montrose Italian bakery covers the classics, cannoli, cornettos, breakfast, lunch, but the reason to pay attention is whatever off-menu experiment is running that week. Come with an open mind and low attachment to specific plans.

A deep-dish pizzeria wedged into the part of Michigan Avenue otherwise devoted to flagship stores and corporate chains. The focaccia-style dough gets a layer of mozzarella before baking, which builds a crunchy, caramelized crust. There's a skinny deep dish for the dough-averse, and an umbrella-shaded patio where you can nurse a spritz and forget the tourist current rushing past. Eater has named it Chicago's Best Deep-Dish Pizza.

Lankford's is a Houston burger-and-milkshake counter that has been feeding the neighborhood since before anyone thought to call it a scene. The Grim stacks macaroni and cheese, bacon, jalapeño, and a sunny-side-up egg on a beef patty, which is less a sandwich than a dare. Non-beef eaters get real options, from salmon to Impossible, so nobody has to sit there politely watching. Eater put it on its list of the city's best burgers.

Lao Pot is a hot pot restaurant in Madison Heights where dinner is a group project: everyone gets a simmering terrine of broth, a tray of thin-sliced beef or pork, and full authority over their own doneness. The room has exposed brick and lantern lighting, and there's a full bar with a weekday happy hour, plus bubble tea for the designated drivers. Order skewers and gyoza while the broth gets going, and expect to leave smelling like it.

Biscuits and focaccia hold the fort until afternoon, when this Midtown spot near Piedmont Park quietly pivots into a wine bar. The patio overlooking 12th Street is the reason most people linger, especially with a bottle or a vermouth cocktail and something from the tinned fish and cheese spread. It's a shape-shifting kind of place, which means the crowd skews toward people who know exactly what they're doing.

A marinated pork spit spinning in the window pulls in foot traffic on MLK Way, which is basically the oldest form of advertising. This Chiapas-style taqueria in Berkeley orders you outside to pick up your al pastor, the ruby meat sweet and charred, with pineapple and a green oil salsa alongside. The chicken mole is a serious plate when you want it. Noah's Ark animals frolic across a mural on the wall, keeping things cheerful.

This is a casual taco spot downtown that keeps the lights on until 3 a.m. on Thursday through Saturday, and 2 a.m. the rest of the week. The menu runs from classic street tacos to the flour-tortilla "gringo" kind and quesabirria, with margaritas in flavors up to and including chamoy. Order at the counter, wear whatever survived the night so far, and come back in a few hours for a breakfast taco if the night refuses to end.

Sofa cushions, dangling bulbs, and a record player set the tone at this Georgeorgetown natural wine bar, where the bottles lining the walls are all for sale and priced like someone actually wants you to drink them. The pours run funky, orange, unfiltered, and nothing near a Columbia Valley pinot, and the staff will talk you through all of it with genuine enthusiasm. Loretta's next door does burgers; the two go together better than you'd expect.

An ice cream shop that names a flavor after Lady Bird Johnson's favorite wildflower is telling you something about itself. Lick keeps things small-batch and seasonal, pulling milk and cream from Texas dairies and swapping flavors as ingredients hit their peak. Honey vanilla and horchata sit alongside roasted beets and fish mint, which is either a very brave move or a very confident one, depending on how you feel about beets.

Cocktail names like "Stay the Fuck Outta Malibu" tell you more about the room than any décor description could. This cocktail bar shares a wall with Will's Pub and the self-described metal tiki bar next door, and the crowd arrives ready to argue about politics between rounds of rotating seasonal drinks. The rooms are oddly shaped and a little dingy, with French Provincial details that got lost along the way, which somehow makes the whole thing work.

A wall in the back pulses with colored light synced to the reggaeton, which tells you exactly what kind of restaurant this is. Lita does modern Caribbean in a Walnut Creek setting that leans hard into Miami energy, with a marble bar, gold trim, and ferns hanging over the dining room. Fish fritters, coconut curry chicken empanadas, and spit-roast jerk chicken shaved into tacos carry the menu. The cocktails keep up.

Little India is a casual Indian restaurant on East 6th Avenue that has fed Denver since before anyone worried about Y2K, and it now stays open around the clock for anyone with a lamb vindaloo emergency at four in the morning. Lunch is when the buffet runs, which means saag, dal makhani, korma, and tandoori chicken sit a few steps away and nobody has to choose between the butter chicken and the biryani. The Infatuation listed it among Denver's lunch spots.

The bar at London Chop House sits underground in the Financial District, dimly lit enough that you'll swear it's still 1985 and someone's about to close a deal on a handshake. It's a proper cocktail bar with martinis, gimlets, and Negronis that nudge the classics sideways, plus a cigar and billiards room attached. Dress like you have an expense account, even if the ghosts of the three-martini lunch are the only ones who do.

Warm tortillas pressed at a kiosk just inside the door set the tone at this San Rafael Mexican restaurant, where the kitchen takes mole seriously enough to run seven housemade versions on the weekend buffet. The mole poblano and a red guajillo version called Mama Luisa are the ones to pace yourself toward. Cabeza de res, menudo, and pozole rojo round things out. Order a michelada; it isn't included, but it's the move.

Los Tios is a sit-down Tex-Mex restaurant that claims it served Houston's first frozen margarita, then took a firm stance on the flavored kind and settled on floaters in coupe glasses. The big indoor patio fills with friend groups and families who are clearly here to stay awhile. The tacos arrive in a C-curved shell built to hold more meat, and everything leans on corn tortillas, which is a bold choice around here.

Lotus is a casual, order-at-the-counter cafe and juice bar on Encinitas' main drag, where the menu runs mostly vegetarian and the salad list reaches ten. Names like Soulful and Spiritual tell you exactly what town you're in. You can add tofu, tempeh, or vegetable "chicken," or blackened chicken if the vegetables have been judging you. Eater has named it among San Diego's best salads.

A short staircase down from a quiet Schuylerville corner takes you into one of those slice shops that seems to exist slightly outside of time. Louie & Ernie's has been around forever, slinging margherita pies and sausage pizzas to a neighborhood that hasn't changed much either. The New York Times put it on their list of the city's 22 best pizza places, which is the kind of recognition that surprises no one who's actually been here.

Loving Hut is a casual, fully vegan counter-service spot on El Cajon Boulevard, with a menu that wanders the globe without ever touching an animal. The Heavenly salad piles shredded cabbage, fried tofu strips, and Vietnamese mint under a sweet-and-sour tamarind dressing, which is how Eater landed it on a list of the best salads in San Diego. The room is mellow and unfussy, and nobody will ask you to explain your lunch.

A strip mall Mexican restaurant where everything, walls, floors, booths, even the plates, is painted black so the food glows against it like a still life. The brothers who run Lujos took over their parents' spot and rebuilt it almost entirely. The regular menu covers tacos, burritos, and quesadillas, but there's a permanent off-menu section worth asking about, including birria enchiladas drowning in red sauce with crema and guacamole. Wash it down with the horchata.