The Best Places in the United States

Tsujita is a ramen shop on Sawtelle, known for tsukemen, where thick noodles arrive separately from a concentrated pork and seafood dipping broth. It has a sister spot, Tsujita Annex, directly across the street, so the neighborhood runs a quiet civil war over thick noodles versus thin. Expect a line, a counter-service pace, and a casual, slurp-forward room. The Infatuation put it on its list of the best ramen spots in America.

Two Goose is a counter-service barbecue market on North Lamar that understands Austin's two great loves, brisket and breakfast tacos, and quietly introduces them in burrito form. The Big Honkin' Burrito packs soft eggs, potatoes, cheese, and falling-apart brisket into a tortilla roughly the size of a throw pillow, with a cup of spicy Sunrise sauce on the side. Come hungry, and plan on a nap.

The views of Mission Bay and the Giants' ballpark hit you before the menu does, which is saying something at this fine dining Italian in Mission Rock. The room leans into sun-faded Tuscan coastal tones, warm wood, and low light that flatters everyone. Pasta is the kitchen's clearest argument: hand-rolled pici in slow-cooked garlic and tomato, Dungeness crab orzo cooked risotto-style. Esquire named the martini one of the country's finest, which gives you somewhere to start.

Yeh Yeh's is a casual bánh mì counter in Lynnwood, a few miles north of Seattle proper, where your order arrives as a baguette held together by a rubber band. The grilled pork gets charred edges and a salty marinade, the tofu version is flash-fried and strangely persuasive, and a Vietnamese iced coffee comes strong enough to rearrange your afternoon. The Infatuation put it on a national bánh mì list. Bring cash-register patience and a few napkins.

Yume Wo Katare is a tiny ramen shop near Porter Square where the menu is one enormous bowl of thick, chewy noodles in heavy pork broth, and your only real choice is two slices of chashu or five. Expect a line out the door and a counter packed shoulder to shoulder. When you finish, the staff invites you to stand and announce your dreams to the room, which is less awkward than it sounds, mostly.

A taxidermy mountain goat watches over the dining room, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe. Avize is an Alpine French wine bar and restaurant where the menu pulls from France, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria, all filtered through Southern ingredients. Frog legs nod to an Atlanta wing institution. The drinks program is serious enough to earn a James Beard semifinalist nod, and North America's 50 Best ranks it at number 29.

The unmarked door on the second floor of a Japanese restaurant looks exactly like where a broom lives, which is precisely the point. Angel's Share is a speakeasy-style cocktail bar with booth banquettes, bare brick, velvet curtains, and lighting set to confession-booth low. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, and the room feels like it has always known that. Come early, come two, and find the door before someone else needs the mop.

The kitchen closes for a month every year so the team can travel and recharge, which sounds like a reasonable excuse until the vegetable-forward menu comes out and you understand why. Harbinger is a creative dinner spot on Ingersoll where the cooking leans seasonal and a little unexpected, pulling from Japanese and Korean influences without making a fuss about it. USA Today named it one of its Restaurants of the Year in 2024.

The historic two-story Queen Street house has its own garden out front, which tells you something about how seriously this Southern restaurant takes its sourcing. Seafood arrives in seasoned broths, the cornbread has inspired genuine reverence, and the pimento cheese with country ham is the kind of opener that makes the rest of the menu feel like bonus rounds. Reservations are scarce, and a sidewalk queue forms before the doors open most evenings.

The menu at this natural wine bar is whatever your bartender decides to tell you about, because nothing is written down. That's a feature, not an oversight. Light Years occupies a converted bungalow on Alabama, pouring organic, biodynamic, and low-intervention bottles that Esquire flagged for its Best Bars in America list. Sit at the bar and let whoever's pouring lead; the conversation is kind of the point.

A 15-foot wood-fire hearth anchors the kitchen at this modern steakhouse and seafood spot in West Des Moines, and the chef runs nearly everything past the flames, including the salads. Roasted bone marrow with brisket jam sits alongside reserve cuts that venture into A5 Kobe territory, so the range is real. Iowa takes beef seriously, and this place takes that seriously back, without feeling like a monument to red meat.

A porch plopped in the driveway and a wall of giant palms make the front door a small scavenger hunt. Inside it's a coffeehouse by day and a cocktail bar by night, all worn midcentury furniture, with laptop people nursing cortados and a short wine list that includes an orange. The food is croissants from elsewhere, and the espresso martini is on the menu, as it legally must be.

A renovated gas station surrounded by cornfields is not where most people expect to find a Texas-style barbecue joint worth a half-hour drive, but here we are. The pit runs daily, turning out brisket, pulled pork, double-smoked sausage, and ribs, with sides like campground beans and pimento cheese pasta salad filling the gaps. USA Today named it a Restaurant of the Year.

The wafer-thin crust crackles and snaps under toppings loaded on with no apologies, and the fennel sausage quietly reminds you this used to be Milwaukee's Italian quarter. Zaffiro's is a tavern-style pizza bar that has been doing this for what feels like forever, red-checkered tablecloths and Blatz on tap and all. Circle pie, square cut, built to be eaten beside strangers under neon light.

The patio seating is made from repurposed toilets and road signs, which tells you everything about the vibe before you've ordered a drink. Double Wide is a Deep Ellum dive bar with a trailer park aesthetic, cheap and stiff pours, and a music venue across the patio hosting bands and DJs on most nights. Wildsam named it one of the 50 most essential bars in America, which somehow feels both surprising and completely correct.

Meadowlark is a cozy cocktail bar in Chicago where the menu is a hardbound book, and it takes its research more seriously than most dissertations. Past editions have covered Midwest birds and the 1893 World's Fair, each drink tied to a landmark with a sepia watercolor beside it. Neighbors, bartenders on their night off, and tourists share the room. It also won the Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award at North America's 50 Best Bars.

Mandalay's tea leaf salad skips the cabbage most Bay Area Burmese spots default to, landing closer to what you'd find in Myanmar, layered with sesame, peanuts, tomatoes, and fried garlic. It's an old-school Burmese restaurant on California Street that's been around forever without feeling tired. A 2024 James Beard America's Classics winner, it draws regulars who clearly have a usual order and aren't changing it anytime soon.

Nong's is a counter-service Thai spot built around one dish, chicken and rice, which started life as a food cart before the paper-wrapped parcels earned it a brick-and-mortar home. You tear open the package and a cloud of ginger, garlic, and pandan fogs your glasses. Soft winter squash dissolves into the broth on the side, and the whole meal costs about what a movie ticket did in 2009. Eater put it on its All-Time 38 list.

Whole pies only, no exceptions, which has annoyed exactly the kind of person who deserves to be annoyed. Chrissy's is a slice-free NY-style pizza shop in Greenpoint where the chef spent pandemic years perfecting thin-crust pies in his apartment before graduating through pop-ups to a permanent counter. The New York Times put it on their best pizza in New York list, which is not a short list to land on.

Live music fills the room most nights at this Cuban cocktail bar and restaurant on Calle Ocho, where the décor slides between Havana and mid-century Miami without quite landing in either. Michelle Bernstein and cocktail veteran Julio Cabrera run the place together, which means the food and the drinks get equal attention. It holds a spot on The World's 50 Best Bars list, and the James Beard Foundation named it an Outstanding Bar Semifinalist.

Bitters are both the obsession and the inventory at this tiny East Village cocktail bar, which also sells an overwhelming wall of the stuff to take home. A dozen seats, a menu split between house originals and riffs on classics, and a bespoke option built around a Negroni, Manhattan, or Old-Fashioned if you'd rather just tell them what you're feeling. House-made vermouth pours on tap. A James Beard semifinalist, and the kind of place that makes you feel smarter for having gone.

Named for Lucian Freud, this 40-seat wine restaurant and bookshop in Buckhead stocks art and fashion volumes alongside a list serious enough to earn a James Beard semifinalist nod for its beverage program. The seasonal American menu runs to ricotta gnudi and caviar-topped omelets, the kind of food that pairs naturally with whatever the wine director opens next. Shelves full of books for sale make lingering feel practically obligatory.

The keypad combination lives behind a bookcase at the Four Seasons, and the concierge will share it once you've booked one of the twenty seats. Bandista is a speakeasy cocktail bar whose drinks draw from Prohibition's smuggling routes and the tequileros who ran the Mexican border, which gives the menu a Latin angle that the 1920s decor alone wouldn't suggest. North America's 50 Best Bars placed it at number 47.

Highballs and boilermakers anchor the menu at this jovial Japanese cocktail bar tucked into a Greenwich Village basement, where the drinks list stays refreshingly short and Japanese spirits do most of the talking. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which feels about right for a room that punches well above its unpretentious footprint. Go for the sake selection if you're curious; stay for the cocktails once you are.

A Strip diner that has been waving off the casino buffets for decades, with fake trees, flamingo lamps, and enough neon to make the omelets feel like a decision. Out back, the lounge has sunken booths, water features, and scorpion bowls, a James Beard America's Classics winner that somehow still runs all night. Hungover tourists and bikers split plates of marinara-soaked eggs, and no one finds this strange.

Fratesi's is a neighborhood pizzeria, the kind that feels like it's been on the corner since before you were born, even though it landed in downtown Miami fairly recently. The bar pies come out so thin they look drawn on, with cheese all the way to the edge, which leaves crust-skeptics with nothing to complain about. Stained glass lamps hang over springy booths, and the tahini caesar is the one salad people will order on purpose.

Three pizza styles under one roof: puffy Neapolitan, fried montanara, and the thin Roman scrocchiarella. This Palms pizzeria is the grown-up version of a beloved Pico-Robertson original, now with a proper sit-down dining room and a menu that stretches to supplì and broccolini with bagna cauda. The kind of neighborhood spot that gets written about in cities far from Los Angeles, so booking ahead is wise.

Dhamaka means "explosion" in Hindi, and the kitchen takes that seriously, sending out smoky goat belly wrapped in cedar wood and mutton in clay pots swimming in dark chili oil with a whole roasted garlic bulb. This is a sit-down Indian restaurant in Essex Market that goes deep into rustic, regional dishes rarely spotted on menus here. The chef holds a James Beard Award. Tables are comically small, so bring people you like close.

A bakery counter next door, a private dining room in back, and cooking classes on the books make this feel more like a culinary compound than a restaurant. The lunch crowd fills up on hoagies, but dinner is where the kitchen stretches out, turning out pastas and wood-fired pizzas that take real swings. Ellen Yin holds a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur, and the open kitchen makes it easy to watch the team earn it.

String lights and climbing vines turn the back patio into the kind of dinner setting that makes you forget you're in the middle of a city. Alta Adams is a Southern restaurant on the West Adams corridor, and the kitchen cooks with the confidence of someone who has been making fried chicken and coconut cake their whole life. Portions run generous, which makes it a natural for groups. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: California.

The corn gets roasted the day before, then ground fresh each morning for the tortillas, which tells you everything about how this East Austin taqueria operates. The menu runs on nixtamalized heirloom corn and swings between ancient technique and something like duck fat refried beans without missing a step. The chef took a James Beard Emerging Chef win and a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Come early, and come however you're dressed.

The name comes from an era when locals climbed to the roof to watch atomic test blasts light up the Nevada sky. This old-school bar on Fremont Street has been around forever, and the Rat Pack drank here after their shows, which sets the tone pretty neatly. The red-tinted interior leans into Atomic Age kitsch, sour beers are a specialty, and the patio out back is where late nights tend to end up.

Caroline Glover won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mountain out of this Stanley Marketplace restaurant in Aurora, and the cooking stays grounded enough that the award doesn't feel like it belongs somewhere else. Annette is a seasonal New American spot where the menu shifts with what's good, though a few things hang around because they've earned it. The room is warm and the hospitality matches it.

A full page of negronis is either a menu or a dare, and Dante in Greenwich Village has been inviting people to find out for longer than anyone cares to count. This Italian cocktail cafe and all-day aperitivo spot leans into its old-school bones without getting musty about it, pairing the drinks with burrata and charcuterie. Named a James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist and ranked on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

Inch-thick pan pizzas baked to order out of a tiny Echo Park shop with a vinyl and cassette collection on the walls. Quarter Sheets draws a crowd serious enough that a wait is part of the deal, and the pastries from the team's baker, a James Beard semifinalist, are a genuine surprise at a pizza counter. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, and the New York Times put it on their restaurant list. Wear whatever you'd wear to a friend's place.

The corn cake is not corn: it's sponge coated in piped kernels of corn mousse, and it stops people in their tracks. Lysée is a dessert gallery in the Flatiron where Eunji Lee, a Food & Wine Best New Chef, applies French technique to Korean flavors like yuja and brown rice, then displays the results on lit tables as though daring you to eat them. North America's Best Pastry Chef at the 50 Best, 2026. Go prepared to feel slightly intimidated by a cake.

The tiger-print carpet and floor-to-ceiling scarlet bookshelves are a clue: this was once a city hall library, and the Parisian team behind Candelaria and Le Mary Celeste had the good sense not to gut it. Now it's a French cocktail bar leaning heavily on vermouths and amaros, the kind of place where the aperitif hour has a way of quietly becoming midnight.

Money-green walls and brown leather set the tone at this approachable cocktail bar where Filipinotown, Echo Park, and Downtown all bleed together. The crowd reflects the neighborhood mix, and the bar leans into that, keeping menus short and descriptive so nobody feels lost. Seasonal cocktails share space with a Frozen of the Month, which is exactly the kind of menu that means everyone leaves happy. A James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist and on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

Caviar on Bugles with crème fraîche is either the most knowing joke in Seattle or a perfectly sincere snack, and at Roquette it reads as both. This Belltown cocktail bar runs on a French-spirits obsession, armagnac and calvados and absinthe doing most of the heavy lifting while classic shapes get quietly rerouted through Normandy or Cognac. A James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist that landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

Fancy Jell-O shots and distilled emu neck share a menu here, which should tell you something about the ambitions of this underground cocktail bar beneath the Riggs Hotel. Red plush, silver trophies, and low ceilings give it the feel of a gentleman's club that took a very interesting turn. The bar comes from Ryan Chetiyawardana, Mr. Lyan himself, and it landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

Pressed-tin ceiling, exposed brick, wine bottles lining the shelves above your head: this Georgetown neo-bistro looks exactly like the French place you've been trying to find in this city. The seasonal menu is deliberately short and liable to change, which feels like a feature rather than a bug. The chef earned a Food & Wine Best New Chefs nod in 2023, and the cocktails are sharp enough to slow down the ordering process considerably.

Poison Girl is a dark, narrow Montrose dive on Westheimer where personal space is treated as a rumor. The bourbon list is deep, but plenty of people at the bar are just ordering Lone Star and nodding at it. Everyone eventually drifts out to the backyard patio, where the evening opens up a little. Dress for sweat and spilled beer, and plan on a cheap tab and a bathroom with a past.

The house martini splits its base between vodka and gin, throws in fino sherry and a river rock tincture, and arrives garnished with olives, a twist, and pearl onions, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Belltown cocktail lounge. Rob Roy calls itself a classic bar "with a bit of punk cheek," and the drinks make the case quietly. A James Beard nominee for Outstanding Bar, it has been a neighborhood anchor long enough to feel lived-in without feeling tired.

This is a seafood restaurant dressed like an Old Hollywood set, with a raw bar and a caviar service whose sturgeon eggs come from fish the chef raised himself. The menu keeps one eye on the Gulf, with redfish, grouper, and a clam chowder that means it. The bar has a Golden Martini from Esquire, so a drink first is only prudent. Expect to dress like someone might photograph you, because someone will.

The comeback sauce and stuffed shrimp survived the ownership change, which is what regulars needed to know. This old-school downtown seafood house has been a Jackson institution forever, and the new chef preserved the classics, the longtime staff, and the general soul of the place while quietly upgrading the wines and adding a feta-brined fried chicken special that nods to the Greek immigrant roots. It landed on the New York Times Restaurant List in 2025.

The mole negro clocks more than thirty ingredients and still manages to taste like a single coherent thing. That kind of cooking is what draws people to this Oaxacan restaurant on South Lamar, where the menu shifts daily and the mezcal cocktails are cold enough to make you forget it's Austin in summer. The chef behind it won a James Beard Award in 2022, and the food makes the case quietly, without any help from the décor.

Loui's is a Hazel Park pizza parlor with wood paneling, a dining room that hasn't been redecorated since sometime before most of its customers were born, and a ceiling hung with chianti bottles signed by diners, like a very boozy guest book. The Detroit-style squares come out thick and airy under a crown of caramelized cheese. Order a pitcher, settle into the dim, and don't plan on being productive afterward.

The eponymous julep anchors the menu, but this Washington Ave cocktail bar stretches well past that single calling card into a sprawling collection of bourbon and a drink list built around herbs and Southern ingredients most bars don't bother sourcing. The vibe is old-school Southern hospitality without the kitsch, and the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar Program in 2022 suggests the approach landed.

The floating pagoda table on a koi pond is exactly as over-the-top as it sounds, which is probably why it's the hardest reservation in the building. Mizumi is a fine-dining Japanese restaurant inside Wynn, recently stripped of its red lacquer drama in favor of teak beams, indigo, and lantern light. The kitchen leans innovative, with sushi and sashimi that feel almost too precise to eat.

The Diplomac, a chef-ified riff on a Big Mac, says more about this East Side restaurant than any press clipping could. Dane Baldwin, who holds a James Beard Award for Best Chef Midwest, runs a room that somehow keeps duck breast and deviled eggs on equal footing, classy enough for a date night but relaxed enough that nobody feels like they wandered in by mistake. Brady Street is lucky to have it back.

Nickel City is an East Austin neighborhood bar that has been pouring drinks on this corner since the 1930s and sees no reason to get fancy about it. The focus is cold beer, boilermakers, and draft Pimm's, with the occasional Aperol Spritz for anyone feeling continental. A food truck out back sells Detroit-style Coney dogs and wings, which is how a quick drink turns into a full afternoon.

This is a Wolfgang Puck steakhouse inside the Shoppes at Palazzo, the sort of place where the wagyu comes from Hokkaido and Australia and the check comes from a much higher power. Expect jackets, expense accounts, and a dining room built for closing deals or pretending to. The Japanese beef burger gets you the same pedigree without the second mortgage, and the man himself occasionally works the room.

Allday is a minimalist neighborhood pizzeria on Speedway, turning out New York-style pies with a lightly charred, still-chewy crust and a tangy sauce. The Pep & Pepp stacks tiny pepperonis under diced pepperoncini, which is about as much suspense as a pizza needs. A six-slice sampler arrives on one tray for the undecided. It has turned up on The Infatuation's best pizza in America list.

Uni custard with brown butter, red curry hollandaise, and a torch of cinnamon tells you immediately where you stand: somewhere north of Boston that plays by its own rules. Nightshade Noodle Bar in Lynn is a tasting-format noodle restaurant with a kitchen that treats cuisine borders as suggestions. The room is a black box, the playlist is loud, and the team is warm. Rachel Miller was a James Beard semifinalist in 2025, and the Times put it on their Boston list.

A nose-to-tail British bistro in the Village where the duck-stuffed cabbage arrives large enough to feed a small party. The team behind Dame brought the same easy warmth here: cozy banquettes, unhurried service, and bar stools held for walk-ins even on a packed night. The menu leans into hearty English classics with just enough creative wobble to stay interesting. Food & Wine named the chef a Best New Chef in 2023, and a James Beard semifinalist nod followed.

The take-home price on any bottle you fall for is half off, which tells you the kind of wine bar this is. Tucked into the Arts District, Garagiste is a low-key room built around boutique pours from the less-traveled wine regions, with a list that shifts constantly. Tasting flights let you range around without committing. No garlic butter nearby threatening the palate. A James Beard Outstanding Bar nominee in 2023.

The servers at this Italian-American red-sauce institution work the room in tuxedos, and they know it. Plush banquettes, glittering chandeliers, and mid-century classics on the menu make Carbone feel like a fever dream of 1960s New York that never cooled down. The rigatoni alla vodka is famous for a reason, the prices are serious, and getting a reservation requires planning well in advance.

A.K. is a counter-service pizza shop on Martin Luther King Jr Way, where a sign above the register promises a dough show and the crust follows through, with a charred, dry crunch outside and a pillowy rip within. The plain pie tastes like a Manhattan street corner, minus the humidity and the trash bags. The Infatuation put it on its list of the best pizza places in America, so expect a line of people with strong opinions about crust.