The Best Places in the United States

Smokin J's is a casual barbecue joint in the Gaslamp, the largest of its three locations, with exposed brick, checkered floors, and enough flat screens to keep a game in sight from any stool. Meat comes by the plate or by the pound, and the sides include a pork-belly-laced navy bean dish called bean crack. The family platters run up to $300 and arrive with white bread, a group project with a sponge.

Someday is a cocktail bar and restaurant tucked down an alley off Division, so the busiest shopping strip in the neighborhood quietly becomes someone else's problem. The shady patio has a Mediterranean slouch to it, and the drinks lean playful, with basil, strawberry, pandan, and tamarind all getting a turn. Plan on a spritz that turns into the cheese plate, and dress for a first date or a 50th anniversary, both of which fit.

Soraya is a modern Japanese American restaurant on the ground floor of the Federal Reserve Building, which is a very Detroit place to eat a katsu. The menu runs from takoyaki and udon to sushi rolls, plus cocktails built on Japanese whisky for people who'd like their banana and brown sugar to feel like a decision. Come in somewhere between work-casual and date-night, and book on Resy.

A former Silver Lake church became Hotel Lucile, and the team behind De La Nonna tucked this restaurant inside it, which gives the room more drama than most new openings deserve. The menu threads French technique through California farmers market produce, with a Southern ease in how it's all served. A full bar runs cocktails that lean tequila and mezcal, and the whole thing is relaxed enough that you won't feel underdressed.

Southern Chicago is a steakhouse-ish dinner spot in the South Loop where the crystal chandeliers and plush velvet seating suggest the Las Vegas Strip got lost on the way to Soldier Field. The kitchen cooks steaks over open flame and stacks seafood towers, and the sides lean decadent, like deviled eggs topped with shrimp and caviar. Plan on dressing a notch up, and on a lot of conventioneers.

The dry-aged bone-in ribeye arrives blanketed in hot butter, which tells you everything about the register this grand steakhouse is playing in. From the family behind Mastro's, Steak 48 fits Beverly Hills like a bespoke suit, with a seafood tower stacked high and sides that go past the usual (corn brulee, Hasselback potatoes). The room skews dressed-up and the tabs follow suit, but the kitchen keeps the promise the room makes.

Sunday Sauce is an Italian-American restaurant on North Killingsworth that treats New Jersey red-sauce comfort food as a cuisine worth remastering. The decor is a loving nod to Y2K little league pizza parties, which is a sentence nobody expected to write about a pasta joint. It works for a date or a Tuesday, and the lunch menu now runs to heroes and subs, with the Bergen County line debate left to you.

Sunny Hill is a bright, casual pizza place a short walk from Golden Gardens, which makes it the natural spot to sit down once the beach has worn you out. The round pies come blistered, and the Detroit-style squares have a focaccia-ish crust with frizzled cheese at the edges. There are also cheeseburgers and waffle fries, and the black garlic ranch for dunking them is not optional in spirit, even if it is on paper.

Süp is a soup restaurant, pronounced exactly how you'd hope, set in a little bungalow on Virginia Street that used to be a dental office. The stocks are made from scratch, the menu rotates daily, and there are usually six soups to choose from, one of them vegan. Chowder shows up Fridays, chili on Saturdays. Sandwiches and salads fill out the rest, and regulars bring their dogs to the outdoor deck. It's casual and cheap-ish, and nobody makes you feel bad about ordering a bowl.

Metal band posters on the walls and distorted guitars blasting while someone brews the most delicate pour-overs in Williamsburg is the whole vibe at this small coffee shop. The owner sources from Brooklyn's Sey roastery and makes his own blends, and the result is coffee that tastes less like coffee than like the memory of a fruit. The drip is worth the trip on its own if you're not in a splurging mood.

Sushi Ichiban is an all-you-can-eat sushi spot a short walk from the Fremont Street canopy, marked by orange neon and a mural on 6th Street. The roll list is long enough to need a bookmark, running from plain salmon nigiri to a shrimp tempura Fremont roll, with corn cheese on the side for anyone who wants a vegetable-adjacent moment. Service moves fast, and takeout comes at a discount.

Daisuke Nakazawa trained under Jiro Ono, and that lineage hangs quietly over every piece of Edomae-style nigiri served at his Los Angeles omakase counter on South Robertson. The room is hushed and deliberate, the kind of place where you eat with full attention. An omakase here moves through nigiri flights with the optional chef's menu adding hot and cold courses before and between.

Hidden in the valet-parking alcove of a Rodeo Drive retail building, this intimate omakase counter seats fewer than twenty people and pairs its high-end nigiri with wine instead of sake, which sounds like a sommelier's dare and somehow works beautifully. Six seats at the bar, a near-invisible entrance, and enough hush to make the whole thing feel like a pleasant conspiracy. The Valley outpost earned the devoted following; this one earns the real estate.

Taco Centro is a casual Little Italy taquería where birria turns up on tacos, on pizza, and in ramen, which is a lot of jobs for one braise. The menu runs thirteen tacos deep, with a Sonoran one on a freshly formed flour tortilla that gets most of the attention. Churros con tres leches close things out, and the drinks lean micheladas, palomas, and local beer on tap. Order at the counter, wear whatever you walked in wearing.

Tacos El Franc is a Tijuana taqueria that planted its flag in the Gaslamp, a few blocks from Petco Park, which tells you who's standing in line. The trompo-sliced adobada, vampiros, and mulitas are counter-service cheap, and the doors stay open until 2 a.m. on weekends, so it's equally plausible you're pre-gaming or post-regretting. Tacos El Gordo sits down the street, and locals have opinions.

A Tijuana-born taqueria where the trompo of al pastor spins in the window like a lighthouse for the post-bar crowd. You order at the counter, get tacos fast and cheap, then dress them yourself at a salsa bar stocked with radishes and limes. The line looks like a hostage situation but moves briskly, and it stays open until 2 a.m., 4 on weekends, for people with a long night behind them and no regrets yet.

A charcoal-fired street cart in a Silver Lake parking lot, doing Hermosillo-style asada the way it's meant to be done: beef piled onto tallow-rich tortillas with cabbage, guacamole, and a lineup of salsas that demands some decision-making. The team behind it brings serious pedigree, Atla among the past stops. The menu is short on purpose, asada tacos, burritos, and the fixings, and the line makes the case before you've ordered.

The long counter at this old-school Chinese restaurant in the Chinatown-International District has been accumulating scuffs, celebrity photos, and regulars for decades. The menu has been this way forever, and that's the point: beef in oyster sauce, chop suey built on sautéed vegetables, nothing experimental. The owner waves you out the door himself, which is a touch you don't get everywhere.

Takoi is a Northern Thai restaurant in Corktown whose dining room looks like a spaceship that landed on Michigan Avenue and decided to stay, moody lighting included. Much of the produce comes from its own farm a mile north in Core City. The plates are meant for sharing, the cocktails are fussed over, and vegans eat well. Reservations help, and the patio is enclosed, so winter doesn't get a vote.

The menu changes six days a week and gets posted to social media, so regulars follow Tevin Love's feeds the way other people follow sports scores. This Vermont Square soul food and Caribbean spot grew from home-cooked meals sold out of Love's house, and the dining room still carries that energy. Oxtails, jerk chicken wings, and macaroni and cheese anchor the rotation, but the jerk salmon and lamb chops, when they appear, tend to disappear fast.

A tofu production company that sprouted a deli counter, Thanh Son is the rare spot where the house-made soy milk and fresh tofu, sold by the pound, upstage everything else on offer. The banh mi are built to order on house-baked bread, and the glass case of che, Vietnamese sweet dessert, stacks up a rainbow of tapioca, jellies, and beans in combinations that take a minute to decode. Bring restraint, or at least a spoon.

The baristas here treat coffee sourcing the way a sommelier treats a wine list, asking what you're in the mood for, floral or fruity, bright or nutty, and steering you toward something you wouldn't have ordered on your own. This sunny corner coffee shop in Philadelphia is genuinely tiny, and weekend lines of pourover devotees stretch down the block. The za'atar croissants disappear early, so arriving with time to spare is less advice than strategy.

The Blind Burro is a Baja-leaning Mexican restaurant on a Gaslamp block that sits close enough to Petco Park to plan your whole evening around it. The menu takes familiar Mexican dishes and gives them a few upgrades, like machetes, which are quesadillas stretched out to the length of a forearm. Brunch brings a churro waffle, and the all-day beer-and-shot deal was clearly written with a ballgame in mind.

An Italian-leaning specialty food shop that doubles as a sandwich counter, with crusty bread packed with combinations like fried zucchini and pesto or prosciutto and coppa. The shelves hold artisanal cheeses, salumi, preserves, and breads for anyone who wants to assemble something impressive at home. Been around forever under different ownership, and the new team moved it into a brighter space without losing the plot.

A mirrored, handsome room on a corner that used to be a franchise Mexican spot, now serving wagyu French dip and whole lobster repositioned in the shell for easier eating. It's a polished, scene-y restaurant from Catch Hospitality, which means it looks great and reservations can be a project. Taylor Swift has been spotted here, which tells you roughly what kind of evening to dress for.

The Fattened Caf is a casual counter-order spot that happens to be St. Louis's only Filipino barbecue joint, which means a pitmaster and a Filipina chef got married and the rest of us got smoked chicken rubbed with burnt coconut. The pork steak, a local obsession, comes marinated in Filipino spices over java rice. Grab a rattan couch up front and share the room with strangers, or bring a crew to the big tables in back.

The Finn is a Main Street food hall where ten vendors and a pair of cocktail bars share one roof, which solves the group chat problem of nobody agreeing on dinner. One stall has been doing Texas barbecue since 1957, another presses its own nixtamalized corn tortillas, and a third sends out smashburgers with tallow fries. Order at the counters, carry it all to one table, and let the bars handle the rest.

The Godfrey is a hotel in Corktown with a few places to eat, and the one you're after is Hamilton's, the all-day restaurant on the ground floor. It's run by the group behind Phoenicia and Leila, so the new American menu keeps leaning Mediterranean when no one's looking, which is how you end up with halibut and chips on pea mash and carrots dressed in zhug. Expect hotel-restaurant prices, cocktails, and a reservation on Tock.

A Sunset Strip breakfast diner where the pancakes run about twelve inches across and the menu lists twenty variations, which means the only real decision is how much butter you want on your Oreo stack. The crowd on weekend mornings makes the sidewalk look like a casting call, but the line moves. A casual, cash-friendly spot that takes pancakes more seriously than most places take anything.

The Grill is a sit-down American restaurant at the Wharf, the sort of place you pick when the show at the Anthem starts soon and nobody can agree on dinner. The menu is steaks, salads, mac and cheese, and lobster rolls, a dressed-up cousin of the roadside chain. There's a wine wall with faux wood pillars, and the servers wear formal attire, which feels generous for a burger.

The name suggests a taco-and-enchilada situation, and then the menu shows up with tenderloin cooked in bone marrow and enchiladas stuffed with Maine lobster. This is a Brickell Key restaurant that treats Mexican food as a reason to order the steak, including a 33-ounce Wagyu tomahawk built for a table of negotiators. The tequila and mezcal list is long, and the margaritas lean on it. Dress like the check will be large.

The Nolen is an open-air rooftop lounge on the 14th floor of a Courtyard by Marriott, which is the sort of address that makes the view do all the introductions. It's cocktails and shareable plates, think shrimp tacos and flatbread, timed for sunset with the Gaslamp grid laid out below. Hotel guests, visitors, and locals with a free evening settle in here, and happy hour and weekend brunch each get their own menu.

The Parlour is a casual Fremont East breakfast-and-coffee spot where the espresso martini and the spiced chai coffee cocktail sit comfortably beside the sugary lattes. There's a syphon coffee rig that brews your cup tableside, in case you wanted your caffeine to feel like a chemistry demo. The dining room is a happy pile of mismatched chairs and tchotchkes, with a deep vegan menu and burgers under $10 on weekend evenings.

The Roost is a Capitol Hill food hall where you order from your phone and the food finds you, which spares everyone the usual tray-and-buzzer shuffle. Under one roof you get Cameo Coffee, Hi-Fi Taco, and a craft beer bar pouring Bluejacket brews. There's also Caruso's Grocery, a sit-down red sauce joint with faded red booths and chicken Parmigiana, doing a convincing impression of a place your grandfather had a table at.

A post-fire renovation gave this Abbot Kinney neighborhood restaurant a fresher face, but the kitchen's restless energy is the same. Chef Casey Lane shops the farmers market in the morning and writes the menu by evening, so the charcoal-kissed dishes you order barely existed as an idea at breakfast. Pasta, whole fish, and whatever looked good at the stalls that day fill a room that Venice locals treat as a standing appointment.

Thim Hing is a cash-only bánh mì counter where people leave carrying sandwiches by the armload, as if provisioning for a long voyage. Around lunch, trunks get loaded with plastic bags of the stuff. The baguette runs rail-thin and loud when you bite it, which means more crunch per square inch than the usual loaf. Bring cash, order for everyone you know, and expect to be the slowest person in line.

The front window is how you order, the aguas frescas are poured cold, and the adobada is quietly the whole argument for coming. This Echo Park taqueria is a branch of a Tijuana original, serving the usual lineup of proteins as tacos, mulitas, burritos, and vampiros. It landed on Eater's hottest new restaurants list, which tracks, given how fast the neighborhood found it. First-timers are pointed toward the adobada, and regulars tend to agree.

This is a dim sum restaurant in Katy Asian Town, part of the chain that earned the "world's least expensive Michelin-starred restaurant" nickname back in Hong Kong. The baked char siu buns, sweet and crackly on top, are what the room orders first. The dining room is big and booth-lined, with a bar off to the side that gives it a faint sports-bar energy. Nobody dresses up for this, and the check stays modest.

True Food Kitchen is a bright, casual daytime-to-dinner spot in Downtown Summerlin where the menu has a ready answer for every dietary restriction at the table. That makes it the group-chat compromise that actually gets approved. Expect yoga leggings still in circulation, a lineup of bowls, salads, and sourdough pizza, and fried chicken that skips the gluten and the deep fryer. The flourless chocolate cake closes things out.

Tú Lan is a no-frills Vietnamese counter-service spot on Mid-Market that has been feeding the neighborhood for what feels like forever. Lunchtime means office workers grabbing takeout while a few people eat at the back tables. The imperial rolls arrive loud and crackling, and the pho, rice plates, and vermicelli bowls are sized for a second meal. You leave with leftovers and change from a twenty.