The Best Places in the United States

A tiny Filipino coffee shop in Bowmanville where the menu leans on flavors you won't find at any other cafe in the city. Pandan, ube, and macadamia nuts show up where oat milk and brown sugar usually do. The room is small enough that regulars eventually stop ordering off the menu and let the baristas improvise. Its sibling spot, Drip Collective, handles the Fulton Market crowd if you need more elbow room.

Crystal chandeliers hang over dark-paneled walls covered in jazz-themed artwork, which is either perfect or a lot, depending on your mood. This Southern fusion dinner spot runs on house-infused spirits and live music, and the kitchen leans New Orleans by way of the Southwest: gumbo with Andouille and hush puppies, pasta soaked in lobster broth and crawfish. The kind of room that feels designed for a date night where everyone is trying slightly harder than usual.

Masa-based dishes anchor the menu at this Mexican restaurant on East Sixth, where chef Fermín Núñez runs an open kitchen in a space that feels rustic and a little buzzy. The cooking moves between tuna tiradito, wood-grilled vegetables, and tacos built on confit wagyu brisket. A James Beard semifinalist and a Michelin Guide selection, it draws a crowd that tends to linger well past the last tortilla.

A small Vietnamese soup counter in a Southeast Powell strip mall, open each morning until the pots run dry, which happens faster than you'd expect. Two or three soups rotate daily, with Saturday drawing people specifically for the cao lầu, a Hoi An regional noodle dish that rarely makes it this far from home. The Vietnamese iced coffee hits harder than you're ready for. Come early, bring cash, and don't stress the menu because there isn't much of one to stress about.

The smash burger with house-cured pork jowl and jeaw condiment is either a flex or a provocation, possibly both. Taurus Ox is a casual Laotian restaurant that moved out of its original counter spot into a proper dining room, and the menu came with it. Khao poon and a family sausage recipe built around lemongrass anchor the Lao side of things, while that burger quietly complicates any notion of what the restaurant is supposed to be. The New York Times named it among Seattle's 25 best.

The wood-fired oven sits dead center in the room, which tells you everything about priorities at this intimate pizzeria in the Warehouse Arts District. Naturally leavened crusts, house-stretched mozzarella, and locally sourced toppings keep the menu short and the focus narrow. The minimalist space, warm lighting, and low hum of a neighborhood crowd make it feel like someone's very well-appointed living room, if that living room produced excellent pizza.

A sandwich shop on Haight doing exactly one thing from New Orleans: the muffuletta, served in a wedge like a slice of savory pie, toasted or cold. The meat version layers prosciutto, mortadella, soppressata, and provolone under a spicy olive spread; mushrooms and scallions handle the vegetarian side. The pickled egg salad with potato chips stuffed inside is its own argument. Seating is tight, but Buena Vista Park is a short walk away, which seems intentional.

A nondescript Katy strip mall is doing a lot of work here. Inside, the dining room runs to sleek fixtures and lazy susan-fitted private rooms, and the menu reads like a focused edit of Hong Kong classics rather than the usual encyclopedia. Congee, wonton soup, and candied walnut shrimp anchor things, with weekend seafood specials worth asking about. The Michelin Guide has it on their list, and the Houston Chronicle ranked it among the city's top restaurants.

Attaboy is a speakeasy cocktail bar in East Nashville, tucked into a concrete-block building that looks like it services HVAC units. There's no menu. The bartenders ask what you like to drink and what kind of day you've had, then handle the rest, like a therapist who works in rye. It's the Nashville sibling of the New York original, and its bar team earned a regional honor from the Spirited Awards.

The blenders run constantly at this French Quarter-edge daiquiri bar, which lifts its whole aesthetic from Havana's legendary Floridita. The decor, the food, and the drinks list all commit to the bit: Cuban classics like El Presidentes and daiquiris in several frozen variations, served in a room small enough that you're on nodding terms with the bartender by round two. A Spirited Awards Regional Honoree for Best U.S. Cocktail Bar.

To get into this speakeasy cocktail bar inside the Horseshoe, you pick up a phone, answer a riddle, and crawl through an entrance. The bar itself looks like a haunted Victorian study, shelves packed with odd artifacts and enough atmosphere to make you forget you're technically in a casino basement. Cocktails run strong and strange, and there's a dedicated mixology classroom if you want to learn why your drink tastes like that.

The cheeseburger, griddled and stacked with onion aioli and double cheese on a toasted sesame bun, has its own reputation to manage. But The Loyalist is a proper basement brasserie doing quiche Lorraine, anchovy toasts, and trout grenobloise with a polish that quietly nods to the tasting-menu restaurant upstairs. It sits below Smyth, which holds three Michelin stars, and the kitchen shares the same sensibility at a fraction of the formality.

Freya is a tasting-menu restaurant where the courses change daily and a pierogi gets dressed like a Coney dog. It's fine dining, but the room is loose enough that you can flip through a binder of the owner's vinyl and request a song, which is not a sentence you hear at most places with a James Beard Semifinalist nod. The wine list leans toward small, sustainable producers, and the Dragonfly bar next door handles cocktails.

Other Mama is a Japanese neighborhood spot in a Durango Drive strip mall, where the fish comes in so fresh you'll forget you're in a desert. The daily catch and oysters live on a chalkboard, and the French toast caviar started as a special and never left. The room feels like a polished dive bar, with the chef's trinkets on display, so jeans and a low-stakes date night both fit.

The sour cream cake near the door has been pulling people off Balboa Street for longer than most San Francisco restaurants have existed. Cinderella is an old-school Russian bakery and cafe in the Richmond, the kind of place where the piroshki are stuffed with cabbage or beef, the borscht is non-negotiable, and the honey cake has its own following. Order something, find a seat, and stop worrying about whatever you were worrying about.

Handmade pasta rooted in Roman and Lazio tradition is the point here, and Evan Funke's Italian restaurant inside the Fontainebleau takes that seriously enough to make everything else on the Strip feel like a reheated punchline. The room is modern rustic, open enough to clock the occasional famous face drifting through, with quieter tables along the edges for anyone who'd rather not. Seasonal antipasti, handmade pasta, the full Roman heritage treatment.

Takeout-only lunch counter in a Kahului strip mall, where Top Chef alum Sheldon Simeon built a line that hasn't really stopped. The move is a bowl of garlic noodles under fried chicken or pork belly, with daily specials that lean into his Filipino roots. Grab a spicy fried chicken sandwich if the board shows it. The picnic benches at Kanaha Beach are the dining room, which, honestly, isn't a downgrade.

A casual lunch counter on Oretha Castle Haley that serves New Orleans Creole the way the neighborhood expects it: red beans, gumbo, Gulf seafood po' boys, priced so that going twice in a week doesn't require a conversation. The staff includes students learning the trade as part of a job-training mission, so the meal comes with a side of genuine purpose. The chef behind the kitchen spent years in upscale rooms before landing here, and the cooking shows it.

The potato pierogi has been on The Infatuation's list of dishes that define New York, which tells you something about Veselka's place in the city's food mythology. This East Village Ukrainian diner has been around forever, serving borscht and pierogi to the neighborhood at all hours, 24-hour service now restored. It draws tourists, yes, but also the people who grew up eating here and aren't stopping. A James Beard Outstanding Restaurant semifinalist, and cheap enough that you'll go back.

Tuna crudo in charred green tomato aguachile is not the Italian that built this city's red-gravy reputation, and that's the whole point. This trattoria in the Faubourg Marigny does vegetable-driven antipasti, fresh pasta, Neapolitan pizza, and roasted meat with a lightness that locals treat as a minor civic relief. The New York Times named it among the 25 best restaurants in New Orleans, which feels about right for the neighborhood canteen that quietly rewrote the local Italian conversation.

Etc. is a stylish Southern restaurant in the Loop, a neighborhood not known for fluorescent pillars or an R&B soundtrack that makes you forget you're a few blocks from a Willis Tower gift shop. Couples split smoked turkey rice and fried okra, friends pass lamb chops, and the oxtail comes under gravy, next to purple grits. The chef is a James Beard Best Chef: Great Lakes semifinalist, if you like your comfort food credentialed.

Burnt terracotta walls and 65 seats keep this Melrose Hill Italian restaurant feeling like someone's well-appointed dinner party. The team does twice-weekly farmers' market runs, so the menu follows the seasons rather than the other way around. The wine list moves through France, Italy, and California without showing off. A James Beard semifinalist nod for Best Chef California in 2025 tracks for a room where regulars rarely bother with the menu.

Colorful murals from local artists cover every wall at this plant-based Latin restaurant on East 6th, where the smell of spices hits you before the door closes. The menu is scratch-made and mostly vegan, pulling from Mexican and Latin traditions with jackfruit carnitas and al pastor tacos that don't apologize for the absence of meat. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist in 2024, which tracks with how seriously the kitchen takes the food.

No website, no Instagram, just a strip mall address and a fan-run page to track the daily rotating soups. Hà VL is a Vietnamese noodle shop where the bowls do all the talking, and the fermented fish noodle soup alone explains why regulars treat the weekly schedule like a train timetable. A 2024 James Beard semifinalist, and the kind of place the New York Times flies someone to Portland specifically to write about.

A rum library with over 150 bottles and a dedicated room that walks you through the sugarcane-to-bottle story before you order. This cocktail bar inside the Collins Avenue strip leans Prohibition-era in its feel, with leather couches, cozy booths, and a patio sized for golden hour. The rum flights lean into Florida producers. You don't need to arrive knowing your agricole from your molasses; the bar is built for learning on the job.

Three kinds of larb on the menu signals where Gai Noi's heart is. Ann Ahmed's fast-casual Thai-Lao restaurant in Minneapolis draws from the Lao city of Luang Prabang, so the menu runs toward khao poon gai, banana-leaf-steamed whitefish, and four versions of jeow, the spicy Lao dipping sauce. It's the looser, louder sibling to Ahmed's more formal Khâluna, the kind of place where you order generously and don't overthink it. The New York Times put it on their 2023 restaurant list.

The hand-dipped corn dog has a crunchy-to-spongy ratio that would make a state fair concessionaire jealous, which tells you most of what you need to know about Tulip Shop Tavern. It's a dive bar on Killingsworth with Rainier tall boys and oak-aged saison sharing the beer list, cocktails that actually require skill, and a smash burger that's started more than a few arguments about the best in Portland. The fried chicken sandwich comes pickle-brined with Alabama white sauce, and nobody's complaining.

Wonton soup, congee, and lacquered duck are the foundation, but the menu at this Cantonese restaurant keeps going through whole fish, stir-fries, and enough elaborate dishes to keep a large table busy for hours. The BYOB policy makes group birthdays feel practically festive on a budget. It sits at a corner where the Lower East Side runs into Chinatown, and the room fills accordingly with the full diversity of both neighborhoods.

The laminated dough at this French patisserie takes the kind of patience most kitchens quietly skip. Croissants, kouign-amann, pain au chocolat, and thick slices of quiche fill the cases, alongside macarons and fresh-baked loaves worth tucking under your arm on the way out. Seasonally flavored coffees keep the morning crowd happy while they deliberate. A James Beard Outstanding Bakery semifinalist, this uptown Phoenix spot makes a convincing case for the detour.

La Fontaine is a lavish French restaurant that treats brunch as something other than an excuse for bottomless mimosas. The pain perdu comes with salted butter and warm caramel, the souffle pancakes get thyme whipped cream instead of syrup, and the dining room glows in soft whites and tans like a very expensive beach house. It's open Thursday through Monday, so plan around that, and wear something nicer than gym shorts.

A fermented chickpea crepe with green pea masala sits next to French toast on the same menu, which tells you most of what you need to know about Pondicheri. It's a modern Indian restaurant and all-day breakfast spot with a bakery upstairs called the Bake Lab, where the chili chocolate chip cookie has its own devoted following. The patio was made for lingering over masala chai, and the thali format rewards anyone who can't commit to one thing.

The focaccia is baked in-house, which explains why the bread alone prompts takeaway orders. Marty's is a neighborhood sandwich shop in Northeast Minneapolis that spent a couple of years as a pop-up before finding a permanent home, and the menu still has that carefully considered quality. Chicken salad, a BLT with local bacon, a salami and prosciutto situation with fennel slaw. The breakfast sandwich stacked with hash browns has developed its own following.

Shave ice made with Maui-grown persimmons is not the shave ice you grew up with, and that gap tells you everything about this mid-priced Hawaiian regional restaurant. The team behind it came up through Alan Wong's, and the dining room has that same warm, attentive feel without the formality. The pastry side has drawn James Beard semifinalist nods two years running, and the desserts show why.

A corner spot on East Passyunk with awnings, a few sidewalk tables, and a spare interior that somehow feels warmer than it looks. Mish Mish is a vegetable-forward Mediterranean small-plates restaurant run by a former food writer who traded criticism for a kitchen, which tracks. The menu leans shareable, smoke and char doing most of the talking. The New York Times named it among Philadelphia's 25 best restaurants right now.

The robata grill runs hot at this casual Japanese izakaya in Midtown, turning out skewers and karaage alongside udon in deep, earthy broths. The cocktail list is robust enough to justify lingering, and the raw fish plates give the kitchen a chance to show some range. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist in 2023, which tracks with a menu that does comfort and precision in the same breath without making a fuss about it.

A smash burger counter inside The Churchill, Phoenix's shipping-container food hall, Stoop Kid pulls double duty: bagel sandwiches in the morning, crispy patties the rest of the day. The kitchen keeps things small and precise, with homemade dill pickles and a fried-egg option for those who treat lunch like a commitment. Grab a beer from next door, find a table in the shaded courtyard, and wait for your name.

This is the Vegas branch of a New York all-day cafe, a sunny, Tiffany-blue dining room beside the Bellagio's botanical gardens where bagels arrive stacked in three-tier towers. It's fancy for a place that mostly sells eggs and fish salad, so the Strip's fully rested and the freshly regretful sit side by side over grapefruit cocktails. Grab a sticky bun from the cart up front on your way out.

The Fox is an East Nashville cocktail bar on Gallatin Pike where the snacks are taken more seriously than the name suggests. A build-your-own charcuterie board and a plate of miso deviled eggs, which people tend to order twice, make up the dinner for plenty of regulars, and a vegan menu means nobody gets stuck with the garnish. It's the Nashville Scene's pick for Best Girl Dinner, and a Spirited Awards regional honoree for its bar team.

Eight seats and a cypress bar is the whole room, and the quiet that settles over it mid-meal is the kind that happens when people are paying close attention. This San Mateo omakase counter serves Edomae sushi built on fish flown in from Toyosu, with curing and aging doing quiet work before a single piece of nigiri lands in front of you. Chef Akira Yoshizumi honed the style across Japan and New York, and the precision shows.

The 1889 Saloon inside is supposedly designed by the cattle baron's wife, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes this old-school Phoenix steakhouse feel like it earned its spurs. Corn-fed aged beef and prime rib anchor the menu, alongside bison meatloaf and baking soda biscuits that haven't changed much since the place opened. The Western décor leans hard into its ranching roots, and nobody seems to mind.

This is a deli at Circa where the sandwiches arrive big enough to share, and the fluorescent lights stay on around the clock. That suits the clientele, a mix of tourists who haven't been to bed yet and people who woke up wanting a reuben at breakfast. Pancakes and shakshuka run until 2pm, and the matzo ball soup shows up whenever your night is ending. Ordering online spares you the lighting.

The mole menu alone runs seven or eight deep, which tells you what kind of Mexican restaurant this is. Red Iguana has been an old-school Salt Lake institution long enough that regulars treat the wait like a ritual, and there is always a wait. House-made corn tortillas, deeply worked sauces, the kind of cooking that takes all day. A neighborhood place that happens to draw the whole city.

Arched windows look out over Columbus Avenue from the upstairs dining room, where a tasting menu covers a lot of ground, swinging from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia with seafood turning up often. Chef Carl Dooley rotates dishes frequently enough that regulars rarely order the same meal twice. The service stays loose rather than ceremonial, which helps, because the room could easily tip formal. The New York Times named it among Boston's 25 best.

Eric Adjepong's Ghanaian restaurant spreads across multiple floors, each with its own look, all of them full on a weeknight. You can do a tasting menu or graze from the à la carte bar menu, a riff on Ghana's casual chop-bar tradition. The cooking moves between smoky, tangy, and deeply savory in ways that feel unfamiliar and completely right at once. The seafood jollof pot alone has colonized a lot of dinner conversation in this city.

Masking tape covers the electrical outlets and laptops are not welcome, which tells you everything about the mood at this tiny Cambridge coffee shop. People line up outside the galley-sized space for foamy, salty Vietnamese iced coffee and brioche guava pastries, then settle into the gravel garden out back at rickety little tables. No wifi, no parking, no apologies.

Tucked below the Dairy Block, this cocktail bar serves its menu on a deck of playing cards, which tells you everything about the room before you've ordered. Plush banquettes, leather chairs, patterned wallpaper, and cabinets of rare vintage bottles conspire to make it feel like a speakeasy that never quite left. The martini section alone could occupy an evening, and the reserve cocktails lean into vintage spirits for those feeling loose with their wallet.

A wool Mexican blanket hangs in the vestibule, which tells you most of what you need to know before you've even ordered. Terlingua is a neighborhood barbecue shop where the smoked meats drift Southwest and Caribbean, so the menu lands somewhere between Texas pit stop and something you'd find closer to the Gulf. The polished concrete bar fills fast, the cornbread has jalapeño and honey, and breakfast runs all day.

A one-room pizza kitchen tucked into Upcountry Maui where the chef mills his own flour and buys whole animals from a local farm before breaking them down for the toppings. The pies lean wood-fired and seasonal, with whatever Kula farms are offering that week doing most of the heavy lifting. House-made gelato closes the meal quietly but memorably. A James Beard semifinalist, which makes a lot of sense once you smell the oven from the parking lot.

Every cocktail at this Korean cocktail bar in Greenwood comes with a small surprise, none more literal than the Glimpse of Divinity, garnished with a Polaroid of you drinking it. The menu is built around Korean flavors and spirits, and the kitchen's Korean-inspired plates were made to sit alongside them. A Spirited Awards Regional Honoree for Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar in 2024, it punches well above its neighborhood bar footprint.

The aunties behind the counter have been known to yell, and there is always a line, and nobody seems to mind either. Good Mong Kok is a Chinatown takeaway dim sum counter where the har gow come stuffed with real chunks of shrimp and the char siu bao run softball-size. Portsmouth Square is a short walk away if you need somewhere to sit. Bring cash, keep your order ready, and let the crowd move.

Coral Gables has a new-school steakhouse that runs on locally raised beef and Australian Wagyu, dry-aged and handled with the kind of seriousness that usually comes with a longer track record. The room keeps things understated, natural materials and soft light instead of the old dark-wood-and-excess formula. It landed at number 40 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which is a statement for a place still finding its footing.

A white clapboard house north of downtown, Olamaie holds a Michelin star for contemporary Southern cooking served prix-fixe in a room that feels like someone's very well-appointed living room. The buttermilk biscuit with whipped honey butter is the kind of thing people mention unprompted for weeks. The cocktail list is genuinely clever, which helps when you're deciding whether to linger, and the answer is usually yes.

Dutch crunch bread is the move at this no-frills sub shop on the edge of the Excelsior, where an 8-inch sandwich still clocks in under $15. The chef behind the counter has Michelin-starred kitchen experience, which explains why the vegetarian sub, built on a hummus base with roasted peppers and cucumbers, quietly outshines the Italian. A classic neighborhood sandwich shop that happens to punch above its weight class.

Chaval is a Spanish-leaning restaurant on Pine Street that runs on Maine ingredients with French habits tucked in, so a local pork chop can show up wearing a shellfish cream sauce and nobody complains. The rooms are warm, there's a patio for when the weather cooperates, and the pastry side of the house means dessert is part of the plan, not an afterthought. Dress for a nice dinner, not a lobster bib.

The bread here is a soft roll with a thin, crispy crust, and it does most of the explaining. This Vietnamese bánh mì shop draws long lines across its San Jose locations, staffed fast enough that the queue moves before you've had time to reconsider your order. The dac biet packs headcheese, cha lua, ham, and pâté into one sandwich, and the buy-four-get-one deal means regulars rarely leave with fewer than five.

A snug wine cafe in Mission Hills where the menu has a section called Farmer's Giving, which is the most polite way to say vegetables have the run of the place. The shaved Brussels sprout salad with cashew dressing gets its own fan club, and a chilled glass of Spanish wine seems to be the house-approved accessory. Small room, low voices, and plenty of couples doing their best impression of people who aren't on a first date.

You find it in a basement beneath an alleyway off 6th Street, which is all part of the point. Here Nor There is a speakeasy cocktail bar where the menu rotates around a high concept, past themes like color theory and global exploration, with drinks that take real kitchen-level prep to pull off. Exposed brick, dim lighting, and enough tucked-away corners to make the chaos of Dirty Sixth feel very far away.

The bar seats face a glass-walled noodle room where someone is forever converting spools of dough into the springy, house-made strands in your bowl. Kajiken is a Japanese soba shop specializing in aburasoba, a brothless style where oils and sauces do the heavy lifting instead. The concentrated flavor catches you off guard the first time. A table caddy of vinegar, hot sauce, and powdered nori lets you keep adjusting until it's exactly right. Expect a line at peak hours.

Cafe Colucci shares its spacious, spice-farm-decorated room with Brundo Spice Co., its in-house spice brand, which tells you something about the kitchen's priorities. This Ethiopian restaurant in Emeryville has been an East Bay institution forever, and the move to a bigger space hasn't dulled anything. Injera arrives fluffy and sour, scooping up mushroom tibs or silky raw beef kitfo with equal enthusiasm. The San Francisco Chronicle named it a Top 100 Bay Area restaurant.

The autographed headshots of old-school celebrities on the walls set the tone: this is a Fisherman's Wharf seafood restaurant that makes no apologies for being exactly what it is. Families from two hours outside the city have been cycling through for generations, and the wood-paneled bar and white-jacketed servers keep the scene feeling frozen in amber. The clam chowder is generous where it counts, and the cioppino comes in a "Lazy Man's" version with the shellfish already shelled.

Pasta is the point at this Italian restaurant on Mass Ave, where around nine varieties rotate through the menu on any given night. The all-Italian wine list keeps things honest, and the counter seats along one wall are held for walk-ins if you didn't plan ahead. It fills up fast and stays full, but the room handles it without breaking a sweat. A Michelin Selected pick that also made the New York Times' Boston shortlist.

Arizona-focused taproom on Indian School Road where the tap list reads like a field guide to the state's small producers: Superstition Meadery, Stoic Cider, Wren House, Arizona Wilderness, all alongside limited releases from further afield. The vibe is beer-geek friendly without being beer-geek insufferable, and the staff can actually explain what's on without making you feel like a tourist in your own city.

A food truck parked at a gas station on San Carlos, serving some of the only serious Oaxacan food in the Bay Area. The tlayuda alone justifies the trip: a tortilla imported from Oaxaca, loaded with asiento, black bean puree, quesillo, and three meats, arriving in a pizza box if you order takeout. Eat at the picnic tables while it's still crisp. Memelas, enmoladas, and a menu that reads like a regional education round things out.

Chilaquiles made with dark, thick mole rather than salsa are the reason El Mil Amores draws a line on weekend mornings in the Mission. It's a brunch spot doing Mexico City-style cooking, the kind of place where the tortilla chips stay crunchy long enough to matter and the mole carries real bitterness alongside the heat. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the Bay Area's best brunch restaurants, which the regulars already knew.

Kiesling is a cozy neighborhood cocktail bar in a building that has been a general store, a saloon, and a cop bar, and it kept the woodwork, the brick, and a hand-painted mural found during renovation. The list is classic drinks with a twist, but a $6 beer and shot special keeps it unfussy. A small patio opens in warmer months, and it has been a Spirited Awards regional honoree.

Mesquite-grilled carne asada is the throughline at this modern Mexican steakhouse in downtown Tucson, where exposed brick and wooden beams split the difference between industrial and hacienda. The menu pushes traditional Mexican cooking into unexpected territory, lobster stuffed inside masa, chile verde stirred into mac and cheese, surf and turf riffing on enchiladas. A long tequila and mezcal list means no one is leaving dry.

The barbari bread is baked fresh each morning, which tells you something about how seriously this casual Silver Lake cafe takes Iranian cooking. Azizam runs on the kind of labor-intensive prep that doesn't announce itself, from herb-packed sandwiches to the kofteh Tabrizi, a single family-size meatball in tangy broth. Named to the New York Times Restaurant List and the L.A. Times 101 Best, it landed on Bon Appétit's Best New Restaurants list, too.

Wood-paneled walls, beers on tap, a game on the TV, and then the menu arrives and reminds you that the chef grew up in the Pacific Rim. The Duchess reads like a neighborhood pub but cooks like something else entirely. The shrimp and corn patties, crisp and spiced with Chamorro chile paste, landed on the New York Times list of best dishes eaten across the country in 2025. Wear whatever you'd wear to a bar.

Schulman's is a neighborhood dive bar dressed as the finished basement of your friend's cool parents, with stained glass lampshades, a lacquered bar, and leather booths that have seen things. The martinis run twelve dollars, there's a double cheeseburger and a pickle beer, and the backyard is built for smokers holding frozen margaritas. Nashville Scene named it Best New Bar in 2024.