The Best Places in the United States

Dan Barber's Greenwich Village dining room runs a single fixed menu, served family-style, that arrives at the table with almost no interference from the kitchen. Vegetables from Blue Hill at Stone Barns upstate carry most of the meal, with grains and proteins woven in to support rather than star. It holds a Michelin star, and the room has the kind of quiet confidence that comes from a team that has stopped needing to prove anything.

The menu changes entirely with each new theme, so you might land on ancient Rome or a meticulous recreation of Escoffier's Paris. It's a tasting-menu restaurant in Fulton Market where the conceit is the whole point, and the kitchen takes it seriously enough that it works. A Michelin star lives here. Come curious, leave wondering what the next theme could possibly be.

A glass-walled wine cellar you can see right through the dining room sets the tone at this elegant Saratoga fine dining destination, which holds a Michelin star. The kitchen runs on California's seasons, offered as a tasting menu or a multicourse prix fixe, and the chef navigates meat, seafood, and vegetables with the same easy confidence. The room is quiet and unhurried, the kind where the sommelier actually knows the cellar cold.

The Parker House rolls come out warm before anything else, which sets the tone for what this is: a proper Michelin-starred New American restaurant that quietly ignores its roadside-tavern name. The prix fixe menu leans on impeccable sourcing, and the wine list runs deep into Burgundy and Bordeaux. The room is polished, the service graceful, and the crowd tends to arrive having already made a reservation months in advance.

Berlu is a Vietnamese bakery on SE Belmont where everything is gluten- and dairy-free, and the star is a springy green pandan sponge cake so beloved that its portrait decorates the bathroom walls. You can also buy socks printed with its face. The chef won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific, which tells you he can cook, though the line is mostly there for the cake with the merch.

Travis Lett, who put Gjelina on the map, runs this izakaya on Abbot Kinney with a partner. The room reads warm despite the cool-kid address, and the kitchen leans hard into vegetables, with that section of the menu running longer than most places' entire offerings. The drinks pull as much weight as the food. Named a James Beard Best New Restaurant Semifinalist and on the New York Times Restaurant List, it's the kind of spot where even the clam ramen feels like a considered argument.

A blown-glass chandelier hangs over the bar at this contemporary French fine dining room tucked into one of Midtown's newer towers, and the soaring ceilings and warm tones make the room feel less corporate than the address suggests. Daniel Boulud and his team steer the menu toward seafood and vegetables with global touches throughout. The whole thing holds a Michelin star, which fits the quietly serious crowd that fills it on a weeknight.

Rootstalk is a contemporary restaurant in a refurbished Victorian on Breckenridge's Main Street, the sort of house where you half expect to be asked to wipe your boots, though the plates inside are far more composed than the exterior suggests. The chef holds a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mountain, and there's a chef's counter tasting menu for anyone who'd rather be narrated to than order.

The gilded dining room inside the Wynn was designed to stop conversation mid-sentence, and the food takes the same approach. Wing Lei is a fine dining room built around Cantonese, Sichuan, and Shanghainese cooking, and it holds a Forbes Five Star, a distinction no other Chinese restaurant in North America can claim. The Peking duck arrives on a custom cart and gets carved tableside, which is exactly as theatrical as it sounds.

A red mirrored hallway leads you down into this speakeasy-style cocktail lounge beneath a north Scottsdale restaurant, which is exactly the kind of entrance that makes people feel they've earned their drink. Inside, gold ceilings, red velvet drapes, and live music set a mood that commits fully to the bit. The cocktails lean sweet-and-savory strange, and small bites keep the evening going. Phoenix New Times named it Best Bar in 2025.

A muffuletta reimagined as a rice-noodle dish tells you pretty much everything about what Kevin Tien is doing at this modern Vietnamese restaurant in Penn Quarter. His Louisiana upbringing and Vietnamese heritage push and pull at each other in ways that somehow feel inevitable rather than forced. Pastry chef Susan Bae won North America's Best Pastry Chef Award, and her desserts make seaweed and green curry sound like obvious choices. It landed at #24 on North America's 50 Best Restaurants.

A cocktail bar that calls itself a nerdy cocktail bar, a natural wine bar, and your favorite dive bar, and then has the audacity to be all three. The Old Bay Martini landed it on Esquire's radar and the Spirited Awards named it the top U.S. cocktail bar, but the room itself is the tell: hot dogs share menu space with wine you've never heard of, and nobody in here seems to think that's unusual.

A polished Art Deco dining room on a prime Upper East Side corner sets the register at Café Boulud: linen-and-crystal fine dining, the kind where the service anticipates rather than intrudes. The kitchen, which holds a Michelin star, works from classical French foundations and bends toward seasonal and global ideas without losing the thread. The wine list leans French and the tarte Tatin arrives as though it had something to prove.

Herbs & Rye is an off-Strip cocktail bar dressed as a steakhouse, all brick walls and red velvet wallpaper, with bartenders in black tie who seem unaware the buffet era ended. The menu is sorted by period, so a pisco sour comes from the Golden Age and a martinez from the Gothic one. It keeps pouring until 3am, which helps, since dinner reservations book up weeks out.

The fried chicken sandwich at a cocktail bar is either a cry for help or a statement of intent, and at Service Bar it's the latter. This relaxed U Street neighborhood bar keeps the classics balanced and the housemade drinks genuinely inventive, pulling from ingredients most menus wouldn't dare touch. The Spirited Awards named it U.S. Bartender of the Year in 2025, and North America's 50 Best Bars has it at number 39.

Polished wood, tattooed bartenders, and leather aprons as far as the eye can see. Bar Leather Apron is a serious cocktail bar tucked into Fort Street Mall, and it won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar in 2023, which is the kind of thing that makes sense once you sit down. The menu leans on local, seasonal ingredients, so the drinks read like a farmers market with a liquor license. Go slow; this isn't a round-of-shots situation.

Ana Castro grew up eating mariscos in Mexico City and now makes them with Gulf Coast shrimp, crab, and fish in a Bywater dining room tiled in pastel pink with terracotta lattice walls. The seafood-driven Mexican menu comes with a glossary on the back, which tells you this is not a Tex-Mex situation. It landed on North America's 50 Best Restaurants list and holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and Castro is a James Beard nominee.

Stone crab claws and bone marrow vinaigrette on a classic steakhouse menu is a pretty good summary of what Little River is doing right now. Sunny's leans into the old-meets-new Florida aesthetic hard, and the room hums with a crowd that dressed for it. The steaks come in shareable or individual cuts, the sides include russet potatoes fried in chicken schmaltz, and the martini program landed on Esquire's national list. The New York Times put it on their Restaurant List for 2025.

The line forms before the counter opens, and it moves through a small, no-frills East Austin wine bar and restaurant where the monthly menu rotates by European region, France and Italy doing the heavy lifting. Homemade pasta anchors most visits, soft serve closes them. The team took home a James Beard Award for Outstanding Beverage, and Food & Wine named it Restaurant of the Year. Order at the counter, then fight for patio shade.

Lipstick-red banquettes, dark wood, and linen-draped tables so close together that you'll know your neighbor's business by dessert. This old-school Upper East Side bistro ran for decades, went dark, and came roaring back under the chefs behind Balthazar, this time with a prix-fixe menu of reverent French classics. It landed on North America's 50 Best Restaurants and took a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur in 2025. The frogs' legs got a shout from the Times.

The long wooden bar came out of a Pennsylvania mining-town dance hall and has been anchoring this Smith Street cocktail bar ever since. Victorian paneling, a tin ceiling, and a curtained parlor with a fireplace in the back make the whole room feel like someone's very well-stocked study. The cocktails are precise and the eponymous Clover Club is on the menu, naturally. The kind of place that makes Brooklyn feel older than it is.

Phila Lorn calls it a noodle house, which undersells the ambition considerably. The menu moves through Cambodian cooking, bright sour salads, curries, and cold noodles without much concern for borders, which is the whole point. It's a BYO, so walk in with a bottle under your arm and the cozy dining room feels less like a restaurant than someone's very talented friend's house. Lorn won the 2025 James Beard Emerging Chef award, and the room fills up accordingly.

A chain-link curtain separates the Salamander hotel lobby from Kwame Onwuachi's Afro-Caribbean restaurant, which pulls from his Nigerian, Jamaican, Trinidadian, and Creole roots. The menu is built for sharing, with hoe crab served in the shell alongside plantain cakes, and a crispy lamb bowl that nods to Ben's Chili Bowl. It landed on North America's 50 Best Restaurants list, and the room fills like it knows.

The rooftop draws Adams Morgan brunch-seekers, but the real reason to come is Masako Morishita's Japanese comfort food, which won her a 2024 James Beard Award for Emerging Chef. This neighborhood restaurant has long been a sushi standby, though the menu has drifted into more interesting territory: edamame dumplings with Parmesan, fried mochi in dashi, a shrimp-katsu burger that commits fully to its own premise. The rotating specials and occasional Saturday prix fixe breakfasts keep regulars checking back.

A metal beaded curtain on the fourth floor of a downtown Marriott is not where you expect to find one of the country's better cocktail bars, and yet here we are. The menu arrives illustrated like a small field guide, one drawing per drink. The cocktails run from riffed classics to things you won't find elsewhere, with bar snacks serious enough to anchor a full evening. It won the Spirited Award for Best U.S. Hotel Bar in 2025, and a James Beard semifinalist nod followed.

There's no menu at Bryant's, just a bartender who asks what you're in the mood for and then makes something better than you imagined. This Milwaukee cocktail lounge has been around forever, all dark wood, velvet booths, and Rat Pack lighting that flatters everyone equally. A 2025 James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Bar, though the room feels too cool to acknowledge it. Come dressed like you mean it.

Named for the Thai refugee camp where chef Yia Vang was born, Vinai is a Hmong restaurant that brings a cuisine most Minneapolis diners have never properly encountered. The menu runs from Hill Tribe chicken to grilled lamb heart, and the hot sauces come from family recipes. The New York Times put it on their Restaurant List, and Bon Appétit named it among America's best new restaurants. Every dish has a story, and Vang is usually around to tell it.

The hand-washing station at the entrance stocks Loewe soap, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Korean fried chicken restaurant. Club music bounces off vaulted ceilings while you work through a bucket of gluten-free fried chicken with consommé, banchan, and frozen yogurt soft serve to finish. Champagne is the obvious pairing, and caviar-topped nuggets are available for anyone who finds the baseline insufficiently absurd. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

The menu cites lumberjacks as inspiration, which sounds like a joke until the food arrives smelling of juniper and pickled elderberries. This is a French American neighborhood restaurant on Nicollet, where the chef works a distinctly Upper Midwestern palate, finding fall vegetables worthy of a special occasion without making the room feel like one. It won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant and landed on the New York Times Restaurant List. The pommes dauphine are, regulars will tell you, really just very good Tater Tots.

Bottles line every wall and stack to the ceiling on Doyers Street, which tells you what you're in for at this tiny Chinatown wine bar before you've even sat down. The team pairs a well-chosen, offbeat list with smart modern Chinese food, and the room fills fast enough that tables spill into the alley. It won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2026, which the elbow-to-elbow crowd seems to have already known for a while.

A neighborhood restaurant on SE Belmont where French technique quietly does the heavy lifting behind food that reads as pure Pacific Northwest. The chef has cooked in Michelin-starred kitchens, and you can feel it in the restraint, the seasoning is always doing something interesting without announcing itself. A 2025 James Beard nominee for Outstanding Restaurant, and a semifinalist for its wine and beverages program. Bring time; this is a sit-and-linger kind of room.

Pacific-leaning flavors, from calamansi and shiso to li-hing mui, anchor the cocktail menu at this Union Square-adjacent bar that rebuilt itself after a fire and came back more focused. The drinks draw on Asian and island influences without feeling like a theme park about it. A 2026 James Beard Award winner for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service, and ranked on North America's 50 Best Bars list, PCH draws a crowd that takes its glass seriously but doesn't dress like it.

Burnt orange banquettes and handsome tile floors set the tone at this West University Texan-Mexican restaurant, where tortillas are nixtamalized and pressed in-house and the masa program is taken seriously. The menu runs from roasted oysters with green garlic butter to a smoked pork chop buried under spicy peanut macha. The chef holds a James Beard Emerging Chef award and a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which feels about right for a neighborhood spot this quietly confident.

Thai Taco Tuesdays draw lines around the block at this family-run Sherman Oaks restaurant, where a second-generation chef holds a James Beard Award and runs a monthly omakase that books out before most people know it's open. The rest of the week it's classic Thai with a wine list that gets written about on its own terms. Warm, buzzy, and very Los Angeles in the best sense, which is to say it's completely unpretentious about being excellent.

A neighborhood restaurant in Logan Square that won a James Beard Award for Outstanding Hospitality, which tells you something before you've even sat down. The menu rotates with the seasons, so regulars show up trusting the kitchen rather than ordering from memory. The room fills fast from morning through dinner, and the bar in the adjacent space is a solid solo option. The Michelin Guide lists it as a Bib Gourmand.

Vegetables get top billing here, not as an afterthought but as the whole argument, with meat from the wood-fired grill playing a supporting role. This is fine dining from a team with Blue Hill at Stone Barns roots, and it shows in the precision without the stiffness. The airy, linen-white room suits the cooking's restraint. A James Beard Outstanding Restaurant nominee, Vicia has been a reason to fly into St. Louis for years.

The unmarked door on Green Street gives nothing away, which is sort of the point. Inside, a converted warehouse with wood-beamed ceilings holds a tasting menu restaurant built around a single organizing idea: every dish is either fired or chilled, and you watch the open kitchen run both with near-monastic focus. Chefs serve their own food here, no front-of-house divide. The Nordic New American cooking is ingredient-first, the room is genuinely dramatic, and the clamshell amuse-bouche is as ridiculous as it sounds.

Pink walls, carved bar panels, and Vikas Khanna working the room while guests line up down First Avenue for a walk-in spot set the tone at this buzzy East Village contemporary Indian restaurant. The kitchen pulls from all of India's regional traditions, and the yogurt kebab earned its own mention in the New York Times. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, and no one seems to leave before they're ready.

A converted church sanctuary in East Nashville, which at least explains the soaring ceilings and the sense that something meaningful is happening here. The wine list runs over a hundred bottles, and the bar anchoring the room doubles as a social hub for groups settling in for the night. The kitchen plays it loose, moving between bar snacks and more serious plates. Chef Colby Rasavong picked up a Food and Wine Best New Chefs nod in 2025, and the Times put it on their restaurant list that same year.

The naturally leavened crust at this cozy Mississippi Avenue pizza shop is made with Oregon-grown organic wheat, and the toppings lean seasonal and unexpected in ways that make you rethink what belongs on a pie. Chef Sarah Minnick, who got a full Netflix "Chef's Table: Pizza" episode to herself, decorates each one with edible flowers and whatever's at the market. Save room for the homemade ice cream, which regulars treat as the main event.

There's a karaoke machine hidden somewhere in this Vietnamese restaurant near the county courthouse, and it tells you everything about the vibe. The team runs the place like a party they're throwing for you, with wings glazed in fish sauce caramel and tamarind ribs you can eat with your hands. No stilettos required, no DJ, no velvet rope. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a spot on the New York Times' 25 best Miami restaurants list.

Brass sconces, emerald armchairs, and a terrazzo counter that looks like a terrazzo counter should look if terrazzo counters had ambition. Identidad is a cocktail bar built around Puerto Rican ingredients sourced from island producers, and the menu rotates often enough that regulars have no excuse to order the same thing twice. It took a 2025 James Beard Award for Best New Bar, which tells you more than the decor already does.

Oberlin is a downtown Providence restaurant where locals take their New York friends to prove the city can be chic and still feed you well. The seafood plates rotate, the staff will talk you through the vermouth list without making you feel like a tourist, and the salt cod brandade arrives with grilled country bread. It's a James Beard Outstanding Restaurant nominee, and the raw bar next door handles the wait.

The bookshelves and well-worn wood make My Loup feel less like a supper club and more like someone's very good dinner party. The French-leaning menu reads casual but cooks with real intent, seasonal and confidently seasoned, the kind of food where the chef is clearly enjoying themselves. The bar is no afterthought either, named among Punch's best new bartenders. The New York Times and Bon Appétit both took notice, and it's easy to see why.

A cocktail bar in Los Feliz that treats the agave category as a field guide rather than a menu category. While most bars stop at tequila and mezcal, Mírate goes deep into hyper-regional Mexican distillates, fermented pulque, tejuino, and tepache, much of it personally scouted by the beverage director. It landed at number 28 on North America's 50 Best Bars. The classics framework keeps things approachable; the spirits list is where things get interesting.

A pink cake frosted with prickly pear buttercream and scattered with sprinkles sets the tone at this bakery from Mariela Camacho, a Food & Wine Best New Chef and James Beard semifinalist. The conchas are airy under a crackly shell, and the coffee drinks lean into the same playful register as everything else. Nothing here is as sweet as it looks, which is the whole trick.

Roman pizza comes out of an open kitchen at this spacious trattoria in the West Loop, where Joe Flamm followed up Rose Mary with a full homage to the Eternal City. The pasta is made on-site, the wine list is all-Italian, and the amaro cocktails are worth staying for. Carciofo alla giudia, the deep-fried artichoke the place is named for, gives you a pretty clear sense of where the kitchen's priorities lie.

The gilded accents and cherry-red booths at this TriBeCa brasserie give it the feel of a Dionysian feast that's been running for decades, even though it hasn't. Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson run the kitchen, and the room they've built pulls a crowd that treats a Tuesday like a Saturday. The menu leans classic French, oysters and soupe de poisson and white asparagus, done with enough conviction to earn a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur.

The name nods to a kissaten, the cozy Japanese tea shop, and this no-reservations Japanese comfort food spot fills up fast enough to make that context feel earned. The menu is short and built for sharing, moving through onigiri, grilled yellowtail collar, and a chilled ramen salad with the unhurried confidence of a team that knows exactly what it's doing. A Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard nominee for Best New Restaurant.

A back-alley cocktail bar from Erik Bruner-Yang and Paola Velez, where the food refuses to stay in its lane. The menu riffs on Taiwan and El Salvador in the same breath, papusas share space with gochujang mayo, and the baked Alaska, a Washingtonian dish of the year, arrives under torched Dominican meringue hiding guava shaved ice and whatever surprises the kitchen buried underneath. Bon Appétit named it one of America's best new bars, and the room earns the fuss.

Candlelit tables inside an 18th-century building that, to be honest, should never have stopped being an inn. Clare de Boer of King in the West Village runs this Pine Plains tavern, and the kitchen treats apparent simplicity as a discipline rather than a shortcut. Food & Wine named it one of the top US restaurants in 2025, and it landed a James Beard semifinalist nod for Best New Restaurant. Probably worth the drive from anywhere you are.

House-made pasta and cured meats anchor the menu at this classic Italian restaurant in Bishop Arts, where the kitchen leans on seasonal Texas produce to do the talking. The menu rotates, so regulars rarely eat the same meal twice. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, and the chef earned a James Beard nomination for Outstanding Chef. Book ahead; the room fills fast and stays that way.

Walls plastered with Polaroids and faded Cantopop posters set the mood at this Chinatown restaurant, where the cooking is as high-energy as the room. The menu is compact Cantonese with a loose, playful hand: claypot rice with bacon and sausage, mapo tofu spaghetti that shouldn't work but clearly does. Reservations vanish fast, and the walk-in line forms before doors open. Bon Appétit and Esquire both named it among America's best new restaurants in 2024.

A chalkboard outside suggests a Champagne breakfast, and inside this little bungalow on the St. Mary's strip, that feels like the most sensible advice you'll get all week. Cullum's Attaboy is a walk-in, counter-service brunch spot doing affordable French luxury, think proper omelets, hollandaise, and caviar appearing with suspicious regularity. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, and a James Beard nomination followed.

The menu at this lively Somerville small-plates spot runs Eastern Mediterranean at its core, then wanders wherever it pleases, poutine with fried halloumi curds one moment, jalapeño cornbread with feta the next. Chef Cassie Piuma treats the mashup as a method, not a gimmick, and it holds together more often than it has any right to. A James Beard Outstanding Chef nominee, she keeps the room packed and the menu long enough that regulars still find surprises.

Thai hip-hop overhead and papaya salad that bites back even on medium spice sets the tone fast at this street food restaurant from James Beard Award-winning chef Benchawan Jabthong Painter. The menu pulls from across Thailand rather than settling into one region, so the pad see ew and house curries share the table with Northern Thai dishes her grandmother used to make. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

The chef here built a following on a hand roll cart before graduating to this tight, buzzy sushi shop on Middle Street, where almost everything comes from Gulf of Maine fishermen. Named a Food & Wine Best New Chef and a James Beard semifinalist, Jordan Rubin treats local seafood as a point of pride rather than a compromise. The tuna de tigre, a New York Times-noted dish, makes a pretty strong case for staying close to home.

Garage doors, string lights, and colorful tablecloths in a former parking lot, which tells you exactly what kind of house party this counter-service spot wants to be. The Lao-American cooking lands hard: papaya salad that makes your eyes water, chiles and fish sauce everywhere, and a smashburger spiked with lemongrass pork sausage that shouldn't work as well as it does. A James Beard semifinalist and on the New York Times Restaurant List.

A wood-burning oven anchors the open kitchen at this contemporary Italian-American restaurant, where concrete floors and cream walls keep things industrial without feeling cold. The bread comes from the sister bakery next door, which tells you something about how seriously the team takes the details. Family-style sharing is the move here. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, and the room fills fast with people who already know the menu by heart.

A bakery run by a former artist who, finding no local mills in Oklahoma's wheat belt, simply found a farmer and milled her own grain. The sourdough-heavy menu leans into specials like French onion soup Danishes and ube-blue corn coffee cake, which is either wildly creative or deeply unhinged, depending on your mood. Cat Cox won a James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker in 2025. Open Saturdays, with a line down the block before the doors even open.

Sleek glass doors open onto a room that feels like it's been broken in nicely, with Danish chairs, warm wood, and a bar you'd actually want to sit at. The Musket Room is a fine dining spot on Elizabeth Street where Mary Attea runs a seasonal menu that shifts often enough to keep regulars guessing. Tasting menus come in omnivore or vegan, or you can go à la carte, which is a small mercy. A James Beard nominee two years running.

Tucked into Mandarin Plaza on Broadway, this contemporary Chinese American restaurant and bar is the project of a first-generation chef cooking his own story onto the plate. The cocktail program is serious enough to earn national bartender recognition, so start there before the food arrives. Dishes are built for sharing, the kitchen is open to the room, and the whole setup feels more like a dinner party than a transaction.

Eighty-two floors above Lower Manhattan, this Forbes Five Star hotel puts you a block from the World Trade Center with views that sweep across the Oculus and the harbor beyond. The neighborhood has quietly become a proper destination, with Brookfield Place and the Westfield shops within easy reach and decent restaurants in every direction. It suits the finance crowd and the tourists who want the postcard skyline without midtown noise.

The Jacuzzi room here is styled like a mermaid's fever dream, with lily-pad walls, waterfall showers, and a central soaking bath that makes you forget Las Vegas exists outside. This Forbes Five Star spa at Wynn leans into Asian- and Middle Eastern-inspired treatments alongside a feng shui-based ritual that works through foot, massage, and scalp in one long, thorough session. Plush waiting rooms with fireplaces set the tone before a single robe goes on.

Wood smoke hangs in the air the moment you walk into this Fort Greene seafood restaurant, which should tell you something about how the kitchen operates. Chef Tomer Blechman anchors the menu around dry-aged fish and open-fire cooking, pulling from a Mediterranean pantry that keeps things interesting without announcing itself. The bar draws a crowd that clearly has opinions about natural wine, and the pita alone justifies showing up early.