The Best Places in the United States

This is a brewery taproom on Mayport Road with a wood-fire oven bolted onto the side of it, so the beer comes first and the pizza arrives like a very good rumor. The stouts run dessert-sweet, the slushies rotate, and the menu is short enough to read before your pint warms up. Expect a margherita with a pun for a name, a fig and hot honey pie, and a crowd of beachy locals who came for one beer and stayed for the rosemary parm bread.

Richard's is the restaurant tucked inside the Inn at 500 Capitol, which means room service here comes with actual cannelloni instead of a club sandwich under a steel dome. The menu is Italian-ish Northwestern, heavy on house-made pasta, and the wine list gets taken seriously, with periodic wine dinners for people who enjoy being told about soil. Think date night in a nice shirt, not a weeknight in a hoodie.

This is a Saturday farmers-and-makers market tucked under the Fuller Warren Bridge, running 10am to 3pm, so wear sunscreen and bring cash for jam. Along with the candles and produce stalls you'd expect, the food vendors include a vegan seitan smashburger stand and a small-batch Indian dairy selling mango lassi. Take your haul to the river or the skate park next door, where teenagers will ignore you gracefully.

A lounge-y small-plates spot in Lakewood where the dessert menu competes hard with everything that came before it. The kitchen leans into seasonal Midwestern vegetables with some global seasoning along the way, and the pastry work is serious enough that skipping it would be a mistake. New ownership from the group behind Cloak and Dagger brought in fresh culinary talent, and the room has found a new sense of itself since.

The squat brick building on Webb Avenue smells like Thanksgiving every single day, because Sandwich Board roasts its turkey in-house and has been doing so forever. This old-school deli counter is an Alameda institution, and regulars have been known to walk in, say nothing, and walk out with exactly what they wanted. The Dutch crunch sandwiches are the move, loaded with that carved turkey alongside avocado and pepperoncinis.

Sandwich Hut is a takeout counter in Hope that builds Italian subs and treats pepperoncini less as a garnish than a core belief. The Allitalia stacks prosciutto, capocollo, pepperoni, and provolone under a generous drift of those crinkly green peppers. There are no tables to speak of, so plan on eating it on a walk, wearing some of it, and wiping oil off your jacket sleeve like a rite of passage.

Sarima is a small bakery that shares a room with a burger chain, which is the kind of living arrangement that sounds like a sitcom premise. The pastries mix Filipino and Indian flavors, so the donuts come filled with calamansi and shrikhand cream, and the cookies borrow from kaju katli. There are a few tables, but most people treat it as a grab-and-go morning stop before work.

Naturally fermented dough and house-made pasta are the baseline here, not the selling point, which tells you something about a neighborhood pizza and pasta joint on Larchmere. The chef built a loyal following at a food hall before opening this permanent spot, and the menu stays focused: orecchiette, mortadella pizza, chicken parm, braised short ribs with polenta. Casual enough for a weeknight, careful enough that you notice the difference.

Whole roast suckling pig, ordered tableside with enough ceremony to make your neighbors jealous, is the move at this Spanish tapas restaurant in Ballston. The co-owner, Spanish himself, infuses his own spirits, and the gin and tonic is the kind of thing that makes you question every gin and tonic you've had before. Paella, croquetas, and a raw bar round things out, and the patio catches a breeze when the weather cooperates.

A Cantonese restaurant in the Cass Corridor doing all-day dim sum, which is reason enough to know where it is. Steamed pork buns, rice rolls, chive-and-garlic pancakes, Singapore rice vermicelli, and a hot and sour soup that earns its place on the menu. The room is small and unpretentious, with two- and four-tops filling fast, and the window seats offer a floor show the neighborhood reliably provides. Takeout moves quickly, too.

The kebabs come off a grill tucked inside a Persian grocery store in Longwood, which tells you most of what you need to know about the prices. Beef koobideh and chicken skewers arrive with saffron rice, and you can ask for barberries, grilled peppers, and lavash to round it out properly. The shallot-yogurt dip from the refrigerated case handles any leftover bread. Bastani and faloodeh close things out the right way.

A mounted St. Bernard stares you down from the wall, which tells you most of what you need to know. This old-school saloon in a sleepy mountain town between Snowbasin and Powder Mountain has been pouring drinks since the frontier era, and the cash-only, no-fries-ever policy suggests it's not softening up anytime soon. The staff is cheerfully gruff, the service is slow, and the burger is the reason skiers make the detour.

The chile oil wontons alone have pulled people across town to this downtown Sichuan restaurant, a sister to Sichuan City out in Happy Valley. The menu runs the full range of textures the cuisine is known for: crispy, tangy, soupy, and that particular mouth-numbing heat that makes you pause mid-bite. Order generously and expect your lips to tingle for a while afterward.

Finding dim sum inside a Courtyard by Marriott near West University is the kind of plot twist you normally need a map and a tip from a stranger for. Every dumpling and bun here is made to order, so nothing sits circling in a cart, and the shrimp cheung fun wraps crunchy fried shrimp in house-made rice noodles. There's a tea list and a green tea Old Fashioned, in case lunch needs a second act.

Sliders is a Neptune Beach seafood shack that has been feeding sandy-footed locals since the '80s, and it still has a patio with a putt-putt green, which tells you how seriously the afternoon is meant to be taken. Expect raw oysters, blackened Mayport shrimp, and fried baskets with hushpuppies on the side. Weekend Bloody Marys arrive crowned with a colossal fried shrimp, so garnish is more of a suggestion.

A row home cafe tucked into Federal Hill past the point where the bar crawl runs out of steam. The owners run it with the kind of warmth that makes regulars feel like houseguests and new grads bring their parents here to look like they know the city. The menu covers a lot of dietary ground, and the parklet out front fills up fast at happy hour. Comfortable, neighborhood, and very much a known quantity to anyone who lives nearby.

The name is short for Serene Republic of Venice, which tells you exactly how seriously the team takes the concept. This South End cicchetti bar and trattoria runs a Venetian Italian menu that shifts with the seasons without abandoning the dishes regulars would notice missing. The room skews sophisticated, the kind of place where the staff actually remembers you by the second visit and seems to mean it.

The orange dining room sits next door to a movie theater, which the regulars treat as a snack-supply opportunity. Star Chaat is a cheerful, family-packed Indian chaat restaurant with a vast vegetarian menu, the kind of place where the whole wheat chaat baskets and a coriander-heavy veggie burger keep the tables full without any help from the multiplex. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best South Asian restaurants.

Cocktails arrive in mini bathtubs and disco-ball goblets, which tells you everything about the vibe before you've touched your steak. This is a steakhouse with a set-price format: most meals come with salad, sauce, and a side built in, running from a house sirloin cap up to a 32-ounce tomahawk for the committed. The room is dim and deliberately sexy, free popcorn lands on the table first, and the whole thing is priced to feel like a night out rather than a special occasion.

Schiacciata, the flatter, crispier Tuscan cousin of focaccia, is the foundation every sandwich here is built on. This downtown Petaluma deli, market, and bottle shop loads it with prosciutto, porchetta, or a spicy spreadable sausage, then piles on broccoli rabe or burrata depending on your sandwich of choice. The shelves behind you are stocked with oil-preserved chiles and Italian pantry goods, so it's easy to leave with more than you planned.

Sub Cultured is a walk-up sandwich window in Atlantic Beach, which means you order outside and eat wherever you can find a ledge. It's part of a crowded local sub scene where everyone has a loyalty and will defend it. The pressed cuban and the jalapeno-heavy Fuego Philly get the attention, and the crinkle-cut fries come with grilled onions, cheese whiz, and a sauce borrowed from In-N-Out. The Infatuation lists it among Jacksonville's best restaurants.

An ice cream sandwich shop in Carondelet where every flavor is named after a literary villain or witch, which is either the most charming concept you've heard all week or proof that a Yale degree can go anywhere. The owners built the place around equitable food systems, so the ethos runs deeper than the frosting. Come for something cold and cleverly named, leave having thought about regional food economies more than you expected.

A retro fish camp on Sullivans Island where the Southern tradition of fried seafood in baskets still anchors the menu, though the kitchen under chef Jason Stanhope has broadened out into local fish crudo, fresh catch, and oysters by the plate. The beverage list leans heavily on crisp whites and tropical cocktails, which makes stopping in for a drink and a dozen oysters an entirely reasonable Tuesday-afternoon decision.

Biscuits baked fresh every morning anchor the menu at this casual brunch spot, where the rest of the food takes its cues from homestyle Texan cooking. The limeade, freshly juiced and apparently the whole origin story, pairs with cocktails made from Utah distillery spirits. Hearty salads and from-scratch everything fill out the menu. The kind of neighborhood spot that started at farmers markets and never lost that energy.

A bakery in Old Redford built entirely around one vegetable, which sounds like a stunt until you see the display case: sweet potato pie, cheesecake, cookies, ice cream, Belgian waffles, grits, cornbread, and on. The whole project is a quiet tribute to George Washington Carver and his cataloguing of the sweet potato's uses. Order ahead online if you'd rather browse than queue, and don't skip the black-eyed pea and collard green soup.

Sweet Theory is a small vegan bakery that doesn't make a big deal of being vegan, which feels like a relief. The donuts come in small batches and tend to sell out, in flavors like lavender blood orange. The biscuits anchor a short sandwich menu, including one stacked with white bean sausage and coconut bacon. There are one or two tables, so you'll be eating this in your car like an adult.

The mini chocolate chip cookies have their own fan base, which tells you something about how this casual American restaurant operates. Chef Lynn Pritchard built a devoted following at the original Clive location before moving downtown, and the regulars followed. The menu mixes old standbys with newer plates, the wine list is carefully put together, and the patio catches the afternoon light when Des Moines cooperates.

A trompo of ruby-red pork spins under a blue canopy near the Oakland Flea Market, sliced thin onto tortillas with a technique that keeps the edges crisp every time. This Pueblan taco stand tops each one with a slab of pineapple that pulls the chile marinade into focus. Get there early while the spit is still full. The gringa, a small al pastor quesadilla on flour tortilla, is worth the detour too.

A cart outside a Cardenas grocery store in East Oakland, where the vendor shouts "Tacos! Tacos de canasta!" loud enough to settle the question of where lunch is. Tacos de canasta are a Mexico City staple rarely spotted in the Bay, and this stand does them straight: steamed basket tacos stuffed with chicharron, pollo con mole, or papas con chorizo, pulled from baskets lined in red picnic cloth, with pickled veggies and a chimichurri aioli that overperform for the price.