The Best Places in the United States

Starduster Lounge is a neighborhood cocktail bar on North Main with a pull toward the Southwest, enough that a phone starts to feel like an unnecessary accessory. The side room has peacock chairs with cowhide seats and tiny leaves painted on an archway, so there's plenty to stare at besides your drink. The Marfa Spritz arrives pink and cold. It's on The Infatuation's list of the best bars in Houston.

State Park is a wood-paneled basement bar that treats a flea-market aesthetic and a craft cocktail list as perfectly compatible. A Miller High Life and a smoky mezcal-amaro drink share the same menu without anyone flinching, and the pimento cheese dip and chicken katsu sandwich keep the food from being an afterthought. There's pool, pinball, and a brunch it takes seriously. The Infatuation lists it among Boston's best bars.

StillWest is a brewery across from Snow King, which makes it the natural place to land after the slopes or the Cowboy Coaster, depending on the season. The covered balcony does most of the work, and the Hucklebuck, a wheat beer the color of a grape soda, tastes like huckleberry. Breaded chicken tenders and hand-cut fries keep things casual, and in summer the alcoholic slushies are what half of Jackson is talking about.

A King William neighborhood coffee shop so small that the bar, one round table, and a window counter fill the room completely, leaving the picnic tables outside to handle the overflow. Stranded pulls Proud Hound beans from Cincinnati for a dense, chocolatey cup, then builds a short menu of named regulars around house syrups. The staff keeps the music loud, which should tell you something about the vibe.

A glass-encased grill loaded with imported binchotan charcoal sits at the center of the room, which tells you more about this izakaya than any menu description could. Sumika is the kind of skewer-and-small-plates spot where the smoke does the seasoning, from pork-wrapped enoki to grilled chicken finished with sour plum sauce. The oyakodon, smoky chicken over rice with a barely-set egg, is quietly the thing to order.

A burger joint built around an actual cattle partnership, where the menu maps Oklahoma's regional traditions with quiet conviction. The onion burger is here, and so is the theta, with hickory sauce and grated American cheese and a strict no-onion policy that locals will defend without irony. The El Reno coney, dressed in sweet mustard slaw, fills out the picture. This is a place where the menu doubles as a short course in what this state considers non-negotiable.

A row of light therapy lamps lines the "sun bar" at this Black-owned coffee shop in Standish-Ericsson, which tells you something about both the Minnesota winters and the priorities of the place. The DuBose family set it up as a neighborhood gathering spot as much as a cafe, and the vibe follows through: classic espresso drinks, hot chocolate, tea, and pastries, in a room designed for slowing down rather than grabbing and going.

Sunday Press is an all-day café in Hermann Park with a drive-through, which is a bold amenity for a place also serving butterfly pea lattes. The light-filled room runs on honey sea salt lattes, nitro cold brew, açai bowls, and sandwiches, so you can order breakfast or a salad you'll mention to someone. After dark it turns into a cocktail lounge called Sunday Social, which is the same room with its personality changed.

Sunday Press is a bright, all-day café with a drive-through, which is how you know Houston built it. The menu leans wellness: butterfly pea lattes, açai bowls, cold-pressed juice, plus the pastries you'll order to cancel that out. Houstonia has it on its list of the city's best coffee shops. After dark it becomes a cocktail lounge called Sunday Social, same room, fewer laptops.

A downtown coffee shop and roastery that sources beans from Yunnan, China, then puts Chinese flavors in the cup, like an osmanthus latte or a Sichuan pepper mocha that tingles on the way down. The seasonal rose honey pistachio latte has its own devoted following. There are only a few tables and a wall of beans and brewing gear, so you'll mostly be ordering and leaving, or guarding a seat like it's the last lifeboat.

The sashimi-grade fish counter is the reason most people make the drive to this Japanese grocery and prepared-foods shop in San Mateo. Pick up hand-rolled onigirazu stuffed with Spam and egg, seaweed salad by the pound, or one of around twenty bento options at lunch. Pre-cut sashimi gets discounted toward closing, which the regulars have long figured out.

This is a tiny sushi counter downstairs from a Japanese listening bar, where the walls come with a vinyl collection and the rules come with a certain hush. It's the kind of room where nobody talks over the record, and the tuna rolls are taken seriously by people in dark jackets who have strong feelings about turntables. It's small, so plan on cozy, not spread-out. The Infatuation has it on their Best Bars In Boston list.

The omakase counter seats just two parties a night, each with a dedicated chef and a spread of peak-season seafood arranged in lacquered boxes you pick from yourself. It's a full Japanese restaurant in Dupont Circle that runs from handmade udon to grilled black cod, but the nigiri is the point, along with a specials list that turns up geoduck and cod milt when the season cooperates.

Susu is a steakhouse on West Randolph that borrows from Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and Asian kitchens, so the usual creamed spinach has some company. It also runs a weekend bakery out of the back entrance, where pre-ordered croissants, shakshuka danish, and tahini canele get picked up like contraband. The breakfast sandwich comes loaded with house-made wagyu sujuk, which is a lot of ambition for a pita.

Sweet Hut is a Pan-Asian bakery and cafe in Midtown, roomy enough that laptop campers and long-lunch friends coexist without elbowing each other. You'll pass rows of individually wrapped pastries before reaching the register, and the white baskets are a quiet admission that one pastry was never the plan. Matcha red bean, Hong Kong polo buns, and a bulgogi Bibimbap Burger for people who need a real lunch first.

A rotating supper club perched atop the Galt House Hotel, Swizzle turns slowly enough that you'll catch the Ohio River from every seat without getting up. The menu runs prime steaks, sustainable seafood, and local produce, but the signature move is the 1910 Old Fashioned, served under a cloud of smoke in a box, a nod to a long-ago distillery fire. Retro in spirit, deliberately theatrical in execution.

Sylvestro is a small Italian-leaning wine bar that shares a wall with its sister restaurant, Urbano Cafe, which makes it the easy answer to the question of where to take a date after dinner. The pastas come out of the same kitchen if you'd rather eat here, and the wine list leans Italian. The digestivo shelf is the real draw, deep enough to include a Japanese fernet, so you can digest in several languages.

Tableau is the Wynn's daytime restaurant, a sunlit atrium with a patio of oddly sculpted hedges, so breakfast comes with a garden party you didn't RSVP to. Expect resort prices and brunch groups dressed for photos, some of whom were clearly up all night at the club. The pancakes are lemon ricotta, and the coffee list goes well past black into mushroom territory.

Mesquite coals keep the asada lightly charred and the chorizo properly crisp at this Oakland taco truck, and the tortillas are pressed by hand, which changes the math on everything else. The Villa family runs it Tijuana-style, so each taco arrives wrapped in a paper cone with a thick scoop of guacamole. The grilled meats draw the crowd, but the fatty cabeza with salsa verde is what the regulars know to order.

A plant-based Hong Kong-style bakery open just one day a week, Tai Zhan draws on the baking culture of old-style cha chaan tengs to turn out pineapple buns, coconut cream buns, and laminated pastries made with avocado and coconut oils rather than butter. The croissants and kouign amann hold their crackle the way the real thing should. Pre-orders open mid-week; walk-ins are welcome on Saturdays, assuming you arrive before the serious shoppers do.

Tall Trees is a tiny Ferndale counter spot for breakfast and lunch, where the sandwiches arrive on focaccia or sesame-crusted semolina batards and stand tall enough to need a plan of attack. It's a forest-green, wood-toned room, so even grabbing takeout feels faintly like a spa visit. Show up at peak lunch and you'll wait with everyone else who saw the photos. It's on The Infatuation's list of Detroit's best restaurants.

Tomato nigiri, marinated and roasted until it snaps like fish, is probably the argument you'd make to a skeptic. Tane is a vegan izakaya and sushi spot in Berkeley, a sibling to San Francisco's Shizen, where the rice is taken seriously and the plant-based fills lean toward smoked beets and pickled fruit rather than an avocado-forward shrug. The crowd skews Berkeley in all the ways you'd expect, but the food is doing something more interesting than the neighborhood cliché suggests.

Filipino breakfast plates are the whole point at this Campbell bistro, where every order arrives as a tapsilog: garlic rice, over-easy eggs, and a protein on top. The fried pork hock is the one to order, a full crunchy hock that needs its soy-vinegar-chile dipping sauce to keep things honest. Mimosas come in calamansi, guava, or mango, which feels very right. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top brunch spots.

Handwritten testimonials cover the walls at this Pittsburgh smokehouse, and "a vegan was converted here" is among the more persuasive ones. The line moves slowly enough to read them all, which gives you time to decide between smoked brisket by the pound, tucked into a cheesesteak, or riding on a smashburger. The banana pudding sells out, so order it early and pretend you planned ahead.

Three stories of industrial space with a rooftop view of downtown Houston make Tejas Brewery hard to miss along Summer Street. It's a full-service beer bar where the house lagers, a Clara and a Negra, anchor the taps alongside a coffee porter. Cocktails and half-bottle wines round things out for whoever showed up not really wanting beer. Pretzel bites and street tacos keep everyone from getting ahead of themselves.

An 11-seat sushi bar in the Inner Richmond where the nigiri run thick enough to make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about portion sizes. There's no menu to study; you sit down and eat what the kitchen sends out. The hand-written notes covering the walls suggest regulars have feelings about this. A line forms well before the 6 p.m. seating, so arriving early is less a tip than a requirement.

The biang-biang noodles here get their name from the sound of dough hitting the counter, which tells you something about the kitchen's priorities. This Outer Sunset restaurant serves Shaanxi cooking, wheat-forward and spiced from the Silk Road, with lamb playing a starring role across the menu. The owner, a former photographer from Xi'an, hung the mauve walls with art and a large shot of the terracotta army, giving the room more personality than the neighborhood expects.

The triangular, window-lined room on Capitol Hill was Tamara Murphy's project from the start, built around a devotion to Pacific Northwest ingredients before that was a given on every Seattle menu. The restaurant organizes its global, seasonal cooking into Land, Earth, and Sea, and the roast pig, stewed with Manila clams and chorizo in a smoked paprika broth, has become a fixture worth planning around. The New York Times named it among Seattle's 25 best.

The Authentique is a French wine bar on Gallatin Avenue that went all in on art nouveau: Mucha paintings, embossed wallpaper, and a bar lined with bottles, like a Parisian apartment someone's romantic cousin decorated. The list leans Burgundy, picpoul, and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, with flights for the indecisive. The savory crepes are the draw, especially the raclette one, which makes a strong case for never ordering wine alone again.

The spicy fried chicken sandwich here comes dressed with apple slaw and pickles, hot enough to make you notice but not so hot you regret your choices. This casual counter-service chicken shack on Hayes Street keeps a line at lunch, though two self-serve kiosks move things along. Wings come with drum, flat, and tip still attached, which purists appreciate. Outdoor tables handle the overflow when the compact room fills up.

The Bixby is a cocktail bar tucked inside Long Point Social Club in Spring Branch, with its own entrance and not a single TV, so nobody will be asking you who's winning. The menu runs to fermentation, clarification, and house-made cordials, with a gin drink involving strawberry and kombu. Eater named it one of Houston's best new cocktail bars. Burgers, wings, and Nashville chicken nuggets keep the science project grounded.

The Back Bar's sunsets over Currituck Sound are their own argument for showing up early. This is fine dining with a Southern drawl, the kind of place where shrimp and grits comes with bay scallops and red-eye gravy, and the wine list was built by an actual sommelier. Fancy enough to mean it, relaxed enough that Duck feels like the right setting. An old-school Outer Banks institution that the locals treat accordingly.

The Boardroom is a North Beach sports bar that seems to have more screens than anywhere else in the neighborhood, yet the walls hold surfboards and skateboards instead of signed jerseys, with slushy machines standing in for a trophy case. It feels closer to a casual meet-up than a game-day shrine, so you can show up without a team allegiance. On Monday Night Football the wings drop to 50 cents each, and the honey garlic is the move.

Chimaek, the Korean pairing of fried chicken and cold beer, is the whole point at this Castro Valley spot. Wings come out of the fryer already tossed in sauce, which means the glaze sets into a proper crunch rather than going soggy. Soy garlic and gochujang are the crowd favorites, and the pickled radish on the side does real work against the sweetness. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best fried chicken spots.

A pistachio cream latte spiked with crushed spices and a hint of white chocolate is the kind of thing that turns a coffee run into a small event. This coffee shop inside the Conservatory food hall near the Galleria keeps the menu creative alongside the classics, with an ube cold foam so purple it looks like a prop. Non-caffeine options like charcoal lemonade and a hibiscus-pineapple-cinnamon tea mean no one gets left out of the fun.

Tomato aspic on the menu, and they're not sorry about it. The Colonnade is an old-school Southern supper club on Cheshire Bridge where servers have your order memorized before you sit down and the regulars fill the room like furniture. Fried gizzards share a menu with Gulf shrimp, the yeast rolls demand a second order, and the coconut icebox pie is not optional. The New York Times named it one of Atlanta's 25 best restaurants.

The Commons is an Eastside coffee shop that came with a laundromat attached, a result of the owners asking the neighborhood what it needed and taking the answer literally. You can order a matcha latte or a barbecue turkey BLT while your towels spin, and there's ice cream if the dryer runs long. Expect low prices, flip-flops, and the rare café where "I'll be here a while" is an actual plan.