The Best Places in the United States

Old-timey bulbs hang over leather booths inside this rock-and-roll burger joint, where the menu leans loud and the vibe leans louder. The Johnny Cash Burger piles on bacon, crisp onions, peppers, and barbecue sauce in a way that manages to feel both retro and inevitable. A lamb burger with goat cheese is there for anyone who wants to go funkier. Most people pair either with a cold beer from the full bar.

Bronze Cafe is a casual northwest Las Vegas sandwich counter in a suite off Buffalo Drive, where the menu splits itself almost evenly between meat and vegetarian. The signature order is a towering stack of bacon, bacon jam, turkey and avocado on toasted ciabatta, and the vegan version is a near-twin with coconut bacon jam and Tofurky. Eater has put it on its list of the best Vegas sandwiches, and the whole thing runs counter-service casual.

Perched at Top of the Rock with a patio that faces the lake just as the sun drops behind the Ozark hills, this casual bar and grill makes it easy to stay for one more round. The kitchen borrows a few dishes from the fancier Osage Restaurant next door, so the food punches above the dive-bar vibe. Go at golden hour, find a seat with water in front of you, and order the bourbon Osage Smash while you still can.

Burma Place is a casual Burmese restaurant in Rancho Bernardo where the salads are the main event, which is a sentence you rarely get to write about a strip-mall dinner. The tea leaf version tosses crisp romaine in a fermented green tea dressing with crunchy fried peas and nuts. The samosa salad is for heavier appetites, and most salads run under $17, so wear whatever you wore to work. Eater counts it among San Diego's best salads.

Anthony Bourdain ate here, which tells you more than a star ever could. Burns Original BBQ is an old-school Houston institution serving smoked ribs, links, chicken, and sides in portions sized for people who skipped lunch and possibly breakfast. The 10-pound baked potato feeds 15, which is either absurd or inspired depending on your group. Multiple locations around the city, and somehow you can also grab it at Kroger.

This barbecue joint grew out of a small operation in Acres Homes and now has several locations, this Katy one included. Anthony Bourdain gave it his approval, and the menu is built for groups, with a baked potato the size of a toddler that feeds fifteen and a rib-and-link special named for the Astros. Chicken is there for anyone dodging red meat, and Kroger sells the stuff too, in case a drive feels like too much commitment.

This Pearland outpost of a Houston barbecue mini-empire started small in Acres Homes and picked up an Anthony Bourdain nod on the way to four locations. It's a casual counter-service joint where the baked potato can weigh ten pounds and feed fifteen, which is less a side dish than a group project. Ribs, links, and chicken round out the plates, and you can also buy the stuff at Kroger, in case a drive feels like too much.

Burt's Place is a deep-dish pizzeria in Morton Grove, and the pie is the whole personality. It comes in a pan with a crust caramelized dark around the edges, the style the late Burt Katz also handed down to Pequod's. Anthony Bourdain once pointed a camera at it and got very reverent. The advice is to order ahead, since a pizza this committed to being slow doesn't care about your schedule.

Butcher & Thief is a steakhouse in a Sunset Road strip-mall suite, where the usual surf-and-turf script gets a few liberties. The chops are cut in-house, and the menu also runs to peanut-butter-crusted bacon, cheesesteak egg rolls, and sour cream and onion bubble bread. It's a steakhouse that remembered dinner is allowed to be fun, so expect a dressy-casual room and a check that behaves like a Vegas steakhouse check.

Byrek are coils of flaky pastry from Albania, and they're the reason to find this small, stylish cafe near Seattle University. The menu covers baguette sandwiches, fries, and salads well enough, but the byrek, stuffed with leeks and feta or beef and onions, arrive with housemade yogurt for dipping and upstage everything else. Save room for baklava or a slice of cake from the counter display.

The patio tables along Mill Street are the most contested real estate in Aspen come summer, which tells you something about how long Cache Cache has held its ground. It's an old-school institution serving traditional French-American fine dining, the kind of room where regulars settle into the bar before you've even found your coat check. The frisée salad with duck egg and bacon has its own fan club, and the escargot in Bourguignon butter is exactly what it should be.

Cafe Isabella is a counter-service Mexican cafe on Taylor Street where the griddled breakfast burrito does most of the talking. Carnitas, eggs, and cheese come tightly wrapped, and adding avocado and sour cream is the polite way to make it heavier. A few sidewalk tables exist for the impatient, though the thing travels fine, which suits the Nob Hill locals who climb down from their Victorians still recovering from the night before.

Crawfish cooked wok-style, the way you'd handle crab or lobster in Chinese cuisine, so every crevice gets a proper coating of spice and oil. This Cajun-Asian boil spot in southwest Houston does mudbugs in flavors like Thai Basil or a butter-garlic-citrus house special, and the heat scale runs up to something called Cray Cray, which should tell you all you need to know about who's ordering it.

Renzo Piano gave this natural history museum and aquarium a living roof planted entirely in native California greenery, which feels appropriate for a place that houses a rainforest, a planetarium, and a penguin colony under one roof. Kids can sleep over beneath the stars and wake up next to the fish tanks. Adults get Thursday NightLife events with DJ sets and full run of the exhibits, which is a more interesting Thursday than most.

A chef's counter anchors the dining room at this modern American restaurant on Camperdown Plaza, where the team trained at places like the French Laundry runs an animated small-plates operation and still finds time to stop by every table. When the weather cooperates, the room spills outside onto one of Greenville's prettier public squares. The lamb loin is the kind of dish that makes you rethink ordering small plates only.

This Hyde Park counter-service spot does meatless versions of the comfort food you'd normally eat in a parked car, burgers first among them. The Big Mik takes obvious cues from a certain drive-thru classic, double patties and special sauce included, with the choice of dairy or vegan cheese. It's casual and inexpensive, the kind of place where ordering ahead online is the smart move. Eater has it on its Chicago burger list.

Getting into this off-Strip speakeasy means ringing a football, which feels like a sentence from a fever dream, and then supplying a password you only get by booking ahead. A host in a vest and flat cap works the room while jazz singers handle the stage, and you can request an unlikely cover from the lounge. It's an Italian steakhouse in costume, so the red leather booths fill up with tourists.

Carnitas Uruapan is a casual carnitas house where the order is measured in pounds, not tacos, though a single taco is allowed. The pork follows a recipe from Michoacán, the region that more or less invented the whole idea, and it comes with cactus salad, pickled chiles, and chicharrón. Brain quesadillas are on offer for the committed. The family now runs three locations, and the one on 55th St hosts the loyal regulars.

A refurbished house on Old Shell Road that smells of house-roasted beans the moment you hit the porch. This coffee shop and bakery has been around forever, and the regulars act accordingly, arriving early enough to claim an egg sandwich on a buttery homestyle biscuit before they sell out, which happens closer to nine than you'd expect. The lemon Goodie bar is the afternoon argument for a second visit.

Casa Di Amore is a red-sauce Italian restaurant that also happens to be a tiki bar, a pairing that sounds like a dare and somehow holds together. The room glows red, with stained glass chandeliers shaped like rings of parrots, and the garlic bread comes buried in melted mozzarella. The chicken parm is plate-sized, and in summer there's an outdoor tiki bar out back for frozen piña coladas.

Casa Kenji is a Japanese-Latin sushi restaurant on Allen Parkway where the crudo arrives with stonefruit and coconut, and the ponzu has clearly been spending time with chimichurri. Expect aguachile, grilled octopus under mojo verde, and maki that flirts with caviar. The bar leans on sake, Japanese whisky, and cocktails heavy on yuzu and lychee. It's a dressed-up-a-little dinner, not a sushi-counter hush.

Patio seating looks out over the rolling Ozarks with a sliver of Table Rock Lake in the frame, which sets expectations high before the food shows up. This is an Italian restaurant where the pasta is made from scratch and the wine list is long enough to require help. The chef trained formally and spent time on the West Coast before landing here, and the cacio e pepe and burnt Basque cheesecake suggest he paid attention.

Memphis barbecue leans on the dry rub and long hickory-and-pecan smoke times rather than the sauce-forward styles that get more press elsewhere, and Central BBQ is where you go to understand why that matters. It's a lively, counter-order barbecue joint with four locations around town; the owner tends to post up at this Poplar Avenue spot, handing out plates of smoked meat like a man who never tires of the job. The smoked chicken wings are the sleeper move.

Mirror-glazed, multilayered pastries from a chef whose résumé includes Chez Panisse, Tartine, and Noma, now available at a small South Scottsdale walk-up bakery open Wednesday through Saturday evenings. Mark Chacón's desserts were already circulating through Phoenix's better cafes before he opened this shop, so the crowd showing up already knows what it wants. Top sellers go fast, which at these hours is less a warning than a scheduling note.

Champ Burger is a walk-up burger stand in the East End with no indoor seating, just a few outdoor spots and a line of loyal regulars that tends to be the main attraction. Third-pound patties of ground chuck go for roughly seven to eleven dollars, and the fries are the standard kind. The menu also stretches to vegan black bean and falafel burgers, plus an old-school Texas Size Steak Sandwich.

A former movie theater in the Solaris complex went full Alice in Wonderland and never looked back. Chasing Rabbits is a members' social club open to the public, folding a speakeasy, screening room, nightclub, arcade, and Mediterranean restaurant into one surreal evening. Members get liquor lockers and secret menus; everyone else gets the braised rabbit Bolognese and the satisfaction of finding a nightclub in Vail that actually has a theme worth committing to.

Cheaters Creamery is an ice cream truck that has the nerve to make you drive to it, which feels like a bait and switch until you're at the window deciding between black sesame and vegan mango sticky rice. You can get three scoops with a cherry on top, a milkshake blending up to three flavors, or a scoop pressed between a warm powdered-sugar doughnut. Call ahead, since the freezer's lineup shifts.

Chéri Rooftop is a French restaurant perched up the Eiffel Tower in Paris Las Vegas, which means you're dining in a replica of a landmark while looking at the real Strip. Expect Champagne, caviar cones, and a steak tartare that suits the date-night dress code. The chocolate soufflé takes an extra 15 minutes, a delay that couples tend to find suspiciously convenient. Eater lists it among its romantic restaurants in town.

The spaghetti arrives buried under shredded cheese that stays stubbornly unmelted, swimming in sweet sauce you'd never mistake for Italian. Chibog is a Filipino homestyle restaurant in Daly City where weekends mean families crowded around platters of crispy pata and lechon kawali. Solo diners can work through silog-style meal sets without feeling lost. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best restaurants on the Peninsula and South Bay.

A donut shop in Old Town Scottsdale that leans into vintage furniture and bright walls, making it feel more like a coffee shop than a bakery. The donuts themselves split the difference between cake and yeast, landing somewhere denser and breadlike, which gives toppings like strawberry shortcake crumbles or Lucky Charms marshmallows something to push against. The pizza donut and mac and cheese fritter are exactly as committed to the bit as they sound.

The oldest Chinatown in North America sprawls across 30 dense blocks, and it rewards wandering on foot more than any map can promise. Tin How Temple sits quietly on a third-floor walkup, incense thick in the air while neighbors light candles and pray. A few streets over, the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory folds cookies by hand amid whirring machinery. The lanterns and neon signs are as good as advertised, which almost never happens.

Choice Juicery is a laidback organic juice and salad cafe in Carlsbad Village, with sibling locations around San Diego County. Salads sit ready in the case at around $13, with a gluten-free wrap upgrade for a few dollars more, and online ordering means you can skip the line entirely. The menu is plant-based, so the taco "meat" is walnuts and the cobb gets coconut "bacon." Eater put it on a list of the best salads in San Diego.