The Best Places in the United States

This is a small oyster bar with an outsized patio, parked a few steps from the Wharf's fish market, where the barge bobs and the air does some of the marketing. It's run by the oyster growers whose name is on the door, so the bivalves have a short commute. Weekday happy hour from 4 to 6 puts oysters at $2 and clams at $1.50, which tourists and locals both do the math on.

Reggies is a heavy metal bar and live music venue that happens to serve jumbo, crispy, sauce-soaked chicken wings, which is a sentence you don't often get to write. Rock, rap, and metal shows fill the stage, with the odd cover band, and the rooftop deck runs on heat lamps once the weather turns. Expect fried pickles, sandwiches, and a respectable beer list, plus a dress code best described as band shirt.

Duck fesenjoon with pomegranate and walnuts is the kind of dish that makes you wonder why Persian food doesn't get more attention in this city. Rumi's Kitchen is a full-service Persian restaurant that started in Atlanta and has landed at Westfield Century City, bringing herb-heavy stews, saffron-marinated kebabs, and a menu that reads like a very convincing argument for going somewhere other than the food court upstairs.

Rustic Root is a Gaslamp Quarter restaurant built around fried chicken and waffles, chicken pot pie with a biscuit on the side, and a dessert cart that rolls up before you've admitted you want dessert. The rooftop tables overlook the neighborhood, so book one. Weekend brunch comes with a Champagne-and-berries setup, where you build your own mimosa and everyone at the table briefly becomes a bartender.

Saint James is a French bistro that dresses like an American diner, or the reverse, and the blue-and-beige checkered floor will not settle the argument. The menu runs croquettes, steak frites, and a bouillabaisse loaded with snow crab and sausage, while weekend brunch brings bottomless mimosas and a Comté omelet. Sit in a booth or on the patio, which exists largely so people can be seen on it.

Sam's Place is a wine bar in a Highland Park bungalow with no website, no social media, and apparently no interest in either. Locals arrive with their dogs and split a platter of sausage, crusty bread, and cornichon butter alongside natural or Old World pours. Wood paneling keeps things cozy, weekends fill up without turning rowdy, and the bar steak is there if a snack plate doesn't count as dinner.

Enrique Olvera's Casamata group opened this seafood-forward Mexican restaurant in a space that has been an Olvera address before, which is either poetic or just convenient real estate. Chef Chuy Cervantes runs the kitchen, sending out mariscos that make a strong case for the coastal zip code: local rockfish ceviche, Dungeness crab tostada with furikake, oysters with turnip salsa. Wine, beer, and cocktails round it out.

This is a family-run Mexican spot on the Tigard stretch of Pacific Highway, a counter-service taqueria with a panaderia attached and a price tag that won't make you check your balance. The burritos arrive at roughly the size of a throw pillow, and the rice and beans migrate across the plate like they're settling new territory. A glass wall of pan dulce guards the door, which makes leaving without a bag nearly impossible. Eater has it on its list of the best restaurants and food carts in Portland.

Schneider Deli is a counter-service Jewish deli tucked into the old Ohio House Motel diner, where the midcentury bones survived the renovation and so did the booths. Breakfast runs from corned beef hash to bagels with lox, then lunch turns to pastrami, brisket, and turkey sliced to order while you watch. Casual, quick, and priced like a sandwich shop, which is the correct amount of money for a deli.

Seia is a contemporary Italian restaurant on the 54th floor of a Brickell skyscraper, where floor-to-ceiling windows frame the skyline, Biscayne Bay, and the Atlantic beyond. The menu leans on handmade pastas and seafood, with an Italian wine list and cocktails to match. Expect a dressed-up room of date nights, anniversaries, and people whose phones come out before the bread does. Eater lists it among the best restaurants in Brickell.

Seville is a rooftop Mediterranean restaurant on top of a Hilton, which sounds like a warning and mostly isn't. The menu leans on tapas, pasta, fish, and pinsa, all sized for splitting, so it suits coworkers on the company card and out-of-town friends who just got talked into the Skydeck. The big patio gets you the Loop skyline without pressing your face against glass. The Infatuation lists it among the Loop's best.

Sexy Steak lives in the old Grand Army of the Republic Building downtown, where you pick your own cut from a case lined with Himalayan salt, like choosing a lobster, but for people who'd rather not. Everything is halal, the wagyu runs Japanese and American, and the menu also wanders into Italian dishes, seafood, and oysters. Expect a steakhouse bill and a lounge upstairs, plus a wine list built for the Napa cabs and Bordeaux.

The menu calls them "Sichuan ravioli," which tells you everything about the vibe here. This old-school International District Chinese restaurant has been serving homestyle Sichuan long before hot pot chains made the cuisine trendy in Seattle, and the approach hasn't changed much: big plates, ropy noodles, a pepper-reddened boiled fish that sounds mild and isn't, and portions sized like someone's grandmother is worried you look thin.

This is the diner tucked inside the El Cortez, an old Fremont Street casino hotel, with a menu long enough to need its own table of contents. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and a late-night run all share the pages, and prime rib is the house specialty at any hour. It's a proper diner, so nobody dresses up, and weekends it keeps going until 7 a.m. for people whose night has outlasted their plans.

A tea room and cafe on the second floor of a Bowery building, reached by buzzing an unmarked door and climbing an industrial staircase. Neon gramophones, Togo couches, a vinyl listening room, and a DJ who drops in twice daily to play something like Boards of Canada on a sound system that did not come cheap. The MacBook presence is significant, but the Japanese teas and pastries give everyone a reasonable excuse to stay.

A rooftop restaurant perched atop the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Skywalker Grill pulls its ingredients from George Lucas's own Skywalker Ranch, which is either a charming farm-to-table story or the most elaborate movie tie-in you've ever paid for, depending on your mood. The modern American menu runs from wagyu burgers and lobster corn dogs to chicken tenders served, with a straight face, alongside caviar ranch.

Smokin J's is a casual barbecue joint in the Gaslamp, the largest of its three locations, with exposed brick, checkered floors, and enough flat screens to keep a game in sight from any stool. Meat comes by the plate or by the pound, and the sides include a pork-belly-laced navy bean dish called bean crack. The family platters run up to $300 and arrive with white bread, a group project with a sponge.

Someday is a cocktail bar and restaurant tucked down an alley off Division, so the busiest shopping strip in the neighborhood quietly becomes someone else's problem. The shady patio has a Mediterranean slouch to it, and the drinks lean playful, with basil, strawberry, pandan, and tamarind all getting a turn. Plan on a spritz that turns into the cheese plate, and dress for a first date or a 50th anniversary, both of which fit.

Soraya is a modern Japanese American restaurant on the ground floor of the Federal Reserve Building, which is a very Detroit place to eat a katsu. The menu runs from takoyaki and udon to sushi rolls, plus cocktails built on Japanese whisky for people who'd like their banana and brown sugar to feel like a decision. Come in somewhere between work-casual and date-night, and book on Resy.

A former Silver Lake church became Hotel Lucile, and the team behind De La Nonna tucked this restaurant inside it, which gives the room more drama than most new openings deserve. The menu threads French technique through California farmers market produce, with a Southern ease in how it's all served. A full bar runs cocktails that lean tequila and mezcal, and the whole thing is relaxed enough that you won't feel underdressed.

Southern Chicago is a steakhouse-ish dinner spot in the South Loop where the crystal chandeliers and plush velvet seating suggest the Las Vegas Strip got lost on the way to Soldier Field. The kitchen cooks steaks over open flame and stacks seafood towers, and the sides lean decadent, like deviled eggs topped with shrimp and caviar. Plan on dressing a notch up, and on a lot of conventioneers.

The dry-aged bone-in ribeye arrives blanketed in hot butter, which tells you everything about the register this grand steakhouse is playing in. From the family behind Mastro's, Steak 48 fits Beverly Hills like a bespoke suit, with a seafood tower stacked high and sides that go past the usual (corn brulee, Hasselback potatoes). The room skews dressed-up and the tabs follow suit, but the kitchen keeps the promise the room makes.

Sunday Sauce is an Italian-American restaurant on North Killingsworth that treats New Jersey red-sauce comfort food as a cuisine worth remastering. The decor is a loving nod to Y2K little league pizza parties, which is a sentence nobody expected to write about a pasta joint. It works for a date or a Tuesday, and the lunch menu now runs to heroes and subs, with the Bergen County line debate left to you.

Sunny Hill is a bright, casual pizza place a short walk from Golden Gardens, which makes it the natural spot to sit down once the beach has worn you out. The round pies come blistered, and the Detroit-style squares have a focaccia-ish crust with frizzled cheese at the edges. There are also cheeseburgers and waffle fries, and the black garlic ranch for dunking them is not optional in spirit, even if it is on paper.

Süp is a soup restaurant, pronounced exactly how you'd hope, set in a little bungalow on Virginia Street that used to be a dental office. The stocks are made from scratch, the menu rotates daily, and there are usually six soups to choose from, one of them vegan. Chowder shows up Fridays, chili on Saturdays. Sandwiches and salads fill out the rest, and regulars bring their dogs to the outdoor deck. It's casual and cheap-ish, and nobody makes you feel bad about ordering a bowl.

Metal band posters on the walls and distorted guitars blasting while someone brews the most delicate pour-overs in Williamsburg is the whole vibe at this small coffee shop. The owner sources from Brooklyn's Sey roastery and makes his own blends, and the result is coffee that tastes less like coffee than like the memory of a fruit. The drip is worth the trip on its own if you're not in a splurging mood.

Sushi Ichiban is an all-you-can-eat sushi spot a short walk from the Fremont Street canopy, marked by orange neon and a mural on 6th Street. The roll list is long enough to need a bookmark, running from plain salmon nigiri to a shrimp tempura Fremont roll, with corn cheese on the side for anyone who wants a vegetable-adjacent moment. Service moves fast, and takeout comes at a discount.

Daisuke Nakazawa trained under Jiro Ono, and that lineage hangs quietly over every piece of Edomae-style nigiri served at his Los Angeles omakase counter on South Robertson. The room is hushed and deliberate, the kind of place where you eat with full attention. An omakase here moves through nigiri flights with the optional chef's menu adding hot and cold courses before and between.

Hidden in the valet-parking alcove of a Rodeo Drive retail building, this intimate omakase counter seats fewer than twenty people and pairs its high-end nigiri with wine instead of sake, which sounds like a sommelier's dare and somehow works beautifully. Six seats at the bar, a near-invisible entrance, and enough hush to make the whole thing feel like a pleasant conspiracy. The Valley outpost earned the devoted following; this one earns the real estate.

Taco Centro is a casual Little Italy taquería where birria turns up on tacos, on pizza, and in ramen, which is a lot of jobs for one braise. The menu runs thirteen tacos deep, with a Sonoran one on a freshly formed flour tortilla that gets most of the attention. Churros con tres leches close things out, and the drinks lean micheladas, palomas, and local beer on tap. Order at the counter, wear whatever you walked in wearing.

Tacos El Franc is a Tijuana taqueria that planted its flag in the Gaslamp, a few blocks from Petco Park, which tells you who's standing in line. The trompo-sliced adobada, vampiros, and mulitas are counter-service cheap, and the doors stay open until 2 a.m. on weekends, so it's equally plausible you're pre-gaming or post-regretting. Tacos El Gordo sits down the street, and locals have opinions.

A Tijuana-born taqueria where the trompo of al pastor spins in the window like a lighthouse for the post-bar crowd. You order at the counter, get tacos fast and cheap, then dress them yourself at a salsa bar stocked with radishes and limes. The line looks like a hostage situation but moves briskly, and it stays open until 2 a.m., 4 on weekends, for people with a long night behind them and no regrets yet.

A charcoal-fired street cart in a Silver Lake parking lot, doing Hermosillo-style asada the way it's meant to be done: beef piled onto tallow-rich tortillas with cabbage, guacamole, and a lineup of salsas that demands some decision-making. The team behind it brings serious pedigree, Atla among the past stops. The menu is short on purpose, asada tacos, burritos, and the fixings, and the line makes the case before you've ordered.

The long counter at this old-school Chinese restaurant in the Chinatown-International District has been accumulating scuffs, celebrity photos, and regulars for decades. The menu has been this way forever, and that's the point: beef in oyster sauce, chop suey built on sautéed vegetables, nothing experimental. The owner waves you out the door himself, which is a touch you don't get everywhere.

Takoi is a Northern Thai restaurant in Corktown whose dining room looks like a spaceship that landed on Michigan Avenue and decided to stay, moody lighting included. Much of the produce comes from its own farm a mile north in Core City. The plates are meant for sharing, the cocktails are fussed over, and vegans eat well. Reservations help, and the patio is enclosed, so winter doesn't get a vote.

The menu changes six days a week and gets posted to social media, so regulars follow Tevin Love's feeds the way other people follow sports scores. This Vermont Square soul food and Caribbean spot grew from home-cooked meals sold out of Love's house, and the dining room still carries that energy. Oxtails, jerk chicken wings, and macaroni and cheese anchor the rotation, but the jerk salmon and lamb chops, when they appear, tend to disappear fast.

A tofu production company that sprouted a deli counter, Thanh Son is the rare spot where the house-made soy milk and fresh tofu, sold by the pound, upstage everything else on offer. The banh mi are built to order on house-baked bread, and the glass case of che, Vietnamese sweet dessert, stacks up a rainbow of tapioca, jellies, and beans in combinations that take a minute to decode. Bring restraint, or at least a spoon.

The baristas here treat coffee sourcing the way a sommelier treats a wine list, asking what you're in the mood for, floral or fruity, bright or nutty, and steering you toward something you wouldn't have ordered on your own. This sunny corner coffee shop in Philadelphia is genuinely tiny, and weekend lines of pourover devotees stretch down the block. The za'atar croissants disappear early, so arriving with time to spare is less advice than strategy.

The Blind Burro is a Baja-leaning Mexican restaurant on a Gaslamp block that sits close enough to Petco Park to plan your whole evening around it. The menu takes familiar Mexican dishes and gives them a few upgrades, like machetes, which are quesadillas stretched out to the length of a forearm. Brunch brings a churro waffle, and the all-day beer-and-shot deal was clearly written with a ballgame in mind.