The Best Places in the United States

An Italian-leaning specialty food shop that doubles as a sandwich counter, with crusty bread packed with combinations like fried zucchini and pesto or prosciutto and coppa. The shelves hold artisanal cheeses, salumi, preserves, and breads for anyone who wants to assemble something impressive at home. Been around forever under different ownership, and the new team moved it into a brighter space without losing the plot.

A mirrored, handsome room on a corner that used to be a franchise Mexican spot, now serving wagyu French dip and whole lobster repositioned in the shell for easier eating. It's a polished, scene-y restaurant from Catch Hospitality, which means it looks great and reservations can be a project. Taylor Swift has been spotted here, which tells you roughly what kind of evening to dress for.

The Fattened Caf is a casual counter-order spot that happens to be St. Louis's only Filipino barbecue joint, which means a pitmaster and a Filipina chef got married and the rest of us got smoked chicken rubbed with burnt coconut. The pork steak, a local obsession, comes marinated in Filipino spices over java rice. Grab a rattan couch up front and share the room with strangers, or bring a crew to the big tables in back.

The Finn is a Main Street food hall where ten vendors and a pair of cocktail bars share one roof, which solves the group chat problem of nobody agreeing on dinner. One stall has been doing Texas barbecue since 1957, another presses its own nixtamalized corn tortillas, and a third sends out smashburgers with tallow fries. Order at the counters, carry it all to one table, and let the bars handle the rest.

The Godfrey is a hotel in Corktown with a few places to eat, and the one you're after is Hamilton's, the all-day restaurant on the ground floor. It's run by the group behind Phoenicia and Leila, so the new American menu keeps leaning Mediterranean when no one's looking, which is how you end up with halibut and chips on pea mash and carrots dressed in zhug. Expect hotel-restaurant prices, cocktails, and a reservation on Tock.

A Sunset Strip breakfast diner where the pancakes run about twelve inches across and the menu lists twenty variations, which means the only real decision is how much butter you want on your Oreo stack. The crowd on weekend mornings makes the sidewalk look like a casting call, but the line moves. A casual, cash-friendly spot that takes pancakes more seriously than most places take anything.

The Grill is a sit-down American restaurant at the Wharf, the sort of place you pick when the show at the Anthem starts soon and nobody can agree on dinner. The menu is steaks, salads, mac and cheese, and lobster rolls, a dressed-up cousin of the roadside chain. There's a wine wall with faux wood pillars, and the servers wear formal attire, which feels generous for a burger.

The name suggests a taco-and-enchilada situation, and then the menu shows up with tenderloin cooked in bone marrow and enchiladas stuffed with Maine lobster. This is a Brickell Key restaurant that treats Mexican food as a reason to order the steak, including a 33-ounce Wagyu tomahawk built for a table of negotiators. The tequila and mezcal list is long, and the margaritas lean on it. Dress like the check will be large.

The Nolen is an open-air rooftop lounge on the 14th floor of a Courtyard by Marriott, which is the sort of address that makes the view do all the introductions. It's cocktails and shareable plates, think shrimp tacos and flatbread, timed for sunset with the Gaslamp grid laid out below. Hotel guests, visitors, and locals with a free evening settle in here, and happy hour and weekend brunch each get their own menu.

The Parlour is a casual Fremont East breakfast-and-coffee spot where the espresso martini and the spiced chai coffee cocktail sit comfortably beside the sugary lattes. There's a syphon coffee rig that brews your cup tableside, in case you wanted your caffeine to feel like a chemistry demo. The dining room is a happy pile of mismatched chairs and tchotchkes, with a deep vegan menu and burgers under $10 on weekend evenings.

The Roost is a Capitol Hill food hall where you order from your phone and the food finds you, which spares everyone the usual tray-and-buzzer shuffle. Under one roof you get Cameo Coffee, Hi-Fi Taco, and a craft beer bar pouring Bluejacket brews. There's also Caruso's Grocery, a sit-down red sauce joint with faded red booths and chicken Parmigiana, doing a convincing impression of a place your grandfather had a table at.

A post-fire renovation gave this Abbot Kinney neighborhood restaurant a fresher face, but the kitchen's restless energy is the same. Chef Casey Lane shops the farmers market in the morning and writes the menu by evening, so the charcoal-kissed dishes you order barely existed as an idea at breakfast. Pasta, whole fish, and whatever looked good at the stalls that day fill a room that Venice locals treat as a standing appointment.

Thim Hing is a cash-only bánh mì counter where people leave carrying sandwiches by the armload, as if provisioning for a long voyage. Around lunch, trunks get loaded with plastic bags of the stuff. The baguette runs rail-thin and loud when you bite it, which means more crunch per square inch than the usual loaf. Bring cash, order for everyone you know, and expect to be the slowest person in line.

The front window is how you order, the aguas frescas are poured cold, and the adobada is quietly the whole argument for coming. This Echo Park taqueria is a branch of a Tijuana original, serving the usual lineup of proteins as tacos, mulitas, burritos, and vampiros. It landed on Eater's hottest new restaurants list, which tracks, given how fast the neighborhood found it. First-timers are pointed toward the adobada, and regulars tend to agree.

This is a dim sum restaurant in Katy Asian Town, part of the chain that earned the "world's least expensive Michelin-starred restaurant" nickname back in Hong Kong. The baked char siu buns, sweet and crackly on top, are what the room orders first. The dining room is big and booth-lined, with a bar off to the side that gives it a faint sports-bar energy. Nobody dresses up for this, and the check stays modest.

True Food Kitchen is a bright, casual daytime-to-dinner spot in Downtown Summerlin where the menu has a ready answer for every dietary restriction at the table. That makes it the group-chat compromise that actually gets approved. Expect yoga leggings still in circulation, a lineup of bowls, salads, and sourdough pizza, and fried chicken that skips the gluten and the deep fryer. The flourless chocolate cake closes things out.

Tú Lan is a no-frills Vietnamese counter-service spot on Mid-Market that has been feeding the neighborhood for what feels like forever. Lunchtime means office workers grabbing takeout while a few people eat at the back tables. The imperial rolls arrive loud and crackling, and the pho, rice plates, and vermicelli bowls are sized for a second meal. You leave with leftovers and change from a twenty.

UFO Bar is a Corktown indie music bar that doubles as a hot dog stand, which is a less strange pairing than it sounds at midnight. The weenies come topped with elotes or kimchi, with halal beef or vegan sausage as the base, and the kitchen is a food truck's worth of ambition. Shows and events run most nights, and when the weather cooperates, everyone drifts up to the rooftop. Eater lists it among Corktown's best.

Vaca is a polished Spanish restaurant by the FIGat7th mall, an Orange County import that landed where the consultants and the company cards are. Tapas like gambas al ajillo and croquetas start around $20, ribeyes and paellas run much larger, and the steaks climb past $100. It suits a client dinner, a power lunch, or a parent you'd like to impress. Wear the good blazer, and let the expense report take the hit.

Vino & Vinyl is a wine bar in Sugar Land's Town Center that also happens to be a record shop, so you can flip through used LPs while someone pours you a glass. The menu runs to charcuterie boards, flatbreads, and heartier plates like steak tacos and braised short ribs. Happy hour is generous with its days, covering all of Tuesday plus late afternoons later in the week, which suits the unhurried, turntable-adjacent pace.

Vino Carta is a wine bar that doubles as a bottle shop at the north end of Little Italy, so you can drink a glass here or walk out with something for later. The shelves run to hundreds of bottles, heavy on natural, orange, and sparkling from small family producers. There's a monthly wine club, plus food pop-ups and the occasional DJ night, which is a lot of ambition for something that started as a place to buy wine.

Warung Indo is a casual strip-mall Indonesian spot in Sugar Land, one of only two in the Houston area, which explains why homesick Indonesians treat it like a embassy with better lunch hours. The menu runs through the national greatest hits, nasi campur and nasi goreng among them, plus a turmeric-gold chicken soup for bad days. Order the pandan-and-coconut cendol to drink, and bring cash-register-line patience.

Water Grill is an upscale seafood restaurant in the Gaslamp, where live tanks of lobster and crab sit in the dining room like a very polite audition. The leather booths and nautical wood paneling suggest a nice dinner, not a casual one. The oyster list pulls from across the country and into Mexico, and whole fish come charcoal-grilled or oven-roasted. It holds AAA's Three Diamonds, so a collared shirt wouldn't hurt.

Lobster rolls come two ways here, cold New England-style or warm with butter, which tells you most of what you need to know about West Side Oyster Club. It's a casual seafood spot on Ocean Avenue doing clam chowder bread bowls, fried oysters, shrimp tacos, and po'boys in a room dressed in rustic wood and white tile, the whole thing quietly pretending the Pacific isn't right outside.

Sand coffee brewed over heated sand until frothy is the move here, and Yala is one of the only coffee shops in the city serving it. The Middle Eastern cafe on Sunset leans into fig matcha lattes and espresso-apricot tonics alongside the traditional stuff. It shares a block with a natural wine bar and a flea market, so the sidewalk patio fills with the kind of Silver Lake crowd that has strong opinions about both coffee and vintage denim.

Yi Cha means "second round" in Korean, which tells you the plan: show up already fed and keep going. It's a Korean gastropub on North Figueroa, doing pub food with a Korean American accent, like nachos piled with ginger-braised pork and chicken wings in gochujang Buffalo sauce. The cocktails run toward lychee and soju, and the bubbling gamjatang is a fine reason to ignore your original dinner plans.

A former bike shop on York Boulevard that now runs eggs and cocktails out of the same kitchen, Zero Fox is a family-owned all-day cafe and bar doing brunch in the morning and burgers after the sun dips. The menu shifts by the hour: chilaquiles and hot honey chicken and waffles give way to nachos and wings, with aguas frescas on one end and a chile-rimmed Foxirita on the other.

The original 1930s wooden beams, plastered over for decades while the building housed a scooter-rental shop, are visible again here. Zigu is a modern izakaya tucked into the ground floor, running a menu of small plates, tempura, and sushi with local touches woven through: mochiko fried chicken, kale noodles, green papaya rolls. Waikiki usually does loud and obvious; this room does quiet and considered.

Zom Tum is a casual Thai and Laotian spot on Capitol Hill, set in the old Joselito space, with a papaya salad station right at the door so you meet the main attraction before you meet a host. The name is a playful spin on "som tom." Curries come from a longtime D.C. Thai restaurateur, and a bar pours craft Thai beers and whisky. Daily happy hour covers spring rolls, wontons, and wine, an unusual trio.