The Best Places in the United States

The mochiko fried chicken, made exclusively from dark meat, is a reasonable place to start understanding what this Hawaiian plate lunch spot in Highwood is about. The chef went from feeding co-workers at a carwash to a brick-and-mortar in what feels like about fifteen minutes. Loco moco, huli huli chicken, and grilled pork belly land on your tray with the kind of confidence that got the place onto the New York Times list of top Chicago restaurants.

The wine cave-like dining room holds over 1,500 bottles, curated by a sommelier who also runs the room. Ellina is a polished Italian restaurant that has been an Aspen anchor long enough to feel like the default answer when someone asks where to eat. Housemade pastas and chicken Milanese hold steady on the menu while the horseshoe bar handles Negronis and the patio on the Hyman pedestrian mall comes with blankets for cool summer nights.

The neon sign and picnic tables say 1960s burger stand, and Falafel's Drive-In has been around forever on Stevens Creek. The family behind it kept the corn dogs but quietly built out a Middle Eastern menu before hummus was something people put on a charcuterie board. The falafel pita arrives saucy and packed, finished with tahini and a sweet hot sauce, and the banana shake has a devoted following.

Gavroche is a modern French restaurant in Old Town, and the burger gets most of the attention. It's a brisket and short rib patty dressed in seared foie gras, caviar, and black truffle, with beef-fat fries, for $55. That tells you the rest of the menu isn't playing it cool either. Expect a date-night room where people dress up a little, then order a hamburger like it's perfectly normal.

The entire menu is gluten-free, which sounds like a warning but reads more like a dare. Jewel's is a breakfast and brunch cafe on the east side of Phoenix where the doughnut holes are light, the tortillas stretch properly, and the waffles hold up under chicken and spicy bacon without apology. Dairy-free, vegan, and vegetarian options run alongside bottomless mimosas and locally roasted coffee. Nothing on the plate telegraphs its constraints.

A glowing Calacatta Viola raw bar piled with oysters anchors the room at this seafood-forward French restaurant in the Design District. David Barzelay of Lazy Bear calls it "big tent French," meaning classic technique with detours through New Orleans and the French West Indies. The room moves through moody lit spaces, plush banquettes, and people-watching booths, and the vibe lands closer to "one more round" than white tablecloth.

A strip-mall address in Chinatown that could be a nail salon from the outside, but inside it's a spare, serene omakase counter where the fish comes in from Tokyo's bay and the sake list runs to two dozen carefully chosen bottles with tasting notes. The room is small and the reservations are harder than they look on a map. Scott Conant and friends have been known to show up, which is the kind of endorsement that doesn't stay quiet long.

A humble neighborhood grocery store in Wailuku where the real draw is through the back, at the seafood counter. Poke here skips the trendy bowl format entirely: just impeccably fresh ahi, hamachi, and tako dressed in traditional Hawaiian seasonings, tasting clean and briny the way poke is supposed to. The pohole fern salad alongside is worth picking up too. Locals fill the counter fast, and they rarely need to look at anything twice.

Vintage Thai movie posters cover the walls at this West Portal neighborhood Thai spot, where the kitchen takes familiar dishes somewhere more playful. Short rib fried rice comes with cured egg yolk; fried papaya salad arrives battered and crisp with dressing on the side. The kaya toast, pandan custard on pillowy milk bread with a scoop of ice cream, landed on The Infatuation's dessert list and you'll see why. Good for families who want something livelier than the usual takeout routine.

The dough ferments for a full week before anyone slides a pizza into the oven, which is an unusual amount of patience for a shoe-box takeout counter in suburban Chicago. The result is a tavern-style pie where even the center squares crack, the sauce runs deep, and the Italian sausage stays juicy. The New York Times put it on their Chicago list. Get there early on weekends; it sells out by 5:30.

The stools, the coffee pots, the laminated menu the size of a small newspaper: from the outside this looks like a classic American diner, until the pupusas and fried plantains arrive. La Cabaña is a roadside counter spot drawing on Honduran, Nicaraguan, and Guatemalan recipes to feed a crowd that clearly knows every server by name. Just maybe check the soccer schedule before you go, because the TV over the bar has opinions.

Arched doorways, colorful tile, and a bar stacked floor to ceiling with mezcal and tequila set the cantina tone at this lively Mexican restaurant in downtown Aspen. Sizzling fajitas arrive tableside, ceviches and Baja-style oysters balance the heavier plates, and the agave program gives you plenty of reason to linger. The frozen margarita is non-negotiable after a day on the mountain.

Lavo is an Italian restaurant that treats brunch as a two-act play. Sunday is the calm one, an all-you-can-eat spread with a towering bread display at the door and shoestring fries you'll keep reaching for. Saturday trades the tablecloth for fog machines, DJs, and bottle service delivered by someone dressed as a banana. Wear whichever outfit matches your appetite for chaos, and bring a budget for either.

The all-day cafe format predates every trend that claims to have invented it, and Le Pichet has been running it quietly near Pike Place for ages. It's a French bistro, the straightforward kind, with charcuterie and wine available at hours when most kitchens are between meals. The room has a Parisian neighborhood feel that doesn't require much imagination to buy into. A charcuterie plate and a carafe have a way of turning into dinner without anyone deciding that was the plan.

The draft beer comes in a frosty goblet roughly the size of a young pumpkin, which tells you exactly what kind of place this is. Liuzza's by the Track is a barroom with a menu, the menu heavy on po' boys and Creole and Cajun stews that rotate as daily specials. The gumbo is a brothy shrimp version seasoned carefully enough that you probably won't reach for the hot sauce, though you will reach for that goblet.

Lux Central is a coffee shop, bakery, and bar that can't commit to one job, and the schedule makes that a feature. Pastries hold down the morning, the bar wakes up soon after, and the egg plates and hashes drift into diner-leaning fare as the day goes on. Plenty of people arrive for a quick latte and are still at the table when the cocktails show up, laptops open, no one embarrassed.

A custom oak door sets a quietly clandestine mood before the room opens into a flora-and-fauna mural that covers most of one wall. This is an upscale Mexican restaurant in Presidio Heights where the chef draws from her home state of Guerrero, running smoke, citrus, and heat through a Northern California filter. Sourdough tortillas, heirloom corn from Mexico, and cherry mole show up together on the same plate without any of it feeling forced.

Every customer gets a free cup of smoky, umami-packed seafood broth the moment they sit down, a small pour of the house Zombie soup and a good preview of why people come back. This San Jose mariscos spot runs three locations around town and does shrimp aguachiles in three colors, each shade marking a different chile. A chamoy-lined michelada handles the heat tax just fine.

A small Vietnamese soup shop on Hyde Street where the bowls arrive fragrant with star anise and lemongrass and the menu doesn't wander far from what it does well. The hủ tiếu nam vang, with its clear broth and shrimp fritter, is the kind of thing people describe to strangers, and the beef stew comes with a fluffy loaf of bread for soaking up the braise. Lunch for under fifteen dollars, served by someone who has clearly made these recipes a thousand times.

The unmarked door is the whole point. Tucked behind the sushi counter at the Venetian, this speakeasy bar keeps a low profile by design, with a full bar, ube espresso martinis, and snacks that skew sharper than the hand rolls out front. Convention-goers grabbing a boxed set to-go have no idea it's back there, which is more or less how the regulars prefer it.

A lunch counter tucked inside a Filipino grocery across from Pike Place Market, Oriental Mart runs on handwritten signs and a stainless steel aesthetic that hasn't changed in decades. The adobo and sinigang feel like exactly the kind of food that connects strangers, which is probably why the wifi password is "TALK TO EACH OTHER." Skip the fish throwers; eat here.

The courtyard alone explains why reservations disappear. Penny Roma is a casual Italian trattoria in the Mission from the Flour + Water team, with handmade pasta and a California instinct for what's in season at the farmers market this week. The room is dense with plants, the focaccia arrives puffed and fragrant, and the stuffed pasta tends toward the kind of richness that makes you forget you ordered a second glass of wine.

Doubles, the Trinidadian street snack of curried chickpeas on soft flatbread, landed in New Orleans largely because of this sunny Mid-City cafe. Chef-owner Lisa Nelson runs a compact menu of Trinbagonian cooking in a room that feels like it's been around forever. The fried fish on coco bread with plantains and hot sauce makes a strong case for the city's sandwich conversation. A neighborhood spot where you order at the counter and eat slowly.

Rare Society is a steakhouse off the Strip that skipped the cavernous Vegas format for a tight, loud, midcentury room with some Rat Pack swagger. It's close enough to spot the well-coiffed socialites and noisy enough that you won't hear their traffic complaints. The kitchen cooks over red oak and sends out a lazy Susan of wagyu, tri-tip, filet, and bone marrow, so bring a card with some headroom.

The marble-topped bar by the window is where regulars settle in for the long haul at this French bistro on California Street. The cooking leans California without making a fuss about it, rustic and careful in equal measure. Desserts come from B. Patisserie next door, which means skipping them would be a genuine act of self-sabotage. The Michelin Guide has it listed as a selected restaurant.

Sant Ambroeus runs the same reliable Milanese playbook it does in New York, the Hamptons, and Palm Beach, which tells you exactly who walks through the door. This sleek trattoria on Main Street does fritto misto, spaghetti al pomodoro, and black truffle pizza for a crowd that tends to know each other, or at least act like it. Long lunches are the format here. Il Baretto next door keeps aperitivo hour going indefinitely.

Counter-service pasta shop in Rockridge where everything on the menu costs less than a glass of wine at the place next door. You order at the register, grab a seat inside or out, and wait for housemade pasta that tracks the seasons, except for the spaghetti, which stays put year-round because nobody has complained. The Sfizio cocktail, amaro with tonic and lime, is a good reason not to order water.

The handmade dumplings and rope-thick noodles in sesame paste have kept this Northern Chinese restaurant an anchor of Oakland's Chinatown for what feels like forever. The room is utilitarian in the best sense: Lazy Susans, communal tables, and staff who will seat you next to strangers when the place fills up, which it does. Order something chewy and don't expect to spend much.

Soto is a Montrose sushi restaurant that made the trip down from Austin and seems to have unpacked for good. The menu leans on fire as much as fish, with salmon that gets a blowtorch and a sea bass left marinating for three days, which is more patience than most people give a sourdough starter. Happy hour is the easy way in, with a five-piece nigiri set for $20, and the Chronicle slots it near the top of the city's restaurants.

Red booths, dim lighting, and dry-aged beef in a Victorian building that somehow reads as a speakeasy for people who take their ribeyes seriously. This is a classic steakhouse with Aspen's wallet fully open: raw bar towers, truffle-topped cuts, lobster tail add-ons, and eight sauces that locals have opinions about. The potato pavés drowned in béarnaise have a nickname, which tells you everything. Reservations open 30 days out, and regulars treat that date like a stock drop.

Salt-and-pepper frogs' legs and claypot catfish steaks are the signal that this is not the Vietnamese restaurant where you order the same three things. Tan Dinh is a family-run sit-down spot on the West Bank, the heart of New Orleans's Vietnamese American community, and the menu goes well past crowd-pleasing pho into dishes that reward a little curiosity. Roasted quail shows up; so does banh mi. The room is unpretentious, the cooking is not.

A lone clothespin near the door is the only sign you're in the right place. This 22-seat speakeasy inside Commonwealth runs on cryptic reservation clues, a red light for walk-ins, and a ceiling lined with antique doors staring down at you. The cocktail menu here doesn't overlap with what the main bar pours, and the vintage Hollywood portraits on the walls set a mood that takes itself seriously, which the drinks earn the right to match.

Toca Madera is a Mexican steakhouse that spends its nights thumping and its mornings dim, candlelit, and forgiving of whatever you did last night. The brunch tower arrives in three tiers and feeds a small committee, and the tres leches French toast goes soft and custardy under the cinnamon cream. Nobody will stop you from ordering a wagyu steak next to your bloody mary, since the dinner menu stays open all day.

Turkey and the Wolf is a sandwich counter at the front of the Venetian's Via Via Food Hall, which means you eat at shared tables with Scarr's Pizza and Ivan Ramen as neighbors. The fried bologna sandwich comes on butter-griddled bread with potato chips tucked inside, and it's large even by Vegas standards. The collard green melt on rye is the one to split with whoever you brought. Counter-service prices, napkins required.

The Caribbean Roast at this casual sandwich counter has a whole legal backstory involving a disputed marinade recipe, which is either reassuring or alarming depending on your feelings about intellectual property. The sandwich itself is pork shoulder slow-roasted into slippery, citrus-kissed hunks, piled onto a Macrina roll with garlic aioli, pickled jalapeños, caramelized onions, and cilantro. Seattle's most fought-over lunch.

A pastry case you have to walk past before you even reach the counter is a clever design choice for a breakfast spot. Vovomeena runs a casual line-order setup near downtown Phoenix with a genuinely neighborhood feel, leaning on local suppliers for eggs, sausage, and coffee. The Pain Perdu swaps bread for banana bread pudding, and the chile-corn Johnnycakes remind you this is the Southwest.

Ethiopian jazz plays low while honey wine arrives, and the room slows down around both. Walia is a sit-down Ethiopian restaurant tucked into a busy San Jose shopping plaza, the kind of spot where the parking lot is slightly chaotic but nobody inside seems to notice. The injera is the vehicle for everything, and the kitchen handles spice with a careful hand. Street parking is your friend here.

An open grill turning satay skewers is the anchor of the room at this refined Indonesian-French restaurant, a genuine departure from the steak-and-pasta circuit that defines most of Aspen's dining scene. The menu runs to lobster noodles, crab fried rice, and charred chicken, all built to share, which makes the format feel natural rather than forced. Bar seats put you closest to the action.

The servers here will gladly walk you through the nuances of vegan cheeses without a trace of condescension, which sets the tone for this plant-based restaurant in Cow Hollow. The menu reads like a convincing case for skipping meat, and the burgers, built on mushrooms and spinach with chipotle aioli and tomato chutney, give skeptics a comfortable entry point. A good first date for the vegan-curious.

A hot chicken shop that started as a popup and grew into an East Bay institution with a '90s aesthetic that nobody asked them to drop. The bone-in and the sandwiches are the move, and the heat scale is honest, meaning medium is a real warning and anything above it is a commitment. Complimentary comeback sauce arrives ready to talk you off the ledge. Nashville-style fried chicken done without ceremony.

A Slovakian-inflected cafe and bakery in Santa Fe that gives you permission to take a morning off from green chile. The small kitchen turns out Hungarian goulash made with local lamb bone broth alongside house-made cakes and pies, and the coffee is good enough to bring in both locals and tourists without anyone feeling embarrassed about it. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist in 2024, which is a lot of recognition for a place this relaxed.

King Sushi is a sushi shop in a tiny log cabin, which is an unexpected thing for raw fish to live in, a few blocks from the Jackson Town Square elk antlers. The rolls go in creative directions, including one that pairs green apple with hamachi and finishes with smoked salt. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Mountain. Book well ahead, since the cabin fills fast and has no room to improvise.

Shredded bison tacos and pashofa, a soupy pork-and-hominy dish, share a menu in a suburban shopping center in Broken Arrow, which tells you a lot about what the chef is doing here. NĀTV is a casual restaurant built around Native cuisine, a tradition barely represented in Oklahoma despite the state being home to dozens of federally recognized tribes. The chef, a James Beard semifinalist, sources from local farms and tribes, and the cooking moves freely between traditional and modern without making a production of it.

A five-course prix-fixe of seasonal Italian, five nights a week, in a room that reads like a neighborhood spot rather than the occasion it technically is. The cooking is quiet and direct, letting good ingredients do the work without much fuss or flourish. Breads and desserts are made in-house, and the antipasti arrive fast, which is fortunate, because you're otherwise looking at a two-to-three-hour sit.

The lamb shank arrives like a main character, trailing spiced coconut and turning heads at neighboring tables. This Thai restaurant in Upper Lawrenceville earns its reputation as a special-occasion room, with a patio that is, somewhat literally, a garden. The massaman curry it arrives in tends to sell out early, so booking a table on the earlier side is less a suggestion than a mild warning. A 2024 James Beard semifinalist.

A rooftop cocktail bar at the Graduate Hotel where the décor commits hard to the wilderness merit-badge aesthetic, think canteens and compasses, while the outdoor patio delivers one of Seattle's better skyline panoramas. The drinks lean into the camping bit without losing their nerve, and the bacon sandwich is there for anyone who needs anchoring. A crowd that skews collegiate but cleans up well fills the space once the sun starts dropping behind the Olympics.

The menu lists grams of alcohol per cocktail, which is either very responsible or a challenge, depending on your disposition. This intimate Capitol Hill cocktail bar is run by an owner who is, in fact, a licensed physician, and who has spent real time traveling the world to stock one of the more unusual spirits collections in the city. Pours come by the ounce or flight, and cocktails run classic, contemporary, or bespoke.

Named for the bustling Jakarta markets that shaped the chef's cooking, Pasar is an Indonesian restaurant on Alberta Street where the snacking is the main event. Coconut rice wraps around shredded chicken, a chile-bright coconut soup arrives buried under fried tofu and tempeh, and the desserts lean toward a crispy banana-and-chocolate crepe that earns its reputation. Bon Appétit named it one of America's Best New Restaurants in 2024.

The pastry case alone could hold up a line: Italian-style cakes, seasonal danishes, oatmeal cream pies, all housemade. This contemporary Italian coffee shop sits at street level of a Frank Gehry condo on Vanderbilt, which sounds like a setup for a joke, but the place is genuinely warm and busy for good reason. Sweetleaf coffee from Queens, a full kitchen running health-ish and comfort food, and staff who seem to actually mean it when they want you to feel at home.

The picture window looks out on a community garden at 9th and Avenue C, and that's about as decorative as this coffee shop gets. Ninth Street Espresso has been a purist espresso spot in Alphabet City since what feels like the dawn of specialty coffee, roasting its own beans out in Long Island City and keeping the menu ruthlessly short. A cookie, a vegan mini-loaf, a bench out front if the weather allows.

Concrete floors, black accent walls, and two arc-shaped bars make this FiDi coffee shop feel like it wandered in from Brooklyn and decided to stay. A multi-roaster menu pulls from a rotating cast of serious names, and the espresso machine moonlights for by-the-cup drip. There's a small food menu, housemade pastries, and, naturally, wine. Laptop seating is deliberately scarce, which says everything about what the room is for.

Yafa is a Yemeni coffee shop on 4th Avenue in Sunset Park, brick walls hung with art and books celebrating Arabic culture on one side and proper third-wave gear on the other. The menu roams past the usual coffee shop lane into slow-cooked lamb and za'atar fries, with a pistachio cappuccino with cardamom for anyone who still wants something to sip. A second location has opened in Downtown Brooklyn, but this is the flagship.

Palomas come in tajín-rimmed Jarritos bottles here, and the bartender's expression suggests you should feel lucky to have one. Sidewinder is a diner-bar in Garfield that leans hard into the dingy-vintage aesthetic, the kind of place where a $3 Bud Heavy and a sloppy joe feel like the whole point. It was opened by the team behind an upscale French bistro, which explains nothing and everything at once.

The rotisserie spit is the organizing principle here: Filipino chicken inasal and pork belly lechon anchor a menu that also runs deep on vegan and gluten-free options, all of it designed to land at a table without a scary bill. Lasita is a natural wine bar tucked into Chinatown's Far East Plaza, and the glowing wine fridge holds Sicilian skin-contact, chilled Spanish reds, and sparkling Portuguese whites. A Monday-night glass or a family dinner both make sense, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

The focaccia here arrives stuffed with ricotta, taleggio, and truffle oil, which a Times writer once described as a quesadilla for superyacht owners, and he wasn't wrong. This rustic Mediterranean small-plates restaurant is the larger River North sibling of a West Loop original that made communal bench seating feel like a good idea. Shareable plates, a warm room, and a crowd that lingers long past the last bite.

The mochiko fried chicken, made with dark meat only, has apparently non-negotiable opinions about itself. This Hawaiian plate lunch spot grew from pandemic-era pop-up dinners to a downtown Chicago address, serving huli huli chicken, loco moco, and grilled pork belly to a city where 60 degrees is not, in fact, considered freezing. The New York Times named it one of Chicago's 25 best restaurants right now.

Carpeted walls and glass cases displaying the day's ingredients signal that this isn't your average dim sum hall. Dragon Beaux is a contemporary Cantonese spot in the Richmond where the siu mai comes topped with crab roe and the barbecue buns have a crunchy sugar crust that makes you rethink every bun you've had before. Save room for the custard dumplings, which arrive looking demure and then absolutely don't.

The Ferry Building and Bay Bridge fill the windows of this upscale Cantonese restaurant and dim sum spot in Embarcadero Center, which feels more like a special-occasion destination than a Sunday cart-and-stamp-card affair. The space runs large, with sun-drenched rooms, intimate nooks, and an outdoor patio. Lunch brings an extensive dim sum menu; dinner leans into Cantonese classics. The coffee lava buns are the kind of thing you'll think about afterward.

The name means "twelve" in Japanese, which is exactly how many seats this NoPa omakase counter holds, with each chef responsible for just four guests at a time. The pacing is unhurried, the nigiri precise and uncluttered, and the room skews toward young professionals with occasion money and good taste in fish. The meal closes with miso soup that makes every other miso soup feel like a rough draft.

A 25-seat handroll bar in Capitol Hill where almost every spot goes to walk-ins, so the line outside is part of the deal. The chef's Nikkei style means cones of crackly nori packed with koshihikari rice and fillings that pull from both Japanese and Peruvian traditions. Ceviches, tiraditos, and small plates round things out. The pace is quick by design, so think of it less as dinner and more as something you inhale with a sense of purpose.

A small Ethiopian restaurant in SoMa where the injera arrives lined with careful, spiced preparations and the meatless plates hold their own against the meat without anyone making a fuss about it. The kitchen leans into berbere and slow-cooked sauces, and the house-made cheese is the kind of quiet addition that makes you order it. It doubles as a community gathering space with deep roots in the Tigrayan diaspora.

The warm Frena arrives with pistachio butter, olives, and pickled peppers, and that's more or less the tone of the whole meal. Okto is a Mediterranean restaurant that draws a devoted Sunday brunch crowd, the kind that photographs first and eats immediately after. The cocktail list gets as much attention as the food, and the espresso martini seems to outnumber the people ordering coffee.

The bolo bao here comes out warm, its lacquered sugar crust crackling under your fingers, and the move is to order it with a pat of cold flavored butter, maybe pandan, maybe salted egg yolk. This Chinese bakery in the Sunset keeps things focused: egg tarts and mooncakes round out the case, but the pineapple bun is the whole argument. Lines form with conviction, so an online order saves time. Cash only in person.

The birds go in whole and come out deeply browned, every slice carrying crackling skin and a soft layer of fat underneath. This tiny strip-mall Thai restaurant in East Hollywood keeps things focused: duck over rice, duck over thin jade noodles, or duck as the salad. The carcass goes into the pot for a dark broth that becomes duck noodle soup, which regulars treat as a second visit folded into the first.

The Omakase Room is a ten-seat sushi counter tucked inside the louder, more casual Sushi-san, so you walk past the regular dining room to get to the quiet part, except it isn't quiet. Eighteen courses run about $260 a head, and the chefs actively encourage you to talk to them and the strangers on either side of you. The sake list is one of the city's biggest, which pairs well with chatting.

A mahogany bar anchors one end while a giant abstract mural anchors the other, and in between, marina lights hang above wooden booths full of regulars who clearly regard this as their personal dining room. Sur Lie is a tapas-style New American spot where small, eclectic plates rotate through whatever the kitchen finds interesting. A James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Hospitality, the warmth here is structural, not performed.

Alon Shaya's first restaurant outside Louisiana sits inside Denver's Source Hotel, and the entrance doubles as a coffee counter before wrapping into a full Israeli Mediterranean dining room. The menu reads like a grandmother's repertoire run through a more adventurous kitchen, hummus dressed with roasted chanterelles, duck matzo ball soup, pomegranate lamb shank. Brunch draws a crowd that knows to arrive early.

The Sunday wait stretches to three hours, which tells you most of what you need to know about this South Indian restaurant tucked into a former Tex-Mex spot on Highway 635. The menu leans into Andhra Pradesh home cooking: dosas in several forms, idli, bisi bele bath, filter coffee, all landing on tables full of Telugu conversation. The New York Times put it on their Restaurant List in 2024, and the regulars looked unsurprised.

The space was a wood furniture showroom before it became a coffee shop, and you can still feel the woodworker's eye in every detail. The team leans into herb-forward syrups, so the lattes run closer to a garden than a pastry case. Phoenix Magazine handed Case Study its Best Americano nod, and the breakfast burrito has its own following. A comfortable place to open a laptop and stay far longer than you planned.