The Best Places in the United States

This is a counter-service breakfast sandwich shop that came up from Los Angeles and now collects sleepy tourists in a line that wraps around the building from early morning until noon. The sandwiches are warm, built to be carried, and priced like a sensible meal in a town that prefers otherwise. Eggs go on brioche or baguette, sometimes with steak, and nobody inside is dressed for anything beyond the walk back to the Strip.

The floor-to-ceiling windows face the Bay, and if you time it right you'll be watching the sunset over the Golden Gate while eating wild mushroom gumbo. This old-school vegetarian restaurant at Fort Mason has been around forever, loosely affiliated with the San Francisco Zen Center, which explains why the dining room feels so unusually calm. The menu takes a global approach, and a vegetarian can order anything on it without scanning for fine print.

The dining room is painted red, yellow, and blue, Colombia's flag colors, which tells you something about what's coming. Mägo is a fine dining tasting menu spot in Oakland where the vibe skews deceptively loose, Latin pop drifts through the room, and the cooking traces the chef's Colombian roots through arepas, fried yuca, and corn pancakes, all finished over a wood-burning hearth with a steering-wheel crank. Pretension-free tasting menus are rarer than they should be.

A seafood truck parked at a gas station on Alum Rock, and the San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top Mexican and seafood spots. The heat runs twelve levels deep, and the team quietly suggests you stop at three. There's no menu, just a base of shrimp that grows as you add octopus, scallops, and sea snails. The aguachile will make your eyes water in a way that somehow doesn't make you stop eating it.

Hammered metal tiles line the ceiling and cookbooks fill the shelves at this daytime cafe on Petaluma's waterfront, where the menu runs through Eastern Mediterranean breakfast and lunch that shifts with the seasons. The Jerusalem-style bagels, looped long and chewy, are made in-house. Turkish coffee comes spiced with cardamom and cinnamon. Gratuity is built into the prices, which saves you the math and explains the sticker shock.

Cash only, no website, a line down Polk Street, and they open at eight in the morning if you'd rather eat crab than sleep. Swan is an old-school seafood counter, marble-topped and tight on stools, where the Dungeness arrives cracked and the raw bar runs to sea urchin when they have it. The noise is mostly shells and sourdough. San Francisco Chronicle calls it a classic for a reason, but the line will convince you faster.

The snap and sizzle of turmeric-stained fish on tabletop grills greets you the moment you walk into this bustling Vietnamese restaurant. The chả cá is the move: thick fillets over dill and scallions, smoky from the grill, served with rice paper and fixings for a roll-your-own situation at the table. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top Vietnamese spots, and the room full of families who never need a menu makes the case quietly but firmly.

The fish is in there somewhere, buried under a brick-red avalanche of dried chiles you have to ladle aside to find it. This Chinatown Sichuan restaurant is famous for that má-là one-two punch, the numbing tingle of peppercorns chasing the heat of the peppers, and the hour-long wait out front suggests the neighborhood has opinions about it. When Dungeness crab is in season, it arrives stir-fried with salted egg yolk.

A worker-owned collective in the Gourmet Ghetto, Cheese Board bakes one vegetarian sourdough pizza per day, rotating with the seasons, and you either want it or you don't. You probably want it. The line wraps around the block most days, but it moves fast, and the green sauce, herby and quietly ferocious, is non-negotiable. Grab a slice, claim a parklet table, and settle into the reliably frenetic sidewalk energy Berkeley does so well.

A family-run taqueria that operates out of an actual home and specializes in tacos al vapor, steamed beef head tacos in five cuts, from cachete to the gloriously fatty labio. The consomé, simmered from cow skull, arrives velvety and shimmering and pulls double duty as a dipper or a hangover cure. Weekend mornings bring goat birria and menudo. Cash, counter service, no fuss.

A French bistro tucked into a working Sausalito shipyard, where the servers wear mechanic coveralls and the menu runs to escargot, frisée with lardons, and quiche. The theme commitment is complete enough to feel charming rather than corny. Patio tables face the water and fill fast, which is the whole point, so book ahead if you're coming with a group and hoping to eat outside.

A cilantro aioli that the team describes as the shop's green sauce equivalent ties together every bánh mì on the menu here, a small downtown San Jose sandwich counter with house-made bread and a thing for Italian porchetta as a filling. String lights are about the extent of the decor, which is fine, because the room is easygoing and the sandwiches are doing the decorating. The San Francisco Chronicle has flagged it among the top Vietnamese spots in the Bay Area.

The menu changes every week at this small Vietnamese deli in Oakland's Fruitvale neighborhood, which keeps regulars coming back to see what chef Paulette Tran is up to. Banh mi are a constant, stuffed differently each time, and a beef rice porridge with ginger and green onions turns up often enough to be considered a regular. The room has plants, local embroidery, and a TV looping Vietnamese street vendors on infinite repeat.

Hand-pulled noodles in every thickness the kitchen can justify anchor the menu at this spacious Uyghur restaurant in downtown Menlo Park, the kind of place where pots of mint tea and flaky meat pastries share the table before you've made up your mind. The cuisine comes from Xinjiang, sitting somewhere between Central Asian and Chinese, and the room fills with long communal tables that make it feel like a feast even on a Tuesday.

Rows of cloudy jars exhaling tiny bubbles line the production kitchen at this small-batch pickle shop and weekend rice-bowl counter in Berkeley. Saturday and Sunday bring a three-course menu built around a maximalist rice bowl piled with the shop's latest ferments: kimchis, citrusy pickles, miso-braised greens. Drinks run to yuzu kombucha or warm ginger amazake. It may be the most Berkeley restaurant of all time, which is saying something.

The view from certain rooms takes in both Biscayne Bay and the cruise port, which tells you exactly where you are in Miami. This is a big, renovated downtown hotel that shed its conference-center soul after a recent overhaul and now pitches itself as a legitimate vacation base. Bayfront Park is right outside for morning runs, and the cultural district is walkable. A solid pick if you want downtown proximity without retreating to South Beach.

Dimmi Dimmi is a corner Italian spot in Lincoln Park that took over a three-decade neighborhood fixture and somehow kept the regulars from rioting. The tavern-style pizzas have crackly edges and come cut in squares, and the handmade pastas hold their own beside them. It's a sit-down dinner, so book ahead, or try your luck at a weekday lunch, which is when the people who know things tend to walk in.

A Mexican café tucked into a shopping center that most people would drive past without a second look, though the tables spilling outside on weekends suggest others have figured it out. Pan dulce comes straight from the display case, the migas and huevos rancheros are the kind of thing you come back for on a bad Tuesday, and the cinnamon coffee is its own reason to show up. Cash-register Spanish, homey enough to linger.

Original Joe's is an old-school Italian-American red-sauce house in North Beach, all leather booths and portions sized for people who plan to eat leftovers tomorrow. The menu runs from pasta to steaks to burgers, so a table of eight with eight different moods can all find something. It has been family-run forever, which explains why a preteen sulking in the corner booth barely draws a glance. Prices are fair, and no one dresses up.

Sam Wo has been around forever, which in San Francisco's Chinatown means it has survived earthquakes, closures, new ownership, and the slow creep of chow mein tourists. It's an old-school Cantonese noodle house where the move is the steamed rice rolls stuffed with char siu, served with a swipe of hot mustard that will clear your sinuses immediately. The tea program has gotten an upgrade, with oolongs and pu-erhs now on offer, though the rice porridge with fried doughnut remains unchanged and deeply comforting.

This is a counter-service pasta spot on Bryant Street whose menu stops at pasta, a seven-layer chocolate cake, and wine, which is about as many decisions as a weekday afternoon can handle. There's a corner of secondhand cookbooks to browse while a bowl of sausage ragu cools slightly. It suits two friends with nowhere to be and a shared reluctance to check email. Prices stay casual, and so does the dress code.

A photo wall of Diana Taurasi greets you at the door, which tells you everything about what kind of sports bar this is. Planted in Phoenix's Melrose district, Title 9 is a beer bar and grill built around women's athletics, with imagery spanning players to sports journalists across every wall. The color palette reads as a quiet nod to the lesbian pride flag, a detail that fits the neighborhood perfectly.

Enormous screens cover the top half of a high-ceilinged room, with smaller ones tiling every corner so there is no bad angle on the game. Backyard is a sports bar and casual eats spot in north Phoenix, with a long beer list, wings, burgers, and pizza keeping things low-key. There is also a dog park on the premises, because apparently watching the game while your dog runs laps was a need that went unmet for too long.

The mahjong lounge in back tells you everything about the vibe at this Penn Quarter American Chinese sit-down. The menu runs from crab rangoon spiked with Old Bay to mapo tofu that takes the spice seriously, and the Chongqing chicken arrives buried in chilies as a statement of intent. Fresh noodles and leek fondue give the lo mein a comfort-food pull that's hard to argue with. Fun, loud, and not pretending to be anything else.

The looming white-domed oven is the centerpiece of this tiny Astoria storefront, which has the brisk pace of a slice shop but the latticed oriel windows and warm arabesques of a Cairo street. It specializes in feteer, flaky layered pies pressed with ghee and folded around fillings, the basturma version packed with heavily garlicked air-dried beef. The New York Times named it among New York's 100 best restaurants. Steinway Street already has its Little Egypt; now it has a destination.

On the shores of Lake Sunapee, this boutique hotel from the Lark Hotels group sits just outside Newbury with a look that's rustic without being shabby and modern without feeling like it was dropped from a city. The rooms lean into the landscape rather than apologizing for it, and the adventurous streak suits the area's hiking, skiing, and lake life. A Michelin Selected Hotel, and the kind of New Hampshire weekend that's easier to pitch than to explain.

The slogan "a friendly place for nice people" has been the house philosophy here for a long time, which either sounds like a joke or the most disarming resort pitch imaginable. This old-school Catskills property has been around forever, predating the whole Borscht Belt wave, and carries a genuinely laissez-faire looseness that most boutique hotels only pretend to. The rooms and grounds feel like a throwback, but not a dusty one.

Roman & Williams designed this boutique hotel inside an old sea captain's house in the center of Nantucket, which tells you something about the ambition level. The rooms are full of considered detail that sidesteps the navy-and-rope aesthetic the island tends to default to. The restaurant, Via Mare, runs a Venetian-inspired menu from a chef with a serious New York pedigree.

A former foundry gets the full boutique hotel treatment here, and the bones are too good to cover up. Exposed brick, iron details, and custom wood furnishings do the heavy lifting, giving rooms a look that somehow reads more handsome than self-conscious about it. A steakhouse sits just off the lobby, and the surrounding blocks of Beloit fill out the rest. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

A Victorian boarding house that's been around forever sits on 55 lakefront acres in the Catskills, now running as a 22-room boutique hotel with ten freestanding bungalows and a private cottage. Rooms mix modern and vintage touches with knowing nods to the old house, while the bungalows add gas stoves for the months when the Catskills remind you they mean it. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

The original denim mill brickwork and oversized wood beams stayed; the graffiti did not. This boutique hotel in Athens occupies a beautifully salvaged industrial building, where the team layered in hand-laid marble, travertine, and custom metalwork without smothering what was already there. Fifty rooms have full-height windows and botanical tones. Downstairs, the Italian kitchen packs the house on Tuesday nights, which in a college town is its own kind of endorsement.

A Greek Revival sea captain's house in the heart of Nantucket's historic district, a few blocks from the water but mercifully clear of the cobblestone crowds. The Blue Iris is a twelve-room boutique hotel with Mediterranean and Portuguese bones rather than the usual nautical clichés, so the mood leans whitewashed and warm. Rain showers and Le Labo products signal the level of care baked into each room.

Thirty-seven acres of unspoiled cliffside on the Mendocino Coast is the kind of real estate that makes you understand why Californians are so insufferable about California. This resort has been around forever, and a recent renovation kept the wooden rafters while adding clean, modern rooms, each with a private patio and most with ocean views. A wood-burning fireplace handles the chilly nights, and trails through gardens and forest handle the days.

The last original historic hotel still standing in downtown Grand Junction, the Melrose leans hard into moody Western: navy walls, brass sconces, iron bed frames, and mounted antlers doing the decorating. There's no front desk, just keyless entry and a digital concierge, which keeps the vibe high and the awkward check-in small talk nonexistent. Melrose Spirit Co., a tiki-inflected cocktail bar on-site, is a genuinely odd and welcome surprise. Colorado National Monument is right there.

Sand and taupe tones, channeled headboards, and soaker tubs give the rooms a polished residential calm that's rare in a city hotel. The Kindler is a boutique hotel that brought Lincoln its first proper independent address, and it shows in the details: art-forward interiors, an honor bar, and Salon Suites with actual living room space. Downtown Lincoln is right outside the door, and there's a bar program worth staying in for.

Every room at this small boutique hotel comes with a custom surfboard rack, which tells you most of what you need to know. The Sitio sits inside Atlantic Park, Virginia Beach's new mixed-use district, with direct access to a surf lagoon that lets guests paddle out regardless of swell. Twenty spare rooms use natural textiles and wide windows; seven have balconies over the water. Pharrell Williams, an Atlantic Park partner, curated the rotating playlists.

Suttle Lake sits in Deschutes National Forest, and this lakeside lodge from the team behind Ace Hotel Portland uses that setting as a reason to try harder, not coast on it. The design, food, and drinks feel more like a considered Portland project than a rustic forest retreat, which makes the surrounding pines and water feel like a bonus rather than the whole plan. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

A whaling captain's house from the 1800s, Union Street Inn is a 12-room boutique hotel that somehow pulls off French interiors alongside Nantucket maritime without it feeling like a theme park. Frette linens, Tivoli radios, and a breakfast that locals talk about in hushed, reverent tones. Close enough to Main Street and the harbor to be convenient, far enough to stay quiet.

Amador is a Spanish-leaning dinner spot in a Chinatown strip mall where parking is more of a rumor than a policy. Every table gets five house salsas with tiny spoons and droppers, so you'll be dosing your own food like a very delicious science project. You can graze through margaritas and croquetas before karaoke next door, or commit to the tasting menu. It's been on The Infatuation's list of the 25 best restaurants in Las Vegas.

Loaves lined up on shelves like a carb library, pastries under glass, and a window straight into the breadmaking operation: Backhaus is a downtown San Mateo bakery and coffee shop that takes laminated dough seriously. The croissants lean toward the ornate, one arrives garnished with pistachios and raspberry as a preview of what's inside. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best bakeries and best coffee.

Vegan Japanese in the Mission, where the menu reads like an argument that tofu never needed meat to earn its place. Cha-Ya has been around forever, with roots in Berkeley's produce-obsessed dining scene, and the cooking stays rustic and unfussy: brothy soups, deep-fried tofu in mushroom-seaweed dashi, sushi rolls packed with pickled and steamed vegetables. Sidewalk tables if you want to watch Valencia Street do its thing.

A low-key sushi bar in SoMa where the omakase swings from spicy tuna rolls to herb-crusted lamb chops, which tells you something about the kitchen's ambitions. The menu covers crowd-pleasing maki and rice bowls for the neighborhood regulars, but the longer tasting format is where things get interesting. The service is warm enough that people treat it like their local, and apparently that's exactly what it is.

James Syhabout of Commis runs this casual Thai-inflected counter spot in Temescal, where the menu swings between a spicy chicken sandwich lacquered in Thai chile oil and garlic noodles that somehow taste like a Bay Area institution. The cooking splits the difference between street food and comfort food, and it does so without making a big deal about it. Cash-friendly prices, a busy room, and nothing on the menu that needs a long explanation.

Cardamom buns, jumbo jam thumbprints, and gingery caramel cookies set the tone at this Scandinavian café and bakery on Market Street. The menu leans seasonal, with tartines on sprouted rye and both sweet and savory porridges, but the flaky seed-topped pastry stuffed with soft scrambled eggs and molten havarti is what brings people back. Grab a sidewalk table and let the Market Street parade do its thing.

A glass case of choux, pâté en croûte, and individual rounds of quiche greets you the moment you walk into this French patisserie and café in the Financial District. The quiche, filled with custard, bacon, and comté, comes as its own small pie rather than a slice, which feels either very Parisian or very practical depending on your mood. The canelés have a genuinely crackling shell that most local versions never manage.

Ox Bar & Hearth is a full-service Lincoln Park restaurant that sits right across from the North and Clybourn el stop and keeps a valet lot, which in this neighborhood is practically a luxury amenity. Brunch leans carb-heavy, with soft blue cornbread and pastries from Fat Peach Bakery. For a $95 smoked ribeye with fried eggs, the kitchen will also shave black truffle on top if you ask nicely.

The Taishan roast chicken arrives head-on, carved tableside by a server wearing two layers of gloves who tears it apart with her bare hands. This Cantonese restaurant in Chinatown is one of the few places left that stays open deep into the night, which means the 2 a.m. crowd runs from solo diners working through a clay pot of eel rice to the chefs from Four Kings. Named among San Francisco Chronicle's top Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area, it earns the spot at any hour.

The tomato soup arrives under a dome of puff pastry in a bowl so hot you'll burn your fingers just reaching for it. This is a classic French bistro in the heart of Yountville, the kind of place with walls so covered in stuff you need a second visit to take it all in. Braised meats, goat cheese salads, an enclosed patio that works even in gray weather. It fills up fast during harvest season, so book ahead.

Carnitas by the pound, sold on weekends only from a weekend-only stand beside the railroad tracks in East Oakland. The Morales family runs this outdoor operation Saturdays and Sundays, and the lines snake long enough that selling out is routine rather than a surprise. A few communal tables let you eat on the spot, or you can take it all home. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best tacos and best Mexican restaurants. Get there early.

Carnitas fried to order in a Richmond backyard: that's the whole setup, and it turns out to be enough. This Pueblan home taqueria turns out giant carnitas tacos loaded with confited pork, hand-pulled quesillo, and a salsa verde that has made grown adults reconsider their life choices. The cemitas are thick and brawny, and pumpkin seed mole shows up as a special when you're lucky. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best Mexican restaurants and best tacos.

The barbacoa tacos dorados here leave a pool of vivid red oil on the plate that stops first-timers mid-bite. This casual Antioch taco spot specializes in guisos, proteins slow-simmered into something silky, ordered as tacos or thick, crispy gorditas. The San Francisco Chronicle put it on their short lists for both best Mexican restaurants and best tacos in the Bay Area, which for a strip-mall counter in the East Bay is a statement worth noting.

String lights zigzag above the patio out back, where counter-service Taiwanese food and soft serve draw crowds to this Emeryville spot. Fried tofu skins that look remarkably like Wheat Thins share a table with grilled corn and fried chicken in a citrusy Sichuan peppercorn sauce. The housemade sparkling oolong and an unconventional sake list give you something to argue over while you wait for a seat.

A taco stand parked in front of a beauty salon on Broadway, which tells you everything about Vallejo's relationship with pretension. The suadero gets seared on the flat top until the edges crisp up, and the al pastor's adobo punches well above its price point. Grilled onions and chiles come on the side. You eat at a picnic table or over your trunk, and the San Francisco Chronicle has called out both the tacos and the broader menu as among the Bay Area's best.

A redwood-shaded café in Monte Rio where the menu runs through the Levant and the Mediterranean and the décor is someone's very good vintage-electronics collection. The beach pita, stuffed with roasted eggplant, boiled eggs, tahini, and pickled mango sauce, is the reason regulars make the drive from the Bay. Take it across to the Russian River beach, or eat at a picnic table while the skatepark next door provides the entertainment.

A food truck that does one thing: pav bhaji, the Mumbai street staple of spiced, buttered vegetable gravy served with soft, toasted rolls for scooping. The bhaji gets its richness from Amul butter, and the locally made pav handles like Parker House rolls. Spicy, cheesy, or both are your main decisions. Order extra bread regardless, because the gravy always wins the race. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top South Asian and top vegetarian spots.

The taproom is built to look like a church, which feels appropriate given how seriously Houstonians take their hometown brewery. Texas's oldest craft brewery pours its own Art Car IPA, Amber Ale, and H-Town Pils alongside a full kitchen running stone-fired pizzas and bar bites. The outdoor garden catches a downtown view when the heat relents. A good place to convert someone still loyal to Miller Lite.

All the seating is outdoors, which means Sam's Log Cabin operates like a neighborhood backyard that happens to serve breakfast. The kitchen lives in an actual log cabin, the pergola is draped in greenery, and the menu runs hearty, with cornmeal pancakes and corned beef hash doing the heavy lifting. Ask about the weekly specials, which tend toward seasonal pancakes and scones. Albany's not a destination, but on a sunny morning this patio makes a persuasive case for itself.

Nonalcoholic micheladas made with hop water and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice set the tone at this cozy Noe Valley cantina, where brunch skews California-virtuous without turning preachy. Tamales come with avocado and a jammy egg, grain bowls are loaded with seeds and roasted vegetables, and the whole thing feels like an all-day LA café that somehow landed in a neighborhood where Patagonia puffers count as dressed up. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top brunch spots.