The Best Places in the United States

Carlyle Club sits on the Chicago River and runs a menu that can't decide between a steakhouse and a sushi bar, then declines to choose. Dry-aged steaks share the table with raw bar towers, handmade pasta, and a wagyu cooked over binchotan. There's a small sushi counter for the committed, plus hand rolls at the bar for everyone else. Expect an all-day, expense-account kind of room where a burger and a lobster pie coexist peacefully.

A Foster-Powell coffee shop where the decor leans into geology: carnelian specimens line the shelves, roasts carry names like Thunderegg, and the view from the patio is a gravel yard across the street, which fits the theme better than intended. The house-roasted coffee is carefully made, the room is cozy and russet-toned, and the whole thing feels quietly, pleasantly odd in a way that Portland pulls off without trying.

A taco spot in Allentown where the al pastor comes with beets alongside the pineapple and onion, which sounds like a challenge and mostly works in its favor. The fish tacos, beer-battered cod with beet-marinated onion and herb aioli, tend to get overlooked next to the flashier options. Flavored margaritas run toward dragonfruit-ginger and hibiscus-coconut, so the room skews festive. Churros with dulce de leche close things out.

Case Chocolates is a speakeasy hidden behind a bookcase in the back of a tiny East End chocolate shop, which is the kind of sentence that should be illegal in a Wes Anderson film but is merely a Tuesday here. The tasting runs three courses of chocolates filled with spirits like gin and carajillo, and the liquor stays polite about it. It's a date-night bet for people who've already done dinner and a movie.

Castizo is a tapas bar in Seville, and the name is Sevillano shorthand for exactly that, so the pressure to deliver was built in. The open kitchen runs in plain view behind an L-shaped bar that wouldn't look out of place in a modern French bistro, and the sherry list is deep enough to keep you there past the point of reason. Eater named it among the 20 best restaurants in Seville. Ask about the seafood counter before you order.

A coffee shop built around crates of vinyl, Caydence on Payne Avenue doubles as a record store and a small live-music room. The drinks lean adventurous, pairing peanut butter and cardamom in one latte, caramel creme brulee in another. Weekend evenings bring local musicians into the back room, and the first Sunday of the month is a free bluegrass jam, which is either a reason to show up or a reason to plan around it.

A rambling beach shack just north of the Wrightsville Beach drawbridge, Ceviche's leans Panamanian rather than strictly Peruvian, with a long list of ceviches, empanadas, and tapas built for sharing alongside bigger plates like ropa vieja and paella. The whole setup, sandy-casual and loud with cocktails going around, makes the kind of sense that only works two blocks from the water.

The beef on weck here is the reason Buffalo has strong opinions about sandwiches: a massive rib roast, sliced to order, piled onto a kummelweck roll with enough jus to make you look confident or foolish, depending on your shirt choice. This is an old-school deli counter, the kind that locals treat as a civic institution. The corned beef and roast turkey are solid detours, and the snickerdoodles are comically oversized, as advertised.

There's no menu at this old-school New Orleans steakhouse, just a cut, a dressing, a starch, and the implicit social contract that you say yes to the onion rings. No leather booths, no cowboy kitsch, no performance of steakhouse-ness whatsoever. The room has been left mostly untouched by its current owners, which is the right call. The New York Times named it among the 25 best restaurants in New Orleans.

A former pop-up that found a permanent home inside Au Lounge in downtown Oakland, Chef Smelly's draws on Creole family recipes to put out Cajun-spiced seafood and soul food. Garlicky Dungeness crab and blackened shrimp anchor the menu, and the platters run large enough to qualify as a commitment. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top seafood spots. Dress accordingly: this is crab-cracking, garlic-breath, no-apologies territory.

Cherry Coffee Roasters started as a pop-up inside a deli and somehow ended up with a roastery across the river in Gretna. The Uptown cafe sits in a sunny old building on a quiet stretch of Laurel Street, and it's the sort of place where laptops outnumber conversations. Over in Gretna, the cafe is attached to the roasting floor, so your pastry comes with a free lesson in what you're drinking if you catch a cupping.

Chibanos is a casual sandwich shop in Washington Square West where Cuban and Chinese cooking share a single piece of toasted pan cubano. Char siu pork goes between the bread, and breakfast versions ride on soft bolo baos. The yuca fries and Chinese sausage croquetas are there if you want a side, and the jasmine flan closes things out. Order at the counter, then settle in at a table inside or out, where half the neighborhood seems to be doing the same. The Infatuation put it at number 25 on its list of Philadelphia's best restaurants.

The coffee ceremony here arrives in a jebena, the traditional Ethiopian clay flask, and it's not a performance for tourists but the way the place works. Chibo is an Ethiopian coffee shop tucked into a Lilburn strip mall, serving espresso and drip alongside house-roasted beans you can take home. Sambusa and kinche are made to order. The couple who run it treat every visitor like a regular they just haven't met yet.

Seafood restaurant, sushi bar, steakhouse, and pizza joint all share one menu here, which sounds like a dare but somehow holds together. Nick Saban used to bring recruits, so the room has seen its share of high-stakes small talk over gumbo. The sushi program is serious enough that the chef has a following of her own. A good place to bring someone you're trying to impress, whether or not you're offering a scholarship.

A former Darwin's location reborn as a worker-owned cooperative coffee shop, where the staff collectively run the place and share in the profits. The menu carries over some old favorites alongside new ones, and the coffee comes from Equal Exchange, another worker-owned co-op, because apparently the solidarity doesn't stop at the door. A neighborhood spot in Cambridge where your latte is, in a small way, a political act.

A craft brewery on a quiet residential street on the north side of town, City Acre feels less like a taproom and more like you wandered into a very well-stocked backyard. The sour series gets regulars talking, and the PB&J porter answers a question nobody asked but everyone is glad got asked. The patio pull is real, which means arriving early if you want a seat that doesn't feel like a compromise.

Fruit cobbler counts as a vegetable here, which tells you everything about City Cafe's approach to the food pyramid. This old-school lunch counter in Northport has been feeding working-class locals and college students forever, turning out cheap, hearty plates to roughly a thousand people a day. The menu rotates by day of the week, giving regulars a reason to come back Tuesday. Crimson Tide posters and a hand-painted mural hold down the walls.

Polished concrete floors and olive-green banquettes replaced the worn carpet when City View moved to its new spot overlooking Portsmouth Square, and the room now reads more gallery than dim sum hall. The classics still show up on the carts, though, and the baked pork buns arrive airy with a crackly top. A sleeker option than the old-school palaces nearby, and the San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best dim sum spots in the Bay Area.

Clarkwood is a Montrose cocktail bar that spends its evenings halfway to a nightclub, and the heavily garnished drinks leave the bar by the thousands. Dom bottle service shares the room with singles scouting the next prospect and couples whose public affection is testing the tables. Around 10pm on weekends the staff pulls the barstools to make room for more people, which tells you where the seating plan ranks.

This is a casual, order-at-the-counter cafe perched on a cliff above the Pacific, attached to a gliderport, so your sandwich comes with a floor show of hang gliders stepping off the edge. Wraps, sandwiches, and soup-and-half-sandwich combos run under $14, and you eat outside in whatever you wore to the beach. It closes early when the fog or rain shows up, which is also when the gliders call it a day.

Colette is a Poncey-Highland bakery where the order counter sits right in front of the open kitchen, so you can watch the bakers knead dough while you wait behind a weekend line of stroller-pushing locals. The case runs from brioche tarts to sour cream-iced cinnamon rolls the size of a toddler's head, plus savory scones made with shishito peppers. It's a counter-service pastry stop, so wear whatever you rolled out of bed in.

Cøllect is a small beer bar on Detroit's east side, tucked into an arts hub from the Library Street Collective crowd. Nine beers share the tap wall with cider, wine, and a few pours of Four Roses, plus Gatorade on draft, which is either a hydration plan or a very good joke. There's a basketball hoop in the middle of the room, so you can earn the second round or at least pretend you did.

The lasagnette arrives sliced, crisped, and floated over a pool of green fondue, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Italian restaurant on Hyde. The team behind Seven Hills took over their original space and pivoted toward something warmer and a little more relaxed, all monochromatic blue walls and wines by the glass. Snacks, pasta, and surprisingly compelling sides fill out a menu that keeps the room full on a weeknight.

Cơm tấm is broken rice, the humble fragments left after milling, and this East San Jose spot has built its whole identity around it. A casual Vietnamese rice shop, it pairs that base with grilled meats and sides that do the real work, including steamed pork cake and fried tofu skin stuffed with shrimp. Fresh minced bird's eye chiles sit on every table instead of a bottle, which tells you something about the kitchen's standards.

Live jazz and fusion food in Pittsburgh's Penn Avenue corridor, where the kitchen is pulling off za'atar focaccia and kimchi fried rice with pork belly in the same breath. Con Alma is a restaurant that takes the music seriously enough that conversation sometimes has to wait. The lineup shifts, so showing up cold is half the fun, whether you land on a jam session or someone doing a slow, considered take on a standard.

Corsa is the upscale Italian restaurant inside the Caldera House hotel in Teton Village, steps from the ski slopes. The dining room is a modern take on a ski chalet, with a fireplace, delicate glassware, and booths along the back wall. Margherita pizzas get passed around as appetizers before the entrees arrive, which is a good way to keep a table of visiting relatives quiet. The Infatuation put it on its list of Jackson Hole's best restaurants.

The outdoor tables on Baker Street are as close to a Parisian sidewalk cafe as Cow Hollow gets, which is either charming or delusional depending on your mood. Côte Ouest is a French bistro where weekend brunch brings smoked salmon benedict on an open-faced croissant, and a Kir Royale seems less indulgent than it should at noon. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top French restaurants.

A hand-painted plywood sign out front announces a small, no-fuss coffee shop where a few tables, a pour-over, and a record player are the entire amenities package. The beans get roasted across the river and the pastries get baked in-house, so nobody's outsourcing the important parts. It shares its room with Soen, which means a coffee run can quietly turn into onigiri and shaved ice. It's on The Infatuation's list of Portland's best coffee shops.

Chicken and dumplings with celery-flecked, black-pepper dumplings gives you a sense of how Covey thinks about American classics: familiar enough to order without squinting at the menu, just a little more considered than you'd expect. It's a neighborhood restaurant that tips toward the elegant side, with a late bar menu of small bites that makes it equally useful for a quick glass of wine before heading home.

Craig's is a bright, airy coffee shop in Midtown where the espresso is the main event and the food shows up on a rotating schedule, like a very caffeinated food hall. Pop-up vendors come and go, and a weekly drop of Tacos Hernandez breakfast burritos is the closest thing to a fixed menu. Iced coffee comes in bottles, popsicles come from JB's Ice Pops, and Eater counts it among Detroit's best coffee shops.

Creekside Market is a casual sandwich counter on the road out of town toward Grand Teton National Park, which makes it the last stop before you commit to a day outdoors. A handwritten board lists the options, and the turkey club on a croissant is the move for anyone whose backpack lunch history involves a pancaked PB&J. Prices stay in sandwich territory, and nobody minds if you walk in wearing hiking boots.