The Best Places in the United States

A neighborhood restaurant tucked near a cinema in East Memphis, Dory runs a full a la carte menu after years of tasting-menu-only service, so the room has loosened up considerably. The husband-and-wife team leans into composed, ingredient-forward plates that move between land and sea without committing to either. Pork loin shares the menu with scallops and mushroom dishes built around masa, which gives you a sense of how they think.

The crawfish come from the fields you can see from your table, which is either the most logical supply chain imaginable or a mild existential moment for the mudbugs. This BYOB boil house sits about an hour outside Houston, and the lines form by six, so early arrival is less a suggestion than a survival skill. Tours and boat excursions through the rice and crawfish fields are available if you call ahead. Order by the pound or go straight for the full feast.

Doug's Delight is a Hazel Park ice cream stand that makes its soft-serve in-house and fills cream puffs with it, which is a lot of structural engineering for something you eat in a parking lot. The hard stuff comes from Guernsey Dairy. There's an off-menu cup with a dog treat for the pup in the back seat, and an Italian beef counter inside, run by a Chicagoan, in case you need a savory excuse.

Ducky's is a casual Montrose pizza-and-tavern hybrid, built around New York-style pies, dart boards, and enough TVs that nobody has to ask what the score is. The menu goes from plain pepperoni to an al pastor pie with pineapple and salsa verde ranch, plus wings and sandwiches for the undecided. The kitchen stays open until midnight, later on weekends, and the happy hour is easy on the wallet.

The name means "two hands," which turns out to be underselling it. This elegant Mediterranean restaurant in downtown Aspen draws from the coastal kitchens of Italy and France, and the chef, an Aspen native who spent years at Matsuhisa, brings real finesse to the room. The crowd skews people who have already changed for dinner. Expect polished service and a menu that moves between crudo, whole branzino, and properly cooked chops.

Exposed brick and Edison bulbs in a Dauphin Street storefront, which is either charming or a cliché depending on your mood, but the modern Southern cooking tends to settle the argument. Dumbwaiter is a full-service dinner spot where Gulf-sourced ingredients do the heavy lifting, shrimp and grits built around Conecuh sausage, collard greens with some heat behind them, and warm bread pudding that arrives with ice cream already melting into it.

Dutch Girl is a Palmer Park doughnut shop that keeps the lights on around the clock for most of the week, which is either a public service or an enabling situation depending on your 3 a.m. self. The new owner, who also runs the Schvitz, left the equipment, the flour, and the whole process alone. Glazed is the point, the prices are corner-shop, and Detroiters poured back in when it reopened.

The mole coloradito here comes from a recipe the chef started learning from her grandmother in Oaxaca at age five, and that kind of timeline tends to show. This is a small Oaxacan restaurant in Burien, colorful ceramics on every table, a handful of seats inside and a covered patio out back. The molotes, fried masa dumplings buried under smoky morita and avocado salsa, are a good reason to arrive hungry.

The enchiladas arrive sizzling on the plate, which tells you everything about the style of Tex-Mex this old-school Dallas institution runs on. The original McKinney Avenue location is a cavernous, sprawling room with a rowdy bar and tables packed with multigenerational families who have been coming here forever. Order the enchiladas, get a frozen margarita alongside them, and don't overthink it.

The spiral-tailed monkey painted on one wall gives the place its name and its vibe: a cheerful Peruvian restaurant with wood accents and geometric light fixtures that somehow feels both casual and considered. The antojitos trio is a good way in, landing beef hearts, jumbo corn, and causa on the table before you've made any real decisions. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of Berkeley's best restaurants.

This is a casino-adjacent barbecue counter where the menu is ribs and chicken and nothing is trying to be anything else. The ribs come tender but still holding together, glazed in a sticky root beer sauce with a little char. A half-rack with half a chicken runs $17.99 if you sign up for the free player's card, which counts as the closest thing to gambling here. The sides are fine. The housemade root beer is thick and creamy.

A one-person takeout operation in Berkeley where the pre-orders open at 9 a.m. sharp and are often gone before the place does. The pies are 18-inch, NY-style, with charred and pillowy crusts, and you have to plan around them rather than the other way around. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best Berkeley restaurants, which feels about right for something this inconvenient to obtain.

Turquoise glazed tiles, dramatic florals, and a sixth-floor view over Chinatown and Telegraph Hill set the tone before you've touched a menu. This is a tasting-menu Cantonese restaurant from the chef behind Hakkasan, and it carries that same instinct for precise, composed presentations of classic dishes. Come for cocktails if the full commitment feels like a lot; the view alone justifies the elevator ride.

Slim Aarons photographs line the walls at this après-ski casual spot on Bridge Street, giving the whole room the feeling of a 1960s ski-lodge fantasy your parents wish they'd actually lived. The menu leans into alpine comfort, with duck confit tacos and a wagyu burger doing most of the heavy lifting. Come sundown, the cocktails and the crowd arrive in roughly equal measure.

Parked near a gas station in North Loop, Feral is a food truck doing two distinct styles of pizza: thin, crispy sourdough rounds and pan pies with the sauce on top, both finished with garlic oil. The pan pizza is the more interesting argument. Order ahead if you're impatient, because the devoted regulars who've adopted this place keep the line moving at its own pace.

A corn-dog-on-a-stick that's been a State Fair of Texas fixture for generations, now available year-round from a permanent food truck in Klyde Warren Park, which means skipping the August heat and the parking odyssey. The batter recipe is a family secret the Fletchers have kept close, and nobody has managed to copy it convincingly. Mustard is the traditional move. Cash, a short wait, and low expectations for your diet are all you need to bring.

Rebecca Masson, the pastry chef Houstonians call "the Sugar Fairy," runs this bakery out of the Heights with the kind of conviction usually reserved for savory kitchens. Expect elevated childhood nostalgia: snickerdoodles, layer cakes, and the Couch Potato, a single cookie that somehow fits potato chips, pretzels, cornflakes, marshmallows, and chocolate chips. It's a lot, in the best sense.

For the Win is a quick-serve burger counter inside the Resort at Summerlin's food hall, where it's one of a handful of stalls sharing a roof with dim sum and an oyster bar. The smash burgers come with grilled onions, and the Brussels sprouts get fried in beef tallow, which makes the vegetable course feel like a technicality. It's a fast, casual stop where you order at the counter and eat with your hands. Eater lists it among the best burgers in Las Vegas.

Fort Point Valencia is the Mission taproom for people who came for the beer and stayed for the cheeseburger. It's a thin-patty, double-american-cheese affair on a buttered sesame bun, with enough shredded lettuce to technically cover your vegetables for the day. Grab a table outside on a sunny Saturday, order a lager, and take the pace of the afternoon as seriously as the pint in your hand.

The full bar sets Fortune Nong Jia Le apart from its Wash Park sibling, though the kitchen stays on the same page: dumplings, Shanghainese noodles, and fried rice alongside heartier plates like crispy half duck in soy reduction and pork belly with potatoes. It's a casual Chinese restaurant that trends slightly more polished than most in its orbit, the kind of place where the menu reads like someone's grandmother is actually cooking.

A vegan brewpub where the kitchen makes its own ferments, and you can buy a jar to take home if one wins you over. Nachos arrive topped with mole-braised hibiscus; a crudités spread leans on cashew queso. The rotating ferment list, cabbage-pear kimchi one week, seasonal giardiniera the next, turns ordering into a low-stakes experiment. Downtown San Jose, tucked between two bakeries, which says something about the neighborhood's current priorities.

Fresa's is a casual Mexican spot on North Lamar, easy to find thanks to a giant rotating neon chicken that does most of the marketing. The wood-grilled chicken anchors a menu of bowls and tacos for people who want to feel virtuous before noon. There's a drive-through for the days Austin heat turns the car into the only reasonable dining room. Order at the counter, keep it casual, and wear whatever survived the commute.