The Best Places in the United States

A katsu shop born from the owners' off-hours obsession with Japanese cutlets, this Redmond spot keeps things focused: pork, chicken, cheese, all fried to a crunch you can hear across the room. The chef pulls from Tokyo tradition and Vancouver's izakaya scene, so the cutlets land in dark chocolate curry, bubbling nabe, or buried under enough grated Parmesan to require a snow shovel. A focused, casual lunch counter doing one thing with real conviction.

Koffeteria is a counter-service bakery and coffee shop on Brittmoore where a kolache can taste like beef pho and the cornbread comes with Cambodian elote ideas. The pastry case wanders freely between Mexico, Brazil, France, and Italy, and nobody there seems worried about passports. The iced coffee arrives salty and sweet, with condensed milk and sourdough butter, which is to say it's a snack with a straw.

Koi is a Montrose sushi restaurant that has settled into a sleek-but-comfortable groove, the kind of room where you can wear a nice shirt without feeling like you've been summoned to a tasting. The menu leans modern while keeping one foot in traditional technique, with fish flown in from Japan and hand rolls wrapped to order. Eat them quickly, since they're built to be unsealed right before the first bite, and finish with a carajillo.

Kokoro is a quiet, minimalist kappo counter tucked into a Serra Mesa shopping plaza, the sort of address where you park between a dry cleaner and a vape shop and then walk into something hushed and serious. The chef works behind the bar in traditional wooden sandals, which tells you how the evening will go. Weekday lunch combos are the easy way in, and the miso soup can be swapped for udon for a couple of bucks.

This is a neighborhood Iranian wine bar in Bernal Heights where the big round tables were clearly built for spreading out. Parents graze through mazze platters with a glass of something cold while kids tally the decorative pots behind the bar, and nobody needs a sitter or a reservation strategy. The sweet and sour chicken stew is soft enough for the teething set, which is more than most wine bars can say.

The design riffs on the 1930s luxury steamship that once ran between the Hawaiian Islands, all sleek curves and amber light, which is a lot of scene-setting for a sushi bar but somehow earns it. Chef Kiyo Ikeda works the counter with fresh-grated wasabi and Hokkaido scallops topped with caviar. Dessert arrives in a Jewel Box, and you leave with a daruma doll for good luck, because of course you do.

Krankies roasts its own coffee in what used to be a fallout shelter, which tells you something about both the building and the clientele. It's a Southern brunch spot with biscuits stacked under fried chicken and a splash of Texas Pete, plus vegan options so nobody has to negotiate. The team closes on the first Monday of each month for a staff mental health day, a detail that tends to make regulars more loyal than any loyalty card ever could.

South Indian cooking is the reason to come to this Westheimer restaurant, even though the menu covers North Indian ground too. Fermented rice batter crepes, peppery tamarind curries, and spiced seafood or goat dishes built on black pepper and sour notes give the kitchen its personality. Finish with an Indian coffee or the sarsaparilla-and-bael-fruit cocktail, which sounds obscure until you try it.

The chef trained under Nobu Matsuhisa, and the menu reflects it: modern Japanese fine dining where sashimi and nigiri share space with contemporary technique and a few ideas that nudge the tradition sideways. The room is polished and the patio offers an escape from it. It's the kind of place where people dress up a little without being told to, which says something about the neighborhood's ambitions.

La Chaparrita is half Mexican grocery and half taco counter in Little Village, so you can pick up a bag of dried chiles on the way to eating a taco, which is efficient. The cooking happens on a comal con sombrero, the domed griddle you'd see on a Mexico City street corner. The menu runs from al pastor and asada to cabeza, crispy tripe, and sesos, and there's tepache and aguas frescas to wash down whatever you were brave enough to order.

La Loba is the restaurant in the 1 Hotel, serving Catalan small plates built mostly around seafood, which is a very Pacific Northwest thing to do with a Barcelona childhood. The dishes are rustic at heart with a few modernist tricks, like an open-faced montadito topped with cured salmon. The room is dressed up and so is the clientele, and Eater lists it among Seattle's best seafood restaurants. Wear the good shoes.

The pastry chef here is a native Sicilian who treats the menu as a rough draft, regularly inventing things that don't exist anywhere else and then pulling them before you can tell your friends. This Montrose Italian bakery covers the classics, cannoli, cornettos, breakfast, lunch, but the reason to pay attention is whatever off-menu experiment is running that week. Come with an open mind and low attachment to specific plans.

A deep-dish pizzeria wedged into the part of Michigan Avenue otherwise devoted to flagship stores and corporate chains. The focaccia-style dough gets a layer of mozzarella before baking, which builds a crunchy, caramelized crust. There's a skinny deep dish for the dough-averse, and an umbrella-shaded patio where you can nurse a spritz and forget the tourist current rushing past. Eater has named it Chicago's Best Deep-Dish Pizza.

Lankford's is a Houston burger-and-milkshake counter that has been feeding the neighborhood since before anyone thought to call it a scene. The Grim stacks macaroni and cheese, bacon, jalapeño, and a sunny-side-up egg on a beef patty, which is less a sandwich than a dare. Non-beef eaters get real options, from salmon to Impossible, so nobody has to sit there politely watching. Eater put it on its list of the city's best burgers.

Lao Pot is a hot pot restaurant in Madison Heights where dinner is a group project: everyone gets a simmering terrine of broth, a tray of thin-sliced beef or pork, and full authority over their own doneness. The room has exposed brick and lantern lighting, and there's a full bar with a weekday happy hour, plus bubble tea for the designated drivers. Order skewers and gyoza while the broth gets going, and expect to leave smelling like it.

Biscuits and focaccia hold the fort until afternoon, when this Midtown spot near Piedmont Park quietly pivots into a wine bar. The patio overlooking 12th Street is the reason most people linger, especially with a bottle or a vermouth cocktail and something from the tinned fish and cheese spread. It's a shape-shifting kind of place, which means the crowd skews toward people who know exactly what they're doing.

A marinated pork spit spinning in the window pulls in foot traffic on MLK Way, which is basically the oldest form of advertising. This Chiapas-style taqueria in Berkeley orders you outside to pick up your al pastor, the ruby meat sweet and charred, with pineapple and a green oil salsa alongside. The chicken mole is a serious plate when you want it. Noah's Ark animals frolic across a mural on the wall, keeping things cheerful.

This is a casual taco spot downtown that keeps the lights on until 3 a.m. on Thursday through Saturday, and 2 a.m. the rest of the week. The menu runs from classic street tacos to the flour-tortilla "gringo" kind and quesabirria, with margaritas in flavors up to and including chamoy. Order at the counter, wear whatever survived the night so far, and come back in a few hours for a breakfast taco if the night refuses to end.

Sofa cushions, dangling bulbs, and a record player set the tone at this Georgeorgetown natural wine bar, where the bottles lining the walls are all for sale and priced like someone actually wants you to drink them. The pours run funky, orange, unfiltered, and nothing near a Columbia Valley pinot, and the staff will talk you through all of it with genuine enthusiasm. Loretta's next door does burgers; the two go together better than you'd expect.

An ice cream shop that names a flavor after Lady Bird Johnson's favorite wildflower is telling you something about itself. Lick keeps things small-batch and seasonal, pulling milk and cream from Texas dairies and swapping flavors as ingredients hit their peak. Honey vanilla and horchata sit alongside roasted beets and fish mint, which is either a very brave move or a very confident one, depending on how you feel about beets.

Cocktail names like "Stay the Fuck Outta Malibu" tell you more about the room than any décor description could. This cocktail bar shares a wall with Will's Pub and the self-described metal tiki bar next door, and the crowd arrives ready to argue about politics between rounds of rotating seasonal drinks. The rooms are oddly shaped and a little dingy, with French Provincial details that got lost along the way, which somehow makes the whole thing work.

A wall in the back pulses with colored light synced to the reggaeton, which tells you exactly what kind of restaurant this is. Lita does modern Caribbean in a Walnut Creek setting that leans hard into Miami energy, with a marble bar, gold trim, and ferns hanging over the dining room. Fish fritters, coconut curry chicken empanadas, and spit-roast jerk chicken shaved into tacos carry the menu. The cocktails keep up.

Little India is a casual Indian restaurant on East 6th Avenue that has fed Denver since before anyone worried about Y2K, and it now stays open around the clock for anyone with a lamb vindaloo emergency at four in the morning. Lunch is when the buffet runs, which means saag, dal makhani, korma, and tandoori chicken sit a few steps away and nobody has to choose between the butter chicken and the biryani. The Infatuation listed it among Denver's lunch spots.

The bar at London Chop House sits underground in the Financial District, dimly lit enough that you'll swear it's still 1985 and someone's about to close a deal on a handshake. It's a proper cocktail bar with martinis, gimlets, and Negronis that nudge the classics sideways, plus a cigar and billiards room attached. Dress like you have an expense account, even if the ghosts of the three-martini lunch are the only ones who do.