The Best Places in the United States

Toca Madera is a Mexican restaurant on Allen Parkway that treats dinner as a floor show, with live entertainment, a Vegas-meets-Miami sensibility, and cocktails and dishes that arrive on fire. The menu runs from smoky ceviche to grilled wagyu to a branzino in chipotle mezcal butter. Expect dressed-up groups and a bill to match, plus a kitchen that stays open until 1 a.m. on weekends, which Eater counted among Houston's best late-night spots.

A bowl of red without a single bean in sight, served the way Frank X. Tolbert intended when he more or less rewrote the rulebook on Texas chili decades ago. This casual chili parlor in Grapevine keeps his recipe going, ladling out small and large bowls with cheese and crackers, or folded into a Frito pie if you're feeling committed. It's a reason to make the suburban drive, and Main Street has enough to browse while the chili lingers.

The Tonga Room is a tiki bar and restaurant built around the Fairmont's old indoor pool, which now holds a floating stage where a band plays through the thunderstorms. Every fifteen minutes the ceiling rains on the lagoon, complete with lightning and thunderclaps, and grown adults rise from their seats to film it. The mai tais are strong, the kids get a layered blue-and-pink mocktail, and the pork belly bites help the whole thing along.

The cigarette machine still works. Tony's Baltimore Grill is a dive bar and pizza-pasta joint that has looked exactly the same since the 1970s, and the regulars, who get tattoos of the place, would riot if anything changed. The 24-hour bar draws casino workers, bands off the nearby stage, and anyone who needs a heavy pour at 1 a.m. Order the pizza, order the eggplant, and let a stranger tell you what Atlantic City is actually like.

Tortello is a pastifico on Division with a storefront window that doubles as a live show, staff cutting and kneading dough for anyone who slows down on the sidewalk. The flour comes from Italy, and a master sfoglina was brought in to train the team, which tells you how seriously they take noodles. It's casual and moderately priced, with fresh pasta by the pound to go and a patio that fills up the minute the weather allows.

Toscana is the full-service, sit-down Italian restaurant tucked inside the sprawling Eataly food hall at Park MGM, which means you walk past pastry counters and pasta shelves to get there, which somehow works. The menu leans Tuscan and seasonal, the kind of regional Italian that changes with what's good rather than just what photographs well. It's a proper dinner-out option in a building most people wander through eating arancini.

The kitchen crew is up at 3 a.m. so you don't have to be, which is the kind of arrangement that makes a bagel shop worth its reputation. Townie is a no-frills NY-style operation in Palm Springs turning out hand-rolled bagels, including a sourdough version and a daily gluten-free batch, plus black-and-white cookies and brownies. Call ahead, because the line in the desert sun is a real thing and a hat will only get you so far.

This is a Sichuan restaurant in Sterling Heights where the peppercorns go to work on your lips and don't clock out until well after dessert. The fried squirrel-shaped fish is what regulars order before the menus finish landing, and the vegetarian options are better than the cuisine's usual afterthought. Big round tables suit a crowd, which is how most of the room arrives. Eater lists it among Metro Detroit's best Chinese restaurants.

The entrance is a gated alley door with a buzzer, which already tells you something about the evening ahead. Trona is a speakeasy cocktail bar in Central East Austin that draws equally from Mexico and Japan, so mezcal and tequila share the back bar with Japanese whisky. The space runs narrow with a small patio, and reservations are the move. Bringing a date here feels a little smug, which is kind of the point.

This is a neighborhood red-sauce joint on Vernon Park Place, run by the same family for ages and arranged so that nothing has had to be fixed. The menu lives on chalkboards, the wine list is long and priced like it respects your wallet, and the eggplant Parm and lemon chicken arrive in portions that assume you have somewhere to nap. Regulars treat first-timers like cousins they've been meaning to feed.

Twisted Sourdough is a strip-mall pizza counter in Henderson that bakes its sourdough into a cone, essentially a waffle cone of pizza stuffed with sauce, stretchy cheese, and pepperoni. The mozzarella sticks run about the length of a forearm, so bring a measuring tape if you're the type. There are also New York slices and deep dish with a caramelized cheese crust, plus a handful of tables and a covered patio. It's on The Infatuation's list of best pizza spots in Las Vegas.

A rooftop cocktail bar perched above downtown Springfield with an art deco walk-in and a big-city view that the city itself doesn't always advertise. The long bar-height table near the corner fits a group comfortably, and the sightlines over the railing make it easy to feel like you've escaped somewhere. Flatbreads circulate for sharing, and the drink menu runs from cocktails to mocktails, which keeps everyone at the table happy.

Vaquero Taquero is a tiny taco counter on East 31st where nothing on the menu costs more than five dollars, which makes it a rare lunch that won't require explaining your finances to anyone. The al pastor comes with pineapple, and the spiciest salsa is there for people who like a little drama. The room is small enough that you should bring one friend, maybe two if you're feeling reckless.

The chicken tikka taco built this place's reputation, and it's still the reason the line forms. Velvet Taco is a fast-casual taco chain that leans global, folding Indian, Thai, and Southern flavors into flour tortillas without making too big a deal about it. The Deep Ellum flagship is the original, with a paid lot out back for anyone who's circled the block twice already. Finish with the red velvet cake, which is exactly what it sounds like.

The marinara here is just tomato, olive oil, and blistered basil, and it doesn't need a single thing more. Vesta is a wood-fired pizza shop in downtown Redwood City where the oven does the heavy lifting, scorching pies to a proper, crackling crisp. The sausage and honey pie, mascarpone folded in, is the crowd favorite if minimalism isn't your move. The San Francisco Chronicle put it on their Peninsula and South Bay best list.

This is a white-tablecloth steakhouse downtown, part of the Landry's empire, where the dry-aged cuts arrive after a round of caviar and oysters Rockefeller. You can go formal in the dining room or sit in the bar, where a pianist plays nightly and nobody checks your cufflinks. Expect expense-account prices and a crowd that treats a Tuesday like an occasion, which the bubbly is happy to support.

Green Guatemalan coffee beans aged in bourbon barrels before roasting is the kind of detail that either makes you very excited or very tired, and Vice & Virtue is banking on the former. This specialty coffee shop and roaster sits inside downtown Memphis's Arrive Hotel, with a warm, slightly theatrical aesthetic that fits the neighborhood. They source globally and collaborate locally, keeping the menu rotating and the regulars curious.

The "trashcan" nacho, Dallas's contribution to stadium-snack culture, gets a serious upgrade at this Deep Ellum restaurant. The format is the same towering chip stack drowning in cheese, black beans, pico, guac, and pickled jalapeños, but the cheese here is worth caring about. The crowd skews young and loud in the best Deep Ellum tradition, which makes the nachos feel like exactly the right thing to order.

Villa Nova is a no-frills, family-run pizzeria in suburban Stickney, the kind of place where the pie arrives square-cut, the way thin-crust tavern pizza is supposed to. The sausage is fennel-forward and left in chunky, meatball-ish clumps, which is a bold choice for a topping and a good one. It's been around forever, so expect regulars who haven't looked at the menu in years. Eater included it among Chicago's best tavern-style thin-crust spots.

A wine shop and tasting room tucked into Edgewood, steps from the Candler Park-Edgewood MARTA station, which makes the flight of three half-pours feel almost responsible. The daily wine flights rotate, and you can also order by the glass or pick up a bottle to take home. A patio out front catches good weather, and the sandwich shop next door means nobody has to drink on an empty stomach.

This is a family-run Vietnamese bakery and sandwich counter where the baguettes come out of the oven that same morning and end up wrapped around pâté, pickled vegetables, and lemongrass chicken. The Alameda cafe is the sunnier, tidier sibling to the original, with a few tables and a full coffee bar. It's cheap, quick, and perfect for lunch, assuming you can stop yourself from lecturing a stranger about bread.

Void is a neighborhood Italian American spot on Milwaukee Avenue in Avondale that skips the "you're family now" routine and just cooks. The menu rotates, though the four-cheese lasagna and fried chicken Vesuvio tend to stick around like they have tenure. The house SpaghettiOs arrive in an actual can, a small gesture of nostalgia that lands without anyone needing to explain it. Eater lists it among Chicago's best Italian restaurants.

Wally's is the Los Angeles wine-shop-turned-restaurant that crossed the desert and blended right in, which says something about both places. Brunch is a sit-down affair with avocado toast, candied bacon on brioche, and steak and eggs, plus a Reuben and thin oblong pizzas for the lunch-minded. Eater put it on its Las Vegas brunch list, and the cellar is deep enough that your server will simply pick the bottle for you.

Washing Potato is a dim sum restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip, from the person behind Hakkasan and Wagamama. The dining room sits on a raised platform with a view into two open kitchens, where cooks steam and roll dumplings by the hundreds. Black walls double as screens for swirling light shows, so even the white furniture gets a little theatrical. Expect traditional dim sum under all the lasers, plus Eater's list of top Chinese restaurants in town.

WG Pizzas is a Lakeview tavern-style pizzeria, a spin-off of an old suburban Highwood joint that has been feeding Lake County for ages. The crust is cut thin but keeps a few proud bubbles at the edges, so it lands chewier than the cracker-crisp stuff, closer to what South Side spots turn out. Order online, grab a BLT pie, and mind the monthly chef takeovers, which are a good excuse to pretend you planned ahead.

Wild Barbecue is a counter-service Texas smokehouse near ASU, run by two Jordanian brothers who picked up the craft in Dallas and then slipped their own history onto the tray. Beef ribs and brisket are there if you want to stay in your lane. The tandoori turkey, lamb chops, and Mediterranean rice suggest you shouldn't. It started as a food truck, and the Phoenix New Times put it on its list of the Valley's top smokehouses.

The servers here will happily explain the difference between cashew and almond-based cheeses without making you feel like you asked something embarrassing, which tells you a lot about how this plant-based Californian restaurant operates. The menu leans into umami to do the heavy lifting, and the mushroom-and-spinach burger with chipotle aioli is a reasonable gateway for the vegan-curious. A Stanford-area outpost of the Cow Hollow original.

This is a deep-dish pizza joint with a sports bar's worth of televisions, built around a founder who developed her own dough, sauce, and sausage blend while raising seven kids. It spent decades as an Englewood fixture before landing in the South Loop. Eater has named it among Chicago's deep-dish picks. There are no reservations, so on game days the move is to show up early and claim a stool like it's a playoff seed.

This is a burger operation that started as a weekend pop-up and now works out of a convenience store in Logan Square, which is about as Chicago a career arc as you can draw. Weekdays you order at the market, and on weekends the club follows its own social media posts to breweries and farmers markets. The smash burgers get playful, including a version that swaps the bun for a doughnut, so bring a casual appetite and zero fear of sugar.

A sprawling lawn outside Springfield where dogs, kids, and adults with a pint of the house hazy IPA coexist without anyone seeming to mind. Wire Road is a craft brewery with a covered patio, rotating food trucks parked on the grass, and live music often enough that bringing a folding chair counts as planning ahead. The coffee menu means someone can always be the designated driver without suffering for it.

Hunter S. Thompson used to drink here, and the walls still look like it. Woody Creek Tavern is a comfort food bar and restaurant about twenty minutes outside Aspen, its walls plastered with Polaroids, magazine covers, and vintage kitsch that have outlasted at least one leopard-print carpet. The menu runs burgers, wings, nachos, and enchiladas, and the spicy margarita is the house original for a reason. The drive out of town is the price of admission.

Word of Mouth Grill is a counter-service barbecue joint in a Tempe strip mall, smoking its meats over mesquite and offering eight housemade sauces ranging from sweet honey to habanero, which is more sauce decisions than most people want to make while hungry. Brisket and pulled pork come by the pound, on a combo plate, or in a brioche bun, and the rib tips are the crisp, craggy move. Order the four-cheese mac and grab napkins.

Hundreds of flags and string lights cover the ceiling, CRT TVs along the bar counter are loaded with old-school video game consoles, and a mural of Walnut Creek landmarks greets you before you even open the door. This hot chicken shop does Nashville-style fried chicken and sandwiches, with heat levels that go from polite to genuinely humbling. The outdoor picnic tables are there when you need air, or perspective.