The Best Places in the United States

Eleven modern wood cabins sit in the pine forest of Montana's Blackfoot River Valley, adults only, all-inclusive, and about as far from a Hampton Inn as geography allows. The Social Haus turns out multicourse dinners despite being deep in Big Sky Country woods, and the all-in rate covers meals, drinks, and transfers from Missoula. A Forbes Four Star resort where champagne and crisp mountain air arrive together.

A charcoal hearth does most of the heavy lifting at this Adriatic-inspired restaurant in West Fulton Market, turning out lamb and other mains with a smoky authority you can smell from the door. Chef Joe Flamm built the room to feel like a Croatian konoba, all whitewashed walls, rustic clay, and hanging plants, with servers who can actually walk you through the menu. Bright, easy, and louder than a library.

A short, ever-rotating menu of around eight dishes anchors this casual neighborhood spot in coral gables, where everything is made in house and the cooking bounces freely between Venezuelan, Japanese, and American touchpoints. The crab arepa alone explains the Michelin Bib Gourmand. Coffee is taken seriously, the flan has a following, and the room runs warm in the way that happens when the people who opened a place still work it every night.

Edible flowers and precisely packed sashimi boxes are the visual signature at this Japanese restaurant in Spring Valley, where the chef came up from Strip kitchens at Mizumi and Morimoto. The food reads as both serious and showy, crispy rice with glazed salmon, Wagyu tartare brightened with pear, sea bass tucked into butter lettuce. The kind of place where the dishes photograph before you eat them, and that turns out to be fine.

A bagel shop in Temescal that quietly reframes the whole New York-versus-everywhere-else argument by not entering it. Poppy turns out the classics, lox, whitefish, schmears of every persuasion, but the open-face seasonal veg sandwich is the point: California produce stacked on a proper bagel, finished with salsa macha for heat. Bon Appétit named it among the very best bagels in the country, New York included.

The madeleines come out warm, baked to order, gilded nearly brown at the edges, and the Times critic named them among her favorite dishes of the year without mentioning Proust once, which takes restraint. Zimmi's is a rustic Southern French bistro on Bedford Street, the kind of place that makes butter-and-lemon sponge cake feel like an event without making a production of it. West Village regulars fill the room early.

A repurposed warehouse in the Arts District with polished concrete, exposed brick, and enough trailing greenery that you half-forget you're surrounded by industrial bones. Damian is a full-service Mexican restaurant where the kitchen takes the cuisine seriously without making you feel lectured about it. The terrace fills fast, the cocktails are sharp, and the fish taco quietly outclasses everything you thought you knew about fish tacos.

Honey Salt is a bright, farmhouse-style Summerlin restaurant where brunch involves bottomless Bloody Marys and mimosas, plus a mocktail list so earnest it includes a green juice that makes Pilates feel plausible. Monkey bread arrives for the table, sticky and iced, and disappears in a way that suggests nobody read the portion sizes. Dress is nice-casual, the kind where the linen shirt is doing real work.

The working brewery behind the bar is the first thing you notice, copper tanks visible through the glass while the dining room fills up around you. This is a Texas American restaurant and brewpub set inside the old Pearl brewhouse, where the kitchen leans hard into Gulf seafood and Southern comfort food. The house beers are brewed on site, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand acknowledges the whole relaxed, unpretentious operation.

The tall, narrow wood-framed windows let you see the whole room before you walk in, which is a nice preview of a Taiwanese restaurant that doesn't hide anything. Eric Sze and partner Andy Chuang run a menu that moves between popcorn chicken dusted in a sweet-spicy blend and whole striped bass lacquered in black sugar and yuzu, and the beef noodle soup, built on a 16-hour oxtail broth, has a following of its own.

Tall ceilings and low light inside the Belden-Stratford give this contemporary restaurant a quietly dramatic feeling before the food even arrives. The menu roams freely, pairing roasted lamb meatballs with tikka masala butter one course and bibimbap with mushroom bulgogi the next, and the banana budino has outlasted every menu refresh for good reason. The sommelier took home a Banchets award in 2025, which explains a lot about the wine list.

A Forbes Four Star resort on a barrier island where the pace drops the moment you cross the bridge. Rooms lean into sand and sea tones, with coastal or ocean views that make it hard to justify getting dressed. The beach, golf, tennis, horseback riding, and sailing fill the days, and the restaurants lean heavily on local seafood. Families land here knowing the kids' programming will keep everyone happily occupied and apart.

Sapphire-blue velvet booths, caramel leather, wood floors, and a chandelier situation that would make a Gilded Age banker feel underdressed: Andrew Carmellini's fine dining room inside the Fifth Avenue Hotel is maximalist and means it. The kitchen leans Mediterranean-Italian, with dishes that have a way of arriving as formal little compositions. A James Beard semifinalist and a New York Times pick for the year's best new restaurants.

This is a casual Italian spot inside the Grand Canal Shoppes, where windows face the Strip and the cooking leans more Hoboken than Bologna, courtesy of the Cake Boss. Portions are built for sharing, with a meatball roughly the size of a toddler's head and a lasagna that keeps its promises. Sunday turns it into an all-you-can-eat brunch buffet, and the chicken parm is the thing to defend at the carving station.

Northern Italian restaurant in Navy Yard that shapeshifts across the day: coffee and focaccia in the morning, aperitivo hour by four, and a full convivial dinner by night. The chef draws on her own northern Italian heritage, so the menu has the kind of specificity that comes from memory rather than research. The James Beard Awards named the chef a 2026 semifinalist for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic.

Candles on every surface, amaro on a lengthy list, and pasta made in-house: Karen Akunowicz's Southern Italian wine bar and pastificio in South Boston earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand by sweating the small stuff. The menu leans hard into the flavors of southern Italy, with handmade pasta and a kitchen that clearly knows what it's doing. Two bars keep the energy up, and the crowd leans into it.

Thank you notes from loyal regulars cover the walls at this Vietnamese neighborhood restaurant in Plaza Shamrock, which holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The menu runs wide, from pho and spring rolls to hot pot and vermicelli, and the booths fill early with people who never really need to look at it. Pricing is the kind that makes a second order easy to justify.

Sunlit, laptop-scattered, and full of potted plants in all the ways you'd expect from a third-wave coffee shop, except this one roasts Vietnamese specialty beans and serves bánh mì stuffed with pork meatballs in tangy tomato sauce on Ba Le Bakery bread. The drink menu wanders into fizzy espresso tonics with housemade watermelon syrup. A James Beard semifinalist for its beverages, and on the New York Times list of Philadelphia's top restaurants.

Donna's is a cocktail bar on White Oak where the evening's main activity is relaying other people's drinks over your head while inching toward the rail. Seats are guarded by strangers who hover with the patience of vultures, and a Fridge Cig, an Old Fashioned built on dark rum and cherry cola, is what you'll be holding when you finally win one. It was a Spirited Awards Top 10 nominee for Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar.

The beef fat fries are the kind of thing that quietly reorganizes your priorities. John's Food and Wine is a laid-back neighborhood restaurant on North Halsted with exposed white brick, a long banquette, and a wine program worth lingering over. You order at the counter, then someone shows you to a table, which turns out to be no hardship at all. The menu runs from country ham to dry-aged steaks, and the room fills with people who seem to have stopped resisting.

El Bagel is a Biscayne Boulevard bagel shop where the line out the door is part of the architecture. The bagels come out blistered and bubbly on the crust, then get stuffed and wrapped tight in parchment, which is how a Miami bagel ends up with guava in it. Bon Appétit once declared these among the very best in the country, outside New York, a distinction New Yorkers will note and then ignore.

A photo of Obama eating a double hangs on the wall, which tells you almost everything about this small, pastel-colored Trinidadian street food spot on H Street. The menu is a love letter to Port of Spain, running through rich stews, channa, and pepperpot fragrant with cinnamon. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and landed on the New York Times Restaurant List, and the lines make sense.

The wraparound windows put both ends of the Strip in frame at once, the Eiffel Tower on one side and MGM's emerald glow on the other. This moody cocktail lounge inside the Waldorf Astoria runs Japanese-leaning bar snacks alongside drinks like a cherry cola old fashioned, and the vibe is firmly date-night. Go for the view, stay for the cocktails, and accept that you probably won't need dinner after.

An Ethiopian restaurant sitting quietly in the Little Ethiopia stretch of Fairfax, where injera-lined silver platters arrive on the table and a fork is beside the point. The family-run team keeps the room simple and lets the food argue for itself, which it does. The kitfo draws regulars back, and the Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand. Come with a group large enough to order widely, or you'll spend the meal regretting what you skipped.

Kira is a 15-seat hand roll bar in Upper Kirby built around a McIntosh stereo and a stack of vinyl, so the soundtrack gets a seat at the counter, too. You order everything up front and the rolls, crudo, and donburi just keep arriving, with a Suntory highball tower nearby and hand-cranked shaved ice to finish. Texas Monthly ranked it among the state's best new restaurants, and the lighting suggests you're probably cooler than you were at six.

Bobby Stuckey, the master sommelier behind Denver's Frasca, brought his Italian restaurant to the Four Seasons Vail, and the town's reservation lines have never been the same. This is elegant, unhurried Northern Italian dining: handmade pasta, bistecca, and an all-Italian wine list curated with the kind of seriousness you'd expect from someone who also co-owns a Friuli winery. The wine window built into the wall is either charming or absurd, possibly both.

Butter shows up in the cocktails here, which tells you most of what you need to know. Bon Délire is a French bistro on the Embarcadero with a horseshoe bar, a minimalist room, and a hip-hop soundtrack that would confuse your grandmother in the best possible way. The menu runs classic, croque madame and steak frites, with madeleines baked to order for dessert. Sunday brunch brings a DJ, which is either absurd or perfect depending on your mood.

The bocce court beside the patio gives away what kind of place this is before you even order. The Vig is a gastropub with a long tap list, a solid wine selection, and a food menu with enough vegetarian options to keep everyone at the table happy. The sprawling patio has its own outdoor bar, which cuts down on excuses to go back inside. Local acts and DJs show up on weekends, and the crowd skews toward people who planned to stay for one drink.

San Diego's first yakitori omakase counter fits twelve people total, eight at the bar and four at a table, so the chef's full attention on chicken and vegetable skewers over two hours feels less like dinner service and more like a private audience. The room is spare and elegant. Reservations open thirty days out and disappear fast, which is either an inconvenience or a good sign, depending on your disposition.

The zakusky cart rolling through the dining room is a good sign: Eastern European grandma cooking, done with real intention. Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark named this Avondale restaurant after one of their grandmothers, and the menu follows, from horseradish vodka at the bar to green borscht thick with dill and egg. Balkan wine, stuffed cabbage, challah-soft pampushky. It's the kind of meal that makes you wonder why this cuisine took so long to get here.

A French bistro in the Central West End from Gerard Craft, the team behind it has been drawing a loyal crowd since the place opened. The room buzzes reliably, and for good reason: gougères that arrive impossibly light, escargot loud with garlic, a slow-cooked cassoulet that lands like a wool blanket in the best sense. Skip dessert at your peril, especially the floating island drifting across its pool of crème anglaise.

A glass high-rise across from the stadium, Hotel Phoenix Atlanta is a downtown hotel that puts Centennial Olympic Park, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and the aquarium within easy walking distance. The public spaces run art by Georgia natives throughout, and the rooms are compact but dressed in bold color and pattern with floor-to-ceiling city views. Pack light: the standard king offers a two-seat bench and not much else for sitting. It holds a AAA Four Diamond rating.

Velvet, gilt, and a color palette that suggests a Victorian fever dream describe the interiors of this boutique hotel on Savannah's riverfront. The Bohemian leans hard into the city's gothic romanticism, with rooms dramatic enough that checking in feels like a plot point. Downstairs, Rocks on the River does comfort food and Neapolitan pizza; the rooftop bar trades on river views and craft cocktails. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

The bread lineup at this Israeli bakery in Rice Village runs from sourdough to shakshuka pastries to burekitas, the small savory hand pies the team grew up eating in Israel. It's a bright, picturesque café with outdoor seating, connected to the same group behind Doris Metropolitan and Hamsa. A 2025 James Beard Outstanding Restaurateur semifinalist, it draws the kind of Saturday morning crowd that treats a bakery run like a serious errand.

Mochi crullers coated in coconut caramel and purple ube brioche doughnuts tell you quickly what kind of bakery this is. Rosie Nguyen draws on Vietnamese heritage and a restless pastry imagination to fill the Woodley Park counter with things you won't find anywhere obvious nearby. The space is roomier than you might expect, and weekend slots go fast enough that advance ordering is the move.

A lobby stocked with Warhol-esque art and enough arcade games to make you forget you're in SoMa is a commitment to a bit. This hotel plants itself in the middle of San Francisco's tech corridor and leans into it cheerfully, with rooms kitted out for either wellness obsessives or families who need a Nintendo Switch to survive a business trip. Condé Nast Traveler named it one of the city's top hotels, and the Michelin Guide has it on their hotel selection.

A motel-shaped boutique hotel in the Tenderloin with a courtyard big enough to park a tour bus, which is not an accident. The Phoenix was a rock-and-roll crash pad for decades before boutique hotels were a category, hosting everyone from Bowie to Nirvana. Texas-based Bunkhouse now runs it, and the rooms are compact, bold, and comfortable without pretending to be luxury. The pool, ringed with palms, remains the social center.

The check-in desk glows pink and purple, and the bar has LED lights embedded in it, so you know exactly what kind of hotel this is before you've touched your keycard. The W SoMa sits a short walk from SFMOMA in a neighborhood that suits its energy, with decor that leans into the spectacle rather than apologizing for it. A good fit if you want a design-forward hotel and a central SoMa address over a muted boutique experience.

The rum cake arrives tableside, which is either theater or efficiency depending on your mood. Marcus Samuelsson's hotel restaurant in NoMa runs New American with a wide lens, pulling in tamarind, obe, and uni-béarnaise alongside the kind of blue cornbread that people talk about unprompted. The room dazzles and the menu follows. A James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist runs the kitchen.

A glass of wine at check-in sets the tone at this 25-room boutique hotel in Forestville, a quietly bohemian pocket of the Russian River Valley. The siblings who run it grew up on the property, which explains why six acres of gardens and farmhouse-chic rooms feel genuinely lived-in rather than styled within an inch of their lives. Good wine country base if your idea of roughing it is a very comfortable bed.

A boutique hotel in SoHo where the design story matters as much as the thread count. The team behind it worked with Danish studio Space Copenhagen to land somewhere between spare and warm, a look closer to Copenhagen than to the gilded-lobby tradition of New York luxury. They call their approach "conscious hospitality," which translates to charitable revenue-sharing rather than just a recycling card on your pillow. Quiet, considered, and not trying to impress anyone who needs impressing.

Full-length windows do a lot of heavy lifting at this NoMad hotel, where the rooms are compact by any honest measure but bright enough that you stop noticing. Arlo has figured out that good light and a smart layout can substitute for square footage, which matters when the alternative is paying Manhattan prices for a room that feels like a sensory deprivation tank. A solid, unpretentious option in a neighborhood that keeps improving.

A rooftop bar on the 54th floor is the easy sell, but the rooms are the real argument for staying here. This Times Square hotel leans into color and personality where its neighbors lean into beige, and the layout is unusually generous for midtown. Transit connections run in every direction, and the Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels. First-timers to New York will find the location hard to argue with.

A hotel in Midtown that leans hard into the Irish pub aesthetic, Merrion Row sits one block from Times Square, which is either a selling point or a warning depending on your relationship with costumed characters. The rooms take their cues from Dublin's warmer traditions, which makes the whole thing feel less like a theme and more like an antidote. The elevator does the heavy lifting between the city outside and the calm within.

A Turkish hammam and a mosaic-lined pool tucked beneath a Beaux Arts tower on 32nd Street is about as New York a contradiction as you'll find. The Marmara Park Avenue is a 128-room luxury hotel where designer Joe Ginsberg's taste runs the show: brass-inlaid concrete floors, Mylar wall coverings, velvet everywhere, and custom wallpaper drawn from his own photographs of a Bronx bridge. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

New York's only revolving restaurant sits on the 48th floor of the Times Square Marriott Marquis, spinning slowly enough that you don't notice until Midtown has quietly swapped sides. Danny Meyer's team gave it an Art Deco overhaul, and the chophouse menu punches well above the tourist-trap neighborhood. The New York Times gave it a star in 2025. Come for sunset and stay through a full rotation; the chocolate cake made the Times critic's year.

A hotel in NoMad that resisted the obvious mid-century modern temptation and landed somewhere more current: hardwood floors, live plants, barn-style room dividers, and contemporary art that earns its wall space. The rooftop Pool Club is the kind of amenity that actually changes your afternoon plans. The Michelin Guide selects it, and the location puts most of Manhattan within easy reach without much effort.

The Original Chopped Salad has its own Facebook page, which tells you something about the regulars here. Citizen Public House is a polished American restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale that manages to feel genuinely comfortable despite looking like it shouldn't. Classic dishes get quiet, confident upgrades, the room runs warm without trying too hard, and the kitchen keeps the kind of hours that make it useful for more than just dinner plans.

Babychan is a Japanese bakery on the ground floor of a Germantown condo building, done up in walnut and Japanese art, which is more design effort than most places put into the thing you eat standing up. The case runs to sesame swiss rolls, salmon onigiri, and milk bread stuffed with cream cheese. It was a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurateur, and the pastries sell out early, so arrive at opening.

The Indian street food mini-chain that started as a spice-blend stand at the farmers market now runs several Salt Lake locations, each anchored by what the restaurant bills as the city's largest Indian buffet. The menu leans into the southern and western regional traditions the founder grew up with, and a James Beard semifinalist nod for Outstanding Restaurateur in 2025 suggests the city has noticed. Come hungry and ready to commit to multiple plates.

Bar Tutto is an all-day Italian cafe from Top Chef winner Joe Flamm, which means you can start with a pastry and an egg sandwich and, if the day cooperates, still be there when the handmade pasta shows up. The wood-fired grill handles razor clams and prawns with Calabrian chile, and the Fernet-leaning cocktail list suggests the staff has opinions about digestivi. It was a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurateur.

Kaya toast on pillowy bread striped with coconut-pandan jam is the thing people cite first, but the menu at this Asian American bakery on Clement Street rotates enough to keep regulars guessing. Pan de sal buns cradle egg salad with panko-fried veg, and the Basque cheesecake is cut thick enough to feel like a statement. Outdoor seating only, but the line moves. The New York Times and the LA Times both put it on their San Francisco lists.

Wooden A-frames perch over Hood Canal tidal flats on a working fifth-generation oyster farm, which tells you most of what you need to know about the oysters. This is an outdoor seafood spot where bivalves are the reason anyone drives out to Lilliwaup, though the supporting cast of crab cakes and clam dishes holds its own. The Stump Bar pours beer and wine and sells buckets of you-shuck oysters for those who skip the reservation.

A large-scale mural by the restaurateur's wife anchors the moody dining room, which looks out onto a park while downtown Fort Worth closes in around it. This polished Italian osteria threads West Texas cooking through the menu, leaning on wild game and simple ingredients to blur the line between the Hill Country and the Apennines. The wine list skews Italian and smartly so.

Named for the Portuguese river and wine region, Douro is a relaxed, all-day seafood restaurant on Portland's Eastern Waterfront that filters Portugal through a Maine lens. The overlap is convenient: both places are serious about what comes out of the water. The kitchen leans into that with raw bar work, sardine toasts, and cataplana, the classic Portuguese seafood stew. The room is unhurried, the menu is coastal in the best bilingual sense.

A diner on Detroit's East Side that now runs Polish nights, the menu built around pierogi, kluski, and kielbasa alongside a long-loved burger on thick sourdough. The room feels like Grandma's sunroom, green walls and pink curtains intact, except for the wax-drowned candlesticks and bouquets cut from the parking lot garden. The New York Times named it to their 2026 Restaurant List, which tracks.

The birria ramen, built on a dark consomé and a family recipe from the owner's father, tells you everything about this taco spot in Southwest Detroit's Mexicantown. It's a casual, counter-style Mexican restaurant where housemade salsa macha sits on every table the way chile crisp would at a Sichuan place, and the lard-fried chicken Milanese comes with spaghetti verde. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List, which tracks.

Doris Metropolitan is a steakhouse that dry-ages its ribeye in-house and then slides Middle Eastern sides next to it, so the tahini salad and the harissa carrots get equal billing with the beef. There's a butchery on the premises if you'd like to take your steak home and cook it badly. It's an expense-account-adjacent night out, and the James Beard folks named the restaurateur a semifinalist.

A working farm that also happens to be a resort, Southall sits on several hundred acres outside Franklin, about half an hour south of Nashville. Produce from the land feeds the restaurant, a seven-acre lake handles irrigation and kayaking equally, and the spa ensures nobody suffers unduly for the pastoral ideal. Rooms and cottages mix modern lines with a little retro warmth. It holds a Michelin Key.

The lamb neck korma pie, a lard-pastry shell hiding 16 hours of braised lamb and a korma gravy heavy with almonds and warm spice, landed on the New York Times list of the year's best dishes in the country. This Ballard restaurant earned a James Beard semifinalist nod for Best New Restaurant, and Eater Seattle handed it the same category outright. The room is in a neighborhood that rewards a walk after dinner, which you will want.

A vintage sky-blue VW van parked out front is the hotel's first word on what you're getting into. Paséa is a beachfront hotel right on PCH next to the Huntington Beach Pier, and it leans hard into the surf-and-sand premise, from complimentary flip-flops to a wave photograph spanning your headboard. The rooftop bar and two pools face the water, and the Balinese-inspired spa is a genuine non-sequitur that somehow fits.

Perched on a 650-foot bluff above the Coachella Valley, this Ritz-Carlton resort trades the usual desert-floor setup for sweeping views that make the surrounding mountains feel like wallpaper you can't believe is real. The 24-acre property has had its ups and downs over the years, but a massive renovation brought it back sharper than before. Pools, spa, and the full Ritz polish are all present, with palm-tree sunsets doing most of the heavy lifting.

The dirty martini bucatini, made with vodka sauce, blue cheese, and charred pickled onions, tells you everything about this Sunnyside pasta shop. The team behind the sandwich counter next door brought the same no-rules energy here, with cocktails running on pasta water vodka and ricotta-washed rum. Eater named it one of Denver's best new restaurants, and Westword called it the top no-rules pasta shop in the city.

Pan-Latin cooking from Geoff Cox and Peruvian chef Diego Muñoz lands on the eighth-floor rooftop of the Source Hotel, with views of Denver spread out below like a consolation prize for anyone who couldn't get a table. The menu moves through octopus carpaccio, mushroom tacos, and crushed avocado loaded with pomegranate and quinoa, while the wine list leans South American. Westword named it a top rooftop restaurant in 2026.

A Mexican-American BBQ joint in the Overland neighborhood where pork ribs get the al pastor treatment and brisket ends up in tacos. The collaboration between a Mexican-born chef and a pitmaster sounds like a concept pitch, but the salsa macha coleslaw and dulce de leche key lime pie make the case on the plate. Cold beer, a cucumber margarita with some heat, and sweet tea round out a menu that knows exactly what it is.

Marble cafe tables inside a wine shop looking out at Melrose Market set the scene at Cafe Suliman, a Middle Eastern lunch spot where Pacific Northwest ingredients quietly take over the menu. The toast is famous enough to anchor a meal, and smaller bites like pickled gigante beans and carrot-lentil dip let you graze your way through without committing to a plan. The chef earned a James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist nod in 2026.

Red lanterns wrap a concrete compound on Biscayne that runs a full-time DJ alongside its pho, because why not. This Vietnamese restaurant in the MiMo district leans into the party without letting it eat the kitchen, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand suggests the kitchen holds its own. The food is big-portioned and boldly seasoned, built to share across a loud table. Someone nearby will almost certainly start singing.

The red leather booths here supposedly inspired scenes in Casino, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe. This is an old-school steakhouse off the Strip, the kind that served Sinatra and the Rat Pack and has never felt the need to apologize for it. Thick porterhouse, a baked potato the size of a small child, lobster tail drowning in butter. Time moves differently in wood-paneled rooms like this.

Olive-green velvet booths, a room that hums with the particular energy of people who might be somebody, and martinis that make a two-hour lunch feel like a reasonable life choice. Stephen Starr revived this old Washington institution near the White House into a full-service American restaurant with a menu that leans classic without apology: French dip, lobster bisque, oysters in beurre blanc. The champagne layer cake arrives frosted in pink, which somehow feels correct.

Bad Butter is a no-seating bakery on Cortland where the pastries lean savory and a little unruly, like a pretzel loaded with cream cheese and mustard or monkey bread with a salsa macha kick. The line has become its own local pastime, so pre-order if you can. Eat your haul on a bench along the 606, where you can hold the bag a bit higher than necessary for the joggers.

Platters of Ibérico pork and dry-aged txuleta arrive pre-sliced, Basque sidrería-style, which tells you everything about how Dolfy's wants you to eat. This Spanish pintxos and wood-fired grill spot on Freret Street was built for sharing, from passed gildas to charred leeks on romesco. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List, and the room runs with the kind of easy energy that makes you order one more round.

A French-ish bakery in West Town where the bakers trained in patisserie but treat tradition as a suggestion. Expect baguettes, Brie sandwiches, and sugar-crusted kouign amann, plus a line out the door. Inside, there's room for booths facing the glass-walled baking room, which is a nice way to watch the people who make your four-pastry limit. Eater counted it among Chicago's best new restaurants, and the sandwiches and bread come with no cap.

A fish sauce martini is either the best idea you've heard all week or the reason you're leaving, which is a pretty good filter for this Vietnamese-French bistro on Eldridge. The menu swings between leeks vinaigrette with mussels and vol-au-vent loaded with chilis and seafood. Getting a table means arriving before doors open to join the waitlist, which the regulars already knew.

The name is a cocktail: soju dropped into beer, the classic Korean bar move. Downtown Crossing's Somaek is a minimalist Korean restaurant where the chef drew inspiration from his mother-in-law's cooking, and it shows in a menu that skips fusion theatrics for the real stuff. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant, it landed on the New York Times Restaurant List too. Go for the stews, order the namesake drink, and don't rush out.