The Best Places to Eat and Drink in the United States

Nite Yun's counter-service spot in the Ferry Building pulls Cambodian cooking toward its quieter, more restorative registers, a different pitch than the bold flavors she built her reputation on in Oakland. The menu moves between soothing and electric without announcing which is which. A James Beard semifinalist and named to the New York Times' 25 best in the city, it's a small room doing serious work on a short menu.

The salt-baked celery root arrives looking like a small geological event, which sets the tone for this French-influenced New American restaurant where technique is the point but the vibe stays loose. Chef Shawn Gawle, a James Beard semifinalist, built the menu around sharing, with tarte flambée, heirloom tomato pie, and carrot cavatelli doing the heavy lifting. Dressy enough to feel like an occasion, relaxed enough that nobody's whispering.

A long counter, an open kitchen, and a pizzaiolo working the back of the room like the whole thing is a performance: this Chinatown strip-mall pizza shop has no interest in blending into its surroundings. The neo-Neapolitan dough is light with a properly blistered edge, and the menu stays tight enough that everything on it seems to mean something. Named among 50 Top Pizza USA's excellent pizzerias.

The wine list leans natural, the cocktails are craft, and the menu changes often enough that regulars rarely order the same thing twice. Copper Common is a wine bar and restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City, from the team behind the Copper Onion next door, and the kitchen ranges widely, pairing sharply drawn flavors without making a fuss about it. Salt Lake Magazine named it one of the city's top restaurants.

Bagels hang in metal racks draped with white sheets, a nod to the coin-operated laundry this place used to be. Now it's an all-day pizza and bagel shop on Balboa, mornings given over to coffee from Grand Coffee and a solid bagel lineup that runs from egg to rye, with schmears folded through green onion or spiked with Calabrian chiles. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the top bagels in the Bay Area, and a Top 100 restaurant pick followed.

A low-lit cottage in the old Clarksville neighborhood, Jeffrey's is a fine-dining steakhouse where the beef is USDA Prime or American Wagyu, dry-aged and finished over an oak-fired grill. The room is close and quietly elegant, the wine list ranges from Napa to Burgundy with confidence, and the service moves like it has nowhere more important to be. The Michelin Guide has selected it, and it appears on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

This is the Caesars Palace Nobu, the biggest of the three on the Strip, a dim, stylish Nikkei dining room where lychee martinis and miso black cod are the opening move. Sequins and big watches fill the tables before a show at the Colosseum across the casino floor. Walk-ins sometimes score a bar seat, but plan on reserving a couple of weeks ahead.

Bird's-eye chiles, not hatch, set the tone at this Southeast Asian restaurant inside a former furniture workshop. Zak Pelaccio, who made his name with Malaysian cooking at Fatty Crab in New York, opened the place with a young chef running the kitchen who handles spice with confidence. The pork belly steak draped in prik phao paste and Thai basil keeps people coming back, and the crab steamed custard sells out most nights. On the New York Times Restaurant List for 2026.

The Chinoiserie wallpaper alone could anchor a design magazine spread, but this is a Chinese American restaurant where the food keeps pace with the room. The chef started with pop-ups exploring identity and landed somewhere more interesting than a thesis: Korean corn cheese egg rolls, dan dan noodles with wagyu guisada. A James Beard semifinalist, and the Victorian veranda fills up fast on sunny afternoons.

By day, a bagel shop where the hand-rolled, kettle-boiled rings get topped with things like hamachi, fresh wasabi, and shiso. By night, the Counter flips to a hyperseasonal kaiseki tasting menu, the kind of multicourse journey that shifts entirely with what's good that week. The chef trained in Japan under serious mentors, and it shows. A James Beard semifinalist in 2026, it's also landed on Eater's best Denver restaurants list.

Two brothers run this Texas BBQ shop near the stadium, open only Thursday through Saturday, which keeps the line long and the brisket moving fast. The setup is classic smoke-and-queue, but house-made flour tortillas stand in for white bread, and the sides swing toward poblano mac and cheese and okra-laced beans. Texas Monthly named it one of the state's 50 best BBQ joints, which the regulars already knew.

Pink and orange neon casts a moody glow over the Camelback Road location of this coffee shop, which leans into creative, photogenic drinks alongside the usual caffeine agenda. The menu runs from lattes built around burnt cream or cookie flavors to matcha, ube, and Lotus energy drinks for the non-coffee contingent. A second, sunlit outpost sits inside the Melrose District's Royale collective, better suited to a quick grab-and-go.

Izakaya Go is a small Japanese izakaya in a Spring Mountain Road plaza, and its late-night happy hour from 10pm to 2am is the real draw. Sushi, tuna belly steak, and yaki udon all get marked down, which suits anyone who spent the day losing money and wants to feel like they won something. It's tight on space, so expect a wait when the deals kick in, and get your oyster order in before 1:45.

A portrait of an imperial bulldog greets you at the door, which is a fair warning. Pony Up is a cocktail bar in LoDo that earns its personality through drinks like a tequila-shochu-sherry situation spiked with Korean chili paste, and shots of George Dickel chased with roast-beef jus. That jus comes from the kitchen, which runs French dips as its signature, an odd pairing that somehow makes complete sense by the second round.

You reach it by taking the middle elevator in the Ten-0-One Building down to the basement, which sets the tone before the doors even open. Rough Rider is a cocktail bar with a full food menu, done up in dark wood and high ceilings, somewhere between a Victorian gentlemen's club and a downtown Phoenix speakeasy. The drinks lean into the era with names like Happy Birthday Mr. President, and the kitchen sends out a raw bar and a bone-in pork chop that suggest nobody phoned it in.

Twenty-eight seats in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood that has somehow gotten by without Italian restaurants until now. Tonino is a pasta-and-pizza spot where the chef's whole philosophy seems to be finding a handful of good ingredients and then leaving them mostly alone. The tiramisù has built a devoted following. A James Beard semifinalist and on the New York Times' 25 best in Boston, it reads like someone's favorite neighborhood secret that stopped being secret.

The move at this old-school Phoenix chophouse is to come in through the kitchen, which is less a quirk than a statement of intent. Red leather banquettes, scarlet wallpaper, dim lighting, and the kind of martinis that explain why the power brokers still fill the room. The relish tray arrives gratis over ice, which somehow feels exactly right. They've been doing the 48-ounce porterhouse and prime rib forever, and they're not taking notes from anyone.

Jicama ribs that read as meat are the talking point at this Vietnamese sit-down in Saint Paul, where chef Eric Pham opened his first restaurant as a tribute to his mother, a longtime figure at the family's Minneapolis institution Quang. Most plates land at $21 or under, and the menu runs from bún chay to a crispy chicken sandwich without any of it feeling like a compromise. The New York Times put it on their Restaurant List in 2026.

Tucked into a cobblestone Georgetown alley, this Turkish and Mediterranean dining room draws from homestyle cooking, particularly the "From Mom's Kitchen" section of the menu. The sesame-and-nigella-seeded bread goes with everything, and the rice-stuffed artichoke, a recreation of an Aegean dish the chef grew up eating, earned a Washingtonian dish of the year. The chef was a 2026 James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic.

The pitas come out of the wood oven almost too hot to handle, still puffed from the heat, and they anchor a menu built around big Mediterranean flavors in a neighborhood restaurant that also runs a soft-serve window because why not. The chef knows the local dogs by name, which tells you something about the room. Lamb ribs and meatballs fill out the regular order for anyone who can't decide, which is most people.

Menus written entirely in Spanish set the tone at this all-white coffee shop in downtown Phoenix, where the minimalism stops at the decor. The drinks lean on flavors from the chef's Mexican childhood: sweetened condensed milk and piloncillo folded into espresso, cafe de olla fragrant with cinnamon and anise, horchata made with wild rice and almond milk. It's a quiet, unhurried room that draws people who plan to stay a while.

The oxtail gumbo here carries a whiff of hardwood smoke, which tells you everything about how this Beverly smokehouse operates. Sanders BBQ Supply Co. sits about twelve miles south of the Loop, deep in a neighborhood few tourists reach, doing the kind of slow, wood-fired barbecue that connects to Chicago's Great Migration roots. The New York Times put it on their 2025 restaurant list, and the pitmaster earned a James Beard semifinalist nod.

The darkly tinted windows and near-invisible signage in an East Nashville strip mall suggest you might have the wrong address, but push through. This casual Mexican restaurant built its following as a pandemic pop-up and landed here with a menu centered on masa, nixtamalized and ground in-house, turning up as tortillas, sopes, and tostadas. The New York Times named the asparagus tostada one of the best restaurant dishes eaten across the country in 2025. No liquor license, but the taco shop next door sells beer.

A red-brick building with white trim and a weathervane off Central Avenue that reads more Boston than Phoenix, until the palm trees remind you where you are. This outdoor coffee shop serves espresso drinks, cold brew, and specialty lattes through a window, with fresh-griddled waffles and Bagelfelds bagels to go alongside. Bring a book and a jacket in winter; in summer, you're in the sun.

The buffalo wings here have a two-day head start on you: brined overnight, chilled, then fried and sauced to order with Frank's and butter. This is the food operation inside the U Street bar Sport & Social, run by Scott Drewno, the chef behind Anju. The wings earned a spot on the Washingtonian's favorite dishes of the year, and after one order you'll understand the fuss, even if ordering anything else feels beside the point.

A massive, custom-built pit dominates the backyard of this East Austin BBQ shop, and the line that snakes toward it on any given afternoon is its own kind of argument. The brisket arrives at the counter still warm enough to stop you mid-sentence, and the house-made sausages and ribs don't ask permission either. Tammy Wynette on the speakers, kimchi and chipotle slaw in the case. La Barbecue holds a Michelin star.

The complimentary chips here come from heirloom corn, and the salsas that arrive with them set the tone for the whole meal: this is a Tex-Mex restaurant where the sauces are the point. The kitchen runs mole the way a French house runs stocks, with a dark, cinnamon-and-chocolate version draped over a spice-rubbed Cornish hen that arrives alongside basmati rice, because why not. Tres leches gets the same treatment, poured tableside.

The Band Box is the food hall tucked behind the right-field fence at First Horizon Park, where you eat a hot dog and keep one eye on the Nashville Sounds. Thursday home games bring guest chefs doing their own takes on concession-stand grub, which beats the usual nachos under a heat lamp. Casual and ballpark-priced, with the crowd in team jerseys and a little more sauce on them than they planned.

You ring an unmarked bell on an unmarked door below street level, and that's the whole game announced before you've ordered a drink. Inside, this cocktail bar in Chelsea is all deep armchairs, shaded lamps, a fireplace, and curtained alcoves fitted with a buzzer to summon your server when you're ready. It's a speakeasy setup done without irony, and the room is quiet enough that people actually talk to each other.

A no-reservations Portuguese spot in Cypress Park where the counter seats facing the open kitchen fill up fast and everyone else negotiates the small room. The menu leans on family recipes and sharing plates, with salt cod fritters and charred cabbage over white beans doing a lot of the heavy lifting. A James Beard semifinalist in multiple years, including Best New Restaurant, which tracks for a place this small running this confidently.

A French-leaning wine list runs deep at this cozy New American bistro on Western, but the kitchen earns its share of the attention. The menu is short and seasonal, built around what the market turned up that week rather than any fixed idea of itself. The cooking is restrained in the way that actually requires confidence. Wine Enthusiast named it one of the top new restaurants in 2025, and the Michelin Guide has it selected.

Six seats behind an unmarked door on Divisadero, Ken is the kind of omakase counter that rewards people who actually read their texts. The chef, a Hong Kong native who came up at respected Bay Area sushi bars, runs a menu that moves between classic nigiri and composed small plates, with cured egg yolk and preserved plum showing up where you'd least expect them. Unhurried, quiet, and booked well in advance.

Spago is a business-casual fine-dining room at Bellagio, and its patio has a front-row view of the fountains, which is why you'll be humming Sinatra whether you meant to or not. The menu sits between luxurious and familiar: pizzas, pastas, and a thick cheeseburger with charred onions. The chinois chicken salad has been on since the early eighties, the culinary equivalent of a band that still plays the hits.

The Caribbean Roast sandwich at this casual counter shop has a dramatic backstory involving a lawsuit over the marinade recipe, which is exactly the kind of lore that follows a legendary pork shoulder around. The roll is from Macrina Bakery, the aioli is garlicky, the onions are caramelized into something slippery and sweet, and the slow-roasted pork does most of the talking. Seattle is not a sandwich town, but Un Bien keeps making the case that it could be.

Pulled pork pressed between two fried plantains, dressed with mango sauce and pikliz, is a reasonable introduction to what this Treme restaurant is doing with Haitian cooking. Fritai is a bright, welcoming room where the Caribbean flavors run vivid and the bar leans on clairin, the Haitian cane spirit that most New Orleans cocktail menus haven't caught up to yet. A James Beard semifinalist two years running.

The burritos here skip the rice, which Mission purists treat as either heresy or gospel depending on which taqueria they grew up on. Order yours dorado-style and the kitchen presses it on the plancha until the tortilla blisters gold. Counter service, cash-register lines out the door, no frills beyond the food. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have both made the pilgrimage to this old-school Mission taqueria, which tells you something about the burritos.

A European restaurant tucked into the Melrose District's Wagon Wheel building, where the back patio's twinkle lights and two-top tables make the whole thing feel like a date you actually planned. The menu changes with the seasons and you can do a five-course tasting or just pull a bottle from the adjoining wine shop and order à la carte. A James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Southwest.

Garlic naan pulled straight from a clay oven is the baseline here, and it only gets more interesting from there. Zareen's is a casual South Asian counter-service spot where street food classics share the menu with a chapli kebab burger on a pillowy bun and paneer tikka masala wrapped burrito-style. The masala fries alone are a strong argument for the side dish. A James Beard semifinalist, it draws a steady lunch crowd of people who know exactly what they're ordering.

Matt Groening is a regular, and his illustrations hang on the wall alongside the framed press clippings, which tells you something about the Jitlada experience. This Southern Thai restaurant occupies a well-worn strip mall on Sunset, but the menu runs to hundreds of dishes, split between familiar Thai standards and a deep catalog of southern specialties that most LA Thai spots don't touch. A James Beard nominee, and the kind of place regulars will talk your ear off about.

The booths at this coal-oven pizza parlor are so carved up with initials and signatures that the wood itself is basically a guestbook for the last several decades of Greenwich Village. Whole pies only, thin-crusted and charred just right, no slices and no exceptions. The room is loud, cheerful, and not trying to impress anyone, which is precisely why it has been full since before most of its customers were born.

Live fire anchors the open kitchen at this spacious Contemporary American restaurant, where Levi Goode channels five generations of Texas roots into a menu that swings from seafood towers to whole duck. The monkey bread served alongside the deviled crab is the kind of detail that makes a dish unforgettable. Ranch-inspired without being the least bit kitschy, it's the sort of place Houston does better than it gets credit for.

The house-made soba is the point here, though the menu at this elegant soba house in the Arts District runs wide enough to spark a real argument about what to order. Cold or hot noodles arrive with seasonal toppings that range from strictly traditional to a Bolognese that has no business working as well as it does. Grilled freshwater eel comes with its crisped spine, exactly as it would in Japan. The Michelin Guide has it listed among its selected restaurants in Dallas.

A 10,000-pound custom oven fires the pies at this Arcadia pizzeria, and a quarter of every dollar goes to the dog rescue operating out back. Each evening, adoptable puppies come out to a covered patio pen, which is where your appetizers will go cold. The pizza is better than you'd expect from a place whose headline act has floppy ears. Bring a date or the kids, and decide in advance exactly how many dogs you're allowed to take home.

A sunny Ethiopian cafe in Silver Spring where you pick your injera before anything else, choosing between imported (extra tangy) and local, both soft enough to do the job properly. The menu is vibrant and the cooking runs from a bubbling chickpea stew to crispy beef tibs to collards that hold their own. Show up early and order the wheat flatbread fried in butter and drizzled with honey. A James Beard semifinalist chef runs the kitchen.

The team behind Boia De runs this wood-fired New American spot a few doors down, with no gas stove in sight. What's surprising is that vegetables do most of the heavy lifting: the lasagna sheets are made from mustard greens, and the menu treats produce with the same care you'd expect from a proper steakhouse. Pizza and some meat round things out, but the room is casual enough that kids and couples share tables without anyone feeling out of place.

A slice counter at the entrance means you can be in and out before the circular bar crowd even finds a seat. Pizza Rock is a big, loud, rock-and-roll pizza shop spread across multiple rooms, with booths for two and communal tables for everyone else. The menu runs several regional styles, and the staff can actually explain the differences. Named among 50 Top Pizza USA's excellent pizzerias, it draws a crowd that didn't want to eat on the Strip.

A massive retro mural reading "Welcome to Leucadia" covers the outside wall, and honestly that sets the tone. Coffee Coffee is a casual coffee shop right on the 101, all big windows and easy light, with seating inside and out. The menu runs the usual espresso route plus an extensive tea list and light breakfast and lunch bites. Surf-town regulars and the unhurried crowd from nearby Bing Surfboards both seem equally at home here.

Three coffee trees grow out of a circular planter in the middle of the room, which tells you something about how seriously this coffee shop takes its atmosphere. The half-moon bar looks borrowed from a boutique hotel, and through the sliding glass doors at the back you can watch the team roasting and cupping while your pour-over is pulled. The menu runs to passionfruit ginger espresso tonics and a sweet corn cream Americano for the adventurous.

A small, bright restaurant on Aurora where the kitchen turns out somewhere between 700 and 800 momos on a busy weekend, which tells you everything about the pace. The six-page menu covers Indian and Nepali cooking, with dumplings in ten styles, a full vegetarian slate, and enough bread to require a decision. The dal bhat thali is where to start, a sampler of traditional foods that the team describes as the closest thing to a home-cooked dinner in Nepal.

Lobster chow mein on the menu is your first clue that the kitchen at this Hayes Valley dinner spot isn't playing it safe. The room is rustic-chic and compact, distressed wood and a light-dark palette, and it books out well in advance, so the bar is the move if you show up without a plan. California cooking with global detours and fine-dining precision runs through the whole menu, delivered by a staff that keeps pace with the crowd.

Tortillas pressed from heirloom corn varieties anchor the menu at this lively Mexican restaurant tucked into a Woodlands strip mall. The chef, a James Beard semifinalist, grew up in Jalisco and cooks like it, with lamb shank slow-braised in agave leaf and a tableside al pastor that gets lit on fire, because apparently subtlety is optional. The crowd that fills this place on a Friday night suggests the mall address puts nobody off.

Pillowy pita, blistered or fried, arrives alongside hummus and baba ghanoush worth skipping the entree for, though that would be a shame. Bavel is a stylish Middle Eastern restaurant from the team behind Bestia, set in a high-ceilinged Arts District warehouse that smells exactly like somewhere you want to be. The menu draws on Israeli, Moroccan, Turkish, and Egyptian cooking, and the room fills with people who booked ahead and dressed accordingly.

The name means "heart, captured" in Persian, which sets the tone before you've even sat down. This sceney Inman Village restaurant is built around sharing, with spreads and house bread to start, a dedicated section of tahdig on the menu, and slow-cooked meats for the table. The crowd arrives dressed to be seen, but the food is the kind that makes people stop talking mid-sentence. A Michelin Guide selection.

1111 is a Montrose cocktail bar and restaurant that takes its cues from Mexico City, which explains the cave-like room and the oval bar at its center. It's pronounced "eleven eleven," a favor to anyone who'd otherwise say it four ways. The margarita comes crystal clear under a cloud of salty lime air, and it sits next door to a jazz club, so the evening practically plans itself. Expect cocktail-hour prices and a good outfit.

A Neapolitan pizzeria in the Heights where the reservation book fills so fast that the walk-in line starts forming early, which is a lot of ceremony for a pie. The wood-fired menu leans on Texas farms and seasonal produce, with tortelloni and polenta tots filling out the table. Upstairs, a 16-seat Italian Deco bar pours things like a Biscoff espresso martini. Eater counted it among Houston's best new restaurants.