The Best Places in the United States

String lights stretch across a patio hung with art made from repurposed tools, which sets the tone for Spread Kitchen, a Lebanese-inspired restaurant on the Sonoma Highway where lemons show up in nearly everything. The chef's citrus fixation runs from the whipped feta and beet dip through the fried cauliflower to the tahini drizzled over the za'atar fries. The San Francisco Chronicle put it in their Bay Area Top 100.

The entrance is a walk-in freezer at the back of a Downtown ice cream shop, which is the kind of plot twist a Las Vegas cocktail bar can get away with. On the other side is an Old Hollywood-style hideaway serving movie-themed drinks, some arriving in milk pint glasses. You can also roll a pair of dice and let the bartenders improvise around your fate. Dress for a drink, not a sundae.

A former auto garage with a butcher-paper cocktail menu still hanging above the makeshift kitchen, Liquid Diet is a creative cocktail bar where the bartenders juice and blend everyday ingredients into drinks that read like a dare. Bell pepper martinis, key lime sippers, banana bread cocktails with cookie shards frozen into chiseled ice cubes. Esquire named it one of the best bars in America, and curious tourists and pub crawlers seem to be putting that to the test nightly.

Flour tortillas, not corn, are the whole argument here. This Sonoran taqueria brings the traditions of San Luis Río Colorado to Los Angeles, where the lard-rich, hand-made tortillas get charred on a griddle and wrapped around mesquite-grilled asada or slow-cooked cabeza. The caramelo and the oversized burritos draw regulars who already know their order before they reach the counter. A casual, counter-service spot where eating light is genuinely hard.

The walls of this pirate-themed tiki bar are hung with portraits of distinguished canine buccaneers, which alone tells you something about the commitment level here. The lore involves a cursed ship, a sea witch, and a crew turned into dogs, and it's fully committed to the bit without letting the theatrics crowd out the drinks. Traditional tiki pours sit alongside inventive originals, and the cocktail menu earns its keep on its own terms.

Every log in the hearth is Michigan oak, cherry, or applewood, and the smoke threads through a Basque and Catalan menu that sprawls from pintxos to proper entrees. This is a sit-down dinner spot in Brush Park where sharing is assumed and the wine list leans Spanish throughout. A specialty gin and tonic section and a sherry-forward low-alcohol program round out what is, by any measure, a well-considered room to spend money in on a Friday night.

A soju distillery in Doraville that also makes its own makgeolli, a Korean rice wine brewed in-house, Minhwa Spirits is a cocktail bar where the spirits on the menu began a few feet away. Food pop-ups and a coffee counter share the space. The bar program draws on serious talent, and the cocktails lean toward floral and aromatic rather than punishing. Small, unpretentious, and a long way from Midtown's usual scene.

All-black walls with iridescent orange accents set the mood at this Latin American cocktail bar and small-plates spot on the northwest side. Argentine and Chilean wines arrive in penguin-shaped ceramic pitchers, and the cocktail list leans on pisco and yerba mate. DJs spin from a booth in the center of the room, a fire pit runs along one wall, and the whole thing gets progressively better after midnight. Book ahead if you want a seat at the bar.

G-Love is a Northwest 21st Avenue restaurant that Portland Monthly calls the city's most Californian, which is a dry way of saying the vibe arrived from San Francisco and unpacked. The signature is a half avocado crusted in seeds to look like its own skin, stuffed with tuna poke, caviar optional. It's a sit-down dinner with a little coastal swagger, and it landed on the magazine's iconic dishes list and its 50 best.

A shaded patio tucked behind a corner cafe on Grand Avenue is a good argument for slowing down on a weekday morning. Malegria is an all-day Latin cafe drawing on Mexican, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran cooking, so the coffee comes sweetened with piloncillo or horchata, and the breakfast sandwich arrives on bolillo bread with fried plantains and crema verde. The crowd tends to linger, which the patio quietly encourages.

Akar is a Malaysian fine dining room in Clayton with concrete walls, sparse decor, and the lighting of a place that expects you to lean in. There's no menu online and reservations happen by phone, which in this economy counts as an aggressive commitment to mystery. The curries run rich and layered, the roti arrives in flaky sheets, and the plates cost real money, so dress like you made the call on purpose.

Delancey is a wood-fired pizzeria in Ballard where the pies come out charred and the room runs on tea candles and the smell of the oven. You can sit down for natural Austrian bubbles and a mountain of romaine salad and call it dinner, though ordering a pizza seems to be the point. It works for a date or a family table, and the chef was a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific.

Echo is a listening lounge in the Arts District where the vintage McIntosh sound system is treated like the guest of honor and the room is arranged around it, living-room style. Wednesdays bring soft jazz or lively blues, and other nights a resident DJ spins classic rock or hip-hop. Cauliflower ceviche tostadas and a mound of papas bravas buried under grated cheese keep everyone busy between songs. Nobody here is trying to shout over anything.

Focaccia sandwiches stacked with Italian cold cuts are the entire point here, and Lorenzo California commits to that premise with no apologies. The tiny cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard does Florentine-style sandwiches from a small counter, with a few seats inside and a handful of tables outside for watching Beverly Hills do its thing. The Los Angeles Times put it on their 101 best restaurants list, which is a lot of recognition for a sandwich shop, and yet.

Mai Lee is a family-run Vietnamese restaurant in a Brentwood strip, and it has been around forever. The menu runs past 300 numbered, made-to-order dishes, so ordering feels like a long-form exam you can't fail. Regulars will point you to the St. Paul sandwich, a St. Louis oddity involving egg foo young and white bread. Casual, unfussy, and priced so you can try several numbers.

Mestiza is a counter-service taqueria with orange booths and blue walls, and the angular windows make lunch feel like a slightly cheerful boat trip. It grew out of the taco nights at sister restaurant Malinche. You order at the register, get a free potato taco, and then spend a while negotiating with the tray of salsas. Spit-roasted pork and a cheesy alambre are on the menu, and so is a cactus option for vegetarians.

Noto is a Neapolitan pizzeria built around a glowing white oven parked dead center in the dining room, which everyone treats with the reverence usually reserved for a small chapel. It started as a food truck and grew into a certified restaurant in St. Peters, where the crust comes out leopard-spotted and the pasta list gets a fair hearing. Families and pizza devotees share the room, and the burrata upgrade tends to go unquestioned.

The Stellar Hog is a small South City barbecue joint with a hand-painted celestial ceiling, which gives you something to look at between ribs. It feels like a neighborhood bar where the Budweiser flows freely, then got a psychedelic makeover and let the kids in. The chipotle-honey ribs and brisket come out glossy and well barked. Sunday on the patio is beef rib territory, so clear your afternoon.

Almost everything lands on a banana leaf, and most people eat with their hands. This Chettinad Indian restaurant in Mountain View specializes in the cooking of Tamil Nadu, which means bold spice, rice noodle cakes soaking up mutton curry, and chicken 65 in a shade of red that means business. The kitchen opens for breakfast daily and runs unlimited thalis on weekends, when the room fills fast with people who already know exactly what they're ordering.

The enchiladas are why people come back to this California Indian restaurant in Sausalito, draped in cheese, yogurt, tamarind, and a curried house sauce that shouldn't work as well as it does. The owner is a regular presence at the tables, cheerfully fielding questions about why the menu also includes Jamaican jerk chicken. There is exactly one dessert. You order it.

Carnitas sold by the pound at a front counter is the whole premise, and it has been in Pilsen long enough to feel like civic infrastructure. This is a no-frills carnitas shop where you pick your cuts, grab tortillas and salsa from the fixings spread, and assemble your own tacos at a table, if you can claim one on a weekend. The cactus salad is a quieter argument for going than the carnitas, but the carnitas is the reason anyone's in line.

The al pastor trompo does its lazy spin in the window, which tells you everything about what kind of place this is: a Mexico City-style taqueria on Middlefield serving snack-size tacos on double yellow corn tortillas. The lengua comes sliced into broad slabs rather than cubed, and the tacos arrive lightly salted by design, with a packet on the side. The communal table works, but hood-of-your-car also works.

The smoker out back is a salvaged propane tank, and the brisket it produces comes out in thick, wide folds that smell of mesquite and barely hold their shape. Eric's is a cafeteria-style BBQ joint in Avondale where the wood-only smoke method is a point of pride, and the smoked turkey and dry-rubbed ribs carry it through. Sides like cheese-dusted elote keep the backyard cookout spirit intact. Phoenix New Times named it among the top 50 restaurants in the metro.

The dining rooms are draped in lush plants and Mexican folk art, and for a moment you forget you're in a neighborhood off North Loop. This fine dining institution has been around forever, making the case for regional Mexican cooking long before it was fashionable, with dishes rooted in Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz, and the Yucatan. Dress accordingly, order the cochinita pibil, and let the room do what it does.

Salt-and-pepper fried chicken wings and wok-fried noodles are the draws at this casual Cantonese spot on the west side of Houston. It has been a neighborhood staple long enough that regulars tend to know what they're getting before they sit down. Save room for the Hong Kong milk tea and the deep-fried French toast, which arrives drowning in butter and condensed milk, which is exactly the kind of ending a meal like this deserves.

Ichifuji is a ten-seat sushi bar in a Linda Vista strip mall, where two veteran itamae work a seasonal omakase that comes in a nigiri-heavy version if you'd rather skip the cooked courses. The bar is sleek and quiet, so plan on whispering reverently over your tuna. The heated patio is dog-friendly and more relaxed, which is handy if your dining companion has opinions about fish and four legs.

Durian tiramisu is either the bravest or most reckless dessert call in Fremont, and Kin Len commits to it without apology. This dim, chic Thai restaurant and bar reads like a stylish neighborhood spot until the food arrives and reframes the whole thing. The menu swings wide, from spicy octopus carpaccio to banana blossom fries, and the cocktails keep pace. They do serve pad Thai, but it comes draped in oversize river prawns, just so you know where you stand.

The tlayudas here come folded rather than open-faced, crisped over a charcoal grill in a way that most Oaxacan food trucks in the Bay Area simply don't bother with. La Jacaranda is an outdoor food truck parked inside a sprawling open-air market on Alum Rock, with canopied communal seating and a menu rooted in Oaxacan tradition. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best restaurants in San Jose, which is a lot of credit for a truck with a charcoal grill.

A small pasta counter tucked above the Pike Place Market Atrium, where the menu changes every couple of weeks based on whatever the market has going. The lasagna stays, the tomato sauce pasta stays, and everything else rotates through combinations like pappardelle with venison ragù or gemelli with caramelized pears and gorgonzola. The chef grew up in Turin, and it shows in the kind of quiet confidence that pairs orecchiette with Penn Cove mussels without making a fuss about it.

The Depression dog, a Chicago hot dog variant that arrives with fries piled right on top of the bun, is a good reason to find this counter-service hot dog stand on Armitage. Redhot Ranch uses natural-casing sausages, which means an actual snap when you bite in. The smash burgers are a serious value. The same owners run 35th Street Red Hots near Sox Park, same menu, if that's closer.

Rectangular pizzas sold by the meal-size slice anchor the menu at this busy Cal-Italian bakery and kitchen on Highway One in Tomales, a natural pit stop for anyone driving or cycling the coast. The menu is tight, meatballs and salads alongside the pizza, but the bread is its own reason to pull over. The olive loaf, dense with Kalamata and green olives, travels well. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the Bay Area's best sandwich spots.

Shelves of cookbooks by Sanjeev Kapoor line the walls, which tells you exactly whose restaurant this is. The celebrity chef's global chain lands in Santa Clara as a fine dining Indian restaurant covering both Northern and Southern regional ground, with the kitchen leaning into contemporary spins on each. The shaam savera, spinach dumplings stuffed with cheese and pooled in tomato gravy, is the signature worth ordering. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best South Asian restaurants.

Biang biang noodles get their name from the sound of dough being slapped against the counter, and at this cozy noodle shop on the Ave, that wide, chewy ribbon is the whole reason you're here. The chef has been setting the local standard for years, dressing them in cumin lamb, tingly beef, or just chile oil, which turns out to be enough. Named one of Seattle Met's 50 Best Restaurants, with a second location in Bellevue if you're on that side of the lake.

A mother-and-son food cart in a Milwaukie food park, turning out Guyanese cooking that's rare in Portland and rarer nationally. The namesake bakes are fluffy, slightly sweet fried-dough pockets stuffed with anything from salt cod to Nutella, so lunch and dessert can share a single pastry. Curry and chow mein reflect Guyana's Indian and Chinese roots. It's cart-priced, with covered seating nearby, and Eater has put it on its list of the best in town.

This Lents noodle shop is named after its one big move, the spicy beef soup from central Vietnam, and it sees no reason to hedge. The broth runs meaty, shrimpy, and lemongrass-bright, with collagen-heavy cuts, pork blood cubes, and thick, slippery noodles. A plate of banana blossom, basil, mint, and lime arrives for you to dump in. Eater's list of Portland's best restaurants and food carts includes it. Dine in or call ahead.

The pisco sours here taste like someone in Lima is personally offended if they're made any other way. Casa Zoraya is a cozy Peruvian restaurant in the Piedmont neighborhood where ceviches arrive looking almost too composed to eat, and beef heart skewers on the starter menu separate the curious from the cautious. The back patio earns its reputation on a warm evening.

A tree grows through the middle of the second-floor patio, which tells you something about the vibe here. Kettner Exchange is a bi-level progressive American restaurant in Little Italy where Asian techniques quietly run the kitchen, and the rooftop draws a crowd that came to be seen but stays for the food. Downstairs buzzes; upstairs breathes. The menu moves between crispy rice and dumplings with enough conviction that you forget this place doubles as a nightlife destination.

This is a big, bright, counter-and-table Mediterranean cafe in Brickell where breakfast and lunch have stopped pretending to be separate meals. Jerusalem bagel plates, harissa chips, and a rice bowl share a menu with malawach churros, and limonana, the mint lemonade, goes with all of it. It's casual enough for shorts, and it's busy in the way that suggests half of Brickell has already decided what they're ordering.

Servers in ties and vests refill your water after every sip, and warm focaccia arrives before you've fully settled in. Mucca Osteria is a downtown Italian restaurant operating on the old assumption that hospitality is the whole point, and the kitchen keeps pace: handmade pastas with a silky bite, burrata draped in long-aged prosciutto, scallops over Parmesan fonduta. A room that makes you slow down without making a fuss about it.

Plant-based pan-Asian on Belmont, where the menu reads like a dare and the cocktails keep pace. Norah is a lively, colorful restaurant where pad Thai nachos and vegan rangoons share space with a whole roasted cauliflower drowned in red curry. A gochujang-pink mezcal margarita or a coconut-pandan Negroni handles the rest. The kind of place that makes skeptics stop explaining themselves.

The daily specials list at this non-traditional Japanese restaurant changes constantly, which gives regulars a reason to sit at the bar and work through it systematically. Uchi originated in Austin and landed a block from RiNo, bringing a range that runs from happy hour nigiri to wagyu on a hot rock. The room stays loud and full most nights, so an early arrival is less a tip than a necessity.

The cheese trolley rolls whether you ordered it or not, which sets the tone for this French restaurant inside Houston's Thompson Hotel. The cooking is modern and refined, with Texas ingredients folded in quietly, Gulf shrimp here, pecan-muscadine gelée there. Small plates, proper entrées, theatrical desserts, the kind of room where the meal takes a while and nobody seems to mind.

An upside-down bonsai tree hangs from the ceiling while a crab butter candle drips tableside, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe here. Haii Keii is a futuristic sushi lounge where the design channels Blade Runner and the menu channels ambition, with inventive rolls, vegetarian nigiri that fools the table, and ube espresso martinis in a shade of purple that has no business being that pretty.

Hot yeast rolls and Gruyère corn bread arrive before you've fully decided what Gulf Coast seafood restaurant means in Houston in 2025. Chef Bryan Caswell, long tied to the city's coastal cuisine identity, is behind Latuli, a seafood-forward dining room where roasted grouper comes with housemade corn pudding and wagyu barbacoa gets crowned with pear and jalapeño. The peach cobbler à la mode closes things out, which is, honestly, the correct order of operations.

The Pappas family has spent decades feeding Houston burgers, barbecue, and Tex-Mex, so an ode to their Greek grandmother feels like a long-overdue plot twist. This casual Greek restaurant dishes out keftedes, calamari, souvlaki, and seafood youvetsi, but the desserts are where things get interesting: baklava cheesecake and brûlée panna cotta sit alongside a cocoa-soaked chocolate cake that has no business being that good.

The Broken Shaker, a cocktail bar with a devoted following, started the whole thing before a hotel ever existed around it. Freehand Miami is a boutique hotel on the quiet edge of South Beach where the rooms stay affordable without making you feel like you're roughing it. The patio pulls a genuinely mixed crowd, and the vibe leans more "interesting strangers on a trip" than resort-guest small talk.

A European hostel chain's first U.S. foothold landed in a restored Art Deco building on Collins Ave, which is either perfect or on the nose depending on your tolerance for irony. It runs from four-to-six-bed dorm rooms, bunk-style and open-air, to private kings. The design stays spare: numbered bunks, a mirror station, an accent pillow in the privates. Bring your own curtain expectations, or just don't have any.

A doorbell on an unassuming Chinatown hallway lined with charred cedar is your only cue you've found this ten-seat omakase counter. Inside, chef Kunihide Nakajima runs an Edomae-style sushi experience that leans hard into traditional Japanese rhythms, from the tsumami courses to the seasonal fruit that closes the meal. The seafood comes from Japan, the aesthetic is spare, and the room does not reward fidgeting.

Walls of VHS tapes set the tone at this Vietnamese restaurant and bar that's been an East Dallas fixture forever. The '60s lounge vibe makes it feel like a party someone threw and never quite ended. The menu runs eclectic but Vietnamese dishes anchor it, and the espresso martini is made with house-brewed Vietnamese coffee, in limited supply each night. Order the garlic noodles if they have them, and hope quietly that they do.

Yellow booths, green walls, and neon lighting make Tambayan look like someone decorated with pure enthusiasm, which turns out to be the right call for a Filipino homestyle restaurant that spent years as a pop-up and food truck before landing a permanent spot on Camelback. The halo halo, layered and rainbow-colored, is the dessert equivalent of that same energy. Phoenix New Times named it the city's top Filipino restaurant.

Javelina is a casual counter-style spot in Northeast Portland where frybread does the heavy lifting, as tacos with bison chili, as the bun on the powwow burger, or tossed in cinnamon sugar. The chef is quick to point out that wheat isn't native here, so the rest of the menu sticks to First Foods like elk, wild rice, and blue corn. Eater lists it among Portland's best, and Esquire counted it among 2025's best new restaurants in America.

This is a small Spanish tapas restaurant on Stockton Street with fewer than ten tables, a dim, moody room, and a sangria habit that works best by the pitcher. Plan on ordering a whole table's worth of small plates, then saving room for the daily risotto and the tres leches. The website hasn't been touched in years, so for a last-minute table you'll need to do the unthinkable and call. It's a date-night and celebration kind of room.

1748 Bakehouse is a neighborhood bakery-cafe on Springfield's Main Street, where the pastry case holds rotating galettes and hand pies and the soup-and-sandwich combos handle lunch. The specials sell out before noon, so anyone who spotted a danish on Instagram should plan accordingly. A fleet of strollers usually parks outside, and the highchairs scattered inside suggest the staff saw this coming. The Infatuation lists it among Jacksonville's best restaurants.

This is a fast-casual Cuban cafe, the kind where you order at the counter and eat a medianoche at your desk by 12:30. The recipes started as a grandmother's and now run to nearly ten locations around Jacksonville. The fried queso blanco cubes with guava sauce disappear fast, so the kitchen keeps re-baking pastelitos, which are hard to find elsewhere in town. Iced café con leche is the move, and the guava matcha is for the brave.