The Best Places to Eat and Stay in the United States

This is the diner tucked inside the El Cortez, an old Fremont Street casino hotel, with a menu long enough to need its own table of contents. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and a late-night run all share the pages, and prime rib is the house specialty at any hour. It's a proper diner, so nobody dresses up, and weekends it keeps going until 7 a.m. for people whose night has outlasted their plans.

A tea room and cafe on the second floor of a Bowery building, reached by buzzing an unmarked door and climbing an industrial staircase. Neon gramophones, Togo couches, a vinyl listening room, and a DJ who drops in twice daily to play something like Boards of Canada on a sound system that did not come cheap. The MacBook presence is significant, but the Japanese teas and pastries give everyone a reasonable excuse to stay.

A rooftop restaurant perched atop the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Skywalker Grill pulls its ingredients from George Lucas's own Skywalker Ranch, which is either a charming farm-to-table story or the most elaborate movie tie-in you've ever paid for, depending on your mood. The modern American menu runs from wagyu burgers and lobster corn dogs to chicken tenders served, with a straight face, alongside caviar ranch.

Someday is a cocktail bar and restaurant tucked down an alley off Division, so the busiest shopping strip in the neighborhood quietly becomes someone else's problem. The shady patio has a Mediterranean slouch to it, and the drinks lean playful, with basil, strawberry, pandan, and tamarind all getting a turn. Plan on a spritz that turns into the cheese plate, and dress for a first date or a 50th anniversary, both of which fit.

Soraya is a modern Japanese American restaurant on the ground floor of the Federal Reserve Building, which is a very Detroit place to eat a katsu. The menu runs from takoyaki and udon to sushi rolls, plus cocktails built on Japanese whisky for people who'd like their banana and brown sugar to feel like a decision. Come in somewhere between work-casual and date-night, and book on Resy.

A former Silver Lake church became Hotel Lucile, and the team behind De La Nonna tucked this restaurant inside it, which gives the room more drama than most new openings deserve. The menu threads French technique through California farmers market produce, with a Southern ease in how it's all served. A full bar runs cocktails that lean tequila and mezcal, and the whole thing is relaxed enough that you won't feel underdressed.

Southern Chicago is a steakhouse-ish dinner spot in the South Loop where the crystal chandeliers and plush velvet seating suggest the Las Vegas Strip got lost on the way to Soldier Field. The kitchen cooks steaks over open flame and stacks seafood towers, and the sides lean decadent, like deviled eggs topped with shrimp and caviar. Plan on dressing a notch up, and on a lot of conventioneers.

Coffee arrives at Specs spiked with Cynar, corrected with maple cream liqueur, or topped with Angostura whipped cream, all from 8am. It's a coffee shop and daytime cocktail bar in Winooski, the former mill town next door to Burlington, where the crafty set debates linocut workshops in the sunny windows while big dreamers at the bar puzzle over how to dome the town rotary. When talks stall, the attached bev mart stocks 24-ounce Busch Ice and cigarettes.

The dry-aged bone-in ribeye arrives blanketed in hot butter, which tells you everything about the register this grand steakhouse is playing in. From the family behind Mastro's, Steak 48 fits Beverly Hills like a bespoke suit, with a seafood tower stacked high and sides that go past the usual (corn brulee, Hasselback potatoes). The room skews dressed-up and the tabs follow suit, but the kitchen keeps the promise the room makes.

Sunday Sauce is an Italian-American restaurant on North Killingsworth that treats New Jersey red-sauce comfort food as a cuisine worth remastering. The decor is a loving nod to Y2K little league pizza parties, which is a sentence nobody expected to write about a pasta joint. It works for a date or a Tuesday, and the lunch menu now runs to heroes and subs, with the Bergen County line debate left to you.

Sunny Hill is a bright, casual pizza place a short walk from Golden Gardens, which makes it the natural spot to sit down once the beach has worn you out. The round pies come blistered, and the Detroit-style squares have a focaccia-ish crust with frizzled cheese at the edges. There are also cheeseburgers and waffle fries, and the black garlic ranch for dunking them is not optional in spirit, even if it is on paper.

Metal band posters on the walls and distorted guitars blasting while someone brews the most delicate pour-overs in Williamsburg is the whole vibe at this small coffee shop. The owner sources from Brooklyn's Sey roastery and makes his own blends, and the result is coffee that tastes less like coffee than like the memory of a fruit. The drip is worth the trip on its own if you're not in a splurging mood.

Sushi Ichiban is an all-you-can-eat sushi spot a short walk from the Fremont Street canopy, marked by orange neon and a mural on 6th Street. The roll list is long enough to need a bookmark, running from plain salmon nigiri to a shrimp tempura Fremont roll, with corn cheese on the side for anyone who wants a vegetable-adjacent moment. Service moves fast, and takeout comes at a discount.

Daisuke Nakazawa trained under Jiro Ono, and that lineage hangs quietly over every piece of Edomae-style nigiri served at his Los Angeles omakase counter on South Robertson. The room is hushed and deliberate, the kind of place where you eat with full attention. An omakase here moves through nigiri flights with the optional chef's menu adding hot and cold courses before and between.

Hidden in the valet-parking alcove of a Rodeo Drive retail building, this intimate omakase counter seats fewer than twenty people and pairs its high-end nigiri with wine instead of sake, which sounds like a sommelier's dare and somehow works beautifully. Six seats at the bar, a near-invisible entrance, and enough hush to make the whole thing feel like a pleasant conspiracy. The Valley outpost earned the devoted following; this one earns the real estate.

Taco Centro is a casual Little Italy taquería where birria turns up on tacos, on pizza, and in ramen, which is a lot of jobs for one braise. The menu runs thirteen tacos deep, with a Sonoran one on a freshly formed flour tortilla that gets most of the attention. Churros con tres leches close things out, and the drinks lean micheladas, palomas, and local beer on tap. Order at the counter, wear whatever you walked in wearing.

A charcoal-fired street cart in a Silver Lake parking lot, doing Hermosillo-style asada the way it's meant to be done: beef piled onto tallow-rich tortillas with cabbage, guacamole, and a lineup of salsas that demands some decision-making. The team behind it brings serious pedigree, Atla among the past stops. The menu is short on purpose, asada tacos, burritos, and the fixings, and the line makes the case before you've ordered.

The long counter at this old-school Chinese restaurant in the Chinatown-International District has been accumulating scuffs, celebrity photos, and regulars for decades. The menu has been this way forever, and that's the point: beef in oyster sauce, chop suey built on sautéed vegetables, nothing experimental. The owner waves you out the door himself, which is a touch you don't get everywhere.

The menu changes six days a week and gets posted to social media, so regulars follow Tevin Love's feeds the way other people follow sports scores. This Vermont Square soul food and Caribbean spot grew from home-cooked meals sold out of Love's house, and the dining room still carries that energy. Oxtails, jerk chicken wings, and macaroni and cheese anchor the rotation, but the jerk salmon and lamb chops, when they appear, tend to disappear fast.

A tofu production company that sprouted a deli counter, Thanh Son is the rare spot where the house-made soy milk and fresh tofu, sold by the pound, upstage everything else on offer. The banh mi are built to order on house-baked bread, and the glass case of che, Vietnamese sweet dessert, stacks up a rainbow of tapioca, jellies, and beans in combinations that take a minute to decode. Bring restraint, or at least a spoon.

The baristas here treat coffee sourcing the way a sommelier treats a wine list, asking what you're in the mood for, floral or fruity, bright or nutty, and steering you toward something you wouldn't have ordered on your own. This sunny corner coffee shop in Philadelphia is genuinely tiny, and weekend lines of pourover devotees stretch down the block. The za'atar croissants disappear early, so arriving with time to spare is less advice than strategy.

Two million crystals drape from floor to ceiling across three floors, which is either maximalist or just correct for Las Vegas. The Chandelier is a cocktail lounge inside the Cosmopolitan, and each level is technically its own bar, from the casino-facing ground floor up to the quieter top lounge. Ask for the Verbena, an off-menu drink with a buzz button flower that momentarily numbs your mouth before the cocktail lands.

An Italian-leaning specialty food shop that doubles as a sandwich counter, with crusty bread packed with combinations like fried zucchini and pesto or prosciutto and coppa. The shelves hold artisanal cheeses, salumi, preserves, and breads for anyone who wants to assemble something impressive at home. Been around forever under different ownership, and the new team moved it into a brighter space without losing the plot.

A mirrored, handsome room on a corner that used to be a franchise Mexican spot, now serving wagyu French dip and whole lobster repositioned in the shell for easier eating. It's a polished, scene-y restaurant from Catch Hospitality, which means it looks great and reservations can be a project. Taylor Swift has been spotted here, which tells you roughly what kind of evening to dress for.

The Fattened Caf is a casual counter-order spot that happens to be St. Louis's only Filipino barbecue joint, which means a pitmaster and a Filipina chef got married and the rest of us got smoked chicken rubbed with burnt coconut. The pork steak, a local obsession, comes marinated in Filipino spices over java rice. Grab a rattan couch up front and share the room with strangers, or bring a crew to the big tables in back.

A Sunset Strip breakfast diner where the pancakes run about twelve inches across and the menu lists twenty variations, which means the only real decision is how much butter you want on your Oreo stack. The crowd on weekend mornings makes the sidewalk look like a casting call, but the line moves. A casual, cash-friendly spot that takes pancakes more seriously than most places take anything.

The Grill is a sit-down American restaurant at the Wharf, the sort of place you pick when the show at the Anthem starts soon and nobody can agree on dinner. The menu is steaks, salads, mac and cheese, and lobster rolls, a dressed-up cousin of the roadside chain. There's a wine wall with faux wood pillars, and the servers wear formal attire, which feels generous for a burger.

The name suggests a taco-and-enchilada situation, and then the menu shows up with tenderloin cooked in bone marrow and enchiladas stuffed with Maine lobster. This is a Brickell Key restaurant that treats Mexican food as a reason to order the steak, including a 33-ounce Wagyu tomahawk built for a table of negotiators. The tequila and mezcal list is long, and the margaritas lean on it. Dress like the check will be large.

The Parlour is a casual Fremont East breakfast-and-coffee spot where the espresso martini and the spiced chai coffee cocktail sit comfortably beside the sugary lattes. There's a syphon coffee rig that brews your cup tableside, in case you wanted your caffeine to feel like a chemistry demo. The dining room is a happy pile of mismatched chairs and tchotchkes, with a deep vegan menu and burgers under $10 on weekend evenings.

The Roost is a Capitol Hill food hall where you order from your phone and the food finds you, which spares everyone the usual tray-and-buzzer shuffle. Under one roof you get Cameo Coffee, Hi-Fi Taco, and a craft beer bar pouring Bluejacket brews. There's also Caruso's Grocery, a sit-down red sauce joint with faded red booths and chicken Parmigiana, doing a convincing impression of a place your grandfather had a table at.

The Royce is a wine bar and bottle shop near Grand Circus Park, where walnut shelving, globe lights, and library ladders make buying a bottle feel faintly like checking out a book. A 12-seat bar anchors the first floor, with cured meats and cheeses to keep the pours company. Over 300 bottles are for sale, plenty by the glass, and classes are on offer for anyone who'd rather understand the list than guess at it.

The Skip is a cocktail bar in the Belt alleyway, where the walls open up in summer and the frozen drinks come out to meet the breeze. Winter closes the patio and swaps in tiki-style cocktails and holiday specials built on nostalgia. Matty Matheson designed the menu, though anyone wanting a proper sit-down meal gets pointed to the bigger sibling, Standby, a few feet away. Expect downtown energy and a festival mood in any season.

A post-fire renovation gave this Abbot Kinney neighborhood restaurant a fresher face, but the kitchen's restless energy is the same. Chef Casey Lane shops the farmers market in the morning and writes the menu by evening, so the charcoal-kissed dishes you order barely existed as an idea at breakfast. Pasta, whole fish, and whatever looked good at the stalls that day fill a room that Venice locals treat as a standing appointment.

Thim Hing is a cash-only bánh mì counter where people leave carrying sandwiches by the armload, as if provisioning for a long voyage. Around lunch, trunks get loaded with plastic bags of the stuff. The baguette runs rail-thin and loud when you bite it, which means more crunch per square inch than the usual loaf. Bring cash, order for everyone you know, and expect to be the slowest person in line.

The front window is how you order, the aguas frescas are poured cold, and the adobada is quietly the whole argument for coming. This Echo Park taqueria is a branch of a Tijuana original, serving the usual lineup of proteins as tacos, mulitas, burritos, and vampiros. It landed on Eater's hottest new restaurants list, which tracks, given how fast the neighborhood found it. First-timers are pointed toward the adobada, and regulars tend to agree.

This is a dim sum restaurant in Katy Asian Town, part of the chain that earned the "world's least expensive Michelin-starred restaurant" nickname back in Hong Kong. The baked char siu buns, sweet and crackly on top, are what the room orders first. The dining room is big and booth-lined, with a bar off to the side that gives it a faint sports-bar energy. Nobody dresses up for this, and the check stays modest.

True Food Kitchen is a bright, casual daytime-to-dinner spot in Downtown Summerlin where the menu has a ready answer for every dietary restriction at the table. That makes it the group-chat compromise that actually gets approved. Expect yoga leggings still in circulation, a lineup of bowls, salads, and sourdough pizza, and fried chicken that skips the gluten and the deep fryer. The flourless chocolate cake closes things out.

Tú Lan is a no-frills Vietnamese counter-service spot on Mid-Market that has been feeding the neighborhood for what feels like forever. Lunchtime means office workers grabbing takeout while a few people eat at the back tables. The imperial rolls arrive loud and crackling, and the pho, rice plates, and vermicelli bowls are sized for a second meal. You leave with leftovers and change from a twenty.

Vaca is a polished Spanish restaurant by the FIGat7th mall, an Orange County import that landed where the consultants and the company cards are. Tapas like gambas al ajillo and croquetas start around $20, ribeyes and paellas run much larger, and the steaks climb past $100. It suits a client dinner, a power lunch, or a parent you'd like to impress. Wear the good blazer, and let the expense report take the hit.

Gold hands serve as beer taps, jewel-toned decanters fill a Queen Anne cabinet, and the wallpaper is not quite what it seems. Velveteen Rabbit is a cocktail bar in the Arts District that takes the storybook theme seriously without going precious about it: seasonal menus, vintage glassware, and drinks rooted in Golden Age mixology. The patio and light-projected walls are draws on their own. Weekends fill up, so book ahead.

Vino & Vinyl is a wine bar in Sugar Land's Town Center that also happens to be a record shop, so you can flip through used LPs while someone pours you a glass. The menu runs to charcuterie boards, flatbreads, and heartier plates like steak tacos and braised short ribs. Happy hour is generous with its days, covering all of Tuesday plus late afternoons later in the week, which suits the unhurried, turntable-adjacent pace.

Vino Carta is a wine bar that doubles as a bottle shop at the north end of Little Italy, so you can drink a glass here or walk out with something for later. The shelves run to hundreds of bottles, heavy on natural, orange, and sparkling from small family producers. There's a monthly wine club, plus food pop-ups and the occasional DJ night, which is a lot of ambition for something that started as a place to buy wine.