The Best Places to Eat and Stay in the United States

From the street, Hermosa looks like the hot dog and beef stand you grew up near, which is the joke, because inside it's a Cambodian sandwich shop with a fried chicken sandwich that has opinions. At night it quietly becomes a dinner tasting, where a group of up to 14 can take over the whole room for an 11-course BYOB spread. It's casual and counter-service, so dress for sandwiches, and bring the wine.

Locals call it "steak basement," which tells you nearly everything: it's a kinda-casual steakhouse tucked below street level in Virginia-Highland, the kind of room that hasn't tried to reinvent itself and doesn't need to. Old-school cuts arrive on heaping platters with starchy sides, and the martinis come with a sidecar so the drink stays cold. Weekend brunch pulls a crowd, but really any night works fine.

Hovan is a casual, inexpensive Mediterranean counter in Five Points, done up in blue and white, where a weekday lunch line of neighborhood office workers moves fast. Regulars get their order started the moment they walk in. When vegan requests picked up, the owners learned to make seitan from scratch for a vegan gyro, which is a level of customer service most places reserve for hostage negotiations. The catering trays turn up at everything from watch parties to funerals.

Tortillas pressed from imported blue Oaxacan corn are the foundation at this Winter Park taco shop, where the kitchen fries in beef tallow and avocado oil. The menu runs toward veal cheeks and chorizo-and-potato fillings, the kind of combinations that suggest the team grew up eating this food, not just studying it. Eater named it among Orlando's 38 best restaurants, and the regulars who show up on a Tuesday seem to already know that.

Huynh is a casual Vietnamese spot in EaDo, the kind where you order a bowl of pho roughly the size of your head and then reconsider your afternoon plans. The menu runs long, with noodle soups, vermicelli bowls, clay pot dishes, egg rolls, and crepes, and it's been a neighborhood fixture forever. Families fill the tables, prices stay friendly, and a second location is headed to Upper Kirby for the less adventurous.

Sixteen dosa configurations is the move at this South Indian casual spot inside Stoneridge Mall, where the crepes come out shatteringly crisp and the kitchen doesn't treat mall traffic as an excuse to coast. The Hyderabad bandi dosa, stuffed with chopped vegetables in a lentil-ginger sauce, arrives with a tomato chutney worth ordering extra. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top South Asian restaurants, which is a lot to carry for a food court neighbor.

The wait at Il Rione works like this: put your name in, retreat to a bar nearby, and wait for your phone to buzz. It's a New York-style pizzeria in Detroit Shoreway, and the room is that particular mix of scuffed and stylish that only works when the food earns it. The menu is short by design, built around pies, with a handful of salads and boards rounding things out. Beer, wine, and cocktails keep the same focused logic.

The snack-sized tacos here get deep-fried and coated in an aggressive orange cheese dust that looks exactly like what it is, and Kansas City has been arguing about whether that's genius or not since 1957. This old-school fast food counter does its own riff on the KC taco, served with hot sauce for dunking, plus a Pocket Burger that improves on the loose meat sandwich format by being noticeably juicier. A local institution that polarizes, never bores.

The wooden door on King Street opens into a narrow, warm room that's been packed most nights for as long as anyone can remember. Indaco is a wood-fired pizza and pasta spot where the wine list leans affordable Italian and people tend to order a second bottle before they've finished the first. The leopard-spotted crust on the nduja pizza is the obvious draw, but the seasonal pasta earns its place on the table too.

The menu roams from South Indian chicken 65 to Indo-Chinese noodles to biryani without feeling like it's hedging its bets, which is a harder trick than it sounds. This casual Indian restaurant in a strip mall along El Camino earned a San Francisco Chronicle nod for South Asian dining in the Bay Area. The Vijayawada biryani, where the rice simmers in a tomato-onion gravy until each grain is loaded, is the kind of dish that makes the drive feel incidental.

The pastry chef doubles as a chocolatier, which is either a warning to pace yourself or a reason to skip straight to dessert. This East Cesar Chavez neighborhood Italian spot runs on local farms and whole-animal cooking, so the menu shifts with the season. Pastas and anything with duck tend to anchor whatever's on offer. Before you leave, at least pick up some of the handmade chocolates at the counter.

Irregardless Biscuit is a tiny Southern breakfast counter in a building with roughly four tables, which is why the line tends to wander out onto Carpenter Street. The biscuits are big and fluffy, the sandwiches ride on them, and the chicory iced coffee does the heavy lifting on a hot morning. The candied bacon one is named for the previous tenant, a hole-in-the-wall breakfast spot, so getting yours to go doubles as a small memorial.

The kitchen counter of this Japanese rowhouse izakaya seats you close enough to watch the grillwork happen in real time. The menu runs to sashimi, grilled collars, and hand-doodled specials that change on a whim, sake descriptions written for humans rather than sommeliers, and on Tuesday nights the upstairs flips into a natural-wine bar that hospitality workers seem to have claimed as their unofficial break room.

Skate-punk graphics on the walls, pinball and Skee-Ball in the back, and a Neapolitan pizza menu with a rotating cast of weekly specials: this is the kind of pizza pub that spawned a small neighborhood empire and still feels like the original reason the other places exist. Vegan options run deep, the drink list stays local, and the room lands somewhere between dive bar and pizza parlor, which is exactly what Upper Fells Point asked for.

Josephine is an Italian-American restaurant and bar in Avondale, and it skips the ripped-up booths and recycled bruschetta that haunt so many red-sauce rooms around Jacksonville. The owner's late grandmother watches over the dining room from a portrait, which keeps everyone's table manners in check. Expect a big caesar, truffle fries, saucy pastas, and a house negroni. The rigatoni alla vodka has been on the menu since day one.

Blue corn tortillas made with help from the chef's mother is a pretty good origin story for a taco shop. Julieta lives inside the historic Stutz Building, and the line sometimes wraps into the alley before the place even opens. The team built a following through years of pop-ups before landing here, and the fillings rotate, though braised brisket and al pastor tend to anchor the menu.

The house falafel recipe here is so closely guarded that the family started selling it wholesale rather than let anyone reverse-engineer it at a competitor's table. This cash-friendly falafel shop sits in Anaheim's Little Arabia District and gets properly packed at lunch, so the outdoor patio exists for good reason. The baba ganoush and hummus are the moves, though the feta fries suggest the kitchen isn't precious about tradition either.

Kasra Persian Grill is a sit-down Persian restaurant that has been feeding Houston for ages, and it does so over a charcoal grill that leaves the kabobs properly blackened at the edges. Skewers of koobideh and chicken arrive next to heaps of basmati, with the dill and fava bean rice available as an upgrade you will be glad you made. Order the eggplant dip first, since it's where the evening starts to make sense.

The chef's special grill platter arrives at the table still sizzling, and within minutes half the dining room has ordered one. This Nepalese restaurant in Windsor Heights runs on that kind of contagious momentum, with a menu that spans gentle biryanis and curries on one end and assertively spiced tandoori meats and tikkas on the other. The owner is famously present, and first-timers rarely leave as strangers.

The frozen custard is the name on the sign, but the jumbo burgers are the reason regulars make the drive to the suburbs. This is a classic drive-in counter spot: charry-edged patties on soft starchy buns, draped in melty processed cheese, with a toppings menu that quietly doubles as a personality test. The custard handles dessert. The go-to move, per local consensus, is eating all of it in the car.

A pond out front sets the tone at this casual Korean barbecue spot in North Shoal Creek, where the room feels genuinely domestic in the best sense. Tabletop grills handle galbi and duck, a long banchan spread fills the gaps, and the traditional menu runs to budae jjigae, kimbap, and kimchi jeon for anyone not in the mood to tend a fire. Cold sake or yuja ade to drink, group tables throughout.

The roast beef Manhattan, a pile of roasted chuck and mashed potatoes drowned in gravy, tells you everything you need to know about this soul food diner on North College. Barack Obama ate here before he was Barack Obama, and the regulars have never let the place forget it. A fire in 2020 took the famously uneven floors but not the rib tips or the neck bones, and the rebuilt room now seats 500 and has a full bar.

Edible flowers scattered across the rolls give away that this Georgetown sushi spot isn't playing it straight. Tucked into Cady's Alley, Kyojin is the flashier sibling of an Arlington raw fish staple, with a full kitchen that lets the Bangkok-born chef push into hot izakaya territory alongside the maki. Truffle wasabi and torched wagyu over uni are the kinds of details that either excite you or make you very tired, depending on the day.

A Parisian-inspired wine bar and grocery that has been around forever, La Buvette rotates its menu of French everyday food daily: mussels, roasted chicken, house-made sausage, cheese plates, and well-priced wine. The sister spot next door handles sandwiches, charcuterie, and fresh bread. A once-temporary patio has become permanent, which tells you something about how the neighborhood feels about the place.

Colombian empanadas next to lamb Bolognese next to butter chicken, and somehow none of it fights. La Merenda was doing international small plates in Walker's Point before the neighborhood caught up, and the reservations-required dining room still draws the crowd that doesn't need a theme explained to them. The goat cheese curds in chorizo cream sauce over crostini is the kind of thing that makes the eclectic menu feel less like a concept and more like a good idea.

The charcoal grill at this Oakland taco truck runs hot enough to split chorizo links open for maximum char, which tells you everything about the priorities here. Tijuana-style tacos, asada at the center, the smoke doing real work on every bite. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best tacos, which tracks when you're standing in the little line that forms between the truck and the grill.

The line at the walk-up window is your first clue that this is a burger spot worth queuing for. It's a smash burger operation, the kind that keeps a rotating daily special on the board and double-fries the fries for good measure. The menu also runs a Philly cheesesteak riff for those who need something to argue about. A second location is coming to Highland Park.

Lao Peng You is a tiny, no-frills dumpling and noodle spot where the dumplings arrive plump, in a dried shrimp broth, and the chile oil is homemade enough to sell by the jar. Two brothers took their grandmother's lessons and ran with them, and the noodles have a pleasing chew. Seats are scarce, so arrive early or spend the wait watching other people's dinner with open envy.

A sea-monster mural by Indy artist C.S. Stanley watches over the pastry case at this neighborhood bakehouse, which a team of five local bakers opened together and never looked back. The porridge sourdough and croissants have drawn a following, and the lunch sandwiches and coffee give people an excuse to linger. Strawberry-guava Danish and pretzel croissants make the decision about what to order harder than it needs to be.

The garlic sauce at this South San Francisco sandwich shop has its own cult following, which tells you something about the commitment level here. The sandwiches are legendarily large, large enough that ordering two for yourself draws concerned looks from strangers. Bread holds everything together with more authority than the deli meats deserve. A San Francisco Chronicle pick for the Bay Area's best sandwich spots, and a genuine test of anyone nearby.

A laminated sign reading "Welcome hunters. Wild game check in available" sets the tone at this family-run butcher and smokehouse near Old Town Los Gatos. Fishermen drop off coolers of fresh catch for the smoker; vegetarians get a pickle-and-avocado sandwich and a polite smile. Order anything built around the house-smoked meat, and skip the barbecue-sauce-heavy Super Hero in favor of the Jackie Special, a maple-sugar-cured turkey and bacon situation with cheddar and avocado.

The gumbo here has been a Detroit obsession for decades, a shrimp-and-sausage situation thickened with okra and a proprietary spice blend nobody's giving up the recipe for. This is a carryout counter spot, casual and no-frills, with jambalaya, red beans and rice, and shrimp po'boys on crackly baguettes rounding out a menu that stays squarely in the Louisiana lane. Order at the counter, take it home, and resist eating it in the car.

The décor alone earns a look: VHS tapes, paint-by-numbers, and a vintage arcade game pile up like a garage sale that never ended. But Love Handle is a breakfast and brunch spot on Mass Ave, and the food keeps pace with the room. Braised meats and fried chicken sandwiches share the menu with hanger steak and eggs, while the pastry case runs to tart cherry-pistachio brownies and espresso-maple cheesecake. Weekends fill early.

A microbrewery that taps new seasonal sours, stouts, and IPAs several times a month, Lua also happens to fly in fresh-caught seafood, because why not. The kitchen, led by a chef who trained at Michelin-starred restaurants in Chicago and the Bay Area, turns out Dungeness crab cakes alongside burgers, wings, and caviar. Named after a Staffordshire bull terrier, which tells you the vibe is relaxed enough that nobody's keeping score.