The Best Places to Eat and Stay in the United States

The Iowa State Capitol dome glows through the windows of this airy, upscale Italian dining room in Des Moines's East Village, which lends the place an accidental grandeur nobody planned. Lunch runs to pasta, sandwiches, and salads. Dinner is a four-course prix fixe that reads far more serious than the tab suggests. The gnocchi are the kind that make you briefly resent every other gnocchi you've eaten.

The Ohio fruitwood smoke is the tell: Michael Symon's barbecue spot on East Fourth Street cooks low and slow, and the brisket and ribs come out of the pit the way they're supposed to. It's a big, lively industrial saloon where meat is sold by the pound or piled into sandwiches, and the bourbon selection is long enough to keep you deliberating well past dinner. Grab a patio table in good weather and watch the street do its thing.

Coral pinks and oversized floral motifs set the tone at this upscale Japanese restaurant inside Bal Harbour Shops, where the charcoal robata runs alongside serious sushi and sashimi. The sake list is extensive, and the cocktail side takes a few detours through mezcal and hibiscus without losing the plot. The room draws a crowd that treats shopping as a warm-up act.

The room was a bank once, and it still looks like money, with soaring beaux arts ceilings, massive pillars, and ironwork that makes you straighten up just walking in. Marble Room is a prime steakhouse and raw bar doing caviar, seafood towers, and serious cuts in one of Cleveland's grandest spaces. Live music fills the room on weekends, which somehow fits the scale perfectly.

Corn pancakes, crispy-edged and dusted with cotija, are the reason the line forms early at this Seward neighborhood breakfast cafe. Colombian dishes like arepas and paisa bowls share the menu with a full parade of pancakes, so the table next to you might be having a very different morning. It's a casual, cash-register-and-coffee-mug kind of spot, warm in the way that neighborhood regulars make a place warm.

A 20-barrel brewhouse visible right behind the bar sets the tone at this brewery and casual restaurant in a handsome old warehouse near downtown. The house beers run from approachable lagers to a double IPA with a name that suggests it means business, and a wood-burning oven turns out Neapolitan-style pizzas alongside pretzels big enough to share whether you planned to or not.

Mayday is a hard ice cream shop on Hendricks Avenue where the flavors read more like side dishes, with corn ice cream under hot honey cornbread croutons and lavender paired with citrus cream and shortbread. The six-scoop flight is the move for groups who can't agree, and a rotating boozy flavor, bourbon-soaked on a good day, handles the grown-ups. Cones are a few dollars, and nobody here is in a hurry.

Shakshuka and a Negroni sounds like a contradiction until you sit down at Mayfield, a modern Mediterranean restaurant in San Juan Capistrano where Levantine and North African flavors run alongside classic California instincts. The menu moves from Turkish eggs with labneh at brunch to za'atar fried chicken at dinner, with a harissa-aioli burger at happy hour for anyone who needs convincing. The cocktail list keeps pace.

A small cut-out in the kitchen door lets you watch each dumpling wrapper get rolled, filled, and pleated by hand before it hits the boiling water. This tiny Chinese restaurant in a Point Loma strip mall specializes in dumplings from Liaoning province, alongside Dongbei beef noodle soup and rougamo flatbread sandwiches. The boba tea is made with muddled fresh fruit, which sounds like an afterthought until you order one.

Mémère's is a French bistro tucked inside the Neptune Hotel, dim and cozy, with off-white walls tinted to suggest decades of Gauloises that never happened. The menu is short and the wine list stretches to a $600 magnum of champagne, so dress for a date or an anniversary. Upstairs sleep is available, and the karaoke bar on the ground floor handles anyone who isn't ready to be reasonable.

Gold, green, and burgundy set the tone in this full-service American grill downtown, where the menu swings wide from pasta and sushi to steaks and craft cocktails. It's the restaurant group's attempt to gather everything they've learned across their other spots under one roof, which sounds like a hedge but mostly works. The Pyro burger and a French dip riff pull regulars back to the sandwich menu.

Tori paitan, a creamy Japanese white chicken broth, is the anchor at this intimate ramen shop tucked inside Dun Huang Plaza. Mensho runs just thirty seats, so the line forms fast and the room stays loud. The noodles are springy, the duck is smoky, and the soft-boiled egg arrives at exactly the right wobble. A ramen shop where every topping feels deliberate rather than decorative.

A food truck parked outside an auto repair shop on South First, Mi Lindo Apatzingán serves the kind of hyper-regional Michoacán cooking that doesn't turn up often anywhere in the Bay Area. The birria de lengua taco, beef tongue simmered in adobo until it collapses into sticky cubes, is the thing to order. Morisqueta, rice under soupy beans with stewed ribs, is worth the detour on its own. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best tacos in the Bay Area.

Mike's Kitchen is a cash-only, cafeteria-style Italian counter tucked inside a VFW outpost in Cranston, which means you order at the line and eat among Rhode Island accents thick enough to need subtitles. Polenta arrives as a soft, custardy square under red sauce, with a meatball or sausage on top. Bring bills, expect to hear about the old days, and don't be surprised if a neighbor offers beach advice unprompted.

Mings On Broad is a counter-service sandwich spot in Cranston where the fried chicken sandwich comes Asian-inspired and the portions seem to assume you're feeding a second person. Pho-tine fries arrive buried in beefy gravy and cheddar curds, and the pandan colada with toasted rice shows up to remind you there's a bar menu. The Infatuation put it on its Providence list. Order to go and eat it messily at home, unobserved.

Mixed Fillings is a pie shop where the key lime comes with a pretzel and brown sugar crust, which is the kind of thing that starts arguments among native Floridians who all have opinions about key lime. There are savory quiche slices too, and you can order flights of four or six to go, for people who can't commit to one pie. The owner also uses the shop to talk up local activism, so expect the conversation to run past dessert.

A wok that produces real smoky hei on Indo-Chinese noodles is a good sign you're not at a standard curry house. Munch India is a casual South Asian restaurant in Berkeley that draws from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, with California produce and the occasional Japanese ingredient folded into the mix. The menu rotates monthly, kebabs go over hardwood charcoal, and everything is available for takeout and delivery.

The barbacoa draws the crowd to this Michoacan-style taqueria in Redwood City, but the deeper menu rewards regulars who order cachete or nervio, the latter sticky with gelatinous fat in a way that takes some commitment. Everything arrives folded on yellow corn tortillas with a tangy salsa verde. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's finest tacos. It's small, parking is a project, and the whole experience costs almost nothing.

Neon pink flamingos and campy art line the walls of this cheerfully self-aware dive bar in Old Brooklyn, where a plain tavern exterior hides the kind of interior that knows exactly what it's doing. Draft cocktails and $3 beers anchor the drinks menu, but the food swings surprisingly hard: a Kobe beef frank topped with caviar and potato chips, udon in bone marrow broth. The crowd comes for the dive trappings and stays because the kitchen clearly didn't get that memo.

Detroit-style pan pizza in a small fast-casual shop on Edwards, where the menu started life on Instagram during the pandemic and somehow held together well enough to become a brick-and-mortar. You can grab a hot slice in house or take a par-baked pie home to finish yourself, which is either charming or suspicious depending on your mood. Toppings lean creative, hot honey buffalo chicken nuggets and fried Brussels sprouts, but the plain pepperoni holds its own too.

The brewing tanks practically share the room with you at this airy warehouse brewery on the edge of downtown Cleveland. Belgian strong ales, altbiers, and kölsches anchor the tap list, with hazy IPAs filling in the rest. The food runs to corndogs, nachos, and sandwiches, which is exactly what you want when you're sitting five feet from a working brewhouse.

Half Japanese grocery, half sushi bar, Noble Fish has been a Detroit-area institution for long enough that regulars have probably watched the dining room expand around them. The sushi counter is the draw: chefs assembling nigiri and sashimi with the kind of focus that makes you stop talking mid-sentence. Rolls run large, prices run reasonable, and the shelves of Japanese snacks and bottled teas make it hard to leave empty-handed.

Knife-cut noodles made in-house anchor the menu at this casual College Park storefront serving the bold flavors of northwest China. Mouth-numbing red chilies and black vinegar show up everywhere, from chili-oil dumplings to griddled flatbread sandwiches. Kumquat lemon tea and sour-plum juice are on hand for anyone who underestimated the heat. The University of Maryland crowd has clearly done the math on the price-to-fire ratio.

Noura Cafe is a casual Lebanese counter spot in Jacksonville that doubles as a small grocery, so you can order a desert rider, that cold-cut-stuffed pita the city is oddly devoted to, and leave with imported tahini and lupini beans. Shawarma platters and kibbeh share the menu with Egyptian stews, and neighborhood moms grab spinach pies on the way home from work. It's cheap, quick, and nobody's dressed up.

O-Ku is a high-end sushi restaurant on a stretch of First Street better known for bars, snacks, and anything that can be fried. Real shoes are encouraged. It's the sort of place you bring a date to prove you can think past the California roll. The signature rolls pair wagyu with tempura shrimp, which is surf n' turf by way of Jacksonville Beach, and the menu is part of a small national izakaya chain.

Obon Shokudo is a small, bright Japanese comfort food spot on SE Grand where the whole menu happens to be vegan, a fact it mentions about as loudly as a houseplant. Udon comes in brothy curry or chilled with sesame, and the onigiri get a smear of miso made from things like hominy or pistachios. Fermented hot sauce and tofu get made in-house too. Portland Monthly put it on its 50 Best Restaurants list.

An Armenian and Caucasian grill tucked into an Aurora strip mall, where the khachapuri arrives topped with egg and cheese and the beef dumplings, called khinkali, are large enough to require a small plan of attack. The menu runs from hearty stews and hand-pulled noodles to eggplant rolls stuffed with garlic-walnut spread. Georgian wine, from a region that considers itself the cradle of viticulture, is the right call alongside any of it.