The Best Places to Eat in the United States

The burnt banana coconut tapioca pudding is a little ugly and completely beside the point, which is almost the whole story of this Vietnamese restaurant on Washington Ave. The menu runs bright and chili-forward, with shrimp cakes wrapped in butter lettuce and twice-cooked eggplant that quietly steals the table. A James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Northeast and a New York Times Restaurant List pick, it draws the kind of crowd that orders everything.

The entrance is around the corner from the address, at Florida and Mariposa, which feels like a metaphor for the restaurant itself. Ernest is a New American spot in the Mission where the chef pairs kaluga caviar with tater tots and means it. The menu is small and seasonal, with raw bar, snacks, and a few mains. Walk-ins can post up at the bar, which has a cocktail program worth the detour on its own.

A snug Georgetown lunch counter where the glass case does most of the talking: lentils with smoky eggplant, leek-and-walnut tarts, spinach-feta börek, and a dairy-free zucchini soup that has no business being that good. Order a sandwich on the crackly focaccia to eat on the spot, then quietly stock your fridge from the rest. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist in 2025, which explains why a takeout counter feels like such a considered place.

By day, Beast & Cleaver is a Ballard butcher shop where you can walk out with chops and links for the home stove. After hours it turns into a whole-animal steakhouse under the alter ego "The Peasant," running a tasting menu, which is the sort of double life usually reserved for superheroes. Steaks, house sausages, and even the salads draw a meat-minded crowd, and the chef was a James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist.

The Peking duck arrives whole or halved, which is the kind of choice that quietly tells you what sort of restaurant NiHao is. A contemporary Chinese spot in Canton, it draws from Sichuan traditions and dim sum alongside more ambitious plates, with a menu wide enough that vegetarians and serious heat-seekers end up equally occupied. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant, it landed national attention fast and has held the room ever since.

The fry bread here comes out puffy and golden, stuffed with ground beef and beans or finished with chocolate, and it gives the whole menu its name. This family-run Tohono O'odham restaurant has been an anchor in Phoenix's Melrose District long before the neighborhood got interesting, serving tacos, stews, and tostadas alongside it. The kind of spot where out-of-towners finally understand what Arizona actually tastes like.

The bread basket alone sets the tone: sheet-pan biscuits and jalapeño johnnycakes before you've even decided anything. This is a sleek Modern Southern restaurant in Summerhill, where the menu keeps one foot in tradition and one somewhere unexpected, think berber-spiced fried chicken or a dish cheekily called lamburger helper. A James Beard semifinalist and a New York Times pick, Southern National reads as a neighborhood spot that just happens to be cooking at a different level.

Bardot is a Michael Mina brasserie tucked inside Aria, a windowless black-and-white room where it's always a flattering 8 p.m. and fresh flowers cover every surface. A shellfish cart rolls past, a martini program has its own national press, and at brunch someone sings Shania Twain over the croissants. It's a dressy-casual, mid-to-upper price French spot, and it holds three AAA diamonds.

Wild Fig is a no-frills BBQ takeout counter in Summerlin that started life as a commissary kitchen, and it still has the energy of one. The smoked pastrami goes toe to toe with the East Coast versions, and the pickles are homemade. Most of it sells out by mid-afternoon, so ordering ahead is the move. A few picnic tables face the parking lot, which the people eating there have decided not to mind.

The skylight over the dining room does most of the heavy lifting at this Latin American restaurant and rum bar on Sansom Street, flooding plates of vaca frita with the kind of light that makes you briefly question which city you're in. The daiquiris are serious, the ceviche keeps pace, and the piña coladas have a small but devoted following. A James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist runs the kitchen.

Royal blue booths, an open kitchen you can pull a counter seat at, and a baked Alaska that arrives on fire make the room feel like it has something to prove, in a good way. Bludorn is a New American restaurant and bar where the menu swings wide, from oysters (some Texan) to cioppino to seafood towers. The chef is a James Beard semifinalist, and the hospitality is the kind that makes you notice it without being able to say why.

A Malaysian Indian tasting menu restaurant tucked into the Tenderloin, Azalina's trades the neighborhood's gray palette for the saturated colors and layered textures of a Penang night market. The chef grew up there, and the seasonal prix fixe traces Malaysian cooking's Chinese, Indian, Malay, and European overlaps through a California lens. A James Beard semifinalist and listed in the New York Times and Condé Nast Traveler, it earns the attention without announcing itself.

This tiny Chinatown dumpling house on Spring Mountain Road has a glass window where you can watch the staff fold your future soup dumplings while you wait, which is either entertainment or torture depending on your blood sugar. There are no reservations, and you may be asked to order before you sit, so study the menu in line. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist, and the xiao long bao are the reason the line exists.

Raku is a Japanese izakaya in a Spring Mountain Road strip mall, where binchotan charcoal and condiments come straight from Japan and the robata grill does the heavy lifting. It stays open until 1am, so the late tables fill with chefs and hospitality workers who have just finished feeding everyone else. The omakase needs a call a few days ahead, and the sake list is long enough to count as a second menu.

Vintage Vegas glamour gets a quiet update at this steakhouse inside the Circa Resort, where the chef behind Scotch 80 Prime brings a recognizable hand to the Downtown corridor. The menu runs classic prime cuts but keeps slipping in detours: lobster and shrimp potstickers, short rib with harissa, tater tots finished with poutine gravy. The crowd skews loyal, the kind who followed the chef here from his last room and haven't opened the menu in months.

Kurdish restaurant on Nolensville Pike, in the Nashville neighborhood that holds the country's largest Kurdish population, so the room knows what it's doing. Lavash comes out of the oven puffed with hot air, sesame seeds still warm, and the lamb stew arrives in its clay pot. The New York Times put it on their 2024 Restaurant List. Come with people, order more than you think you need, and plan on finishing it anyway.

Through a glass partition, you can watch the dumpling-rolling operation in full swing before you've even ordered, which makes restraint basically impossible. This bright Outer Sunset shop does stuffed dumplings, cold small plates, and a beef noodle soup so deeply flavored it reads as a direct rebuttal to the neighborhood fog. The New York Times put it on their San Francisco list, and the pig-ear salad alone will make you rethink your dumpling-only strategy.

The dough here sits somewhere between New York and New Haven, fermented with a sourdough-and-commercial-yeast blend that produces a crust that shatters at the edge and stays open and airy inside. This is a pizza shop in the Lower Haight, and it's one of the tougher reservations in the city right now. On Tuesdays the kitchen roasts a half chicken that the New York Times found worth mentioning in the same breath as Zuni Café.

Farmers and foragers sometimes drop by mid-service with morels or a jar of honey, which tells you something about how Crafted operates. This farm-to-table New American restaurant sits in Yakima wine country and takes the surrounding agriculture seriously, building a menu where the kitchen collaborates and seasons actually steer the ship. A 2024 James Beard Semifinalist, it runs a tasting menu without the stiff-backed dining room that usually comes with one.

Picnic tables covered in floral oilcloth and a menu that has almost no peer in San Francisco: Prubechu is the city's go-to for Chamorro cooking, the Indigenous cuisine of Guam. The staff will walk you through it happily, from coconut-braised beef noodles to thrice-cooked brisket skewers. Fire up the space heaters on a cool evening and the outdoor patio starts to feel, almost, like somewhere warmer.

Kase x Noko is an omakase sushi counter where getting a seat means setting an alarm for five to midnight, six weeks ahead, and then refreshing like it's a concert drop. There are three sessions a night at the bar, and they vanish almost instantly. It's a tasting-menu splurge, so dress like you earned it, and expect the chef to run the evening with jokes between courses. Nashville Scene named it Best New Restaurant in 2025.

Kouign-amann and cruffins sharing a case with proper baguettes and macarons sets the tone fast at this French patisserie. The laminated dough is serious, the espresso keeps things moving, and the whole operation closes by two, so the morning crowd treats it with the urgency the pastries deserve. A James Beard Outstanding Bakery semifinalist, JL Patisserie is what happens when French technique finds a permanent home in the desert.

A jewelry box packed in ice, opened tableside to reveal a small trove of nigiri and prepared bites, is the kind of move that sets the tone here. Kame is an intimate omakase counter where fish flies in from Japan several times a week and caviar appears less as a flourish than a habit. The chefs talk, the room stays loose, and the whole thing lands closer to a dinner party than a ceremony. A Michelin selected restaurant.

Dungeness crab in a bib is the great equalizer, and Thanh Long has been proving that since before most of its regulars were born. This Outer Sunset Vietnamese restaurant built its reputation on roast crab drowned in butter and garlic, served with noodles that are non-negotiably part of the order. The garlic situation borders on theatrical, which is exactly the point. An old-school institution that still packs the room on any given night.

Good Pie is an Arts District pizza shop that can't commit to one style, so it does New York slices, thick Detroit rectangles, and a thinner Long Island grandma pie. You can eat at the sidewalk window like it's a Tuesday, or take the nicer dining room and order a pitcher of sangria like it isn't. Lunch is easy here, gluten-free pies are on the menu, and nobody will make you pick a lane.

Two stone lions guard the front door of this North Charleston BBQ shop, which should tell you something about how the team does things. Meat by the pound is the move, built around shared combos that draw on both North Carolina Piedmont tradition and Chinese family-style dining. The hot pot collards keep people talking. Popular cuts like duck legs and ribs sell out, so arriving early is less a suggestion than a strategy.

A coffee shop in the East End where the menu reads like a choose-your-own-adventure: classic pour overs and cold brews on one side, house lattes spiked with cinnamon and raw honey on the other, and a CBD infusion option for anyone who knows what they want from life. Empanadas and breakfast tacos fill out the food side, with barbacoa on weekends for the committed. Loteria nights and paint-and-sip events keep regulars coming back between caffeine runs.

A three-story former church building with soaring ceilings and a rooftop deck overlooking the Houston skyline is a pretty good argument for a second latte. This bustling coffee shop leans into its bones, mixing plush sofas and good acoustics with a menu of espresso drinks, chai, and matcha. The Big Tex, clocking in at four ounces of espresso, is there for the committed.

Tapioca dumplings arrive wrapped in banana leaves you peel back like a present, and a catfish hot pot comes in a tureen with tomatoes and okra bobbing in tangy broth, and somehow the room stays minimal enough that the food fills every inch of it. This Vietnamese restaurant on East Passyunk has a James Beard semifinalist nod and a spot on the New York Times restaurant list, which tracks once the bánh bèo chén lands on the table.

A dim, low-slung corner restaurant in East Kensington where the pierogies are non-negotiable and the rotisserie pork lands on stewed kapusta like it's been doing this forever. The sourdough comes with dill butter and smalec, the seasonal water ice is a very Philly curveball, and the whole place reads like Polish comfort food filtered through a neighborhood that just figured out it had good bones. The New York Times put it on their Restaurant List.

The chef running this low-key Rainier Avenue to-go spot cut his teeth in the butcher shop that used to occupy the same building, and the meat knowledge shows. Brisket, burnt ends, and pull-apart pork ribs come with a choice of tomato-based house sauce or a Jamaican jerk concoction that starts complex and finishes hot. The New York Times named it among Seattle's 25 best restaurants. Save room for the rum cake.

The name means "midnight snack," which is about right for a casual restaurant where khao soi radiatori and green curry lamb with pakoras share a menu without apology. The team calls it first-generation American food, drawing on growing up Taiwanese American and cooking across the country. Monthly Wednesday burger specials and weekend brunch with Taiwanese rice porridge keep regulars checking the calendar. End with a gelato flight and no regrets.

The exterior mural of mariachi musicians on Oracle Road is hard to miss, and inside the checkered floors and chalkboard specials keep the vibe going. This is a Coahuila-style taqueria where the quesabirria tacos, slow-braised beef and melted cheese in crispy corn tortillas with consommé for dipping, are the reason the place fills up fast. The menu runs deeper than tacos, with mesquite-grilled ribs and carne asada burritos holding their own.

The open hearth at the center of this Middle Eastern restaurant burns hot enough that you can feel it from across the room, which is by design. Everything here runs through that fire, from the flatbreads to the meats, and the kitchen's control of it is something to watch. Spreads, vegetables, and grilled proteins arrive in a relaxed progression, and the Middle Eastern wine and spirits list is a serious one. On The Washington Post's 40 best D.C. restaurants.

The small orange building on Blake Street looks like it could be anyone's house, which is sort of the point. Hannibal's is an old-school soul food restaurant where the menu leans hard into Lowcountry seafood, with crab and shrimp rice that locals and working chefs both talk about. The New York Times put it on their Restaurant List, and the room makes clear why: nobody here opened a menu for the first time today.

The chef's counter at this vegan tasting menu spot on Belmont seats you close enough to watch the kitchen improvise, and some dishes on any given night will never appear again. Aaron Adams moves between produce-forward simplicity and molecular technique without making either feel like a statement. The sourcing runs local and specific, down to tofu from an old-school Portland maker. The New York Times put it on their Portland shortlist.

The menu arrives handwritten each day with exactly two appetizers, two mains, and two desserts, and you won't know what they are until you sit down. This romantic neighborhood restaurant is tucked into a house off a gravel path in a way that makes even locals double-check the address. The feel is a dinner party at a well-traveled friend's place, the food seasonally European and quietly confident. Booking ahead is wise; guessing the menu is the game.

Naturally leavened pizzas anchor the menu at this East Nashville neighborhood restaurant, though the kitchen moves seasonally enough that what lands on top is anyone's guess. Philip Krajeck also runs the more formal Rolf & Daughters, but Folk is the warmer, wood-paneled sibling where the cooking feels unfussy without being unambitious. The Michelin Guide has it selected, which tracks for a room that fills up with locals who clearly never needed a reason to return.

Lacquer walls and deep-red booths give Jackrabbit Filly the feel of a Chinese-American restaurant your parents loved, except the chef behind the counter was a Top Chef finalist. The menu runs New American Chinese and shareable, from dumplings to cornmeal-crusted trout, with frozen drinks for anyone who needs something festive alongside the spice. North Charleston, which has quietly become the more interesting half of the metro.

A mural of a steer over the parking lot reads "All Hail the King," which tells you everything about the mood inside this Texas-style BBQ shop in Charleston. John Lewis made his name at LA Barbecue in Austin, and the brisket he slices to order at the counter explains why. Picnic tables on a gravel patio, firewood stacked ceiling-high, and a permanent haze of smoke round out the scene. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand.

The open live-fire grill runs the length of the kitchen and puts on a show whether you book a counter seat or not. This Argentine-inflected steakhouse has been an institution on MLK forever, with Greg Denton and Gabrielle Quiñónez Denton behind the flames. The asado is built for at least two people and their ambitions. The chowder, meanwhile, arrives with a smoked marrow bone floating in it, which tells you everything about the kitchen's sense of humor.

A converted 1920s bank building on King Street, with soaring ceilings, white tile, and black wood that lands somewhere between Parisian brasserie and Charleston old money. The menu calls itself "fancy seafood," which is honest: this is a full-on seafood brasserie where the oysters are slurped cold and the crab toast is the kind of thing that makes ordering seem easy. The kitchen handles beautiful product with a light hand and doesn't overcomplicate it.

A coal-fired Neapolitan pizza shop a short walk from Coors Field, Marco's holds the only certification from the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana in Colorado, which is basically a notarized letter from Naples saying the pies are correct. The crust is blistered and chewy in the right proportions. Substitutions on the Neapolitan pies are not allowed, which will sort the room into people who appreciate that and people who ask anyway.

You pick your fish from the case, tell them how you want it, and then somehow end up eating one of the better seafood meals in the city. The New York Times ranked this Egyptian seafood market at number seventeen in New York, which raises real questions about what the fancier places on that list are doing with their tablecloths. The room is Astoria's Little Egypt, not a dining room, and nobody seems to mind.

A postcard mural splashes the back wall of this fast-casual Filipino spot in the International District, setting the tone for a menu that's equally unsubtle about what it loves. Bulalo, the clear beef shank soup, is the centerpiece, and Melissa Miranda's kitchen pulls it off with enough technique to make a simple bowl feel considered. The pancit, the lumpia, the sinigang wings, all travel well in the same direction. The New York Times has named it among Seattle's 25 best.

Hand-cut blocks of ice imported from Japan are the first clue that this isn't a typical whiskey bar. Tucked into the Las Vegas Arts District, Bar Ginza models itself on the quiet whiskey bars of Tokyo, with more than 90 Japanese bottles lining brick walls and flights structured as an omakase. If you don't know where to start, the co-owner behind the bar is happy to pour his way through an education.

The picadillo mac and cheese earned a shoutout from the New York Times, which tells you something about what this South Side BBQ counter is doing. Everything is cut and weighed market style, so you load your tray with brisket, turkey, and sides that lean hard into Mexican tradition: pickled nopales, street corn, chicharrón mac. A line forms early and moves slowly for good reason. Texas Monthly put it on their statewide list, and a James Beard semifinalist nod followed.

A wood-fired grill anchors the dining room at this lively Mexican restaurant on the Trinity River, where the move is to start with a drink at the horseshoe bar and watch the kitchen work before settling in for a round of shareable plates and grilled meats. The tequila and mezcal list runs deep, and the crowd skews festive in the way places do when the patio has won awards and someone nearby is building tacos at the table.

The dining room sits on the second floor of a Victorian house that has been many things over the years, and it still feels lived-in. Modern French cooking with a Pacific Northwest accent is the move here, seasonal and unshowy, the kind that makes you want to book the chef's counter and stay while the afternoon light changes. The New York Times named it among Portland's best. A glass from the thoughtful wine list and a couple of small plates, and it's easy to see why regulars never really leave.

A tiny Filipino coffee shop in Bowmanville where the menu leans on flavors you won't find at any other cafe in the city. Pandan, ube, and macadamia nuts show up where oat milk and brown sugar usually do. The room is small enough that regulars eventually stop ordering off the menu and let the baristas improvise. Its sibling spot, Drip Collective, handles the Fulton Market crowd if you need more elbow room.

Crystal chandeliers hang over dark-paneled walls covered in jazz-themed artwork, which is either perfect or a lot, depending on your mood. This Southern fusion dinner spot runs on house-infused spirits and live music, and the kitchen leans New Orleans by way of the Southwest: gumbo with Andouille and hush puppies, pasta soaked in lobster broth and crawfish. The kind of room that feels designed for a date night where everyone is trying slightly harder than usual.

Masa-based dishes anchor the menu at this Mexican restaurant on East Sixth, where chef Fermín Núñez runs an open kitchen in a space that feels rustic and a little buzzy. The cooking moves between tuna tiradito, wood-grilled vegetables, and tacos built on confit wagyu brisket. A James Beard semifinalist and a Michelin Guide selection, it draws a crowd that tends to linger well past the last tortilla.

A small Vietnamese soup counter in a Southeast Powell strip mall, open each morning until the pots run dry, which happens faster than you'd expect. Two or three soups rotate daily, with Saturday drawing people specifically for the cao lầu, a Hoi An regional noodle dish that rarely makes it this far from home. The Vietnamese iced coffee hits harder than you're ready for. Come early, bring cash, and don't stress the menu because there isn't much of one to stress about.

The smash burger with house-cured pork jowl and jeaw condiment is either a flex or a provocation, possibly both. Taurus Ox is a casual Laotian restaurant that moved out of its original counter spot into a proper dining room, and the menu came with it. Khao poon and a family sausage recipe built around lemongrass anchor the Lao side of things, while that burger quietly complicates any notion of what the restaurant is supposed to be. The New York Times named it among Seattle's 25 best.

The wood-fired oven sits dead center in the room, which tells you everything about priorities at this intimate pizzeria in the Warehouse Arts District. Naturally leavened crusts, house-stretched mozzarella, and locally sourced toppings keep the menu short and the focus narrow. The minimalist space, warm lighting, and low hum of a neighborhood crowd make it feel like someone's very well-appointed living room, if that living room produced excellent pizza.

A sandwich shop on Haight doing exactly one thing from New Orleans: the muffuletta, served in a wedge like a slice of savory pie, toasted or cold. The meat version layers prosciutto, mortadella, soppressata, and provolone under a spicy olive spread; mushrooms and scallions handle the vegetarian side. The pickled egg salad with potato chips stuffed inside is its own argument. Seating is tight, but Buena Vista Park is a short walk away, which seems intentional.

A nondescript Katy strip mall is doing a lot of work here. Inside, the dining room runs to sleek fixtures and lazy susan-fitted private rooms, and the menu reads like a focused edit of Hong Kong classics rather than the usual encyclopedia. Congee, wonton soup, and candied walnut shrimp anchor things, with weekend seafood specials worth asking about. The Michelin Guide has it on their list, and the Houston Chronicle ranked it among the city's top restaurants.

The cheeseburger, griddled and stacked with onion aioli and double cheese on a toasted sesame bun, has its own reputation to manage. But The Loyalist is a proper basement brasserie doing quiche Lorraine, anchovy toasts, and trout grenobloise with a polish that quietly nods to the tasting-menu restaurant upstairs. It sits below Smyth, which holds three Michelin stars, and the kitchen shares the same sensibility at a fraction of the formality.

Freya is a tasting-menu restaurant where the courses change daily and a pierogi gets dressed like a Coney dog. It's fine dining, but the room is loose enough that you can flip through a binder of the owner's vinyl and request a song, which is not a sentence you hear at most places with a James Beard Semifinalist nod. The wine list leans toward small, sustainable producers, and the Dragonfly bar next door handles cocktails.