The Best Places to Eat in the United States

Rick Bayless runs a small empire in Chicago, and somehow his airport torta counter at O'Hare landed on the New York Times list of the city's 25 best restaurants. It's a quick-service spot, so expect a counter and a tray, but the choriqueso, a griddled sandwich of molten Jack cheese, chorizo, and avocado, audibly crunches when you bite it. The tortilla soup is the same recipe they pour at Frontera Grill. Boarding group 7 has never been so bearable.

The hot dog shop that's been feeding sand-dusted beachgoers at Wrightsville for decades, Trolly Stop runs a tight menu: pick your dog (beef-pork Southern, all-beef Northern, smoked turkey, veggie, smoked pork sausage) then pick your toppings. The Carolina dog, dressed with deli mustard, chili, and coleslaw, is the low-key litmus test for first-timers. The Surfer and the Mexican dogs are there for anyone who wants cheese and bacon doing most of the heavy lifting.

The coyota is a Sonoran pastry that looks roughly like a flying saucer, which is a good start. Tutuli bakes them in fillings like cajeta, hibiscus, and guava, and the flavors open up properly once you toast one. They're somewhere between a cookie and an empanada, and they turn up at coffee shops around the Bay. The San Francisco Chronicle named Tutuli among the best bakeries in the Bay Area.

The chef spent years learning to speak, read, and write Japanese before opening this fine dining restaurant on South Lamar, and that rigor still shapes every plate. Uchi's thing is raw or lightly cooked seafood paired with unexpected partners, citrus, fruit, even goat cheese, and it helped build Austin into a serious destination for Japanese-influenced cooking. The New York Times named it among Austin's best restaurants.

South Indian vegetarian cooking is thin on the ground in Pittsburgh, which makes this casual strip-mall cafe in Monroeville worth the drive from downtown. The dosa menu runs to over twenty varieties, and the curries pair with bread that arrives at the table looking genuinely inflated. Red leather booths, big plates, and a crowd that tends to arrive in groups and order as many things as the table can hold.

The aquarium smoker in the window tells you what kind of place this is before you get through the door. Uncle John's is a South Side Chicago BBQ shop running one of the city's rarest traditions: pork hot links and rib tips cooked in a plexiglass box, fire controlled by hose, a technique tracing back to Delta pitmasters who came north during the Great Migration. The New York Times named it among Chicago's 25 best restaurants.

A coffee shop with a rotating seasonal menu and a strong espresso program, Valor leans into drinks that split the difference, literally and figuratively. The Middle Child straddles espresso and drip coffee in a way that sounds like a therapy session but drinks better than it has any right to. Regulars track the seasonal drops the way others follow drops of a different kind, cycling back each fall and winter for whatever the team has conjured next.

Turkish coffee prepared in a cezve sits alongside shaken espresso and whatever baklava-flavored latte the team dreamed up this week. It's a small, cozy coffee shop in the King William area, with proper work tables and living-room chairs depending on your agenda. They rotate through local and national bakers for pastries, and tea drinkers have a London Fog waiting for them. The kind of neighborhood spot that pulls you in for twenty minutes and keeps you for two hours.

A square pizza shop in a far-west Miami strip where the pies split the difference between Detroit, Sicilian, and grandma-style. The chef came up in fine dining before the pandemic sent him home, and Miami flavors crept into the toppings: Cuban mojo pork, Colombian hot dog vibes, summer peaches. The New York Times put it on their short list of Miami restaurants right now, which, for a slice shop this far from South Beach, is the kind of attention that fills a parking lot.

Duck is the whole point here, a Little Saigon restaurant in San Jose where the menu circles around one bird and doesn't apologize for it. The duck salad is the thing to order: a towering pile of poached slices, shredded cabbage, banana blossom, fried shallots, and rau răm, all pulled together with a ginger-spiked fish sauce vinaigrette. Most people take it to go, which tells you something about the vibe. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the top Vietnamese spots in the Bay Area.

Voi Cà Phê is a takeout counter in Georgetown that treats Vietnamese coffee like a serious subject, sourcing single-origin beans from Vietnam and brewing them through a phin or an espresso machine. The cà phê sữa đá is the classic, but the pho spice latte, with star anise and coriander seed, is what a pumpkin spice latte would be if it had a passport. There are banh mi too, so one stop covers breakfast and lunch.

An old poi factory turned roadside Hawaiian food spot on the Windward Coast, run by native Hawaiians who have been feeding people here for a while. The kanaka nui plate arrives loaded with pretty much everything the kitchen makes, and the warm kulolo with haupia ice cream is the kind of dessert that ends the conversation. Pull off Kamehameha Highway and eat outside; the atmosphere does a lot of the heavy lifting.

The red and green sign is easy to miss from San Pablo Ave, but regulars know to look. This Lebanese diner has a U-shaped counter and an endearing no-fuss quality that suits heavily spiced shawarma and kafta, served on combo plates with rice, garlic sauce, tzatziki, and brothy lentil soup. The baba ghanoush is flame-roasted and worth the detour. Picnic tables out front if you prefer sky to ceiling.

Washed Up is a small coffee shop on Kercheval, and the pastry case is the plot twist: Wednesday through Friday it's stocked with scones, cookies, and muffins from Sister Pie, a few doors down. The drinks run to espresso tonics, matcha, chai, and hojicha, with beans from a rotating cast of roasters. Eater put it on its list of Detroit's best coffee shops, and the neighborhood seems to have taken the hint.

Illustrated cartoon versions of the kitchen's own ingredients cover the walls at this Isaan Thai spot in Oakland's Dimond District, which sets the tone nicely. The khao soi has a creamy, spicy broth that earns its keep, and the nam khao, fried rice with fermented pork and sharp slivers of ginger, has a crunch you can hear across the table. Grilled salmon wrapped in coconut leaves arrives with a sauce that manages sour, sweet, and spicy all at once without negotiating.

A crimson-and-white house wedged between Druid City and West Tuscaloosa, this breakfast spot greets you at the door with a cardboard Nick Saban and doesn't let up from there. Bear Bryant's usual corner table still has his bust, houndstooth fedora and all. The biscuits are soft and buttery, and the meat-and-three combos keep regulars coming back past the decor. Alabama football isn't a theme here so much as the whole atmosphere.

The smoke smell hits before you open the door, which is a good sign. This Petaluma counter-service spot turns out flame-roasted pollo asado marinated in adobo, with a cold salsa bar that does a lot of work, especially a black salsa built from scorched chiles. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the Bay Area's best Mexican restaurants. Bring cash for a four-piece plate and leave room for the handmade corn tortillas.

The location near the airport is the whole point: fish flown in from both coasts lands here before it lands anywhere else in Tulsa. White River has been a market and old-school lunch counter forever, and you order at the counter for oysters, frog legs, and a slice of pie to finish. The industrial surroundings are a feature, not a bug, and the regulars know it.

Hemp-infused lattes and rum-spiked coffee cocktails share the menu at this Heights café and cocktail bar that doubles as a dispensary. CBD or Delta-8 goes into the elixirs, and the shelves hold oils and gummies to take home alongside the merch. It occupies an interesting lane somewhere between third-wave coffee shop and wellness boutique, which the crowd seems to find perfectly normal on a Tuesday morning.

Wildland is an all-day restaurant, bar, and bakery in Carlsbad, from the same people behind Jeune et Jolie and Campfire. A Tokyo-style standing bar cuts through an 8,000-square-foot dining room, and the coffee counter behind it hums from morning on, olive oil-honey latte included. Breakfast leans toward a folded pizza stuffed with runny egg and mortadella, which is a sandwich only if you squint. Eater lists it among San Diego's coffee roasters and cafes.

With Love, Always is a retro diner off the Strip that started as a parking lot pop-up and now draws lines for smashed onion burgers with lacy, crispy edges, finished with a creamy sauce and shoestring fries. It's casual and loud in the good way, packed with families fresh from practice. The soft serve comes with a pickup ticket, so your custard arrives after the burger instead of as soup beforehand. It's on The Infatuation's list of the 25 best restaurants in Las Vegas.

The grandfather's hummus and falafel recipes from his 1951 Jordanian restaurant anchor the menu at this cheerful fast-casual Middle Eastern spot in Dublin. The chicken shawarma comes with a sharp, garlicky toum that earns its own reputation, and baklava soft-serve with honey and flaky phyllo does the work of dessert. The walls say "We have a great sense of hummus," so you know exactly where you stand. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top Middle Eastern restaurants.

Yeast is a small East Nashville bakery built around the kolache, the Czech pastry Texans have been quietly keeping to themselves. The sweet Bohemian versions come filled with fruit, and the savory Tex-Czech ones run toward sausage, cheddar, and jalapeño. A few tables and a tiny patio exist, but the move is to carry your bag across the street to East Park and eat on a bench like a person with nowhere to be.

A sushi spot in San Mateo where the non-sushi menu quietly steals the show. Regulars fill the seats and rarely need to look at a menu, and the chef keeps them coming back with rice dishes worth the trip on their own: hitsumamushi arrives in a hot stone vessel, the grains scorched and crackly, folded with salmon and yellowtail and finished with a kelp and green tea broth. Five variations of chirashi round things out, and lunch brings a chicken curry worth knowing about.

Tucked just off the food court at Mekong Plaza, this Northern Chinese bao shop has outlasted neighbors that came and went while it quietly became a fixture. Handmade dumplings arrive chewy and properly sealed, with steamed buns and xiao long bao filling out the menu. Dan dan noodles and a cucumber salad round things out for anyone who wants something beyond the folded stuff. Phoenix New Times named it the best dumplings in Phoenix.

A steak-and-sushi restaurant inside Scottsdale Fashion Square, which tells you exactly who the room is built for. The menu runs from raw fish and specialty rolls through wagyu and pasta, so you can arrive with shopping bags and leave with a bill to match. The herb-roasted branzino, served over lemon rice, has drawn particular attention from local critics. Not cheap, but the kitchen takes the food more seriously than the setting might suggest.