The Best Places to Eat in the United States

This is a casual White Center seafood-boil joint where Viet-Cajun means you're handed a bib and no one judges the state of your sleeves. Seafood is sold by the pound, from Dungeness crab to signal crawfish in season, then tossed in garlic butter or the house Tango sauce, which has a tamarind tang. Bring a group, since the table gets loud and the napkin supply is a fiction. Prices run friendly, and dress for splatter.

The team behind downtown's cocktail bars Wren & Wolf and Carry On pivoted to daytime, and the result is a doughnut shop tucked into the warehouse district just south of Phoenix, connected to a church in a pairing no one planned but somehow makes sense. Brioche rounds and tall, croissant-style hybrids share the menu, with creative coffee alongside. The crowd skews early and purposeful, the way people get when pastries are involved.

Cryin' Coyote is a casual Cave Creek smokehouse that took over from a longtime local barbecue joint, and the ribs are the order, with good char and fat rendered down to something rich. The sides lean Southwest, so a chile relleno-style rice casserole fills in for the mac and cheese. Save room for the Texas sheet cake, which sneaks in cinnamon and ginger, a small act of rebellion in a state that takes its brisket seriously.

The pairing of fried chicken and waffles sounds simple until you see a menu built around named combinations, each with its own waffle flavor, schmear, and sauce. Dame's is a soul food spot inside the Liberty Warehouse where lines form on a near-daily basis, and the kitchen gives you enough customization options that ordering becomes a minor project. A sweet potato waffle with orange-honeycomb schmear is not a thing you walk away forgetting.

The sweet tomato sauce at this old-school Kew Gardens slice shop hints that yes, tomatoes are technically a fruit, and somehow that's not a problem. Locals have been devoted to it long enough to request it on the pesto pizza too, which is already doing fine on its own. The counter seats maybe four people, and the pizza arrives from the oven directly to your hands. The New York Times put it on their short list of the city's best.

Daofu is a casual Adams Avenue restaurant where a salad shows up before you've finished deciding what to order. It's free, built on house-made tofu and curly greens with a pulpy raspberry dressing, and it works as a warm-up for the bolder spices on the main plates. The salad menu stays under $11, which makes it an easy place to wander in on a weeknight in whatever you were already wearing.

A sandwich shop named for the round painted lucky dolls that fill the room, this sibling to ramen spot Menya Musashi does Japanese katsu sandwiches and a few things that upstage them. The nori-dusted fries are the thing people keep mentioning. The katsu curry plate, technically a detour from the menu's thesis, is what the regulars seem to order instead.

The bread comes from Leidenheimer, the legendary New Orleans bakery, which tells you most of what you need to know about this po'boy shop's priorities. Gulf seafood and roasted meats get stuffed into fresh baguettes with all the classic condiments, and a Thanksgiving Everyday option, turkey with cornbread stuffing and cranberry sauce, quietly steals the room. A bananas foster old-fashioned is on the cocktail list, because of course it is.

A molcajete that arrives looking like a stone-bowl still life, heaped with grilled meats, nopales, and queso fresco, sets the tone at this relaxed Mexican restaurant in Desert Hot Springs. The menu moves comfortably from huevos divorciados at breakfast through mole enchiladas and carne asada platters at dinner, the kind of cooking that takes its time. The margaritas and mezcal flights give you a reason to as well.

Desilicious is a casual South Indian cafe on Parmer Lane where the menu runs past 80 kinds of dosa, chapathi, and parotta, plus breakfast staples like idly and pongal. The room does not compete: metal pitchers of water wait on every table, the air conditioning is more of a suggestion, and the TV plays Indian pop videos through tinny speakers. Order the chai, then keep coming back until you've worked through the list.

A bakery and café that a lawyer-turned-baker opened after deciding the courtroom could wait. The tres leches and carrot cake with cream cheese frosting are the regulars, but the seasonal cupcakes and pecan pie bars keep people checking what's new. It's a proper dessert-first kind of spot, the sort Houston has been relying on for decades when a special occasion needs something more than a grocery store sheet cake.

This is a dessert shop in The Woodlands where the case does the talking, and what it says is carrot cake, tres leches, and chocolate-dipped chocolate chunk cookies. It began with a baker who spent years on a path toward law and then wisely got out. The seasonal cupcakes, truffles, and pecan pie bars rotate, and Houstonia has it on a list of the area's best bakeries. Come for a slice, leave with a box, and don't tell anyone how that happened.

A casual dumpling restaurant in the Aria, where a glass-walled kitchen lets you watch cooks fold each xiao long bao by hand while you wait for a table. The soup dumplings come with vinegar sauce and a lesson in not burning your mouth. The cucumber salad and hot and sour soup are the usual sidekicks. Expect a line, mid-range bills, and a dining room full of people who have clearly done their research.

A neighborhood restaurant tucked near a cinema in East Memphis, Dory runs a full a la carte menu after years of tasting-menu-only service, so the room has loosened up considerably. The husband-and-wife team leans into composed, ingredient-forward plates that move between land and sea without committing to either. Pork loin shares the menu with scallops and mushroom dishes built around masa, which gives you a sense of how they think.

The crawfish come from the fields you can see from your table, which is either the most logical supply chain imaginable or a mild existential moment for the mudbugs. This BYOB boil house sits about an hour outside Houston, and the lines form by six, so early arrival is less a suggestion than a survival skill. Tours and boat excursions through the rice and crawfish fields are available if you call ahead. Order by the pound or go straight for the full feast.

Doug's Delight is a Hazel Park ice cream stand that makes its soft-serve in-house and fills cream puffs with it, which is a lot of structural engineering for something you eat in a parking lot. The hard stuff comes from Guernsey Dairy. There's an off-menu cup with a dog treat for the pup in the back seat, and an Italian beef counter inside, run by a Chicagoan, in case you need a savory excuse.

Ducky's is a casual Montrose pizza-and-tavern hybrid, built around New York-style pies, dart boards, and enough TVs that nobody has to ask what the score is. The menu goes from plain pepperoni to an al pastor pie with pineapple and salsa verde ranch, plus wings and sandwiches for the undecided. The kitchen stays open until midnight, later on weekends, and the happy hour is easy on the wallet.

The name means "two hands," which turns out to be underselling it. This elegant Mediterranean restaurant in downtown Aspen draws from the coastal kitchens of Italy and France, and the chef, an Aspen native who spent years at Matsuhisa, brings real finesse to the room. The crowd skews people who have already changed for dinner. Expect polished service and a menu that moves between crudo, whole branzino, and properly cooked chops.

Exposed brick and Edison bulbs in a Dauphin Street storefront, which is either charming or a cliché depending on your mood, but the modern Southern cooking tends to settle the argument. Dumbwaiter is a full-service dinner spot where Gulf-sourced ingredients do the heavy lifting, shrimp and grits built around Conecuh sausage, collard greens with some heat behind them, and warm bread pudding that arrives with ice cream already melting into it.

Dutch Girl is a Palmer Park doughnut shop that keeps the lights on around the clock for most of the week, which is either a public service or an enabling situation depending on your 3 a.m. self. The new owner, who also runs the Schvitz, left the equipment, the flour, and the whole process alone. Glazed is the point, the prices are corner-shop, and Detroiters poured back in when it reopened.

This is a velvet-draped, 1920s-style cocktail parlor, reached by slipping behind the doughnut stand inside Aria's food hall, which is about as speakeasy as a doughnut counter can make you feel. Live jazz fills the room most nights, and the drinks arrive with props: mushroom-shaped glasses on a mossy board, a Manhattan in a cigar box. Dress for a date, and bring someone who won't mind sharing the dry ice.

Eight Row Flint is a whiskey bar in a former mid-century dry cleaner in the Heights, and the back bar is stocked like it's expecting a long siege. The drink menu runs to a small-novella 25 pages, there are big casks of the good stuff, and you can rent a locker for your own bottles if you want to be That Whiskey Person. The patio is huge, the cheeseburger and wings keep the evening honest, and the margaritas get a lot of press.

The mole coloradito here comes from a recipe the chef started learning from her grandmother in Oaxaca at age five, and that kind of timeline tends to show. This is a small Oaxacan restaurant in Burien, colorful ceramics on every table, a handful of seats inside and a covered patio out back. The molotes, fried masa dumplings buried under smoky morita and avocado salsa, are a good reason to arrive hungry.

The enchiladas arrive sizzling on the plate, which tells you everything about the style of Tex-Mex this old-school Dallas institution runs on. The original McKinney Avenue location is a cavernous, sprawling room with a rowdy bar and tables packed with multigenerational families who have been coming here forever. Order the enchiladas, get a frozen margarita alongside them, and don't overthink it.

The spiral-tailed monkey painted on one wall gives the place its name and its vibe: a cheerful Peruvian restaurant with wood accents and geometric light fixtures that somehow feels both casual and considered. The antojitos trio is a good way in, landing beef hearts, jumbo corn, and causa on the table before you've made any real decisions. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of Berkeley's best restaurants.