While it’s incredible to travel the world for the best culinary experiences, you don’t have to trek to France or Japan to get great food. For everyone on more of a domestic budget this year, this list celebrates the best dining destinations right here, right now in the United States. Whether you need inspiration for your next road trip, or want to hop on a short flight to get a taste of another region, there’s good eating in every corner of this country.
For the third-annual Food & Wine Global Tastemakers awards, we reached out to more than 400 chefs, writers, and travel pros, to get their recommendations and rankings for the best restaurants across America. These are the spots they loved in their own travels or would recommend to visiting family and friends, from a deep dive on bluefin tuna in Portland, Maine, to a Pacific fine-dining institution entering a whole new era in Seattle. A “grandma chic” tasting menu simply stuns in Saint Paul, and a wild circus of a new steakhouse is partying in Miami.
Here are the top 15 restaurants worth visiting in America right now, according to our trusted food, wine, and travel pros.
Burdell (Oakland)
Food & Wine / Eva Kolenko
Geoff Davis digs into a totally fresh take on California soul food at Burdell, one of 2023’s most highly anticipated openings, and Food & Wine’s 2024 Restaurant of the Year. The restaurant looks like a grandmother’s sitting room from the 1970s, complete with vintage Corelle china and soul playing on the retro stereo system. The boiled peanuts, barbecue shrimp, and family meals fold local and seasonal produce into dishes with slow-simmered nostalgia. Davis was a 2024 James Beard Award semifinalist, and Burdell made the California Michelin Guide.
Canlis (Seattle)
Courtesy of Canlis
Opened by Peter Canlis in 1950, this fine dining institution is now owned by the third generation of the family. It still serves stunning mid-century architecture and lake views. But it entered a whole new era with 2023 F&W Best New Chef Aisha Ibrahim, one of TIME Magazine’s most influential people in the world, and the first female chef in the restaurant’s history. She brought back a multicourse tasting menu with fun updates, along with the iconic salad tossed tableside. After more than two dozen James Beard Award nominations and several wins over the years, there’s never been a better moment to revisit Canlis.
The Musket Room (New York City)
Courtesy of Nitzan Keynan / The Musket Room
At The Musket Room, a long, reclaimed wood bar winds back to a leafy patio. And the tasting menus (both omnivorous and vegan) lean upscale and global, with dishes inspired by the heritage and travel of 2024 F&W Best New Chefs Mary Attea and Camari Mick. Both, incidentally, have been James Beard Award semifinalists for several years running. Can’t snag a reservation? Try their newer and more casual café Raf’s just up the street, where the wood-fired half chicken has found a cozy home.
Lowland (Charleston)
Courtesy of Hayden Stinebaugh
James Beard Award winner Jason Stanhope opened Lowland last year as an ode to Lowcountry cooking. It’s part of The Pinch hotel, a boutique property recognized by the Michelin Guide, but Lowland truly stands alone, with a historic 19th century home next door. The restaurant climbs two stories worth of dreamy interiors, filled with warm brick, handsome fireplaces, patterned wallpaper, and a mossy mural that crawls the walls. You can expect refined Southern comforts, from local oysters to farmer cheese biscuits to a thick tavern burger.
Emeril’s (New Orleans)
Courtesy of Laura Steffan
Bam! Emeril’s has still got it. Yes, that would be the original restaurant from celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, Food Network star and James Beard Award winner. His namesake spot opened in 1990, and it’s now led by son E.J. Lagasse (technically, the fourth Emeril), who stepped in at only 19 years old after training in New York City, London, and Stockholm. Next time you’re in New Orleans, come back for the tasting menu, with elegant interpretations of oyster stew and quail Milton. A 2023 renovation has put the kitchen on full display, and a mountain of butter rolls through the dining room.
Mr. Tuna (Portland, Maine)
Courtesy of Catherine Dzilenski
Mr. Tuna, also known as chef Jordan Rubin, along with Mrs. Tuna, his wife and partner, Marisa Lewiecki, kickstarted a sushi cart in 2017, and finally opened a dedicated brick and mortar location in 2024. Rubin’s into local Atlantic bluefin tuna, as in those epic 500-pound fish, which he breaks down and serves most of the year. Sushi fans come to Mr. Tuna for the hand rolls and espresso Martinis, but our restaurant editor recommends the tuna sashimi tasting as one of the best dishes he ate all year. Even in this weathered fishing town, it’s a true education in cuts and marbling, from lean akami to fatty toro.
Yangban (Los Angeles)
Coutesy of Kelly Puleio
Chef power couple Katianna and John Hong come from a Michelin-starred background that includes Mélisse in Los Angeles (two stars), the Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa (three stars at the time), and its casual spinoff, The Charter Oak, where Katianna was named a 2018 F&W Best New Chef. They moved back to LA to have a baby and open their own restaurant, Yangban, serving their distinct perspective on modern Korean-American fare. The pea shoot salad, assorted banchan, double-fried chicken wings, and stone pot rice are all served in a dramatic black dining room and earned the restaurant a James Beard Award nomination. It’s temporarily closed for a renovation, so stay tuned for the return this spring.
My Loup (Philadelphia)
Courtesy of Nicole Guglielmo
2023 F&W Best New Chef Amanda Shulman opened Her Place in 2021, an intimate supper club that feels like a dinner party. Then, with husband and partner Alex Kemp, they followed it up with the opening of My Loup in 2023. A more traditional restaurant showcasing French-Canadian market fare, it was a 2024 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best New Restaurant. The seasonal menu changes daily, which swaps out seafood plateaus, foie gras sets, braised rabbit “Marbella,” and a green garlic “escar-roll” in which escargot get bathed in a green-garlic sauce and rolled in brioche. Grab a classic cocktail at the red-tiled bar, then settle into the library-esque dining room lined with wallpaper and books.
Myriel (Saint Paul, Minnesota)
Food & Wine / Eva Kolenko
2024 F&W Best New Chef Karyn Tomlinson has a reputation for “grandma chic” style. At Myriel, she pulls in whole animals from local farms and wanders the woods for wild ingredients, which star in simply stunning dishes. Take the crispy and rosy duck breast, sliced over a gloss of sauce and scattered with herbs. She sets it down on pretty vintage china in a minimalist dining room full of soothing neutrals. It’s worth the ticket to Minnesota for such a beautifully restrained tasting menu.
Stissing House (Pine Plains, New York)
Courtesy of Stissing House
At Stissing House, 2018 F&W Best New Chef Clare de Boer has taken up residence at one of the oldest taverns in America, with a history that dates to 1782. Drive up for a weekend of leaf peeping in upstate New York, and start with a drink by the fire before getting cozy in the candlelit dining room. The daily changing menu features simple pleasures, like pickles, chips, or a cup of broth. But the real treats are roasted over the wood fire, like dayboat scallops cooked over the coals, or a suckling pig crisped up until crackling.
Nancy’s Hustle (Houston)
Courtesy of Nancy’s Hustle
“We like butter,” declares the team at Nancy’s Hustle, and it’s demonstrably true. The laid-back bistro and wine bar makes 45 pounds of cultured butter each week to smear on the outstandingly fluffy “Nancy Cakes,” along with a briny burst of trout roe. That butter is also incorporated into fun snacks like crispy-bottomed dumplings and a slick endive salad. Cutting through the fat, there’s also a killer natural wine list, which helped snag a Bib Gourmand designation from the Michelin Guide and several James Beard Award nods. Nancy’s might have started as the neighborhood joint of the east side, but it’s worth the trip to Texas.
Penny (New York City)
Courtesy of Teddy Wolff
Walk right into this simple seafood spot in the East Village and belly up to the long marble bar. Penny comes from the same team as Claud, the cool wine bar right below. Upstairs, in the natural light, chef Joshua Pinsky doesn’t fool around with fancy towers. He’s into straight-shooting “ice boxes” or metal trays filled with pebble ice and studded with oysters, razor clams, scallop crudo, and mussels escabeche. A live Maine lobster is poached to order and simply dunked in brown butter. Don’t miss the ice cream sandwich situation on soft brioche bread.
Sunny’s (Miami)
Courtesy of Michael Pisarri
Welcome to Miami and its iconic new steakhouse. From the owners of the restaurant and cocktail bar Jaguar Sun (now closed), Sunny’s started as an outdoor pop-up before it added an indoor dining room where old-school red booths with white tablecloths look out onto a patio canopied by an enormous banyan tree. The Martini menu lets you order “as you like it,” so toss in a few olives stuffed with blue cheese. Of course, it’s all about the steak and pasta, like an Australian wagyu rib eye hit with pineapple hot sauce. Hand-drawn illustrations of alligators crawl across the menus, dancing elephants hold up the ice buckets, and the whole scene is kind of a circus.
Virtue (Chicago)
Courtesy of Virtue
Chef mentor Erick Williams and then-rising star 2022 F&W Best New Chef Damarr Brown cooked together for years before they opened Virtue in 2018, which brought Southern cooking and warm hospitality to the South Side. They’ve both won James Beard Awards and a Bib Gourmand from the Michelin Guide for their soulful dirty rice and gizzards, stoneground grits with blackened fish, and salads scattered with crispy pig ears. While the mission here is still simple kindness, we named Williams a 2024 F&W Game Changer in recognition of the work he’s doing in the community to inspire the next generation of Black chefs and entrepreneurs.
Oyster Oyster (Washington, D.C.)
Courtesy of REY LOPEZ
2022 F&W Best New Chef Rob Rubba cooked meat for years before he doubled down on sustainability at Oyster Oyster in Washington, D.C. He surprises diners with a vegetable-focused tasting menu, with the option to add a single oyster. The team works with local farms and foragers, as well as tending their own rooftop garden for herbs and flowers. They flip oyster shells into candles, upcycle wine bottles into plates, and print menus on recycled paper embedded with wildflower seeds.
To uncover the best food and drink experiences for travelers, Food & Wine polled over 400 chefs, travel experts, food and travel writers, and wine pros from across the globe for their top culinary travel experiences. We then turned the results over to our Global Advisory Board, who ranked the top nominees in each category. For the full list of all 165 winners, visit foodandwine.com/globaltastemakers.
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