35 guides
San Diego's burgers
4 spots
The definitive guide to San Diego’s favorite burgers.
SPOT Houston Guide
6 spots
Houston doesn't have a dining district. It has everything, everywhere, spread across a city built without zoning laws and consequently without pretension. The Viet-Cajun crawfish at Crawfish & Noodles in Alief - spiced with lemongrass, garlic, and butter in a way that has no precedent in either Vietnamese or Cajun cooking - is one of the genuinely original dishes in American food. It was invented here, in a strip mall, by immigrants, and it's brilliant. The Original Ninfa's on Navigation in the East End is where fajitas were made famous in 1973, and the room still earns its legend. Pinkerton's Barbecue brings the technique and restraint of serious Texas smoked meat to the Northside. The Rice Box brings Chinese cooking to the Heights with equal conviction. Pull the map outward and the Gulf Coast food orbit claims Viola & Agnes' in Seabrook and Little Daddy's Gumbo Bar in Galveston - both worth the drive. Houston rewards the curious. The diversity isn't a talking point - it's the literal texture of the strip malls, the blocks, the people feeding each other. Come without a plan. Eat Vietnamese for lunch, Tex-Mex for dinner, and barbecue somewhere in between.
SPOT Dallas Guide
8 spots
Dallas has a complicated relationship with its own food identity. It's not Austin - it doesn't need to be. The BBQ scene here has quietly produced some of the most serious smoked meat in the state: Pecan Lodge in Deep Ellum, Cattleack in Farmers Branch, Goldee's in South Fort Worth. The city knows how to build a fire, and the proof is in the brisket. What makes the Dallas map interesting is the range outside the BBQ circuit. Jimmy's Food Store in East Dallas has been selling Italian deli goods and sandwiches since 1966. Roots Southern Table makes the case for refined Southern cooking with real conviction. And Czech Stop in West, TX - technically an hour down I-35 but a mandatory kolache stop on any road trip south - belongs in any honest Dallas guide because Dallas people talk about it like a hometown institution. Dallas is best eaten across multiple neighborhoods. Deep Ellum for BBQ and late nights. Bishop Arts for Italian and neighborhood restaurants. Come during fall when the heat breaks, and leave time for a drive south on I-35.
SPOT Mexico City Guide
35 spots
Mexico City operates on a different scale. The taco culture alone - El Vilsito's pastor at midnight, El Califa de León's Michelin-starred guisados in San Rafael, Taquería Selene in Anzures, the 2am griddles on any Roma Norte corner - is enough to build an entire trip around. La Merced Market has been feeding the city for centuries. Standing in it with no plan and following your nose is the right approach. Roma Norte and Condesa are the obvious starting points for good reason. Contramar has been the definitive Mexico City seafood restaurant for twenty years. Expendio de Maiz serves pre-Hispanic ingredients without apology and without compromise. PLONK is a wine bar that could hold its own in any city in the world. Gala Panadería sets the bakery standard. El Cardenal in Centro Histórico serves the best traditional Mexican breakfast you'll eat. The neighborhood rewards walking with no particular agenda. Mexico City is best understood by neighborhood: Roma Norte for density and discovery, Centro Histórico for tradition, Polanco for the expense-account end. Come for a week. Come back for a month. You will not run out of things to eat.
SPOT Guadalajara Guide
9 spots
Every serious food city has a dish that defines it, and Guadalajara's is the torta ahogada: a pork roll drowned in a fiery tomato-chile sauce. Tortas Ahogadas Don José in Mexicaltzingo is one of the originals, and eating one with your fingers over wax paper at a plastic table is the correct way to be introduced to the city. The name means "drowned sandwich." It earns the name. Colonia Americana is where the city's younger food scene has taken root - tacos de barbacoa in the morning at Tacos de Barbacoa Arturo, mezcal and café culture at Colacorta, seafood tacos at Tacón de Marlin. Mercado Libertad (San Juan de Dios) is one of the largest covered markets in Latin America, and the carnitas at the market stalls are what pork is supposed to taste like. El Chivo de Oro keeps the birria tradition alive in the same neighborhood. Guadalajara doesn't perform for tourists. The best spots are where locals eat, at hours locals eat, and the experience is better for it. Go for the tortas ahogadas in the morning. Stay for the birria. Order whatever the table next to you is having.
SPOT Seattle Guide
17 spots
Seattle is a seafood city with Caribbean influences it doesn't fully advertise. Taylor Shellfish Oyster Bar on Capitol Hill and The Walrus and the Carpenter in Ballard define the oyster end of the spectrum - raw, cold, excellent, the kind of place you stay too long. Local Tide in Fremont is what happens when serious technique meets Pacific Northwest fish. Matt's in the Market sits above Pike Place and makes the argument that proximity to great produce actually matters. The Caribbean thread running through Seattle's food scene is one of its best open secrets. Paseo and Un Bien - the two great Caribbean sandwich shops in SoDo and Crown Hill - have lines that don't lie. Asadero Ballard anchors the taco end of Ballard's eating strip. Loretta's Northwesterner in Georgetown is the dive bar that regulars quietly prefer to stay undiscovered. The Shambles in Roosevelt handles the natural wine list. Canlis in Queen Anne is the room for occasions that demand it. Seattle eats early and drinks coffee constantly. The best sequence: oysters in the morning at the market, something hot for lunch, a long dinner in Ballard or Fremont. The rain is real but manageable. Bring layers, skip the umbrella.
SPOT Boston Guide
10 spots
Boston gets dismissed as a colonial theme park - Freedom Trail, Sam Adams, chowder - and misses the actual texture of its food scene. The North End is one of the most concentrated blocks of good Italian eating in the country: Galleria Umberto's Sicilian squares before lunch, Carmelina's for dinner, Mike's Pastry on the way out. The neighborhood has been feeding people since Italian immigrants settled here a century ago and hasn't needed to reinvent itself. The Irish pub tradition runs deeper here than in most cities that claim it. J.J. Foley's Cafe has been in the same South End spot since 1909, run by the same family for five generations. The Black Rose on State Street has had live traditional Irish music every night since 1976. These aren't themed bars - they're neighborhood institutions that happen to carry a lot of history. The rest of the city's eating spans candlepin bowling with wood-fired pizza in Somerville, a pre-1903 pizza institution in East Boston, and a year-round producers' market at Haymarket. Boston rewards people who walk away from the obvious. The best pizza - Galleria Umberto, Santarpio's - is cheap, cash-only, and requires knowing to show up early. The best dining (Mamma Maria) is quiet and unhurried and easy to miss if you're looking for buzz. Come on a weekend, spend real time in the North End, and leave room in the itinerary for things that close before dinner.
SPOT Vancouver Guide
12 spots
Vancouver is unfairly beautiful and, it turns out, unfairly well-fed. Miku in Coal Harbour does aburi sushi at a level that puts most of Tokyo's mid-range to shame. HK BBQ Master and Kirin Seafood are both in Richmond - one of the great Chinese food destinations in North America - where the roast duck and dim sum are worth the drive from the city center. Phnom Penh in Chinatown has been serving its famous butter beef since 1985 and still earns every line out the door. The West End and Gastown offer a different register. Meat & Bread's porchetta sandwich in Gastown is the benchmark against which every sandwich in the city gets measured. La Belle Patate and Fritz European Fry House anchor a surprisingly serious Belgian fry culture in the West End - thick-cut, twice-fried, served with a wall of dipping sauces. JAPADOG started as a sidewalk cart and became an institution. Granville Island Public Market on a Saturday morning is the thing you plan your visit around. Vancouver rewards longer stays. The first day is the obvious stuff. By day three you're figuring out Richmond for dim sum, Chinatown for butter beef at Phnom Penh, and Gastown for good wine and pork sandwiches. The mountain backdrop never gets old. Come hungry, stay curious.
La Paz: Fish Tacos Before Noon, Clams After
7 spots
In La Paz, fish is a morning food. The stands open at eight, the fryers run until mid afternoon, and by dinner the city has moved on. Start with the three names every Paceño argues about, then ride out to Don Rafa before it closes at half past noon. After that it's chocolate clams on a sidewalk in Esterito and a molcajete at El Toro Güero. This is the list that explains the city.
La Paz Beyond the Fish Taco
5 spots
The rest of the day in La Paz, in order. Machaca burritos for breakfast in a backyard patio. Gorditas and caldo at the market counter. Coffee on Madero, ice cream on the Malecón, grilled meat when you can't look at another fish. And after midnight, a jate: the bacon-wrapped hot dog this city named for itself.
La Paz After Dark
3 spots
Three places for the nights you want more than a taco stand. Tatanka hides down an alley and cooks the day's catch next to serious beef. NEMI is a tasting menu from a chef who spent a decade at Pujol. La Miserable is where you end up either way, working through mezcal with a bartender who knows the shelf.
Barrio Logan: Where San Diego Mexican Food Started
3 spots
Before anyone used the word regional, Barrio Logan and Logan Heights were feeding San Diego the food of Mexican-American grandmothers: rolled tacos, chorizo con huevo, chile relleno, pots of beans. Las Cuatro Milpas has done it since 1933 and just reopened a few blocks down the street. La Cocina De Rosita still cooks like somebody's grandmother made it. Chuy's wraps a whole chile relleno in carne asada and calls it a burrito. Start here, then fan out across the rest of Mexico.
Sinaloa Mariscos: Trucks, Towers and Aguachile
5 spots
Aguachile is Sinaloa's gift to the world, raw shrimp cured in lime and chile for about as long as it takes to reach the table, and San Diego has more good versions than any city north of Culiacan. Most of them come from trucks and strip-mall counters: a blue truck on Home Avenue, the 2005 original that put mariscos on wheels, a Convoy Street room that slips chile crisp into a Sinaloa menu. Eat the aguachile first and immediately. Everything else can wait.
The North: Sonora, Flour Tortillas and Cow Heads
3 spots
North of Sinaloa the tortilla turns to flour, the beef gets thick and charred over mesquite, and the cow gets used from the head down. This is the most underrepresented regional cooking in San Diego, which makes the three places doing it worth the drive: a Pacific Beach counter pressing Sonoran flour tortillas, a Bonita shop built around the taco perron, and a Chula Vista kitchen that simmers whole cow heads in their own juices until cheek, tongue and brain fall off the bone.
The South: Puebla, Oaxaca, Guerrero and Yucatan
10 spots
The south of Mexico cooks in sauces, and San Diego hides more of it than people think. A City Heights steam table that has rotated 180 regional guisados since 1989. The county's only full-time Oaxacan kitchen, under a tent in Escondido. Cemitas poblanas from a donut counter in Sherman Heights, pozole verde from an Acapulco family in Hillcrest, cochinita pibil on a residential North Park street, and the mole at Quixote that everyone else gets measured against.
Birria and Carnitas: Jalisco and Michoacan in San Diego
7 spots
Two neighboring states, two slow-cooked meats. Jalisco gave the world birria, beef stewed in chiles and served with its own consome. Michoacan gave it carnitas, pork simmered for hours in lard in a copper cazo and sold by the pound. San Diego has deep roots in both, mostly south and east of downtown: a Nestor birrieria that started in a parking lot in 2006, three carnitas families cooking the same way since the 1970s and 80s, and a City Heights menuderia that puts bone marrow on the side.
Tijuana Tacos, This Side of the Border
5 spots
The Tijuana taco is the standard San Diego judges everything against: adobada shaved off a spinning trompo, carne asada over fire, and a spoon of thin guacamole on top of both. These five shops cook it that way, from a Chula Vista counter pressing its own masa to an El Cajon stand in a strip of auto shops. Tacos El Gordo is here as the reference point; the other four are where you go once you know the reference.
Where Guy Fieri Ate in the Desert
8 spots
Eight Coachella Valley stops filmed across multiple episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives between 2017 and 2022. The valley eats better than its reputation, mostly because the people who work the resorts have to eat somewhere: chicharron en salsa and pollo en pipian at El Mirasol, a porchetta sandwich and arancini at an Italian deli, quesabirria tacos and torta ahogada, latkes and brisket at a Palm Springs deli counter. One crepe operation in Palm Desert is filling them with barbecue chicken and cheesesteak.
Ugly Delicious: As the Meat Turns
3 spots
Ugly Delicious season 2, episode 4, built entirely around meat on a spindle and what happens when it crosses a border. Shawarma and mezze at a Lebanese room that has fed Armenian and Arab Los Angeles for decades, a Boyle Heights counter run by brothers who put Lebanese kebab inside a Mexican menu, and a saj griddle in Oakland turning out mana eesh. It is the clearest statement of the show's whole argument: the interesting food is what happens at the seams.
Where Guy Fieri Ate in Seattle
14 spots
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives reached Seattle early and has kept coming back across multiple episodes since. The list runs on the city's older immigrant kitchens and the places that feed people late: house chili at a Ballard parlor open since the 1920s, Trinidadian curried goat roti and dhalpuri, garlic beef asado piroshki, elk bolognese at Bizzarro. A Central District pit handles the brisket and spare ribs, and a Georgetown chili shack handles the rest of the night.
Where Guy Fieri Ate in the Bay Area
28 spots
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives has worked the Bay Area across multiple episodes since 2007 and is still at it. A torta pambazo with the roll dipped in chile, buffalo stew and a turkey dinner plate at a Van Ness carvery, tostones con mojo in San Rafael, sisig burritos out of a truck, cream of artichoke soup in Pescadero. San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose and the peninsula all roll up into one list.
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner: Los Angeles
3 spots
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner season 1, episode 3, spent eating across Los Angeles with Lena Waithe, and almost all of it in Gardena rather than anywhere a visitor would think to look. A diner counter inside a bowling alley doing oxtail soup and char siu with eggs, a mochi shop pounding and rolling by hand, and an unmarked door off a parking lot that opens onto a Japanese room serving katsudon and dashimaki tamago. Gardena has one of the oldest Japanese American communities in the country and one worth visiting.
- S
San Felipe: Shrimp Town on the Sea of Cortez
12 spots
Places that make the drive down Highway 5 worth it, from the stand with a claim on the first fish taco to the brewery on the way out of town. The malecón covers the seafood; the back streets cover birria, adobada and breakfast burritos the size of a forearm.
Where Guy Fieri Ate in the South Sound
6 spots
Six stops in Tacoma and the towns south of it, filmed across multiple episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, most of them around 2013. This is the unglamorous half of Puget Sound and it cooks accordingly: double-floured fried chicken and cornbread dressing on the Hilltop, parmesan tots and tasso tacos on Sixth Avenue, hangover soup and schnitzel at a European room, a Cuban sandwich out of a converted feed store along the I-5 corridor.
Where Action Bronson Ate in Los Angeles
10 spots
Los Angeles across multiple episodes spanning the whole life of FTD, from the early numbered seasons through the later ones and the undated stretches of 2021 to 2024. Much of it is Thai and Indian cooking held at full strength: crispy rice salad and Bangkok mall pasta at Night + Market, Punjabi barbecue on Fairfax, malai rigatoni at a Silver Lake sports bar, a butter chicken parm that has no business working. The older city shows up too, in a French dip counter open since 1908 and a deli cutting New York style heroes.
Where Guy Fieri Ate in Sonoma County
11 spots
Guy Fieri is from Sonoma County and once ran restaurants here, which is why the region turns up across multiple episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, far more than its size explains, from 2007 through 2023. The picks are better than that origin suggests: al pastor shaved off the trompo at a Roseland taqueria, housemade ravioli and meatball sliders in Geyserville, house-cured corned beef hash, beef pho at a Santa Rosa Vietnamese counter. A Forestville roadhouse and a garden behind a room on Sonoma Plaza fill in the rest.
Where Action Bronson Ate in Philadelphia
6 spots
America's Food Capital, season 4, episode 8, covered Philadelphia. The cheesesteak here is the Germantown Avenue one rather than the Passyunk argument, and around it sit beef rendang over rice, a fried lasagna sandwich with an egg on it, and pink pistachio sticky buns off a Rittenhouse bakery counter. Zahav closes it out with hummus tehina and laffa straight from the taboon.
Where Action Bronson Ate in the Bay Area
5 spots
FTD season 2, episode 10, was spent exploring San Francisco and Oakland. It opens on a soul food breakfast and sweet potato cheesecake at a North Oakland pie counter, then works the Sichuan end of Chinatown for chicken buried under dried red peppers and a Clement Street table of Burmese tea leaf salad. State Bird Provisions sends quail past on carts; Souvla is the fast Greek exit.
Where Guy Fieri Ate in Bakersfield
8 spots
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives has come through Bakersfield repeatedly, across multiple episodes. The city has a food tradition worth the drive on its own: Basque shepherds settled Kern County in the late 1800s, and the boarding houses that fed them became restaurants that still serve family style, soup and beans and pickled tongue arriving whether you asked or not. Oxtail stew at Pyrenees Cafe is the anchor, with a Cajun seafood omelette, a chicken pita plate and a brisket sandwich filling out the rest.
Where Anthony Bourdain Ate in New Orleans
20 spots
Filmed across multiple episodes of three shows: A Cook's Tour, No Reservations and The Layover. Bourdain kept coming back to New Orleans, including right after Katrina, and the list shows it. A fried shrimp po'boy with Swiss and roast beef gravy at Domilise's, a bowl of yakamein, shaved ice at Hansen's, oysters Foch at Antoine's, and a long run of Uptown dives where the order is a Jagermeister shot with a beer back.
- W
Where Anthony Bourdain Ate in Los Angeles
27 spots
Everywhere Anthony Bourdain ate on camera in Los Angeles that is still standing, pulled from multiple episodes across ten years: No Reservations, The Layover and Parts Unknown, filmed in 2007, 2012, 2013 and again in 2017. Every entry cites its episode. Places that have closed are left out, which unfortunately means most of Koreatown. Five entries survive under a changed name or address and say so: Sandeomi Hamjipark took over Ham Ji Park's room and recipes in December 2025, Casa Gish Bac is the same Oaxacan family on a new street, Broken Spanish Comedor is Ray Garcia's Culver City revival, Coni'Seafood is the room he filmed as Mariscos Chente, and Tacos Indiana grew from a cart at 4th and Clarence into a stand on South Indiana Street. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the estate of Anthony Bourdain.
- W
Where Anthony Bourdain Ate in Seattle
15 spots
Everywhere Anthony Bourdain ate on camera in Seattle that is still standing, filmed across multiple episodes of No Reservations, The Layover and Parts Unknown between 2007 and 2017. Every entry cites its episode. One deliberate substitution: his Italian stop was Salumi, Armandino Batali's cured meat counter in Pioneer Square, and that room is gone. DeLaurenti stands in for it because the Salumi line survives as Coro by Salumi and DeLaurenti stocks it. Two entries have moved and say so: Shorty's shifted two doors down in 2019 when its building was redeveloped, and Revel returned to Fremont in a new building in 2020. Mamnoon, the Capitol Hill restaurant he used to illustrate what the tech boom was pricing out, closed in September 2025 and is left off. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the estate of Anthony Bourdain.
- W
Where Anthony Bourdain Ate in the Desert
6 spots
The two desert episodes Anthony Bourdain filmed, laid out as a drive east from the pass: No Reservations season 4, episode 15 in 2008, running the San Gorgonio Pass and the Salton Sea, and No Reservations season 7, episode 13 in 2011, through the high desert with Josh Homme as his guide. Every entry cites its episode, and everything here is still open. He never actually ate inside Palm Springs city limits, so this guide orbits the town rather than sitting in it, from a roadside taco stand in Banning to a bar 223 feet below sea level in Bombay Beach. Lord Fletcher's in Rancho Mirage and the Sky Village cafe in Yucca Valley were both on those episodes and have since closed. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the estate of Anthony Bourdain.
- T
The Best Birria in SD
3 spots
Birria might not be native to the Baja, but immigrants from all over Mexico have brought their culinary traditions to SD beyond just TJ. Jaliscos main export may be Tequila but birria is not far behind, growing in popularity in recent years the slow braised beef with consomé has found its way onto menus all over the US. However, few do it right, and these are some of the best I’ve found in SD so far.
- T
The Best Carnitas in SD
5 spots
Finding good Mexican food in SD can be like finding a good pasta in Rome. It should be easy, but in practice it’s a tourist town with a lot of traps. Here I’ve put together those spots that do it right. Big hunks of pork, lots of lard, in a large copper pot. The kind of carnitas that keep cardiologists in business, and the neighborhood well fed.
