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I recently had a longer-than-usual conversation with an old friend whom I keep running into at steakhouses. After brushes at Musso & Frank Grill (twice), Smoke House, and Little Dom’s (a spiritually steakhouse-adjacent Italian restaurant), a pattern became apparent: We both like restaurants with rib-eye, icy martinis, and red leather booths. 

“Why are you always out at steakhouses, dressed like Sharon Stone in Casino?” he asked. 

It’s a good question. Why do I, an analytical, alternative-leaning writer who listens to experimental ambient music and buys organic lettuces at the farmers market every weekend, feel drawn to a setting that unapologetically celebrates power, masculinity, and excess? Why do I want to occasionally make-believe that I’m a millionaire in 1957 (read: a white man with a generous expense account) sinking his teeth into a bloody rib-eye, lit Kent in hand, even if that fantasy isn’t exactly designed for me?

I really do love steak and potatoes, cold vodka, and an excuse to dress up, but that’s not the only answer. In truth, like many people, I’m craving something less tangible. Mired in homesickness for loosely defined “times that felt simpler” as I struggle to keep my morale afloat in a sea of endless doomsday notifications, I find a relief in the escapism of steakhouses and the familiarity of olives on a toothpick, a shrimp cocktail, and a room that could plausibly exist in 1940 or 1980 — somehow able to compartmentalize the experience from its evocation of icky, flagrant displays of wealth and old-timey boys-will-be-boys culture. Still, I can’t help but feel concerned that steakhouses, in all of their glorification of beef and money and nostalgia, have an air of “make America great again” energy. 

I grew up in restaurant booths, surrounded by red meat. My grandfather operated a hofbrau; my father, an Italian restaurant. Even now, cavernous, mahogany-paneled, noisy rooms make me feel like a child in a sticky red leather booth, sitting patiently as large men talked business over me and I watched trays of meat in jus and scalloped potatoes whoosh back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room. When I was in sixth grade, I once ate two entire racks of lamb in one sitting, and my parents nicknamed me “Carnivore.” 

But coming of age really does change us sometimes. When I was 16 and moody and newly obsessed with punk rock and its philosophies, I became a vegetarian, motivated by a deep discomfort with animal suffering and a growing awareness of how power operates between humans and animals, men and women, institutions and individuals. I was influenced by writers like Carol J. Adams, whose work connected meat consumption to broader systems of domination. For years, I didn’t just avoid meat; I felt actively opposed to what it represented. 

My views didn’t feel fringe at the time; plant-based eating was on the rise, and there was a sense — maybe naive, but tangible — that the future would be greener, kinder, and more equitable. In the early 2010s, I worked at a vegan magazine for several years, where we ran multiple stories a week about major meat producers committing to more humane practices, of tech companies developing plant-based steak in labs. The rights of animals, of women, and of other marginalized groups seemed to be steadily and reliably improving. I saw no need for idealizing the past. 

That sense of inevitability has, to put it mildly, eroded. I started eating meat again in 2013 (you only live once, I figured), and a few years later, for reasons that I assume you’re already exhausted by, the mood of America changed. The iconic Bay Area vegan restaurant I revered during my peak millennial-optimism era is closing this month after 31 years of business. Beyond Meat’s stock price is in the pennies. Regressive views have reproliferated, and the idea that progress would move in a straight line now feels almost quaint.

Steakhouses are built for deals, company cards, and people who are, at best, selectively thinking about factory farms — people who want to feel important (or at least adjacent to someone important). If they were truly for everyone, how could they make you feel like a big shot? With their $68 entrees, $22 martinis, and tableside theatrics, they’ve become symbols of a kind of spending power that fewer and fewer people actually have, and of a past that was exclusionary, inequitable, and, for some, outright hostile. 

Even if it wasn’t socially irresponsible to try to revert American society to the way it was many decades ago (make America great again for whom?), it’s financially impossible. America’s economy has seen a dramatic stratification of wealth, with a hollowed-out middle class, stagnated wages, and rampant post-COVID inflation — and no amount of making everyone recite the Pledge of Allegiance four times a day or whatever is going to fix that anytime soon. 

Despite all this, I still feel drawn to a night out at a steakhouse. Not just because I like the food, although I (usually) do. Not just because I enjoy the aesthetics, although, let’s be honest, I really do. (Yes, I do like dressing like Sharon Stone in Casino.) It’s because, increasingly, the experience offers something harder to come by: the illusion of control. My own sense of political powerlessness has made me crave a setting where I’m escorted to my table and get my martini just the way I like it. For the span of an unhurried meal, the world narrows to a series of small, satisfying decisions. 

Of course, the fantasy only works if you don’t look at it too directly — and after a dirty martini and a leisurely, lively table conversation, I’m not really looking at anything too directly. There’s a certain pleasure in the tension of guilt: of knowing something’s bad for you and choosing to do it anyway, whether that’s eating red meat or indulging nostalgia. Knowing that the steakhouse is a caricature of indulgent power-dining and still finding it fun, and even comforting, may be twisted, but it’s certainly not the only pleasure that’s complicated. 

Cigarettes are back. Haven’t you heard? I don’t think it’s a coincidence. You won’t find me in a booth with a Kent (although ask me again if they re-legalize smoking indoors), but at least I can cut into some medium-rare filet mignon and embody a liminal, fleeting alternate reality for a few hours. That is, until the bill comes. 

High Steaks, a deep dive into steakhouse culture, continues across Eater all this week.

I live for a great steakhouse. Growing up, my late father, a lover of steak, took me to Cask ’n Cleaver in LA’s Inland Empire at the ripe age of 6, where I ordered filet with my best “Medium well, please.” Today, my favorite restaurant in Los Angeles is the classic Argentine steakhouse Carlitos Gardel, where I regularly partake in provoletas, empanadas, parrilladas, dulce de leche meringue cake, and a postprandial cigar.

I’m not the only one loving a good steak these days. We’ve reached peak steakhouse in 2026, with chefs opening exciting new spots all over the country. After evolving from old English chophouses into a midcentury American art form all their own, steakhouses in the 21st century have become vehicles for cultural expression for a diverse array of chefs and diners — but that doesn’t make steakhouses accessible to all, per se. 

Given their reputation as celebratory spots, steakhouses often lean on the pricey side. That makes it all the more important that you know how to get the most bang for your buck and avoid all the needless upsells. My lifetime of experience in steakhouses informs my approach, which I’m happy to share. 

Recruit your server

Steakhouses serve a lot of purposes. You might show up with buddies, or kids, or a date, or your boss. Each meal requires something different. 

Conveying your intentions to the server lets them adapt the flow of dishes, the suggestions for wine, and the level of schtick. Signal how much you plan to order, and if the place allows BYO wine, show whatever you brought so the server has context for pairing. Don’t feel like you need to flex your expertise, but do show them you’re in control of the experience, instead of letting them upsell you.

Start with the steak

Every steakhouse does one thing really well. Sometimes that’s a particular cut of steak or a specific preparation; often you can categorize a steakhouse into one of several camps based on its primary cooking equipment: broilers (Peter Luger), wood grills (Curtis Stone’s Michelin-starred Gwen), charcoal grills (Animae), gas grills (Golden Bull), and sometimes stovetop pans (Slay Steak & Fish). I zero in on the best steak by looking at the menu before I arrive. A prime-grade, dry-aged, bone-in rib-eye is my go-to, followed by a New York strip of the same specs.

Do the math

Calculate the price per ounce (subtracting 4-6 ounces if it’s bone-in) to make sure you’re not getting ripped off. I consider $5-6 per ounce a good deal.

But that’s not a hard-and-fast rule. At Sartiano’s in Las Vegas, my table absolutely had to order the 40-ounce dry-aged porterhouse, carved tableside; it costs about $7 an ounce after subtracting the T-bone. Just because a steak is the most expensive doesn’t mean it’s the best. My favorite at Carlitos Gardel is the incredible entraña (a thin, iron-rich skirt steak). 

While some prices are intimidating, steakhouses actually tend to lose money on meat, since it often costs 40-50 percent of the menu price. But they make up for the loss with markups on everything else — making it even more important to watch those costs. 

Edit your apps

Say you’re at a prototypical steakhouse (Smith & Wollensky) with a dozen appetizers (fritto misto, crab cake), raw shellfish (oysters, chilled lobster tails), and five salads on the menu. You don’t need more than one app per diner (and you could stick to even fewer); any more and you’ll fill up before the meat arrives. This is especially true with heavy dishes like pasta, available at lots of Italian-style steakhouses now. Order a salad, though; I find crunching on greens with a creamy or tangy dressing tends to build appetite.

Make sure the sides and sauces are complementary

The steak is the main attraction, but every star needs a supporting cast. Always get something green (creamed spinach, grilled asparagus) and some kind of potato (I prefer mashed or whipped). Don’t overload the table with carbs. 

When it comes to sauce, consider how rich the sides are. Bearnaise is great with asparagus and fries, but too rich for spinach. Chimichurri is too oily for fried onions or mushrooms. Bordelaise or red wine sauce is fantastic with rich mashed potatoes, but overly rich with potatoes au gratin or a baked potato. Steak sauce (or a variant of A1) tends to work with all flavors, but it can mask more complex cuts of steak (which is why I relegate it to breakfast). 

It’s okay to split an order

Most steakhouses serve cuts that are frankly too large for most diners. A 12-ounce New York strip or a 16-ounce rib-eye is really best split between two people (even if they’re not labeled as “for two” on the menu). My general rule of thumb is 5-6 ounces of beef per person, because that leaves plenty of room for appetizers, sides, and dessert. Don’t be afraid to under-order. I’ve never left a steak dinner pining for more to eat; if anything, you’re going to be taking home leftovers. 

If you fear getting the stink eye from the server, order an extra dessert or a round of after-dinner drinks as an olive branch. A good establishment knows your return business is more valuable than a big check on the first visit.

Skip the upsells 

Keep the seafood to a minimum if you want to stay on budget. That $50 leg of grilled king crab isn’t worth the price, and I’ve been underwhelmed by virtually every seafood tower I’ve had. Lobster on mac and cheese or fries just swells your tab. 

Also, most steak “enhancements” like seared foie gras or Dungeness crab offer poor value. Don’t order too many sauces, either; get one that complements all of your sides, and you’ll be happier. 

Get a cocktail with apps and wine with dinner

The martini is the classic lubricant to an excellent steak dinner, but I think nothing pairs better with the salty, buttery, rich flavor of beef than wine. I love an Oregon pinot noir, well-aged Burgundy, or peppery Rhone red with my steak, but an oaky Central Coast chardonnay also works for those who prefer white wine. For non-drinkers, don’t be embarrassed to order soda, especially one with bitter notes that offset fatty meat. The steakhouse is all about enjoyment, no matter what that means to you.

Dessert isn’t optional

Everyone has their preferred dessert, so I won’t get too heavy-handed here. If there’s a signature dessert, it’s probably worth trying at least once. The butter cake at Mastro’s— a snowball-sized scoop of rich vanilla ice cream melting over a warm, 6-inch disc of carby gold — is as amazing as advertised. The schlag at Peter Luger’s and Wolfgang’s is ridiculous, hilarious, and necessary with a serving of apple strudel. Even if it’s just a few bites, you need dessert.

Steakhouses have main character energy. Coming across them in movies or television, it’s easy to picture yourself seated next to Don Draper and Roger Sterling entertaining clients over martinis, or imagine overhearing John Travolta’s character order his steak “bloody as hell” in Pulp Fiction’s “wax museum with a pulse,” as he describes the restaurant. Steakhouses are bold and dramatic spaces, often sporting red leather booths, moody lighting, and platters of grilled meat — and across the country, diners can’t seem to get enough of them lately.

Over the past year (and with many more to come), major cities across the country are experiencing a steakhouse resurgence. James Beard Award-winning chef Kwame Onwuachi and restaurateur Stephen Starr are hot for steaks as of late, with respective openings in Vegas and Miami in the past month alone. These new steakhouses represent trends playing out across the country, such as pairing sizzling meats with global flair, as seen at the new Mexican-leaning Cuerno in NYC and Argentine import Brasero Atlántico in D.C. These aren’t your grandfather’s steakhouses, either, with many throwing in fun elements like Skee-ball, Caribbean flavors, and high-fi listening bars.

Below are some of the most significant steakhouse openings that have either occurred over the past year or are soon on the way, representing a cross-section of cities across the country. 

Bazaar Meat by José Andrés

1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

The fourth installment of Bazaar Meat by José Andrés may be the celebrity chef’s most personal one to date. Set inside the tony Waldorf Astoria Washington D.C., Bazaar Meat replaces his Spanish Japanese restaurant Bazaar (which opened in 2023), marking the global humanitarian’s first new restaurant in years on his home turf. At Bazaar Meat, his fire-fed offshoot for carnivores gaining steam across the country, a menu prepared with international techniques is split into sections like Our Big Guys, Cooked José’s Way, which features massive prime cuts of bone-in New York strips from Oregon and rib-eye chuletons from Texas. Diners start their meal here the Spanish way, waving over the trained cortadora de jamón to carve impossibly thin ruby slices of the prized pig. 

Maroon

2535 S. Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV

Come April 24, Tatiana chef Kwame Onwuachi will expand his reach beyond the northeast and into Miami with the new Maroon, a Caribbean steakhouse tucked inside the Sahara resort casino. At Maroon, Onwuachi will combine the classic American steakhouse with the island diasporic flavors that he loves to explore. In the center of Maroon will be a custom-made live fire jerk pit. The team will serve steaks, seafood, and sides full of the Caribbean’s many spice blends, with an emphasis on jerk techniques. The interior is equally ambitious and seats 125 diners, with private dining rooms and a bar-lounge for drinkers. 

Superprime Steakhouse

545 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA

San Francisco chef Marc Zimmerman staged his steakhouse comeback by opening Superprime Steakhouse in mid-2025. The San Francisco chef is known for his expertise in handling meats over fire at Alexander’s Steakhouse, plus his notable wagyu steakhouse, Gozu. In June 2025, Zimmerman closed his Japanese-influenced listening bar, Yokai, and converted the space into Superprime Steakhouse. It’s already grabbed San Francisco’s attention by serving a 2.5-pound porterhouse, a bone-in filet, and a New York strip prepared over a wood grill with a compelling charcoal-roasted bone marrow add-on. The wagyu arrives at the table as skewers or 3-ounce cuts, and there’s plenty of Japanese-imported seafood, like the uni toast with duck confit over milk bread. And because hi-fi listening bars are all the rage throughout California, the vintage 1970s-era JBL Pro Series studio set the sound levels just right.

Slim’s

9700 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, Florida

East Coast restaurant wizard Stephen Starr seamlessly transformed his sushi spot Makoto at the Bal Harbour Shops into the throwback steakhouse of his dreams in March. The “who’s who” of Miami Beach almost forget they’re in a mall as soon as their Chanels step into this glam new portal to the Roaring ’20s to clink together lychee martinis and devour 36-ounce Owner’s Choice Delmonico, impeccable rib-eyes, and dedicated American and Japanese wagyu sections that cap out at $210 for an 8-ounce strip.  Starr’s clearly in his high-steaks era as of late, which includes his well-received Chez Frites in Atlantic City. Starr is so proud (and protective) of the beef program, he won’t divulge the ranch he exclusively sources from. Slim’s also showcases some of the restaurant magnate’s best sellers from other restaurants, including the $100 foie gras-topped cheesesteak made famous on his Philly home turf at Barclay Prime (where it’s even pricier at $140). 

Sanders BBQ Prime

5311 S. Lake Park Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 

James Sanders’s story is already legendary. In 2024, the Chicago chef opened one of the nation’s most celebrated barbecue spots, Sanders BBQ Supply Co., which still draws a steady queue of customers waiting to try his barbecue, which uses techniques that date back to the Great Migration. Sanders says he’s on track to open his next project, Sanders BBQ Prime, where his team, including pitmaster Nick Kleutsch, will grill meats with Asian, and Caribbean flavors. He’s reluctant to call it a steakhouse, though steaks, lamb chops, and other meats will be cooked on a live fire in front of diners. Side dishes already sound like must-haves, including a sweet potato salad, and popcorn prepared with smoky beef tallow. Taco meat will be thrown on the grill the second it’s ordered, and they’ll hand out samples while casual service takes place cafeteria-style with a tray and a charming dining room. Sanders BBQ Prime will open its doors on the lower level of the former Promontory music venue in June 2026 — hopefully, he says, on the same weekend as the Obama Presidential Center debut, which is less than a mile away in Hyde Park.

The Eighty Six

86 Bedford Street, New York, NY 

Eugene Remm and Tilman Fertitta, the hitmakers behind Catch Hospitality Group, gifted the West Village an uber-exclusive, “neo-speakeasy” steakhouse in September, and a visit from Taylor Swift cemented its hot-spot status early on. With just 10 tables, the Eighty Six remains the hardest reservation to secure in the city (with no openings for the foreseeable future). Those lucky enough to get in are seated in brown-leather booths and get the red-carpet treatment from chef Michael Vignola (best known for Soho’s wildly successful Corner Store). Rib-eyes and porterhouses cut and aged beneath the century-old bar join luxe foie gras-topped filets and a cheesesteak made from 72-hour Australian rib-eye. The seafood here also takes center stage, including oysters with gin-celery mignonette and well-dressed shrimp cocktails topped with horseradish snow. 

Star Rover

1801 N. Shepherd Drive #B, Houston, TX

Star Rover is quite possibly the quirkiest and most fun steakhouse of the year. Certain cues are a dead giveaway, with red and white checkered tablecloths, a Skee-Ball section, a bar lined with decorative cowboy hats, and a sparkly midcentury neon sign illuminating the entry. Operator Ford Fry, who was embroiled in controversy in 2024, closed his former Tex-Mex restaurant Superica in January and quickly replaced it less than two months later with his casual steakhouse, Star Rover. The families will love the milk rolls, onion rings, and potato skins served with Star Rover’s T-bone, skirt, burgers, or rib-eye grilled on a plancha and slathered generously in butter. Crab cakes, shrimp cocktail, and a deep-fried lobster tail are ultimate crowd pleasers. Those with a bottomless pit have one hour to finish a 76-ounce steak, milk rolls, salad, onion rings, and fries to receive a free meal, T-shirt, and a sign on the wall that says, “I Ate the 76er.”

Bev’s Steak

117 Cherry Street, Black Mountain, NC 

A steakhouse with a Japanese bent opened just east of Asheville in December, bringing “America’s Prettiest Small Town” a fine dining destination for koji-marinated rib-eyes, local wagyu, and unique game meats like elk loin. Named for chef and longtime local Jake Whitman’s culinary grandmother, Beverly, Bev’s Steak embraces the state from start to finish. Family-owned cattle farm Brasstown Beef supplies beautifully marbled meat that’s cut in-house and seasoned with Spicewalla spices and Sichuan peppercorns.

Souu LA

970 N. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles’s next unique steakhouse will come from a team that operates a tea and cocktail space in Chinatown’s Mandarin Plaza: Souu LA. Steep was initially launched as a pandemic pop-up by owners Samuel Wang and Lydia Lin in 2020, who expanded it into a popular late-night tea-infused spirits, savory cocktails, and Asian bar bites spot called Steep After Dark. The partners took over an adjacent space (the shuttered Angry Egret Dinette) to serve traditional Taiwanese breakfast in the daytime hours, then shift to a Taiwanese steakhouse inspired by iron-plate steaks made famous in Taiwan’s night markets. In 2025, the crew started serving steak platters out of Steep and at pop-ups throughout the city. At the moment, Souu operates out of Downtown’s weekly food and retail bazaar, Smorgasburg, which is where fans can find a preview. Souu’s steakhouse represents a first for Chinatown, a neighborhood that typically leans into its Asian roots, but this time courtesy of an innovative team that’s bucking tradition.

Brasero Atlántico

1066 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

The Buenos Aires-born standout made a sizzling stateside debut last October, impressing discerning D.C. diners from the start with a striking, 2,000-pound custom oven grilling up the prime cuts of meat Argentina is known for. While its wood-fired steaks, like a 24-ounce tenderloin, rib-eye, or New York strip, steal the spotlight, Brasero also pays extra attention to its pastas, which honor Argentina’s 19th-century wave of Italian immigrants. Founder Renato “Tato” Giovannoni is a Renaissance man of sorts, converting what used to be D.C.’s oldest firehouse into the ambitious two-part project that includes Florería Atlántico, his award-winning basement bar that pours his own line of vermouth.

Cuerno 

1271 Avenue of the Americas, Time & Life Building, Rockefeller Center, New York, NY

One of Midtown’s most anticipated openings of 2025, high-energy Cuerno lives up to the buzz by serving some of the best steaks in the city, all set to upbeat guitar music. Cuerno marks the first American restaurant from the Costeño Group, which oversees a vast portfolio of restaurants in Mexico and Spain. Gargantuan tomahawks and rib-eyes parade around in tandem with tableside margs dusted with a chile-crusted rim, and Cuerno’s standout salsas also have a fast following. Family-owned ranches on the pristine grasslands of South Dakota provide the richly marbled cuts of beef, which get the dry-aged treatment, a shake of flaky Colima sea salt, and a sear over a Josper charcoal grill before finally landing on the plate. Cuerno finally got a buttoned-up Manhattan neighborhood to let its hair down in a soaring space that resembles an open-air hacienda, all wrapped up in a tequila-soaked bow. 

Daniel’s Miami

1500 San Ignacio Avenue, Coral Gables, Florida

Daniel’s Miami achieved the near-impossible in its first nine months of service — debuting at No. 40 on the World’s 101 Best Steak Restaurants list for 2026, the only spot in Florida its undercover steak inspectors deemed worthy of the choosy ranking. In short, Daniel’s must be doing something exceptionally well. A world-class steak program overseen by culinary director Daniel Ganem showcases a swath of premium cuts from ranches both near (Florida) and far (Tasmania), including 10-ounce wagyu skirt, 36-ounce porterhouse, and 32-ounce tomahawk, which join next-level sides like creamed spinach with local Malabar greens. A prime rib cart roving around the white-tablecloth dining room is also a crowd-pleasing feature at its older Fort Lauderdale sibling, though the Miami edition is the clear breakout star of the two.

It’s easy to identify a great steakhouse. It’s that instantly comforting place serving big hunks of meat, shrimp cocktails, cold martinis, and so on. But the quest to find the “best steakhouse” requires a follow-up question: “The best for what?” 

It turns out, when you ask an Eater editor about their favorite steakhouses, we often come back with highly specific, niche love affairs — many of which are less about the food and more about a special experience outside of the plate. Thus, our slightly off-kilter steakhouse superlatives: a set of cheeky awards for steakhouses we love for a variety of reasons, some traditional and some distinctly not, whether it’s the immersive time-travel feeling a restaurant gives, its essential place in the community, the way it sounds inside, or the hours it keeps. These are the best steakhouses in America for extremely specific reasons.

Best for Hollywood Celebrity Spotting: Musso & Frank, Los Angeles

Century-old haunt Musso & Frank might be the last place on Hollywood Boulevard where the stars inside are cooler than the ones on the sidewalk. On any given night, you might be seated near The Rolling Stones (true story), Metallica (true story), or Jon Hamm and John Slattery chatting over drinks just like their Mad Men characters (also, unbelievably, a true story). There’s no better place to enjoy an icy martini and a steak on the fiery indoor grill (exempt from LA ordinances that ban charcoal indoors). Ask for the Marilyn Monroe booth. — Hilary Pollack

The Most Texas of Texas Steakhouses: Dai Due, Austin, Texas

Austin restaurant and butcher shop Dai Due is sneakily one of the best steak destinations in Texas. Jesse Griffiths is one of those Texas-forever chefs who walks the walk: All the meat he sources comes from the state, and he often does his own hunting. Look no further than the glorious dry-aged Texas wagyu rib-eye for a meal that could never happen anywhere else. — Nadia Chaudhury

Most Worthy of Ron Swanson: St. Elmo, Indianapolis

When the creators of Parks & Recreation assembled a bachelor party for Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson, it could only have been at St. Elmo, a vintage steakhouse nonpareil in Indianapolis. It’s not the literal Ron Swanson of it all that makes it special, but what the character’s tastes represent: the ideal old-school restaurant, with a huge porterhouse, immaculate shrimp cocktail, and lots of wine and whiskey. It’s a throwback to a different era, without the baggage (never mind the questionable Parks & Rec cameo from Newt Gingrich). —Ben Mesirow

Best Post-Slots Steakhouse: Herbs & Rye, Las Vegas

Time tends to melt in Las Vegas. It’s all too easy to lose yourself in flashing lights and tumbling dice in a way both disorienting and thrilling. But it is a great relief to know that when you cancel a 5 p.m. dinner reservation, push past an 8 o’clock rebook, and suddenly look up to find it’s after midnight, Herbs & Rye will be there, ready to serve you a great steak, classic sides, and stellar cocktails until 3 a.m. —BM

Biggest Queer Icon: Annie’s Paramount, Washington, D.C.

More of a steak-serving neighborhood gathering place than a traditional steakhouse, Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse in D.C. has been a vibrant hub for the city’s LGBTQ community, and the Dupont Circle neighborhood at large, for nearly 80 years. Regulars head to the 17th Street location to dish over strong martinis, London broil with mushrooms and gravy, and cabernet-drenched chopped steak; the inclusive destination’s status as an icon was immortalized with a James Beard America’s Classic award in 2019. — Missy Frederick 

Best Wine List — And Wildest Vibes: Bern’s Steak House, Tampa, Florida

Over the past 70 years, the team at Bern’s has amassed one of the greatest wine cellars in the world, with more than half a million bottles spanning 6,500 labels. You might expect that to correlate with a sophisticated vibe, but this is Tampa, baby, and the Laxer family let it rip on the decor. There are different rooms with themes (based on the Laxers’ art collection) that veer from hotel ballroom to Dracula’s castle. It’s extravagant, it’s gaudy, and you can’t beat the vintage wine and dry-aged steak done in high Florida style. — BM

Best Steakhouse for Time Travelers: The Old Place, Cornell, California

Plenty of steakhouses decorate with Old West kitsch, but visiting the Old Place, set in a century-old former post office in the Santa Monica Mountains, is basically time travel. Getting there requires a winding ascent from modern Malibu into the dusty chaparral of a classic Western. There are a few rough-hewn booths and a long bar in the low-ceilinged room, which is decorated with animal skulls and perfumed with oak smoke. Order a big steak and a bottle of local wine — and maybe some clams, which are surprisingly good — and try not to tangle with any outlaws. — BM

Best Steakhouse to Meet Your Third Spouse: Gibsons, Chicago

Gibsons classic steakhouse cooking is worthy of distinction, but its bar is also the throbbing heart of the Viagra Triangle, a nightlife district in Chicago’s Gold Coast with a very specific scene: It’s a place for financially stable, mature adults to meet like-minded partners (of any age — but usually younger). The bar is fun, raucous, flashy, and makes for some of the best people-watching around, before heading to the dining room to get a signature Chicago cut bone-in rib-eye and another Paper Plane or two. — BM

Best to See and Be Seen: Crane Club, New York

The bar at West Chelsea’s Crane Club steakhouse, the first serious food-focused spot from the clubstaurant experts at Tao Group in New York, is ideal for drinking, dining, and people-watching among a crowd that clearly has money. The bar has lowered ceilings, crimson booths, and scalloped light fixtures that give it the feel of a lair. Behind the bar, Chris Lemperle turns out sharp riffs on classics, alongside the showstopping Vintage Vesper 1953 — the drink of James Bond made with the now-discontinued Kina Lillet — for $350. And if you arrive between 5:30 and 6 p.m., you can score one of the 12 nightly off-menu burgers. — Melissa McCart

Best for the Decision-Fatigued: Quincy’s, Denver

Some steakhouse menus are like phone books. The one at Colorado chain Quincy’s is like a tweet: Filet mignon, starting at $19 for 6 ounces, with baked potato and salad. Mac and cheese and lasagna are the only sides, chocolate cream pie and cheesecake the only desserts. Prime rib on weekends. That’s it. — Nick Mancall-Bitel

Best Sound System: Superprime, San Francisco

Superprime Steakhouse is San Francisco’s new hub of steak from chef Marc Zimmerman, combining master cuts of beef and wagyu with, surprisingly, a killer vintage JBL sound system. The tunes carry over from Zimmerman’s previous project, Yokai, setting a steak-eating mood with jazz vinyls that palpably warm up the space. It’s part listening bar, part steakhouse, with an undercurrent of San Francisco style. — Dianne de Guzman

Most Unlikely Location: Monte Carlo, Albuquerque, New Mexico

It’s not often that you have to pass through a package liquor store in order to get to a steakhouse, but this affordable meat den and speakeasy in Albuquerque is more than its humble surroundings. A fixture of Eater’s essential Albuquerque restaurants list, the Monte Carlo’s offerings are well-marbled, reasonably priced, and unpretentious; think no-frills sides and starters like loaded baked potatoes, deep-fried zucchini, and mozzarella sticks. Naturally, the restaurant also serves a formidable green chile cheeseburger. — MF

Chef Anthony Mangieri from Una Pizza Napoletana, whose pizza was crowned the best in the U.S. in 2025, takes Eater on a tour of his favorite restaurants in NYC for tastes of creamy cheesecake, a juicy burger, and more.

Mangieri starts his day with a cycle around town to clear his head, before getting a slice of cheesecake at Veniero’s Pasticceria e Caffé, a dessert that he’s been enjoying for more than 30 years. The Sicilian-style cake is made with alternating layers of sponge cake soaked in rum, maraschino cherries, and a dense cannoli cream, encased in a buttery pie dough. Mangieri talks about the history behind the cheesecake, which is cooked in a. century-old underground oven. “You can’t fake that kind of stuff, that comes from years of hard work, and repetition, and passion, and family, and it really touches me,” he says.

He then makes his way to Hearth, for one of his favorite burgers. The restaurant is rooted in Tuscan culinary traditions, but with plenty of American spins. The Variety Burger literally uses a variety of meats: beef heart, liver, brisket, bone marrow, and beef chuck are ground into a thick patty that is topped with fontina cheese from Italy and caramelized onions. “To me its insane that this burger is not on the top of every burger list in the United States,” he says, noting that the burger transcends the traditional idea of a burger and is one of the most incredible meals he’s had.

Next is D. Coluccio & Sons, a sandwich shop and market that has been distributing cheese, tomatoes, and olive oil directly imported from Italy since 1978. Mangieri goes shopping, highlighting some of his favorites for cooking at home or to inspire new dishes at the restaurant.

Finally, Mangieri makes it to his final stop at Casa Enrique. Chef and owner Cosme Aguilar takes him into the kitchen for a look behind the scenes. Mangieri and his family then dig into tacos, enchiladas, and a spicy shrimp dish. “There’s just a lot of layers of flavor going on, everything is really thoughtful, you can taste each ingredient, and I think that’s kind of a commonality in everything we experienced today on our day off, and that’s kind of the way I eat,” he says.

Watch the most recent episode of Chef’s Day Off to see how chef Anthony Mangieri spends his day off at his favorite restaurants, bakeries, and shops around New York City.

By and large, most diners at Cote, the sleek and club-like New York City steakhouse, order the Butcher’s Feast. For $82 per person, diners get four cuts of beef, grilled tableside. But there is no creamed spinach here, nor loaded baked potatoes: Instead, there is banchan, like kimchi and pickled daikon; scallion salad, with gochugaru vinaigrette; lettuce leaves, with a side of ssamjang; gyeran-jjim, renamed on the menu as “savory egg souffle”; and bubbling clay pots of both kimchi stew and doenjang stew, served with rice. 

Many customers, specifically non-Korean ones, don’t know what the stews are, explains owner Simon Kim, but the meat makes them more amenable, putting them in “the vibe,” according to Kim. “It’s an experience that some of the meat-and-potato guys wouldn’t have taken otherwise, and they’re open to it,” he says. “They came for the steak, and they stay for the kimchi.” 

Cote is, Kim emphasizes, not the typical Korean barbecue restaurant, but a Korean steakhouse. This distinction mattered to him, like the difference between a bistro and brasserie. He wanted fun and fire, but also 1,200 labels of wine, dry-aged wagyu, and caviar — to merge the energy of the Korean barbecue restaurant with the well-established luxury of the American steakhouse. 

Before Cote opened in 2017, Kim received warnings about his concept. With millennials eating much less red meat than older generations,  the steakhouse was on the decline, advisers said. Recent years have proven this false, however. Not only has the steakhouse surged in a wave of nostalgic dining, overcoming even spiking beef prices, but Cote has succeeded, still impossible to book nearly a decade in and now with swanky outposts in Miami, Singapore, and Las Vegas. 

The revival of the classic American steakhouse symbolizes a specific cultural moment, but the rise of the new American steakhouse — as evidenced by restaurants like Cote, NYC’s Cuerno, San Diego’s Animae, and Las Vegas’s Maroon — might symbolize a more interesting one. 

In our current dining culture, the steakhouse represents dueling sensibilities. Here, of course, is the presiding take: The steakhouse is a symbol of the current shift toward conservatism. The right has long stoked the image of its opponents as soft, timid soy-eaters, themselves as the macho party of meat and potatoes; the steakhouse is their stronghold, its standardized menu asserting a particular Americana. The steakhouse is risk-averse and resistant to new ideas, satisfied enough in its own timeless format. 

The steakhouse is, Jessica Sidman wrote in 2024, “tradition and masculinity… It’s America First (never mind if the cooks and valets are immigrants).” It’s for reasons like these, argued Alicia Kennedy, that the current steakhouse revival cannot be politically neutral: It is a “collective fever dream in which the right-wing, masculinist approach of the carnivores has found a palatable way into polite society.”

But perhaps the steakhouse can instead assert another America: the one built by immigrants and enslaved people, for whom status and power have been hard-won. If the steakhouse protects a certain vision of Americanness through the standardization of its menu and the trappings of tradition, is it possible for the steakhouse, in slightly different form, to also subvert these standards? This rising wave of steakhouses suggests so. 

Sneakily, the steakhouse has emerged as a kind of Trojan horse: a venue in which globalization is championed, where foreign flavors are rendered more familiar, the borders between cuisines become more permeable, and immigrant chefs elevate their cultures to new levels of prestige. 

Since 2021, Tara Monsod has been the executive chef at Animae, a glitzy, velvet-draped Asian American steakhouse in San Diego. Amid the city’s more traditional establishments like Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s, Animae stands out, pairing its dry-aged rib-eyes with banchan and painting its pork tomahawk with a glistening, sweet beet glaze in the style of Filipino tocino. “It’s presented simply like a steak — but not a steak, and still very much Filipino, but with the visual appeal of a steakhouse,” Monsod says. One doesn’t have to understand tocino to try it; in the milieu of the steakhouse, meat is a universal language. “At the end of the day, it’s a slab of meat that they can’t resist.”

Look past the big meats, and Monsod’s subversion of the steakhouse makes itself more clear. Onto Animae’s menu she sneaks chicken cooked into adobong pula, reddened with annatto oil, and pancit palabok, luxed-up with lobster, trout roe, and bucatini. In other dishes, what she’s doing is more “bridging the gap.” Take her potatoes, crisped in beef fat then served with a smear of koji-spiked sour cream and dollops of Chinese sausage jam, evoking a baked potato. Initially, Monsod resisted potatoes. “It’s an Asian restaurant,” she says. “But people associate potatoes with steakhouse, so I gave in.”

That push and pull exists on both sides of the proposition. The power of the steakhouse is that, for many people, it’s “unintimidating,” conjuring comforting expectations of Caesar salads and creamed spinach. This is important in a city like San Diego, where the culinary scene is still “growing,” Monsod says. This is also its opportunity: She can hook diners in with a keyword, promising something familiar, then sneak in something unexpected. Her Caesar salad, for example, is layered with nori flakes and crispy baby anchovies. “You catch them with the very American side,” she says. 

Later this month, chef Kwame Onwuachi will open Maroon, a Caribbean steakhouse in Sahara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. It offers a telling of history one might not expect to see from a steakhouse, which most might associate with a somewhat sanitized nostalgia of the United States’s past. Onwuachi’s restaurant gets its name from Maroons, the escaped and freed slaves who went on to create their own communities in Africa, the U.S., and the Caribbean. Through the restaurant, Onwuachi says, “I’m able to tell the story of the Maroons and that story of survival.” 

Onwuachi writes of 17th-century Jamaica in his 2019 memoir; it’s cited on Maroon’s website, explaining the restaurant’s backstory. When Britain captured the colony from Spain, some Spaniards freed or left behind their slaves. These Maroons, he writes, hid out in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains, where they lived a “hardscrabble existence” of subsistence farming and the occasional raid on the British occupiers. “In order to not reveal their location, they built these jerk pits and then covered them, so the smoke wouldn’t reveal where they were. Through that came the invention of jerk cuisine,” Onwuachi says. 

Because of these origins, the scholar Tao Leigh Goffe describes jerk as “a cuisine outside of and in opposition to the European colonial and Creole palate.” And yet, here it is: central to one of the Strip’s most anticipated new openings, beckoning anyone in Vegas looking for a good time. At Maroon, the live-fire jerk pit takes center stage. It’s the restaurant’s heart, from which the 30-day rum-aged steaks, racks of lamb, and chicken — brined, marinated, and smoked in a four-day process — will emerge. While the restaurant will have the requisite steakhouse dishes like steak tartare, “the things that are coming out of the pit are really, really signature,” according to Onwuachi. 

In this way, Maroon builds on what Onwauchi has done with his NYC restaurant Tatiana, notably in its claiming of a place of power. Tatiana is located in the complex of Lincoln Center, the construction of which, as Pete Wells wrote in his 2023 review, resulted in the destruction of a Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood. It reestablishes a tether to a history that might otherwise be whitewashed. Power is central to Vegas and to the very concept of the steakhouse; the story of Maroon is a reminder that subversion is its own kind of power, too.

Steakhouses promise that anyone dining there deserves the luxury experience. Still, what cuisines have historically won this luxury treatment? For those that are, more commonly, relegated to the “cheap eats” margins, the steakhouse — with its self-assured entitlement to its level of expense — can challenge perceptions. 

In his early travels abroad, Mexican restaurateur Alberto Martínez found Mexican culture derided, its food reduced to nachos, tacos, and tamales. For Cuerno, the NYC restaurant he opened in the summer of 2025, Martínez chose the language of Mexican steakhouse over Mexican restaurant precisely because he knew the latter would evoke “tequila, donkeys, burritos, and other things that we are not,” he says.

Cuerno serves steaks crusted in Mexican salt — $188 for a tomahawk — and other dishes that are meant to evoke Northern Mexico’s carne asada culture. Its salad is not Caesar but César de Tijuana, topped with chicharron croutons, in a reminder that despite the dish’s frequent association with Italian restaurants, it really is a Mexican invention. Cuerno is the first U.S. venture from Martínez, who previously ran high-end restaurants across Mexico as part of the Costeño Group. 

As a 16-year-old, Martínez opened his first food business in Mexico, a very small taco stand that sold only steak tacos, topped with a bit of bone marrow and salsa verde; everyone in his hometown hired him to cater their parties. Despite the affection for Mexican dishes like tacos and tamales among non-Mexican clientele, there remains an unspoken price ceiling for what certain foods should cost in the U.S. At Cuerno, that dish of humble beginnings has been reenvisioned into a showy signature worthy of a Midtown steakhouse. Order the Taco Taquero, and a server wheels over a cart to chop the inclusions tableside. The mixture then goes into tacos — $42 for three. In the context of the steakhouse, though, people are willing to pay for meat. 

The thwack of knife against wood that percusses through the dining room tells the story that Martínez wanted to put forth with Cuerno. “It’s a very special sound that reminds me of the north of Mexico,” he says. “I wanted people to hear that sound and [for it to] become something very familiar.” In NYC, “all the kitchens are powered by Mexicans,” Martínez says. “But very few places really represent us.” 

Monsod has found a similar contradiction between the expectations set by the steakhouse, and where people — even within her community — expect to see Filipino food. “People don’t want to pay more for Asian food, or for Filipino food specifically,” she says. Especially among her parents’ generation, “I feel like sometimes there’s this fear or embarrassment that, for whatever reason, our food is not worthy to be in a space like that.”

For these diners, her goal is for Animae to inspire a new pride. An expensive dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows, gold accents, and lush fabrics — where cultural foods otherwise taken for granted are instead presented with tweezered polish — looks like some level of making it, after all. “I think once they experience that,” she says,  “They can break down that idea of where our food [is] versus where it can be.” 

It’s all a little more complicated than that, though. Getting diners to take interest in “foreign” flavors doesn’t actually shift the culture at large in a more progressive direction. People who vote against immigrants still like tacos, maybe even more so when they’re filled with perfectly charred steak and served in spaces smoothed by the steakhouse’s shimmery opulence. The steakhouse is still predicated upon reinforcing the status quo — just look at the way chefs have to conform to its conventions. 

Maybe it’s a naive illusion to believe that the steakhouse can mean anything other than what it has always meant. But can’t it also be the scaffolding for something new, and isn’t it invigorating to see something reworked to be a vehicle toward the opposite perspective? In these steakhouses, the borders between cultures are open; cuisines meld.

Simon Kim describes his Korean steakhouse as embracing “the power of ‘and.’” Cote is a place where the American steakhouse and the Korean barbecue restaurant both realize they can take some cues from the other. It’s a place, Kim is proud to say, where big spenders buying bottles in the thousands share a dining room with NYU students on the rare splurge, both of them sitting down for the same Butcher’s Feast. “Our dining room feels more like a coral reef than a group of sharks,” Kim says. 

The steakhouse is the staid, protective nostalgia of the old, and the steakhouse can also be the tradition-pushing promise of the new.

If you’ve never tried Goop Kitchen, Gwyneth Paltrow’s takeout-only, nutritious food operation, you’re missing out. No matter what you think of the Hollywood star or her lifestyle and wellness brand, the consensus in LA restaurant circles is the company’s food is shockingly good. Chef Josiah Citrin, of two-Michelin-starred Mélisse, is a big fan, while Marissa Hermer of Palm Springs’ Bar Issi says she orders it all the time. Eater editor Nicole Fellah gets the Caesar salad wrap regularly. Multiple Hollywood types told me it’s a favorite in writers rooms, too.

I admit I was hugely skeptical until I tried the brand’s gluten-free (like everything at Goop Kitchen) pepperoni pizza, named after Paltrow’s Pepper Potts character in the Marvel films. When I visited the test kitchen last summer, chefs Kim Floresca and Brent Parrino prepared a fantastic turkey burger. Though the idea of “clean” food annoys me, I appreciate well-sourced and consistently delivered fare that won’t weigh you down. And the food is fairly affordable (like the $17 Andrew Huberman-collab turkey chili or $23 whole square pizza), unlike Goop’s luxury clothing and goods.

Celebrity-branded food businesses are nothing new. But with Goop Kitchen’s expansion earlier this year to San Francisco and now to New York City, Goop Kitchen feels bound to enter a broader national conversation, as Erewhon did when it went national.  

I asked Paltrow about all of it last week. We chatted about her intentions for the NYC expansion, her involvement in menu development, and the brand’s future.

Matthew Kang: Do you like the same items on the Goop Kitchen menu as your customers? 

Gwyneth Paltrow: Nothing gets on the menu without me loving it. My favorite is the salmon bento box ($18), which is popular but not the No. 1 [among customers]. I also really love the winter harvest chop salad ($16.50) that we do with sharp cheddar and falafel bites; it’s not in the top five [among customers], but definitely one of my favorites.

How much are you guiding menu development? 

I’m very involved in ideating all of the dishes. We do multiple tastings. There’s pretty much nothing on the menu that I haven’t had a direct hand in shaping.

This whole thing is my brainchild. It comes from my cookbooks and years of feeding my family. I really wanted to do something the way that I cook, which I think is full of a lot of flavor, and also very clean and healthy. It’s an area that I think has been lacking. 

Why expand Goop Kitchen to SF and NYC? 

When it started, in our own backyard in Santa Monica, the idea was to bring incredibly high-quality, delicious food to everybody. SF was the next step for us because you don’t have to hire an entirely new team; [you can use the] same operational resources in California. It’s obviously a concept that feels very intuitively California. I was interested to see how it would go down in SF, probably the most urban environment in California. We’re still throttling demand there every day. 

I’m from here [New York], and all my friends and family were about to kill me if we didn’t open Goop Kitchen in New York. It’s really become a thing: People land in California and text me their order; next question is when is this coming to New York. I think it’s thrilling. It’s a homecoming in a certain sense for me. 

In expanding to the East Coast, are you changing the menu at all? Or do you think New Yorkers will gravitate towards different dishes than Californians?

We’re not changing the menu. I think we will probably be open to doing fun things along the way, like our collab with [podcaster and neuroscientist] Andrew Huberman, which was a huge success for us. Everybody wants to eat the same way: really delicious, high-quality. NYC kind of needs that more than anywhere. I haven’t found anything in New York that solves the problem of what should I order that’s really delicious and healthy.

How many locations do you foresee opening in New York and SF? What other cities do you see expanding to?

We have a robust road map for New York and California. We’re looking at Miami, and I think eventually we’ll be in many more cities.

Where does Goop Kitchen fit into the larger Goop organization in terms of financial performance? Is it a financial leader or more of a passion project?

Goop Kitchen is a complete passion project. Feeding people is my love language and creating access to delicious healthy food is a very deep passion of mine. And luckily the business is incredibly successful. Strong unit economics, metrics, repeat rates — we are leaders in many of these categories when looking at competitors. The metrics are off the charts.

What competitive advantages does Goop Kitchen have over its main competitors?

As everybody knows, as you build a food business, the most difficult thing is to scale and maintain the integrity of the food. That’s really the thing to focus on. We developed this business to be takeout and delivery, and engineered the package, like the bento box, to make sure food holds its integrity. We are absolutely obsessed with quality and execution. Once the recipe development is done, and we all feel good about what we’re serving, the operational team is really the most important thing. 

Are there any cuisines or trends you think might influence where Goop Kitchen goes from here?

I don’t see us as a very trend-oriented business. We have found success creating food that follows a certain set of values: food we want to eat and feed our families. We want it to be broadly accessible, especially to people with dietary restrictions. I’m very proud of that.  

Dining out in Big Sur, California, requires intentionality. There’s nothing casual about visiting a restaurant off the cliff-hugging stretch of Highway 1, a place once described to me as “California’s Delphi.” The coastal community has long been a place of artistic and culinary pilgrimage, for folks in search of Big Sur Bakery scones (here’s hoping for a return), a golden hour drink at Nepenthe, and, of course, a meal at the storybook restaurant at Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn. For almost 80 years, Deetjen’s has been serving diners heaps of charm alongside its famous buttermilk pancakes and beef ragu; the redwood building feels like a rustic tchotchke- and art-filled English tavern, where each ceramic jester, rabbit, or antique teapot has a heartbeat. So when a painting was allegedly stolen from the restaurant last fall, it hit a central nerve for not just the restaurant, but an even broader community of Deetjen’s lovers. Immediately, an informal, grassroots search and rescue campaign began on Instagram, as users shared their own photos of the painting in a quest to help track it down. 

The painting in question was gifted to the Inn’s late founder Helmuth Deetjen by the late, celebrated local artist George Choley. As Deetjen’s archivist and historian Michelle Provost tells Eater, “This particular Choley [painting] had been in the same place [since the 1980s], undisturbed, and a symbol of continued historic preservation.” 

It wasn’t just decor. It was a part of what she says gives repeat guests a sense of comfort upon entering the restaurant and “a feeling of coming home.” 

Restaurants need art to cultivate a lived-in, meaningful environment. A painting can carry weight as a standalone piece, but in the context of a restaurant, it enhances the connection between the diner and the establishment. Often, as was the case with Deetjen’s Choley, these artworks serve as literal landscapes into which guests can mentally return long after leaving; a visual shorthand for the restaurant’s history and quirks. 

I spoke to a handful of restaurants from across the United States about their signature artworks, asking them about the stories behind their ambiance-making pieces. Some could easily fetch big numbers at a Sotheby’s auction, while others reflect a more folksy, homegrown approach; some are carved, some are painted, and all are proudly made by humans.

The tapestry bringing the Mediterranean to March (Houston)

When March opened in 2021, the 28-seat Houston restaurant received a lot of attention for its hyper-regional menu, which shifts its focus every five-to-six months to a different area of the Mediterranean. The wall-to-ceiling tapestry in the Michelin-starred restaurant has become just as memorable.June Rodil, the CEO of the restaurant group behind March, tells Eater that it “is rooted in the study of the Mediterranean, not only in cuisine, but in landscape, history, climate, and the way people live in conversation with the land.” The massive artwork, (titled As Above, So Below), was commissioned from Argentinian textile artist Alexandra Kehayoglou, whose tufted, textured works, Rodil says, pack emotional depth. Initially concerned about where such a tactile piece would go, they kept returning to the softness and intimacy of placing the piece largely overhead diners. As Rodil says, “We were basically like, no, this cannot live where chairs and heels, dropped forks, [and] jovial splashes of wine are going to have their way with it.” The result is a work that she says feels “responsive, generous, and alive” — ideal for the space’s intimate, history-informed identity.

The hand-carved bar at The Madonna Inn (San Luis Obispo, California)

The queen of America’s kitsch roadside hotels is the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, California. The interiors of the midcentury modern hotel favor hot pink, glitter, and floral carpets, and the sprawling Silver Bar Cocktail Lounge and Gold Rush Diner are united by a series of intricate wood carvings of grapes and vines. hey were commissioned by the late founder Alex Madonna from an artisan named Alexander Zeller, a Bavarian woodworker from Munich lovingly known as “Mr. Chips,” who drew inspiration from European design traditions. The archways feature intricate scrollwork, floral patterns, and ornamental details that create a richly textured, old-world atmosphere. As the Inn tells Eater, portions of Mr. Chips’ carvings were intentionally left unfinished after his passing in 1961 as a tribute to him, preserving his original outlines, and adding “a meaningful historical layer to the space, allowing guests to experience not only the artistry itself but also the story behind it.”

The jazzy sandwich and salad art at South Coast Deli (Santa Barbara, California)

For more than 30 years, South Coast Deli has been one of the best places to grab a salad or sandwich (you can’t go wrong with the Eggplant Sammie) in Santa Barbara, California. The casual space has a Factory Pomo-meets-Global Village Coffeehouse aesthetic that sparks ’90s/aughts nostalgia, and an especially memorable painting at its San Roque neighborhood location of a woman riding a carrot in a salad bowl between two figures, a man and a woman, with the latter downing a sub. As owner Jim St. John tells Eater, it was commissioned from a friend and artist named Lloyd Dallett, who cites layered colors, rich textures, “and flavors of butter, cheese, baguettes, and beautiful old stone walls” as inspiration in her art. “[That] piece [was] originally commissioned for our Isla Vista location,” St. John tells Eater, where it hung for a decade before they decided not to renew the lease there. “We like to support local artists, and the pieces we commissioned over the years have tremendous personality and reflect the energy and whimsy associated with South Coast Deli.”

The Ballad of the Dish and the Spoon at Chez Nous (Manhattan, New York)

You would need some serious construction equipment to remove the signature artwork at Chez Nous in Manhattan, New York, as it was painted directly onto the French restaurant’s wall by celebrated British artist Cecily Brown. Titled The Ballad of the Dish and the Spoon, the artwork is a one-of-a-kind mural that runs the length of the space and complements Chez Nous’ mirrored, coffered ceilings, rich dark wood dining tables, and maroon velvet banquettes. As the restaurant tells Eater, “[It’s] inspired by the famous Mother Goose nursery rhyme, and there are many images and hidden references to the rhyme in the painting.” It’s a unique opportunity to dine beside a museum-worthy work, and it finds extra meaning as a piece that lives in the West Village, where Brown first supported herself through waitressing  when she moved to New York City in the 1990s. 

A pizza parlor’s homage to Brokeback Mountain at Roberta’s (Brooklyn, New York)

When famed Brooklyn pizzeria Roberta’s opened nearly 20 years ago, its Bee Sting Pizza helped put Bushwick on the food tourism map. The Italian-American restaurant is still a must for folks on the NYC pizza crawl, and, as any elder Bushwickian will tell you, dining at Roberta’s original string-light-covered converted factory still serves peak Girls-era Brooklyn charm. Holding court in the first dining room, you’ll find a painting that co-founder and owner Brandon Hoy tells Eater still sparks a lot of commentary from guests: an homage to Brokeback Mountain in pizza form. In lieu of realistic depictions of the 2005 film’s stars, it features a pizza-faced Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. “People really love it,” Hoy tells Eater, explaining that the artist, Zachary Kinsella, was an early regular; “He worked with Chris Parachini and myself at Royal Oak before we opened Roberta’s.” Hoy also notes that Kinsella made multiple drawings for Roberta’s in that series, including an unfinished, classic scene from Dirty Dancing. “[Kinsella] was doing a bunch of movies and tv shows,” he concludes, “Not really sure how he landed on Brokeback Mountain [for us], but it’s legendary.”

At a time when so many restaurants are using AI to churn out everything from murals to logos, it feels especially timely to remind ourselves about why the state of a restaurant’s art can be one of its most viable signs of life. Real food, like real art (and not even particularly clouty or critically-acclaimed art) will always be imbued with the efforts of an authentic, human-led creative process. And isn’t there something delicious about that?