Restaurant Guide Index:
(List of Recommended Restaurants from Various Sources)
California: Los Angeles | Orange County | Sacramento | San Bernardino/Riverside | San Diego | San Francisco/Bay Area
Missouri: Kansas City | St. Louis
New Mexico: Albuquerque | Las Cruces
Oklahoma: Oklahoma City | Tulsa
Texas: Austin | Dallas/Fort Worth | El Paso | Houston | Rio Grande Valley | San Antonio
Washington: Portland | Seattle
This is a “master list” of restaurants that I have seen on the Internet or other sources and would like to try, or that I think would be of interest to others. I do not mean for this to be an exhaustive list of every good place to eat, but it should represent a good sample of the most interesting or unique restaurants, along with a few that best represent an area’s regional cuisine.
Notes about the listings:
- Date indicates the most recent update of each listing.
- Map provides a link to Google Maps. This will provide the most up-to-date information about the restaurant’s status, hours, etc.
Primary Guidelines are to include restaurants that have high ratings on web sites such as Yelp, Google Maps, TripAdvisor, etc. combined with:
- The most popular places in town that reflect the “local taste”
- Regional or unique foods where it looks like this would be a good place to try it
- Ethnic foods of all kinds especially when they have specialty dishes that are highly rated by reviewers or have regional dishes that are not very common in the U.S.
Additional Guidelines include:
- It is always good to have food that is fresh, healthy, or farm to table if they look like they will be good and not too expensive
- I don’t want to include high end restaurants ($$$ or more) unless they have regional specialties or are not like the fine dining restaurants most people would find in their own cities
- I don’t want to include diners or greasy spoon places that are popular locally but seem to be like generic restaurants across the country
- I will include Asian and Mexican restaurants if they do not look all that authentic but may be the best place to eat in a local area
- Some places that are not authentic (Tex-Mex is an example) will be on the list because they represent a regional cuisine and the area’s local history (but I try to list the ones with the best reviews)
Geographic Coverage: This list came about as a result of search tools that were available on the old Urbanspoon.com web site so that I could compile a list of what I thought might be the best restaurants in any city, region, or state. The “best” is subjective, with a high priority given to ethnic restaurants and regional specialties in each state (it is what I would look for when traveling, and I do not claim anything more than this).
Urbanspoon was purchased by Zomato.com, and I found that the former search tools were no longer available (nor is there anything similar on other web sites). As a result I am planning to limit the geographical coverage to the states I was able to research while Urbanspoon was on line. Of course I use other sources to complete the list, but the skeleton of it was mainly possible because of Urbanspoon.
The following are states I have researched on Urbanspoon with the plan to eventually include in the Restaurant Guide, but which are not yet published:
Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Tennessee, Wisconsin
Note: Steve’s Restaurant Reviews (the ones I have personally visited) are found Here