California

Find Restaurants in California by City

The most effective place to start would be location. The food scene can change dramatically depending on which part of the state one considers, and even adjacent cities may offer different advantages. Our city pages have been created to help you discover rather than force you to navigate an endless statewide ranking system.

Select a destination below to look at restaurants, cuisines, meals, and sorting criteria all in one place. This will help you find a better selection from your broad search to a shortlist that is right for your chosen location.

What Makes the Golden State Such a Good Place to Eat?

This kind of area rarely manages to bring together agriculture, coast, migration, and urban culture. Vegetables from vast agricultural areas, seafood from the Pacific, California wines, and family-run businesses over generations all affect the foods we eat here. One of these aspects is why “California cuisine” could mean so many different things.

There is a lot more variety than a single signature style. The state has been steeped in Mexican cuisine, but Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Indian, French, Thai, Mediterranean, and countless other food styles have loyal followings in their communities. In one dinner, it could be a taco place or a noodle house around the corner, and another would be an elegant tasting menu from a Michelin-recommended establishment.

From Southern California to the Bay Area and Beyond

Southern California has some of the most diverse urban dining cultures in the United States. There are Los Angeles’ many specialty areas as well as San Diego’s, which mixes a coastal cuisine with heavy influences from Baja and Mexico. Orange County includes Little Saigon specialties, casual seafood, family-oriented restaurants, and high-profile chef-run kitchens.

Further north, the Bay Area has its reputation for international cooking, bakeries, seafood, produce-based cuisine, and long-established neighborhood restaurants. Sacramento has its farm-to-fork reputation thanks to proximity to productive agricultural areas. Napa and Sonoma have destination dining coupled with wine-country excursions. The Central Coast adds barbecue, fresh seafood, produce, and laid-back beach towns.

It’s because of that broad range of geographic possibilities that a city-by-city guide is usually much more effective than any kind of statewide ranking of best places.

Find a Place That Fits the Meal

“What’s the best restaurant?” is something that changes with what you need on the day. What someone would be looking for while trying to have an easy lunch isn’t the same as the things you’re considering when planning an anniversary dinner, feeding your family, meeting with friends, or even just finding something to eat at night. Sometimes price, cuisine type, location, ambience, service approach, dietary considerations, and convenience count as much as popularity.

Our guide is arranged with all that in mind. Instead of presenting one place that should work for everybody, we give you a wider range of choice and additional details that could help you filter the list down to a manageable size.

If you prefer to browse by cuisine type, we have a wide variety of choices as well. The restaurants of Mexican cuisine in California, for example, are a large part of local cuisine traditions. Italian, seafood, Indian, Chinese, Japanese and regional American cuisines are also readily available in many areas. Some areas are also popular due to their selection of Michelin-star and chef-oriented restaurants.

How to Use Our City Dining Guides

First, select the place you visit or the city nearest to you. Then, open the guide of that city, find the selection of restaurants and compare them in accordance with their features. Some people care about cuisine first. Others consider price, location, ambience, or purpose of the event.

There are more than 30 options in each city post, and thus it gives the opportunity for more freedom in choice without limiting the cuisine of this particular city to the top 10. The only thing you should do is spend less time moving from one tab to another and choose something suitable for you.

Planning a Food-Focused Trip?

A road trip may be centered on food as much as on beaches, parks, or monuments. For example, you can start off your adventure with tacos and seafood in San Diego, then neighborhood food in Los Angeles, followed by stops in the Central Coast and the Bay Area, and end it off with wine-country food. Or perhaps you prefer a different route through towns and cities that offer dishes that don’t get as much spotlight in the national press.

This page should be your base for exploring statewide food, while the city guides will give you more detailed information. If your plans change, return here and pick out your next destination.