Historical landmarks, sandy beaches and snowy mountaintops aren’t the only attractions that draw in tourists. Food has a special way of touching hearts and making places feel special.
If that’s the driving motivator behind your travel plans, TripAdvisor is helping you narrow down your vacation destination search. The site recently released its latest annual list of top food destinations in the U.S., and the results are diverse.
TripAdvisor determined the top cities by looking at the quality and quantity of reviews that restaurants received on its site from October 2024 through September 2025.
So if you’re a foodie or are just trying to broaden your culinary horizons, these cities will have you leaving stuffed and satisfied.
10. Nashville, Tennessee
The city is known for being the birthplace of “Nashville-style” hot chicken — which has an interesting origin. To sum it up, the legend goes that the iconic spicy chicken was created as revenge by an angry wife, whose husband then made a business out of it. It’s still running and is known today as Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack.
Locals also love fried bologna sandwiches and “meat ‘n’ threes,” for which customers pick one meat out of an array of choices and three vegetable side dishes. Those “vegetables” can include items like hush puppies and mac and cheese.
9. San Francisco
San Francisco is home to several firsts. For one, the martini. One tale about the classic cocktail’s origin centers on the Occidental Hotel.
Supposedly, a miner making a trek to Martinez, California, sat down at the hotel bar, put down a piece of gold and asked the bartender to whip him up something special. The bartender mixed sweetened gin, vermouth, bitters and Maraschino and dubbed it the “Martinez” in honor of the miner’s journey.
Sourdough is among San Francisco’s other firsts, as well as Dungeness crabs — the first one to be sent off commercially as edible came out of San Francisco around 1848.
Classy food and drink persist as part of San Francisco’s food culture today.
8. Boston
Seafood is a major part of Boston cuisine, with staples including the lobster roll, oysters and fried clams. But if seafood isn’t your thing, the city is also loved for its South Shore bar pizzas and North Shore-style roast beef sandwiches.
Boston also has a well-known Chinatown, and many of its neighborhoods have pockets where Vietnamese, Armenian and Caribbean food can be enjoyed. This city has something to offer everybody.
7. Oahu, Hawaii
Oahu is a melting pot of culinary influences, where traditional Hawaiian roots mix with Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese and American flavors. One staple you can’t miss is poke. While it is now trendy worldwide, its origins here date back to fishermen seasoning fresh cut-offs of their catch with sea salt and limu (seaweed) for a quick snack.
Another island icon is Spam musubi, a slice of grilled Spam on top of a block of rice, wrapped in nori. It became a local favorite during World War II when fresh meat was scarce and GI rations of Spam were plentiful.
For dessert, travelers head to the North Shore for shave ice. Unlike the crunchy snow cones found on the mainland, Hawaiian shave ice is incredibly fine and powdery, designed to absorb syrups made from tropical fruits like guava, passion fruit (lilikoi) and pineapple.
6. Chicago
Chicago is a heavyweight in American food history, and it is the birthplace of the brownie. In 1893, Bertha Palmer, president of the Board of Lady Managers for the World’s Columbian Exposition, asked the pastry chef at the Palmer House hotel to create a dessert that could be easily boxed for ladies attending the fair.
The result was the Palmer House Brownie — a fudgy, walnut-topped confection that is still served at the hotel today.
The city is also fiercely proud of its deep-dish pizza, widely credited to Pizzeria Uno in the 1940s, and the Chicago-style hot dog. A true Chicago dog is a frankfurter on a poppy seed bun, topped with yellow mustard, neon green relish, chopped onions, tomato wedges, a pickle spear, sport peppers and celery salt.
5. Miami
Miami offers a vibrant mix of Latin American and Caribbean flavors, but its most legendary dish comes from the sea. Joe’s Stone Crab, a South Beach institution since 1913, is credited with discovering that the local stone crabs were edible.
In 1921, a visiting researcher brought a sack of the hard-shelled crabs to owner Joe Weiss. After some experimentation, they found that boiling and chilling them created a delicacy that transformed the restaurant into a global destination.
4. Orlando, Florida
The city’s culinary scene gained attention in 2022 when the Michelin Guide arrived in Florida, awarding stars to several local restaurants, including Capa and Soseki.
Beyond the fine dining, the city boasts incredible diversity in neighborhoods like the Mills 50 district. This area, historically a hub for the Vietnamese community, is now one of the most exciting food corridors in the South, packed with banh mi shops, noodle houses, and modern fusion concepts that have nothing to do with a mouse.
3. Maui, Hawaii
While Oahu is known for street food and fusion, Maui is the heart of the “Hawaii Regional Cuisine” movement. Founded in the early 1990s by chefs like Peter Merriman, this movement shifted the focus away from imported hotel food toward fresh, locally grown ingredients.
The island’s rich volcanic soil produces world-famous crops like sweet Kula onions and Maui Gold pineapples. This farm-to-table ethos is best experienced at legendary spots like Mama’s Fish House, where the menu lists the name of the fisherman who caught your specific fish that morning.
2. Las Vegas
Las Vegas dominates the high-end dining world today with more celebrity chefs per square mile than perhaps anywhere else on earth. However, its most iconic contribution to American dining is the humble shrimp cocktail.
In 1959, the Golden Gate Casino introduced the 50-cent shrimp cocktail as a loss leader to get gamblers in the door. It was an instant sensation. The combination of chilled shrimp and spicy cocktail sauce served in a tulip glass became synonymous with Vegas value.
While the 50-cent price tag is long gone, the dish remains a nostalgic symbol of the city’s ability to offer accessible luxury.
1. New York City
New York City has a stacked list of foods that it’s known for. Some of those include the cronut, bagels with cream cheese and lox, pastrami on rye — and, of course, pizza.
The city is home to more than 20,000 restaurants, and it would take 22.7 years to eat at all of them, according to one estimate. If you don’t have that kind of time, at least make it a priority to visit Katz’s Delicatessen, Scarpetta or Absolute Bagels.
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