🍕Pepperoni Pizza📍Seattle: Seattle has quietly become a great pizza city: Post Alley, Stevie’s Famous, Slice Box, and Ananas nail the NYC slice; My Friend Derek’s and Moto deliver on Detroit-style; Windy City Pie covers Chicago. But the standout is newcomer Alex Kim’s A.K. Pizza in Othello, where the pies are crispy, bubbly, and full of flavor, with just the right char. His NYC-style pepperoni pie alone should earn Seattle a spot on the map of the world’s great pizza cities.—J. Kenji López-Alt

🌮 Al Pastor Tacos📍Seattle: Tacos al pastor—once the domain of late-night L.A. streets—have found a new home in Seattle. In recent years, late-night taquerias have popped up (with some just as quickly shutting down) across the city, and Tacos La Cuadra has led the charge with juicy, fire-roasted pork carved off the trompo, topped with pineapple and killer salsas. I still love grabbing them from the street, but La Cuadra now boasts two brick-and-mortar spots.—J. Kenji López-Alt

🥯 Everything Bagel and Scallion Shmear📍Seattle: I don’t miss much about New York, but I do miss its bagel culture—freshly baked all day so every one’s hot, crackly, and chewy inside. Andrew Rubinstein (formerly of Rubinstein Bagels) gets it. His new shop, Hey Bagel, keeps it simple: fresh bagels all day, a few great schmears (no sandwiches—just tear and dip), and excellent coffee. Don’t ask them to toast one—they can’t, and a real bagel doesn’t need it.—J. Kenji López-Alt

🦀 Spicy Raw Marinated Crab📍Santa Clara, CA: Before I visited this late-night hotspot tucked in a strip mall, I only knew of Korean spicy raw marinated crabs as a flashy TikTok trend. Then I ordered a whole pile of the blood-red, sauce-soaked crustaceans, put on the plastic gloves, and immediately understood the deep, primal pleasures of the dish—the way you smoosh the raw crabs’ oozy, gelatinous flesh over hot rice to form the perfect spicy-sweet bite. Now I crave it all the time.—Luke Tsai

🐦 Squab📍San Francisco: I’d eaten fried squab (aka pigeon) before, but mostly only at super-traditional banquets in Hong Kong or China. What a kick, then, to see the succulent little birds featured as the signature item at San Francisco’s buzziest restaurant—a sign that once-niche Asian dishes are ascendant in the U.S. The Four Kings squab is a knockout: crisp-skinned, fatty, rich, and plated unapologetically, with claws and head attached. I even savored the sweet, creamy brain.—Luke Tsai

🦆 Peking Duck📍San Bruno, CA: For the previous six years, we celebrated my daughter’s birthday by getting Peking duck at the same Chinese restaurant—an old standby. But in 2025, we found an even more delicious Peking duck. Boiling Beijing’s S-tier version consists almost entirely of crispy skin (i.e., the best part) and comes with new-to-me condiments like sugar (for dipping) and hawthorn jelly, which both enhance the wildly luxurious flavor of hot duck fat.—Luke Tsai

🍛 Beef Curry📍Los Angeles: I took a drive one day through Altadena, just me and my curious/nosy self, to see how the fire-ravaged neighborhood was doing. I drove by Miya and saw lights, smiles, and life. I stepped in and ate the most incredible Thai food possibly in all of L.A. It showed me the power of great, soulful food that can bring a community back out and bloom life again into a devastated neighborhood.—Memo Torres

🌮Al Pastor Tacos📍Los Angeles: For those of you who follow my daily reporting, you’ve seen the toll this year has taken on our resilient city. I leave the studio late every night, hungry and tired. Almost nightly, I have the al pastor at Tacos Tamix. If it’s in a taco, I like to top it with the pickled habanero onions and avocado salsa. It reminds me that no matter what, tacos are always here for us in L.A.—Memo Torres

🍜 Double Extra Chashu Ramen📍Los Angeles: This hefty bowl of thick noodles, housemade chashu pork, fresh garlic, and umami flavors brought me new friends this year. Despite Los Angeles dealing with fire and ICE, it was a good reminder that this city, for all its struggles, will always have great food to help you make new friends. All it takes is asking: “Want to try the best ramen in the city? Meet me at Tsujita.”—Memo Torres

🍕Detroit-Style Pizza📍Chicago: A city that’s mastered the world’s pizza styles may well wonder: What more can be done? “Hold my IPA,” said the bakers at Middle Brow, who already perfected the Chicago-style thin crust party cut, branching out to this Avondale taproom to show Detroit how it’s done. Blanketed in fluffy Parm, a rotating cast of 10 rectangles with frico-squared crusts range from basic pepperoni to chicken paprikash, mirroring the sweeping array of suds on tap.—Mike Sula