America's Best Comfort Foods

By Emma Sloley

Cutting-edge cuisine has its place, but sometimes you just want a hearty meal with your favorite comfort foods.

Loveless Cafe's signature biscuits and sausage gravy in Nashville, TN.

There are certain feel-good foods we universally reach for when we need to be comforted. A fragrant bowl of chicken soup. A dose of silky mashed potato. A 10-napkin serving of unctuous barbecue. Restaurant trends may come and go, but comfort foods are forever. Fortunately, America is awash with restaurants where the traditional never went out of style.

While on the hunt for America's best comfort foods, we stuck to tried-and-true dishes that tend to evoke a sense of place. We found a bigger-than-Texas chicken-fried steak in Houston, biscuits and gravy worth lining up for in Nashville, and a chicken soup recipe handed down through generations in Philadelphia, along with a host of other feel-good staples.

The common denominator: all of them are unpretentious, homemade, and in most instances, the kind of dishes that would cause a riot were the restaurants to take them off the menu. About the only things you won't find on our list are any radical surprises. And isn't that kind of comforting?

Slideshow: America's Best Comfort Foods

The Chicken-Fried Steak at Saltgrass Steak House in Houston, TX.
Chicken-Fried Steak
The Restaurant: Salt Grass Steak House, Houston
The Skinny: A cube steak pounded thin, dredged in milk, egg, and flour, then fried and served with a creamy gravy: chicken-fried steak (or CFS in Texas parlance) is the southern answer to schnitzel. "It's as lowbrow as it is outrageously delicious," says food writer Salma Abdelnour. "It's also the definition of comfort food: warm, creamy/saucy, a little crunchy, rich, and likely to destroy the rest of your day, in a good way." She cites the Salt Grass Steak House version-made with Angus beef-as her all-time go-to, thanks to the perfectly crunchy batter and the fact that it's "so big it hangs off the plate."

Famous 4th Street Delicatessen's signature dish, Chicken Soup, in Philadelphia, PA.
Chicken Soup
The Restaurant: Famous 4th Street Delicatessen, Philadelphia
The Skinny: The best thing about "Jewish penicillin" (otherwise known as chicken soup) is its versatility, variously standing in as magically curative sick food, a late-night snack, or even breakfast. Fourth-generation deli owner Russ Cowan uses his family recipe for this much-loved Philly spot, which has been dispensing Jewish soul food since 1923. The $15 "Famous Chicken Soup" is loaded with noodles, matzoh balls, kreplach, and kasha (buckwheat) and serves two to three people…provided you're willing to share.

Loveless Cafe's signature biscuits and sausage gravy in Nashville, TN.
Biscuits and Gravy
The Restaurant: Loveless Café, Nashville
The Skinny: Biscuits and gravy are to breakfast food in the South what bagels and lox are to New York, and they don't come much better than at Loveless Café, where these buttery, fluffy slices of heaven have caught the attention of everyone from the Food Network to the Today show. "Here in the South, we like to say that gravy runs through our veins," quips Loveless manager Jesse Goldstein. "Our biscuits and gravy are truly a Southern staple…that perfectly simple yet oh-so-filling breakfast favorite." Go all-out Southern and order them with eggs, country ham, and red-eye gravy.

The Blacksmith's signature Meatloaf dish in Bend, OR.
Meatloaf
The Restaurant: The Blacksmith, Bend, OR
The Skinny: Just when you thought this comfort food classic had nothing else to teach us, it gets reinvented, this time at the hands of talented chef Gavin McMichael of the Blacksmith, a steakhouse serving "new ranch" cuisine in downtown Bend. The "Not Your Mother's Meatloaf" is made from a combination of beef, pork, and veal, individually baked to order (yeah, how come Mom never did that?), glazed with homemade ketchup, and served with mashed potatoes, creamed corn, and a rich tomato-beef sauce. "The dish has been on since day one," says McMichael. "We did try to take it off once, and I was inundated with calls and e-mails asking me if I had lost my mind."
Chili
The Restaurant: Slim's Last Chance, Seattle
The Skinny: Sister restaurant to the cozy down-home Pig Iron Bar-B-Q, this combo chili shack/live music venue in Georgetown serves four varieties of top-notch chilies daily. Choose from Texas red (traditional all-meat), brisket and bean (using slow-smoked beef brisket from Pig Iron), chile verde (served with green chiles, tomatillos, and pork), or turkey and white bean. All can be served alone or poured over white-cheddar grits or jalapeño mac 'n cheese. You can also go off-topic and order burgers and wings, but really, why would you?

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