Planning a food-first trip out west? Sunset has published a round-up of what it calls its favourite 'OG' restaurants — the modern classics of the American West that have earned a permanent spot on any serious eater's bucket list. The full list lives behind the magazine's restaurants hub, but the surrounding coverage gives a good sense of where the editorial obsession lies.
The picks stretch across the region rather than clustering in one city. There's a beloved Salt Lake City pizza spot drawing national recognition, and standout hubs in Oahu, Hawaii, where Maui chef Sheldon Simeon — a 'Top Chef' alum — also features in a separate feature built around shareable, family-style recipes from his cookbook 'Ohana Style'. Meanwhile, two veteran chefs make the case for tasting-menu-style trust at Jacaranda and Lielle, restaurants where the pitch is simple: surrender your dinner to someone who knows exactly where it should go.
California gets plenty of love too. Sunset spotlights the revival of counter culture at modern California classics — the diner-and-counter format reworked with serious cooking — and chef Claudette Zepeda's 'Cooking the Borderlands', which channels the smoke and cross-border flair of Tijuana into a recipe collection that pushes at the edges of Mexican food. Beyond restaurants, the hub dips into garden-to-table cooking with preserving expert Kevin West, plus trend pieces ranging from mushroom cappuccinos to a no-fuss guide to fine dining and pro tips for avoiding a booking disaster.
For travellers, the takeaway is that the West's dining scene rewards going beyond the obvious big-name cities. A trip could just as easily pivot on a pizzeria in Salt Lake City as on a tasting counter in Los Angeles or a plate-lunch-style spot in Honolulu. Sunset's editors are framing these places not as new openings to chase, but as modern institutions — the restaurants that defined the region's cooking and still hold up. If you like building itineraries around meals, this list is a solid skeleton for a coastal-and-desert food road trip, with Hawaii as the tropical extension.
