by Anya Von Bremzen

What is "American cuisine" now? In search of answers, we traveled to 10 of our most forward-thinking food capitals to bring you the best examples and the top tables in each. As we discovered, choice is the new buzzword: from "small plates" to big ideas, celebrity scenes to intimate neighborhood gems, multimillion-dollar design temples to chic storefronts, the iconoclasts of a new generation are profoundly altering the culinary landscape. Meanwhile, other chefs are taking up the mantle of Alice Waters, romancing farmers' markets and kitchen gardens, preferring a revolution in the smallest details. Over the past year we've seen American chefs (and diners) turn their backs on gussied-up comfort food in favor of food that makes you sit up and take note. Whether they're in Boston or San Francisco, restaurants have become destinations for gustatory thrill rides. Luckily, culinary adventurers need not look beyond our shores to get a taste of the best. Read on.

Kevin Rathbun knew with all the certainty in the world that there wasn't a soul in Atlanta who could resist oysters two ways (cornmeal-fried and lemongrass-stewed) or banana-peanut butter cream pie. What really matters, however, is this: the Southern-leaning New American dishes at Rathbun's (112 Krog St.; 404/524-8280; dinner for two $60) taste as good as they sound. One would be happy to eat his food in a mess hall. Yet Atlanta's fashionable Johnson Studio has transformed the 19th-century warehouse space, once home to a potbellied-stove factory, using mod shades of gray, a luminous open kitchen, and oversized stovepipe pendants that cast a fuchsia glow on the city swells who tuck into veal chops with sweet corn and Gouda fondue or Rathbun's cloudlike fresh mozzarella. They leave lusting after all the stuff they didn't manage to order.

Neither a chile-suffused ethnic dive nor a pink box in the mall serving flavorless pad thai, Nan Thai Fine Dining (1350 Spring St. N.W.; 404/870-9933; dinner for two $67) reinvents the genre with a sleekly opulent crimson and gold room that hosts le tout Atlanta: Buckhead charity-ball queens, pro golfers (Vijay Singh is a friend of the owners'), and sweater-vested academics from Georgia Tech. It's hard to tell which detail is most enchanting: the silk-draped gamins who deliver your tea rose-colored dumplings, the elaborate carved fruits that appear as part of chef Nan Niyomkul'sappetizer lollapalooza, or the coconut-milk extractor that the owners imported from Thailand (read: fabulous curries).

Impresario Stephen Starr is the Steven Spielberg of restaurateurs, and like the director he yearns to be recognized for being more than a blockbuster-machine. Witness his Oscar-worthy remake of Striped Bass (1500 Walnut St.; 215/732-4444; dinner for two $90), the city's soaring temple of seafood. The original marble columns and coffered ceiling are still here, but lengths of gray velvet now lend the room a coolly masculine look. Starr has cast Alfred Portale—the perfectionist chef of Manhattan's Gotham Bar & Grill—for the part of executive chef. With fellow New York chef Christopher Lee in a supporting role, Portale skillfully manipulates gorgeous ingredients into sophisticated compositions like soft-shell crab with a frothy cinnamon-tinged emulsion, or a pristine slab of halibut paired with fava beans, leeks, morels, and fiddlehead ferns. The Philadelphia Cheese Skate (short ribs, wild mushroom, and caramelized onion stuffed between pieces of breaded skate and sauced with a Parmesan cream) is a classic in the making.

In a time of flash-in-the-wok fusion trends and concept-by-number restaurants, Meritage (500 S. 20th St.; 215/985-1922; dinner for two $90) feels like a throwback to a more civilized era. Wine is the restaurant's raison d'être, with the menu of beautifully prepared retro hits of European cuisine (remember Veal Oscar?) devised by the globe-trotting owners to flatter their serious cellar. Provençal artichokes barigoule make perfect sense with the crisp rosé; the caramel notes in the Recioto di Soave echo the perfectly ripe figs in the Italianate tart. The warm, 34-seat dining room, with Tuscan-rust walls, and the personal attention lavished on guests bring to mind an intimate dinner party. Are you one of those guests who like to linger? Settle into a leather club chair in the lounge and nurse one of the 40 single-malt scotches on offer.

Okay, so here's Table 8 (7661 Melrose Ave.; 323/782-8258; dinner for two $85), a meta-hip boîte located below a Melrose body-piercing parlor and patronized by the likes of Robert Downey Jr. and Jennifer Aniston, and helmed by a chef who has been featured on People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" list. Will food be an afterthought? Well, no. Handsome as he is, Puck-trained Govind Armstronghas put impeccable artisanal ingredients before his ego, distilling them into clean, compulsively edible dishes. He makes sardines glow with a hint of celery-leaf pesto, introduces you to sunchokes or Kurobuta pork, hooks you on oak-grilled sweetbreads with hand-torn pasta. You'd rather just stare? There's Elton John sneaking into a private room. He'll be having a salt-crusted porterhouse. Feel free to follow suit.

A light-bathed, split-level room packed with sleek blondes, La Terza (8384 W. Third St.; 323/782-8384; dinner for two $90) is the second restaurant from Gino Angelini, a chef whose urban-rustic Italian idiom fits L.A. like a Gucci glove. The emphasis here is on grilled and rotisserie meats, but for all the wood-fired pleasures of Sonoma lamb or Jidori chicken (L.A.'s "it" fowl), what you might remember is the sophistication of the smoked branzino carpaccio, or the lingering flavor of the pappardelle with beef cheeks. Order a nutty Umbrian Moraiolo from the olive oil menu, so you can watch the waiter ceremoniously pour it onto your plate from a long silver ladle. It would be reckless not to gorge on La Brea Bakery breads—La Terza's co-owner and frontman is the former La Brea vice-president—or try Nancy Silverton's divine dolci, such as ricotta fritters with sour-cherry compote. Even the sprout-loving locals can't resist.

Cairo-born chef Michael Mina is no stranger to the limelight. He has wowed San Franciscans with his mythic tuna tartare at Aqua, and outperformed Cirque du Soleil with theatrical tableside service at its offshoot in Las Vegas. Given all the fanfare that greeted the opening of Michael Mina (Westin St. Francis, 335 Powell St.; 415/397-9222; dinner for two $150) last summer, you'd think Escoffier himself had risen from the grave. It doesn't hurt that Andre Agassi is a backer. Or that celebrity designer Barbara Barry revamped the old dining room of the St. Francis Hotel overlooking Union Square—swathing it in calming shades of cream and celadon—to the tune of $4.5 million. "Diners lose interest after just a few bites of one dish," Mina says, explaining his ingenious idea of refracting a main ingredient—Dover sole, Kobe beef—into six sublime tasting portions arranged in three hot and cold pairs on fragile, custom-made Royal Doulton china especially designed to showcase miniature servings. Diver scallops, for instance, come seared and as ceviche, and are accessorized three ways: with lemon and caviar, truffles and corn, and tomatoes and lobster. The troika of bread puddings—peach and raspberry, banana and strawberry, fig and blackberry—proves that one dessert is never enough.

Daniel Patterson, formerly of Elisabeth Daniel, belongs to the new generation of scientifically minded chefs whose innovations are reawakening palates numbed by comfort-food overdose. He is now installed at Frisson (244 Jackson St.; 415/956-3004; dinner for two $95), a Mid-Century-Modern-inspired restaurant-supper club with a luminous backlit dome and a menu that is a testament to Patterson's latest obsession: aromas. Working with a perfumer to develop natural essential oils, Patterson explores the relationship between flavor and smell in his bold but disciplined creations. Lavender-scented onions provide an intriguing dimension to cornmeal-crusted foie gras. Black bass with braised lettuce is transformed by a peppery touch of Litsea cubeba (the fruit of the Chinese may chang tree). After serious gourmands depart, revelers sink into the lounge's oversized sofas and groove to an eclectic sound track mixed by resident DJ's.

Could it be? A restaurant this seemingly unpretentious generating such buzz? Book a full month in advance and see why Quince (1701 Octavia St.; 415/775-8500; dinner for two $100) basks in cultlike devotion. Chef Michael Tusk indulges lovers of haute-rustic flavors with a purist northern-California spin on Mediterranean food. It took clever maneuvering—partitions, flattering lighting, a Murano-glass chandelier—to make the diminutive former Victorian apothecary look so inviting. Still, what you'll remember is the quiet intelligence that shines through each dish on the market-driven menu. Here are chickpea ravioli in a pepper-zapped squid sauce, followed by squab cooked under a weight, or a Roman-style oxtail stew subtly seasoned with cloves and cinnamon. After buckwheat crêpes with prunes and Armagnac, you'll stroll away composing flowery sonnets to the pleasures of veal cheeks, wild nettles, and artisanal olive oils.

Ten-month-old T'afia (3701 Travis St.; 713/524-6922; dinner for two $80) is a Berkeley restaurant that just happens to have interesting Hill Country and Galveston County vintages on its wine list, a menu that romances Texas ingredients, and an address on a fast-gentrifying stretch of Houston's emerging Midtown. Monica Pope, one of the founders of the city's wildly popular farmers' market and the Republic of Alice Waters's ambassador to the Lone Star State, preaches the garden-to-table gospel with dishes such as a salad of house-cured duck prosciutto with fennel and blood orange; a terrifically tender and smoky venison served with a reassuringly homey sweet-potato purée and a sauce of buttermilk grits; or an earthy buckwheat and wild mushroom gâteau. The bare bones-chic, 16-table dining room, with exposed brick walls and acrylic-frosted tables, is saved from austerity by the excitement that hangs in the air as guests share in Pope's latest discoveries: an unusual Texas chèvre, a particularly sweet carrot from a farmer named Gita. A few sips of the punch made with the house-distilled ratafia—the Mediterranean fruit-infused liqueur that lends the restaurant its name—and the space positively glows.

The walls at Rouge (812 Westheimer St.; 713/520-7955; dinner for two $80) bring to mind a soak in a tub of Shiraz, and the wraparound eye-level mirrors make spying on your fellow diners obligatory (these range from mink-draped divas to deal-making moguls to foodies who are clearly here just for the rabbit terrine). Edelberto Gonçalves, a young Frenchman with the face of an angel and a past that includes stints at several Michelin-starred restaurants, knows how to please them all. Vaguely New American, more than a little bit French, his food says ambition, bordering on the baroque, but stopping short of the excess that plagues so many Houston chefs. Just taste his buttery-rich salmon confit sprinkled with fleur de sel. Or his impossibly fragrant lobster tagine—the whole crustacean is first presented in a tagine pot before being whisked back to the kitchen for carving. Please exercise restraint when attacking that sweet coconut tamale: everyone's watching.

It was a happy day in Houston when Claire Smith, once chef-owner of the Daily Review Café, reappeared on the scene after a three-year hiatus. Shade (250 W. 19th St.; 713/863-7500; dinner for two $70), her warm, minimalist neighborhood haunt in the Heights, is the first serious restaurant in a district Houstonians love for its eclectic mix of biker bars, antiques shops, groovy boutiques, and gingerbread Victorian manses. The cross-cultural menu leaps from Mexican-inflected quail with pickled Nopalito cactus to Chinese five spice-seared tuna carpaccio to Southern chicken-fried pork chops, but Smith is always in command of her flavors. She spikes ultra-fresh grouper with a wasabi crust and refreshing cucumber "scales"; and sauces roast lamb with a velvety eggplant-goat cheese purée. The retro coconut cream pie updated with a crumbly hazelnut shortbread crust is reason alone to come here.

NEXT GREAT NEIGHBORHOOD With the light-rail metro finally finished, Houston's Midtown is now home to new shops, bars, and restaurants. • White-napped tables pose against hot-red walls at Julia's Bistro (3722 Main St.; 713/807-0090; dinner for two $65). Jazzy Nuevo Latino cuisine—duck taquitos, churrasco-style pork tenderloin with red chimichurri—comes courtesy of chef José Garcia, most recently of Artista, another Houston favorite. • Fried catfish with grits and eggs, a delicious wings-and-waffles combo, and a comfy, lived-in vibe draw locals to the Breakfast Klub (3711 Travis St.; 713/528-8561; breakfast for two $17). • For three years running, the city's best-loved-restaurant award has gone to Ibiza Food & Wine Bar (2450 Louisiana St.; 713/524-0004; dinner for two $80), for the bright, welcoming room, the extensive wine cellar, the addictive slow-cooked lamb shank and mint couscous—to say nothing of the tableside cocktail carts.