The Most Essential Throwback Restaurants in America

There are restaurants where you dine and then there are restaurants you enter like a time machine—worn linoleum, fraying booths, creaky floorboards, laminated menus. This list is for the latter.

We’re talking sit-down spots or classic drive-ins where the prices are kind, the dress code nonexistent, and the atmosphere marinated in memory—Throwback Restaurants.

What exactly is a Throwback Restaurant? It’s one of those “you’ll know it when you see it” things, but we wanted to pin it down with specificity: Every place on this list has been open at least 35 years, meaning anything born in the ’90s or later has too much peach fuzz. Chains were are a no-go. The Affordable Care Act says 20 restaurants qualifies as a chain—we’re more stingy, so we capped it at three. At a Throwback Restaurant, you can eat well for under $35 (booze and steak don’t count—we won’t scoff at those indulgences, for they are sacred).

More importantly, these joints have a deep connection to place. They weave tales of the town, people or regional cuisine.

You don’t come to a Throwback Restaurant for reinvention. You come for the buzz of a neon sign, to get called “hon” or “sweetie” by your waitress, to hold space in rooms where the past ain’t a gimmick—it’s the chef’s kiss.

5 Brothers
Key West, FL
Year Established/Built: 1978
Cuban

Tucked back in an Old Town Key West neighborhood near the cemetery on a street that feels far from the bars of Duval, a third generation of Cubans help preserve the culture of the island through their pressed roast pork sandwiches, bollos (black-eyed pea fritters) and cafe con leches. Visitors can find the counter for ordering at the back of the corner grocery store through aisles of pickles, hot sauces and canned goods. And while there’s no seating indoors, come morning, the "Bench Crew," a motley mix of neighbors, part-timers and morning shoppers, will be gathered outside the pastel-painted stucco building to sip their coffees with a guava pastry and chew over the local gossip.

— Jennifer Justus

Attman’s Delicatessen
Baltimore, MD
Year Established/Built: 1915
Jewish Deli

On East Lombard, Attman’s stacks corned beef the old way—by hand, by instinct, by tradition. At the oldest family-owned deli in America, your sandwich comes quick, heavy and wrapped in wax paper before you can second-guess it. You don’t come here to linger—you come to belong.

— H. Drew Blackburn

Aunt Carrie’s
Narragansett, RI
Year Established/Built: 1920
Seafood

In the southernmost reaches of Narragansett, Aunt Carrie’s reigns supreme: since 1920, the Point Judith clam shack has been stitched into Rhode Island summer tradition. Its owners claim that founders Carrie and Ulysses Cooper invented the clam cake, evolved from a corn fritter recipe—a fist-sized, golden-brown pillowy fritter with a crisp exterior. [George’s of Galilee, another local stronghold, claims provenance, too]. In 2007, it was named an American Classic by the James Beard Foundation, and still, 105 years later, any ride to the shore should include a stop here for chowder and a dozen clam cakes.

— Sam Alviani

Billy Reed’s
Palm Springs, CA
Year Established/Built: 1975
American

This Palm Springs mainstay serves classic American fare in a dining room decked out like a divey Victorian parlor—stained glass chandeliers, velvety colors, aged wood and all. Come for the comfort food, stay for the sublime vibes.

— HDB

Bowens Island Restaurant
Charleston, SC
Year Established/Built: 1946
Seafood

Bowens sits on stilts at the end of a road, where oysters come iced on tin trays and hushpuppies soaked in hot sauce. The building’s been patched after fire and flood, but its heart never left. Lowcountry in every sense—salty, smoky, and full of delight.

— HDB

Breitbach’s Country Dining
Balltown, IA
Year Established/Built: 1852
American Comfort Food

Residents of Balltown, Iowa helped rebuild Breitbach’s not once, but twice. President Millard Fillmore granted the building permit for Breitbach’s tavern in 1852, and the structure survived until 2007 when a fire completely destroyed it. Unfathomably, another fire burned down the new building in less than a year. The most recent incarnation mirrors the original architecture and dining rooms, including the long boarding-house style communal tables dotted with fried pork tenderloin plates and slices of pie.

— Hannah Hayes

Buckhorn Exchange
Denver, CO
Year Established/Built: 1893
Game

From the Rocky Mountain oysters atop the appetizer menu (don’t ask, or do, it’s up to you) to the menagerie of stuffed beasts staring from every corner, the Buckhorn performs the Western mystique. With bona fides going back to 1893, game meats and table-side steak carving, it’s earned its spurs.

— Kraig Becker

Bull’s Horn Food & Drink
Minneapolis, MN
Year Established/Built: 1935
Burgers/Midwestern

When Minneapolis chef Doug Flicker closed his beloved bistro Piccolo and bought the Sunrise Inn, a longstanding neighborhood 3.2 bar (a nod to the highest ABV allowed), he gave it only what it needed: a new name, a good dusting, and a much upgraded burger—plus the best cheese curds in town. The high-vibes, low-change refresh keeps the meat raffles (a Midwestern tradition), pull tabs, wood paneling, and vinyl booths. 

— HH

Cafe Pasqual’s
Santa Fe, NM
Year Established/Built: 1979
Southwestern

Since 1979, the flavors of New Mexico and its influences have been simmered and served inside this 1905 adobe. On the walls: 100-year-old Mexican hand-painted tile. And plates: organic eggs served alongside red chile mole, tamales, grilled corn cakes with calabacitas and stacked enchilada layered in a rainbow of local vegetables such as sweet potato and red pepper. An art gallery addition next door also pays homage to this region’s artistic roots with Native American Pueblo pottery, beadwork, watercolor, woodcarving and more. 

— JJ

Campo’s Deli
Philadelphia, PA
Year Established/Built: 1947
Deli, Cheesesteaks

You could throw a dart at Philly and hit a cheesesteak spot—but Campo’s has been slicing it right since 1947. Family-run for generations, it’s not about flash, it’s about perfect balance: bread, steak, onions, cheese. It tastes like the city itself—loud, warm, unshakably proud.

— HDB

Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous
Memphis, TN
Year Established/Built: 1948
Barbecue

Server and kitchen posts at this alleyway basement barbecue institution are rarely vacated. Many have worked the cracked-tile floor or the rib-cutting tables since the ’70s and ’80s. Countless visitors to Memphis descend the stairs for those dry-rubbed, Greek-seasoned ribs born of an elevator shaft turned smoker, but the locals know to start out with a cheese and sausage plate first.

— HH

Crazy Otto’s Empire Diner
Herkimer, NY
Year Established/Built: 1952
Diner

A restored 1952 Mountainview train turned greasy spoon legend, where the pancakes are as wide as hubcaps and the counter regulars drink their coffee black. Here the portions are large and the servers are friendly. Crazy Otto’s is everything you want a diner to be.

— HDB

Dooky Chase’s Restaurant
New Orleans, LA
Year Established/Built: 1941
Creole

Dooky Chase’s has lived many lives: sandwich shop and lottery ticket outlet, locals bar, music venue (Duke Ellington, Lena Horne!), meeting place of civil rights activist greats like Thurgood Marshall and Oretha Castle Haley. In 1946, matriarch Leah Chase envisioned the place as we now know it, her legacy articulated as a warm, bustling dining room with gumbo and red beans and rice lunches, along with weekend dinner services putting out plates of fried chicken, her famous shrimp Clemenceau, and praline bread pudding.

— SA

Duarte’s Tavern
Pescadero, CA
Year Established/Built: 1894
Portuguese-Californian

Pescadero is a hazy concept south of Half Moon Bay, unincorporated, home to just a few hundred souls. This stalwart family spot, however, brings the place into focus: a history of Portuguese immigration and cooking that intersects with California culinary tradition in the form of cioppino—but only on the weekends.

— Zach Dundas

Eagle’s Restaurant
Birmingham, AL
Year Established/Built: 1951
Soul food

A steam table with collards, meatloaf, mac and cheese. The styrofoam to-go containers, heavy with generous scoops of chicken and dressing, stewed okra, oxtails, corn muffins. Even the cinderblock building is a clue to what’s good, because showy details are not necessary for selling the big flavors coming from this kitchen. And sure enough, locals have known to line up for this favorite soul food spot since its earlier days as a burger and beer joint in the mid-1950s. While the restaurant has changed hands, the name has stayed the same since the original owner’s earliest aim for the place: Fly high.

— JJ

El Charro
Tucson, AZ
Year Established/Built: 1922
Mexican

We’re going to make some allowances for El Charro. This historic Tucson staple has branded and expanded itself in ways that we largely tried to avoid in this list—there’s an airport location, they ship on Goldbelly, etc. But … it’s El Charro! Home of the chimichanga! Linchpin of Tucson’s status as a UNESCO-certified city of gastronomy and, at least at its downtown location, a 100-plus-year-old institution of border culture.

— ZD

Elliston Place Soda Shop
Nashville, TN
Year Established/Built: 1939
Meat-and-Three, Burgers

This restaurant, once part of a pharmacy, has kept up the Nashville tradition of meat-and-three love since 1939 when Lynn Chandler took over the soda foundation at age 23. Still on the menu: crisp fried chicken, scratch biscuits, meatloaf, turnip greens, burgers, shakes and homemade pies made at dawn by longtime employee Linda Melton. Its neon, chrome and red vinyl has made many a music video or album cover (see George Jones, 1976). And while we’re not saying this is the paradise Jimmy Buffett sang about with his cheeseburgers, we do know he was a regular while living in town and thanked the place in his liner notes on three albums.

— JJ

Frady’s One Stop Food Store
New Orleans, LA
Year Established/Built: 1972
Po’Boys and hot plates

A mustard-colored community hub for New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood, people pack into the shoebox lunch counter for conversation as much as fried shrimp po’boys wrapped in butcher paper and daily hot plates (like Monday red beans and rice). Still in the family, founder Joe Frady’s twins Kirk and Kerry run the restaurant now. Don’t skip an order of fries — they’re made to order.

— HH

Golden Light Cafe
Amarillo, TX
Year Established/Built: 1946
Hatch chile burger

Remember those heavy duty plastic chairs from school cafeteria lunch rooms in primary Crayola colors? Their mix-and-match presence is part of the nostalgia at The Golden Light Cafe. It feels like a type of unintentional decor, maybe, along with the cozy booths, Budweiser beers signs and a counter that seats folks looking toward a busy griddle. Open since 1946, it’s the oldest restaurant in Amarillo situated along historic Sixth Street, and maybe one of the oldest still in its original location along Route 66. Hatch chiles add heat to the burgers. The Texas red chili or green chile stew packs a hearty punch too.

— JJ

Greene’s Hamburgers
Farmington, MI
Year Established/Built: 1957
Burgers/Diner

As if Wes Anderson and David Lynch were tasked with designing a burger stand, Greene’s brutalist, newspaper-hued aesthetic belies the familial regulars inside. The simplicity is thrilling: a pickle-dressed smash patty with grilled hand-cut onions; crinkle cut fries or onion rings. The wildest milkshake flavor: chocolate.

— HH

Huber's
Portland, OR
Year Established/Built: 1879
Old American

Portland is not a town that offers many "step back into the past" moments, so this 1879-founded centurion has rare aura here. Almost hidden in a sleepy downtown building, its arched ceilings, stained-glass aura and spartan wooden chairs cast back to a vanished era of wheeler-dealer lunches and big-night family dinners. The specialty of the house is ... turkey? The theatrical, table-side Spanish coffee preparation is a goofy local rite of passage. In other words, a delightful voyage through the looking-glass to a West Coast where no one had thought of the term "farm to table" and waiters wore vests.

— ZD

Ivar's Salmon House
Seattle, WA
Year Established/Built: 1971
Seafood

Ivar’s is a definitive presence in Seattle, with roots on the 1930s waterfront and the city’s robust Scandinavian population and many fast-food-style walk-up spots to dig into fish’n’ chips and oysters. But the Salmon House, built in 1971 with a midcentury-modernist aim to channel Northwest Indigenous culture and art, epitomizes both this longstanding brand and its contribution to PNW culinary style.

— ZD

Jones Barbecue Diner
Marianna, AR
Year Established/Built: 1910
Barbecue

One of the oldest Black-owned restaurants in the U.S. was nearly lost to a kitchen fire in 2021, but the local community and fans from across the world raised it back from the ashes in less than a year. But it’s still business as usual. Jones only serves barbecue pork by the pound or piled on Wonder Bread wrapped in foil. The only choice to be made in ordering: slaw or no slaw.

— HH

Keller’s Drive-In
Dallas, TX
Year Established/Built: 1950
Burgers

At Keller’s you don’t need a DeLorean to get transported back to the 50s. It hasn't changed much and that’s the beauty of it. At one of its two locations, you park your car, flash your lights and a server takes your order. The beer is cold, the burgers are magical and covered in poppy-seed buns. The clientele anybody and everybody from boomers to college kids to angelheaded hipsters. This is not just a burger joint done right, but perfectly.

— HDB

The Kegs
Grand Forks, ND
Year Established/Built: 1935
Drive-in

Bookended by two massive wooden barrels, The Kegs is the last remaining outpost of William and Martha Muzzy’s WWII-era fast food chain. Carhops still come out to the drive-in menu boards to take orders for sloppy joes, onion rings and floats.

— HH

LC’s Bar-B-Q
Kansas City, MO
Year Established/Built: 1986
BBQ

There’s much debate about which regions does barbecue best and we're not here to put that debate to rest, we just know we absolutely love Kansas City’s take centered on deep tomato flavored sauces. At LC’s you get the full throwback experience—small, slick oily floor, the place billowing with hickory smoke. LC Richardson is gone, but his legacy reverberates in every bite.

— HDB

Laughing Water Restaurant
Custer, SD
Year Established/Built: 1984
Native American

When you visit Crazy Horse Memorial be prepared to feel the weight of the place—and don’t leave without a plate from Laughing Water. Fry bread pulled from hot oil, savory buffalo stew and hearty buffalo burgers carry on Lakota stories and tradition.

— HDB

Lou Mitchell’s
Chicago, IL
Year Established/Built: 1923
Diner food

There are so many diners to love in this land. But Lou Mitchell’s has special cache at the front door to Route 66. Hot coffee and a stack of pancakes await for your journey. Standing stout and strong in the bustle of the Windy City with its original 1949 neon sign, Lou Mitchell’s has preserved much of the original decor from the era. It draws a mix of locals and travelers—like all good Route 66 diners do—and serves the classics from eggs to meatloaf, reuben sandwiches, patty melts and slices of pie. Long line for a table? You’ll probably be treated to hot doughnut holes while you wait.

— JJ

Lydia’s Supper Club
Butte, MT
Year Established/Built: 1946
Italian-American

The high-mountain mining city of Butte, Montana is one of those places that contains a million stories. The copper mines here were once among the world’s richest, and the workers they drew and the wealth they spun made this unlikely settlement on the Continental Divide one of the biggest, most diverse and most rambunctious places in the Mountain West. Lydia’s holds the thread of one such tale: It’s the last survivor of an entire genre of Italian-American dinner clubs that once dotted Meaderville, a neighborhood swallowed by mine expansion. Think stained glass, old-school antipasti spreads, red sauce and steak.

— ZD

Mary Mac’s Tea Room
Atlanta, GA
Year Established/Built: 1945
Southern comfort

This Atlanta icon weathered a century of history—and a roof collapse in 2024 that briefly shut its doors but not its spirit or pride. Inside, there’s fried chicken, greens, biscuits and other southern delicacies served with a pencil-marked menu. First-timers get welcomed like old friends.

— HDB

Mustard’s Grill
Napa, CA
Year Established/Built: 1983
California cuisine

This place was “farm to table” before the concept was ratified as a concept. It was “California cuisine” back when that really meant something new. And you could even say it was Napa before Napa was Napa, at least as we know it now. There’s not a lot of glitz here, just a dash of unselfconscious elegance, and it remains a place where winemakers and vineyard owners can take power lunches alongside the Valley’s blue-ish-collar core.

— ZD

Old Towne Inn
Westby, WI
Year Established/Built: 1980
Supper Club

A Wisconsin supper club with all the trimmings: relish tray starters, prime rib nights, and a Friday fish fry that draws a crowd. Vinyl booths, dim lighting, and brandy Old Fashioneds set the scene for long, slow meals. They even run a “Fish Fry Club” where your 11th dinner is free—proof they do this right.

— HDB

Peppermill
Las Vegas, NV
Year Established/Built: 1972
Diner/Cocktail Lounge

Amid the razzle-dazzle of Las Vegas, the Peppermill looks pretty tame on the outside —and even vaguely in the shape of an old Pizza Hut? But on the inside, it’s lit 24-7. Open since 1972, the Peppermill is a catch-all for the hungry, after-hours crowd seeking giant omelets, toast and coffee to daywalking brunchers for benedict and cocktail-sippers round-the-clock at the Fireside Lounge section of the restaurant. The decor fits the chaotic, outside-of-time mood — from classic diner counter for pancakes to porterhouse steaks and ostentatious tiki drinks under purple lights on a velvet sofa. Video poker at the bar, naturally.

— JJ

Robert’s Grill
El Reno, OK
Year Established/Built: 1926
Burgers

Robert’s chili slaw dog isn’t exactly oil-painting subject material, but it really doesn’t matter since the tangy-savory combination makes it nearly impossible to eat one slowly. Although it might have second billing to the headliner onion burger, the regulars, many who used to crowd the counter as teenagers, know it’s the real star.

— HH

Sylvia's Restaurant
New York, NY
Year Established/Built: 1962
Soul Food

Harlem has changed, but Sylvia’s hasn’t. Founded by Sylvia Woods, a sharecropper’s daughter turned matriarch, the place became a crossroads for politics, music and Sunday best. You can still feel her presence in the hush of a prayer before the meal and the praise after that first bite.

— HDB

Taylor Grocery
Taylor, MS
Year Established/Built: 1930
Southern/Catfish

Although it’s a catfish spot now, Taylor Grocery still looks like the tiny town’s dry goods store it was back in the 1890s — inside and out. Owner Lynn Hewlett, who is often posted up on the porch with his guitar, brings in other musicians who play inside for a collection of Ole Miss students, travelers, and locals sitting down to the red-check tablecloths with their fish plates piled with fried okra, brown rice, and hushpuppies.

— HH

Yank Sing
San Francisco, CA
Year Established/Built: 1958
Chinese

One of the most enduring pleasures of visiting an Asian restaurant is the expansive menu—and Yank Sing delivers. At this third-generation, family-owned Chinese spot (and Bay Area staple), you can enjoy dim sum more than 100 ways, every single day.

— HDB