Every town has a local.
This one just isn't ours.
We don't stop being wellfd when we leave our markets. We travel like locals, not tourists, asking the bartender where the cooks eat. This is where the good spots we find on the road go. Independent, owner-operated, no chains. If we'd make it our local, it's here.
8 spots and counting
Bob Chinn's Crab House
Bob Chinn and his daughter Marilyn spent four years scouting seafood houses across the country before opening a 175-seat restaurant in a shuttered Wheeling building two days before Christmas in 1982. The porch was enclosed by the late eighties and the room grew to 650 seats, feeding close to a million guests a year. Bob died in 2022 at 99; Marilyn Chinn LeTourneau runs it now with her daughters. Fish is flown in daily through O'Hare, the catch is posted at the front door, king crab and garlic buns anchor the menu, and the Hawaiian-shirt servers and Mai Tais in plastic cups are part of the tradition.
Epping's on Eastside
Set in a renovated 1800s bottling works at the corner of downtown Lexington's Warehouse Block, where the original owner's name and an 1863 date are still set into the terrazzo at the door. Executive chef and owner Cole Arimes builds a rotating small-plates menu around house-cured meats, house-baked bread, and Kentucky farms named on the page, then runs pan-Asian technique through much of it: ginger ponzu, gochujang, tamarind. The room is industrial modern softened with sheer curtains and warm wood. Weekend brunch, a certified sommelier's wine and spirits program, Wednesday live music, and two private event rooms.
The Rathskeller
Indianapolis' oldest restaurant, serving continuously since 1894 from the cellar of the Athenaeum, the German Renaissance Revival landmark built as Das Deutsche Haus and designed by the firm of Bernard Vonnegut, grandfather of Kurt. The dining room is beamed and paneled, hung with steins and painted German proverbs, with a brick corridor of mounted game and state coats of arms leading to the Kellerbar. The kitchen still cooks the old menu: rouladen, schnitzel, sauerbraten, oxtail soup, house sauerkraut, alongside steaks and seafood. Twelve imported drafts, fifty-plus imported bottles, and live music most nights in the biergarten.
Pawleys Tap House & Grill
The only self-pour taproom on the Grand Strand, where forty taps line the wall and you pour your own. Owners Erin Carachilo and George Eddis met working in Philadelphia restaurants before settling on this stretch of coast, and both influences show on the menu: fried flounder platters, shrimp and grits, and fried green tomatoes sit alongside cheesesteak egg rolls and flatbreads. The house signature is a mac and cheese flight served three ways, topped with chicken and bacon, chopped brisket, and blackened shrimp. A vaulted, string-lit room under a mile from the ocean, with an onsite room for private events.
Iron Horse Pub & Grill
Iron Horse is where the guy at the golf course sends you for a quick local bite and a beer, and he was right. Sandwiches better than a downtown bar needs to make, bacon and bread sourced from Montana names printed on the menu, and enough local taps to remind you that Missoula is a real beer town.
Gio's Italian Kitchen
Gio's is a small Italian room in a beach town that cooks like it has something to prove. It's known for its seafood, and a local we ran into told us that this is where she eats and some of her favorites, which quickly became ours too.
Legend's Cocktail Lounge
A music-legends shrine on a small-town Indiana main street, where the steaks come out perfect, a house BBQ sauce runs through half the menu, and the crème brûlée cheesecake is worth ordering twice.
Galvin's on Main
A big, easygoing family-run sports bar in historic downtown Georgetown with jalapeño canoe poppers worth the detour on their own. Forty taps, charred-crust pizza, and a room that somehow still reads neighborhood instead of cavernous.
