If schmaltz, chopped liver, and chocolate egg creams occupy key positions in your personal food pyramid, then this Jewish steakhouse-slash-bar mitzvah afterparty in NYC is the place for you. The meal is a communal affair—the $75 family-style set menu ensures everyone gets a bit of veal cutlet and stuffed cabbages, and you’ll likely join hands with the grandparents sitting next to you and dance the hora around the dining room.

From Wednesday to Saturday (starting at 7pm) this Wynwood taco spot turns into a massive sing-along dedicated exclusively to rancheras, boleros, and all Latin breakup anthems. The mics aren’t actually plugged in, so consider it karaoke group therapy with a side of tacos al pastor. The catch is, there is a food and beverage minimum that changes depending on how busy they get. When we went, it was $75 per person. This place gets especially crowded from Thursday to Saturday, so make a reservation.

Dinner at Muukata6395 in San Francisco is a rowdy Thai barbecue event. Each table has a domed charcoal grill where pork belly, shrimp, and bacon sizzle, as well as a broth moat loaded with vegetables and noodles. Come with friends who are willing to yell across the table, since birthday parties and large groups shriek as they take shots of soju (that’s part of the appeal). And for the pièce de résistance, finish the meal by slurping up the broth flavored with all the barbecue drippings.

It feels insane that you don't need a passport to have the rose water hand bath, belly dancing, and fall-off-the-bone spicy chicken experience at Marrakesh. It’s a classic place with a celebrity photo walk and belly dancing on the weekends. This Moroccan spot is full of low, colorful couches, decorative lanterns, and engraved gold tables straight from a market in Marrakesh. There's a prix-fixe menu that is ideal for big groups. Oh, and it’s BYOB.

This Gold Coast spot is over-the-top in a fun way, including how it mixes fancy steakhouse nostalgia with “this ain’t your average experience” touches. Caviar bumps and freakishly tall martini glasses are everywhere. At multiple points in the night, a table of people in their Saturday night best will get the excellent duck course, which involves a 1940s duck press and a tableside fire show. When it comes to dinners at new Chicago steakhouses, The Alston's is the most entertaining.

Hats off to everyone at Somerville. If you’ve been itching to wear your favorite linen suit, consider this your moment. Whatever the occasion, dinner at this retro supper club will feel innately special, and it’s not because of the Ruinart champagne by the bottle, or the caviar dripping from your fried chicken slider. It’s also about the fun of a nightly jazz band with a grand piano lighting up the handsome mahogany-clad room as vested servers refill wine glasses.

Georgia Boy’s 13-course tasting menu is a meal you’ll vividly remember without any help from your camera roll. The rotating dishes at this Atlanta restaurant are inspired by all things local (think: hot dog ice cream and a Georgia pollen salad). There are always a couple of tasty signatures though, like the housemade cereal and poached lobster served with a warm banana milk. All the best speakeasy tricks are employed here: there’s no signage and there’s a hidden back door.

Rimini has something that all other Italian restaurants in Seattle don’t. Specifically, a Sicilian fellow named Tony who serenades the dining room with Sinatra standards and asks each table, “Va bene?” approximately six times per course. We’d love Rimini for its unrelentingly warm service even if the food was just OK, but thankfully every plate of tender pasta is executed perfectly, and the vodka chicken parm is both blanketed in velvety mozzarella and topped with a dollop of fresh burrata.

Mai-Kai feels like walking into an old ship full of pirates who washed ashore 100 years ago and have been steadily drinking since. The dark, cavernous space is mostly made of wood, and an endless loop of water flows down the bar’s windows as if the entire property is trapped in a perpetual thunderstorm. The vaguely Polynesian and Southeast Asian food has never been the point of Mai-Kai—it's simply background noise to the nightly dinner show.

If neon lights and K-Pop jams are your speed, then dinner at One Shot Pocha will hit all of the right marks. You can doodle notes on the chalkboard walls, crunch deep-fried chicken wings that create reverb just as loud as the speaker system, and drink soju out of a watermelon (the proper way to consume the beverage). Hit the karaoke rooms after dinner to sing your heart out and play a little tambourine, too.

There’s nothing else quite like Plaza Mariachi in Nashville. It’s a big replica of a town square that holds space for salsa dancing, mariachi shows, and live folklore ballets. There are competing restaurants vying for your attention—a cevicheria, taquerias, a steakhouse, a Venezuelan coffee shop, a Mexican candy store, and a Little Caesars. But also Latin markets, clothing boutiques, and the headquarters for Activa 105.1 FM, a regional Mexican radio station.

Brennan’s is the fine dining standard in New Orleans. It’s the type of restaurant where you’ll find yourself checking your posture, because you’d hate to slouch, and saying “powder room” instead of bathroom. But it’s still one of the funnest spots in town, in part because servers put on shows when doing tableside bananas foster (a dish that Brennan’s actually invented). They also pour great cocktails, including a perfect Sazerac.

There’s a lot going on at Casa Bonita. Cliff divers throw themselves off real 30-foot waterfalls, a Man/Bear/Pig inexplicably wanders around the restaurant, and you order sopaipillas by raising a flag. It’s worth bringing a bunch of friends and exploring every nook and cranny of this gigantic place over a couple hours. While the food is infinitely better than it was before the renovation, do yourself a favor and stick to the menu’s best dish, the carnitas tacos.

You can find fish fries just about anywhere in Milwaukee on a Friday night, but Kegel’s Inn feels like falling through a time portal to the 1920s Midwest. We’re talking about a true throwback with low ceilings, wood-paneled walls, early-20th-century landscape paintings, and chandeliers crafted from iron and stained glass. Outside of the fish fry and classic German dishes like schnitzel and spaetzle mac, you should try Germany-meets-Wisconsin items like kuegel wurst.