6 Best American Restaurants in Boston

Field & Vine earns its reputation not by accident of location but by conviction of purpose.

Theo's Cozy Corner earns its name honestly: a galley-kitchen sliver on Salem Street seating about twenty, where you climb through the kitchen and lift a trap door for stairs down to the bathroom.

Highland Kitchen has been a fixture of the Somerville dining scene long enough to have developed the kind of reputation that neighbourhood restaurants either earn or quietly lose — and by most accounts, it has held its ground.

Brassica Kitchen + Café occupies a modest, warm room in Jamaica Plain that operates on a split personality the neighbourhood has come to trust: a relaxed café during the day, a more deliberate and ingredient-driven kitchen after dark.

Buttermilk & Bourbon doesn't position itself as Back Bay's most experimental room, and that restraint is the whole argument.

Let's be clear about what this room is and isn't.