The Best Places in the United States

The Broken Shaker, a cocktail bar with a devoted following, started the whole thing before a hotel ever existed around it. Freehand Miami is a boutique hotel on the quiet edge of South Beach where the rooms stay affordable without making you feel like you're roughing it. The patio pulls a genuinely mixed crowd, and the vibe leans more "interesting strangers on a trip" than resort-guest small talk.

A European hostel chain's first U.S. foothold landed in a restored Art Deco building on Collins Ave, which is either perfect or on the nose depending on your tolerance for irony. It runs from four-to-six-bed dorm rooms, bunk-style and open-air, to private kings. The design stays spare: numbered bunks, a mirror station, an accent pillow in the privates. Bring your own curtain expectations, or just don't have any.

Cactus Music curates the listening experience here, which tells you something about the clientele Hotel Saint Augustine is after. This hotel lounge sits across from the Menil campus and spills across three rooms of haute-design chairs and low couches, feeling more like someone's very tasteful living room than a hotel bar. The cocktail list is concise, the kitchen runs through the Bludorn team, and Montrose neighbors have adopted it accordingly.

Each cocktail on the menu is credited to the specific bartender who created it, which is either a charming act of transparency or a very public performance review. This neighborhood cocktail bar and casual kitchen in the Heights has a wraparound patio that fills with locals who treat it like a living room. The team behind Anvil runs the place, so the drinks are taken seriously even when the vibe stays loose.

Taxidermy, graffitied walls, mannequins, shelves of old shoes, and a trippy dome with bean bag chairs on the second floor: Notsuoh is less a dive bar and more a three-story cabinet of curiosities that also happens to serve drinks. The art is strange, the vibe is stranger, and the whole place reads like a dare Houston issues to anyone who thinks Austin has a monopoly on weird. An old-school Main Street institution that earns every square foot.

Every book on the shelves, and even pressed under the glass bar top, is about wine. The Library is a wine bar tucked into Spring Branch, where the staff knows their Jura from their Savoie and a "Head Librarian's Preferred Drinking List" exists for anyone who needs a nudge toward a bottle. The selection leans toward esoteric and cult producers, so this is less "Cabernet for the table" and more a place where the menu rewards curiosity.

A giant neon sign reading "Death is coming. Eat trash, be free." sets the tone at this raccoon-themed cocktail bar in Houston. The murals and paintings lean fully into the bit, and the drinks follow suit, running to things like a pho-inspired martini built on rye with Thai chile and star anise. The kitchen stays open until 2am, which is exactly when you need churros and birria ramen the most.

The bayfront pool is ringed with lemon-yellow chaises where guests in bathrobes drift between a dip and the third-floor spa, moving at the precise pace of people who have nowhere to be. This Miami Beach hotel leans into the hammam, eucalyptus steam room, and garden hammocks with the conviction of a place that knows its guests are here to look serene while being seen. Pack your most performative beach read accordingly.

A small "Cocktails" neon sign is the only clue visible through the net-curtained windows of this Williamsburg cocktail bar, which occupies a former auto-parts store near McCarren Park. Inside, ornamental plates crowd the walls, tasseled fittings hang overhead, and ceramic tiles fool the eye into reading as rugs. It feels like a great-aunt's drawing room, if your great-aunt had excellent taste and kept unusual hours.

The last unmarked door at the end of a long basement corridor, no bell, no sign, just turn the handle. This is a cocktail bar tucked beneath a Nordic restaurant on Great Jones Street, sharing a kitchen with the dining room upstairs. The room reads as intentionally low-key, the kind of place where knowing how to find it is half the point, and the other half is that you actually got in.

Marble bar, leather chairs, thick linens, and windows looking straight down Fifth Avenue: Ai Fiori is a formal Italian restaurant on the second floor of the Langham Hotel that telegraphs expense account before you've ordered drinks. The kitchen leans Italian with enough invention to keep it interesting, and the room is polished enough that nobody's rushing you. Gracious service throughout lunch and dinner.

Five tiers of spirits line the back bar at Beaker and Grey, a cocktail bar in Wynwood-adjacent Midtown that pulls a crowd comfortable in nice sneakers. Uplighting catches the brickwork and warm bulbs keep everything buzzy without tipping into lounge-bar gloom. The small lounge beyond the bar has floor-to-ceiling windows that feel a touch showroom, but nobody seems to mind once drinks arrive.

A flaming red domed oven anchors the warehouse-sized dining room, which also has a copper bar, tulip pendant lights, and booths that seem to float slightly above the floor. This is a buzzy Italian restaurant in the Arts District where the crowd's energy and the kitchen's output seem to feed each other. The blistered pizzas and rich pastas are the reason the room is always full, and desserts from the pastry side hold their own.

The carved oak mantle behind the bar holds more bottles than most people have seen in one place, which tells you what kind of bar Blackbird is before anyone says a word. It's a long, narrow neighborhood drinking spot in the Castro, with wood-planked walls, blood-red banquettes, local art for sale overhead, and a pool table tucked behind wrought iron at the far end. Serious spirits list, no pretense.

You reach Caña by walking through a parking garage in the base of a historic Petroleum Building until a podium appears, which is the kind entrance policy that filters out the uncommitted. Inside, a corridor lined with rum bottles leads to a wood-panelled room with leather banquettes and a ribbed concrete ceiling. It's a rum cocktail bar that takes the spirit seriously, and the dim lamplight makes everyone look like they have good taste.

Redwood paneling climbs to a vaulted ceiling lit by stained glass skylights, and a sign on the wall politely warns guests to watch their language. Huber's is a bar that has been around forever, and it shows in the best possible way, with tableside Flaming Spanish Coffees set ablaze by bartenders who have clearly done this before. Old Portland money and curious newcomers share the room, and nobody seems to check their phone.

You book by text, and they text back; no app, no OpenTable, just your name and a party size to a Seattle number you'd better save correctly. Knee High is a tiny, reservation-only speakeasy-style cocktail bar tucked away on Olive Way, the kind of place where finding the door is already part of the evening. Late-night slots open up if you're bold enough to text after ten.

Corrugated iron ceiling, pressed tin bar front, mustard walls: Little Branch looks like a speakeasy that forgot to close. This Greenwich Village cocktail bar carries the DNA of Milk & Honey, the late Sasha Petraske's legendary first act, which means classically made drinks taken seriously and a room that rewards staying a while. It's discreet enough to feel like a find, but open to anyone who can find the door.

A former antique shop on 33rd Street that now deals in classically built cocktails, organized on the menu by category the way a serious bar should be. This is a two-floor cocktail bar from the late Sasha Petraske's lineage, sibling to Little Branch, with communal high tables downstairs where live jazz pulls in the neighbors, and a looser, loungier room upstairs when you need to actually hear yourself think.

A basement cocktail bar on Rivington, reached by a utilitarian staircase and lit just enough to read the menu, which is worth reading because it's full of jokes. Booth seating, exposed brick, and a short row of spirits on the back bar keep things grounded for a room connected to Death & Co. The drinks are serious; the room refuses to be.

A French spirits lounge on Melrose where the cocktail menu is divided into categories named Parfum and Potion, which tells you immediately what kind of evening they have in mind. The team also runs La Descarga and Harvard & Stone, so the theatrics are deliberate. Low lighting, a Parisian lounge sensibility, and a crowd that dressed for it. The menu leans heavily on calvados, armagnac, and eau de vie, which is either your thing or a prompt to try something new.

The cocktail bar up front does brisk business before anyone looks at a menu, which tells you something about Prospect's priorities. This is a polished New American restaurant on the ground floor of a Financial District high-rise, with high ceilings, roomy tables, and a room full of people who expensed lunch and stayed for dinner. The cooking is straightforward and well-executed, leaning on good ingredients and restraint over anything flashy.

The ceiling is woven from the staves of 300 bourbon barrels, which tells you everything about where Rickhouse's priorities lie. This whiskey bar in the Financial District is styled as an old-school saloon, with floor-to-ceiling shelves of bottles behind the counter and a library ladder to reach the top shelf. A back room holds a second bar and a hayloft gallery for looking down, literally, on everyone else.

The cocktail menu runs 32 pages and opens with a table of contents, which tells you everything about how seriously this hotel bar takes its work. Originals are sorted by style; classics are filed by decade. The room holds up in daylight just as well as it does after dark, which isn't something most hotel bars can say without lying. Bring someone who likes to read before they order.

A New Orleans cocktail bar where the inside has been dressed up to look like an outdoor street scene, the way a film studio backlot would imagine the French Quarter. Barrel-aged cocktails are the house move, and the 1920s theme is committed enough that someone looked up the etymology of sassafras before naming the place. The crowd tends toward people who wanted something more atmospheric than a standard Hollywood dive.

A blood bank refrigerator and a roulette wheel anchor the bar at this speakeasy-themed cocktail bar in Capitol Hill, where vested bartenders work in front of shelves stacked with bitters and books. The high ceilings and striped wallpaper lean hard into the 1920s bit, and the room delivers on atmosphere even when the service runs a little transactional. Good for a serious drink in a room that at least committed to the costume.

Leopard-print stage, tartan wallpaper, red leather booths, and a baby grand with a jazz band squeezed in, all on a five-lane highway in Shorecrest. The Anderson is a craft cocktail bar that could not care less about beach-bar minimalism. One room goes full black on black; the other commits to New York kitsch so hard it loops back around to charming. The drinks, not the decor, tend to be the reason people come back.

The ground floor runs dark wood and dim light, with a long bar and clandestine booths; upstairs it's velvet couches and armchairs, like someone's very well-stocked living room. This Lincoln Avenue cocktail bar leans into an old-time saloon feel without making it a costume, pulling sixty-plus classics-leaning drinks organized by spirit and style. The Harry Johnson-style etchings on the menu are either charming or insufferable, depending on your mood.

The scallop-shaped pool behind this Art Deco cocktail bar is what most guests are actually aiming for, which makes the bar itself a pleasantly unhurried place to land. Andre Balazs owns the Raleigh Hotel around it, which explains the crowd that looks like it wandered off a casting call. Order something with gin, find a seat, and let the Collins Avenue faithful do their thing.

A plate-glass window in the exposed-brick wall looks straight into a working still, which tells you everything about what kind of cocktail bar this is. The Shanty is the front room of New York Distilling Company, so the gin in your glass traveled about twenty feet to get there. It sits on a quiet warehouse block in Greenpoint, easy to miss, which seems to suit the regulars just fine.

An unmarked door at the back of Cole's opens into a dimly lit cocktail bar where jazz plays low and Victorian oil lamps glow against wood-panelled walls. The late Sasha Petraske was a part owner, and the room feels exactly like something he'd have built: serious about its classic cocktails, quiet enough to hear the ice hit the glass, and a little too good at making you lose track of the hour.

The name comes from a bourbon cocktail on an old Range menu, which is the kind of origin story that tells you exactly what kind of bar this is. Gun-metal grey walls, bare wood floors, and 70s utilitarian furniture give Dogpatch's Third Rail a chill it takes a drink or two to shake. A neighborhood cocktail bar that doesn't perform warmth, and regulars seem to prefer it that way.

The vintage jukebox leans Glenn Miller and Rat Pack standards, which tells you everything about what kind of night Tosca Café is selling. This old-school North Beach cocktail bar has been around forever, all dark wood and faded glamour that a sympathetic restoration polished back to a shine. Come late, order something simple, and let the room do its thing. If the playlist sounds like your grandparents' wedding, you'll fit right in.

The elongated leaf-shaped island bar, ringed in mustard yellow and sage green stools, sets the tone here: grown-up, art deco, easy jazz in the background. This is a proper cocktail bar where sitting at the counter is the point, not a fallback while you wait for a table. The bartenders are worth watching, and the cocktail menu gives you plenty of reasons to stay put.

Edison bulbs over factory-tiled walls and a ceiling that looks like it never quite finished being renovated: Whitehall calls itself a "gastro bar" rather than a gastropub, and the distinction holds. It's a neighborhood cocktail bar on Greenwich Avenue with a modern British menu running alongside, but people mostly come for the warm room and the staff who seem to mean it. Think London train station, interpreted loosely and affectionately.

The Elizabeth Taylor portrait in the lobby sets the tone: this is a hotel that takes its vintage glamour seriously without quite winking at you. A mid-century beachfront resort on Collins Avenue, Eden Roc draws on Morris Lapidus's sweeping architecture for rooms with oceanfront views, a sprawling spa, and poolside daybeds where frozen cocktails arrive at a civilized pace. The vibe skews polished rather than party-forward, which on South Beach counts as a genuine position.

The cocktail list pulls from the shelves around you, which tells you exactly what kind of place this is: part upscale liquor store, part proper bar, and committed to being both at once. Depending on which Phoenix-area location you land in, the extras might include a golf simulator, pinball, a pizzeria, or a cigar lounge. The drinks run from spritzes to stirred classics, and the bottles for sale are genuinely worth browsing.

Andrew Tarlow, the restaurateur who more or less invented the Brooklyn communal-table aesthetic, runs his only Manhattan outpost here on East 27th. The neighborhood trattoria seats you at long tables with a daily menu scrawled on butcher paper, and the food leans into the gamy, the bitter, and the slow-cooked, the things that take patience to understand. The New York Times placed it sixth on its 100 Best Restaurants list.

A Japantown hotel where the lobby's 19-foot Douglas fir ceilings and open pipe shelving make the place feel more like a very well-curated living room than a hotel. The design splits the difference between Japanese and Scandinavian, which sounds like a thesis project but works. Rooms get dark gray walls hung with calligraphy and modern Japanese art, a clear step up from the obligatory Alcatraz watercolor. Cozy without being precious about it.

One of the few surviving pre-earthquake Queen Anne mansions in the city, this 12-room boutique hotel is more cabinet of curiosities than traditional lodging. Stained glass, intricate woodwork, Italian marble, and original Louis Icart paintings fill the common areas, and no two guest rooms are alike, some charmingly, some quirkily so. Condé Nast Traveler named it among San Francisco's best hotels.

Brass lighting and graphic fabric break up the white walls at this design-forward Mid-Market hotel, which is doing its best impression of a nearby SFMOMA annex. The 236 rooms lean minimalist, softened by wood surfaces and deep soaking tubs, with double-paned windows keeping the neighborhood's noise at bay. Higher floors pull in proper skyline views, and the minibar runs on local snacks rather than the usual sad peanuts.