The Best Places in the United States

The entrance is a gated alley door with a buzzer, which already tells you something about the evening ahead. Trona is a speakeasy cocktail bar in Central East Austin that draws equally from Mexico and Japan, so mezcal and tequila share the back bar with Japanese whisky. The space runs narrow with a small patio, and reservations are the move. Bringing a date here feels a little smug, which is kind of the point.

Villa Nova is a no-frills, family-run pizzeria in suburban Stickney, the kind of place where the pie arrives square-cut, the way thin-crust tavern pizza is supposed to. The sausage is fennel-forward and left in chunky, meatball-ish clumps, which is a bold choice for a topping and a good one. It's been around forever, so expect regulars who haven't looked at the menu in years. Eater included it among Chicago's best tavern-style thin-crust spots.

A wine shop and tasting room tucked into Edgewood, steps from the Candler Park-Edgewood MARTA station, which makes the flight of three half-pours feel almost responsible. The daily wine flights rotate, and you can also order by the glass or pick up a bottle to take home. A patio out front catches good weather, and the sandwich shop next door means nobody has to drink on an empty stomach.

Tetsuya Wakuda made Las Vegas his US debut, reportedly because the Strip's energy reminded him of Shinjuku, which is either a compliment or a warning depending on your tolerance for spectacle. This fine dining room inside The Venetian pulls Japanese seafood, Canadian lobster, and Tasmanian oysters into a menu that moves between traditional and contemporary Japanese cooking. A hidden omakase room exists for those who know to ask, with rare whisky alongside the meal.

WG Pizzas is a Lakeview tavern-style pizzeria, a spin-off of an old suburban Highwood joint that has been feeding Lake County for ages. The crust is cut thin but keeps a few proud bubbles at the edges, so it lands chewier than the cracker-crisp stuff, closer to what South Side spots turn out. Order online, grab a BLT pie, and mind the monthly chef takeovers, which are a good excuse to pretend you planned ahead.

Zarella is a River North tavern-style pizzeria run by the Boka group, which means the thin, cornmeal-dusted pies come with a cocktail menu and a downstairs speakeasy lounge. Two well-known Chicago chefs developed the crusts, and the toppings include mortadella and all-beef pepperoni, so expect River North prices for what is, technically, bar pizza. Eater has named it among the city's best tavern-style pizza spots.

The copper bar catches the afternoon light in a way that makes you want to order a Bloody Mary before you've even sat down. Zuni is a bi-level California bistro that's been a fixture on Market Street forever, shaped like a triangle and decorated like someone with actual taste. The wood-fired chicken for two, served with a warm bread salad, is the dish regulars have been quietly hoarding for decades.

The 47-story atrium is so vertiginously tall that John Portman's neo-futuristic design has moonlighted as a movie set for decades. This downtown convention hotel connects to Peachtree Center by skybridge and runs multiple restaurants, from a coffee shop to a steakhouse. Rooms are clean and functional, with low platform beds and a proper desk. The glass elevators alone will make you feel like you're in a film, which, statistically, you sort of are.

The Fox Theatre is literally across the street, which makes this Marriott Courtyard a practical choice for anyone coming to Atlanta for a show or using Peachtree Street as a home base. It's a mid-range hotel with 158 rooms, soft lighting, plush beds, and a lobby big enough to spread out in. The attached restaurant leans into Southern comfort food, chicken and waffles among them.

The bones go back to 1913, but a thorough renovation means the lobby reads contemporary rather than musty. This downtown Atlanta hotel keeps rooms compact and practical, with a proper desk and a modern bath, and some king rooms add a sofa if you need the breathing room. The lobby coffee counter pulls double duty as a morning café and evening bar. Peachtree Center MARTA is a short walk south, and dozens of restaurants surround it.

Three wings of rooms orbit a central elevator bank in this retro-futuristic high-rise hotel downtown, which at 28 stories and 1,249 rooms is less a hotel than a small municipality. Skybridges connect it to neighboring hotels and the conference center, so conventioneers can spend three days entirely indoors if the Atlanta summer has anything to say about it. Fourth-floor rooms open onto a terrace with a jogging track and pickleball courts.

The atrium here was John Portman's original experiment in the form: a cavernous open void with a skylight ceiling and glass elevators gliding up the walls, and it still stops people mid-stride. This conference-scale hotel spreads across three towers, from standard king rooms to the Radius, a glass cylinder with compact quarters and mosaic-tile showers that feel like a set from a 1970s sci-fi film. Polaris, the revolving rooftop restaurant under a blue dome, completes the retro-futurist mood.

A sleek, AAA Three Diamond hotel a short walk from downtown Atlanta's convention halls and concert venues, which either thrills you or doesn't depending on why you're here. The compact rooms keep things minimal, platform beds, clutter-free desks loaded with charging points, and nearly all bathrooms are shower-only. The lobby bar runs tapas and craft cocktails, and there's a seasonal outdoor pool with terrace seating when the weather cooperates.

A converted vintage office building in the middle of downtown Atlanta, this Hampton Inn puts every major sports venue and attraction within walking distance, which matters more than you'd think on a game night. Rooms are compact and stylish, with an oversize TV and a proper desk, though "seating" often means the desk chair. Suites add a living room with a pull-out sofa. Hot breakfast is included daily.

The painted coffered ceiling in the lobby is original to the 1929 office building, and it sets expectations the rest of this extended-stay Marriott hotel doesn't quite match, in the best possible way to stay calibrated. Most suites come with a full kitchen setup for actual cooking. Complimentary hot breakfast runs daily, the Peachtree Center MARTA stop is right outside, and the fitness center looks straight down onto the street below.

The breeze-block bones of the original 1962 structure are still visible near the pool, a quiet reminder that this downtown Atlanta hotel was the city's first integrated hotel, which is a genuinely significant thing to just be staying next to. The midcentury modern furnishings and retro mini-fridges lean into that history rather than papering over it. Every major sports venue downtown is walkable, which either thrills you or doesn't.

The menu is divided into Acte I, Acte II, and Acte III, which tells you everything about the neighborhood this French brasserie has anchored for decades. Hayes Valley locals and pre-curtain opera crowds fill the room most nights, and the kitchen leans into French classics with a fondness for deconstruction. The beverage program keeps pace, with seasonal cocktails and a French 75 built on a French single malt that somehow feels obvious in retrospect.

Tiger-striped wood, tile-topped bars, and hanging light tubes give this Capitol Hill cocktail bar a look that's somehow both designed-within-an-inch-of-its-life and still easy to be in. It shares a back door with the pasta restaurant Spinasse but runs on its own logic, with small plates and a drinks list to match. Date-night couples fill the tables while bartenders occasionally step out to take orders, keeping the whole thing warmer than the room suggests.

The bar at Au Cheval is the part of the diner you can sit at without a two-hour wait, assuming the wait stays tolerable, and the whole place runs on dim lighting, a cocktail list, and the knowledge that a griddled burger with a fried egg is coming either way. It's a moody, no-frills diner-bar, and the cocktails do real work while you stare at the people who got the table. Difford's Guide gives it four stars.

The bartender here is a fourth-generation New Orleanian who will mix your Ramos Gin Fizz while narrating its entire biography. Bar Uncommon is a cocktail bar tucked into the Renaissance Pere Marquette, with the spare, hotel-adjacent look you'd expect, but Chris McMillian, one of the founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail, is the reason regulars overlook the lobby entrance. Classics, made the old way, with a history lecture included at no extra charge.

A red light above an unmarked door in a Chelsea coffee shop is the only signal that there's a cocktail bar behind it. Once through, the room opens into flocked wallpaper, fringed lampshades, and an antique copper bathtub sitting squarely in the middle of things, which everyone photographs and then pretends they weren't going to. The seven-seat copper bar is the calmer alternative. Dressed-up but not stiff, and a long way from the espresso machine out front.

A wood-stone oven dominates the back of this cocktail bar on Valencia, turning out pizza while the bartenders run a tight menu of drinks built on a few well-chosen flavors rather than a paragraph of modifiers. The room hits that sweet spot between lively and unpretentious, with filament bulbs over the bar and a crowd that looks like they found the place before it was a thing, even though everyone has found it by now.

A black and white marble floor runs from the front door all the way back through the bar, past the restaurant, and out into a quiet courtyard, putting a lot of physical distance between you and Bourbon Street without much effort. The cocktail bar leans into New Orleans classics like the Vieux Carré and Ramos gin fizz alongside bottled punches and house recipes built on acid phosphate and champagne vinegar, which is not a sentence you read every day.

Rum drinks without a single plastic volcano or flaming garnish in sight. Cane & Table is a cocktail bar that calls itself "Proto Tiki," rooting its menu in the centuries of trade between rum-producing islands before the tiki craze gave everything a grass skirt. The room on Decatur Street feels genuinely New Orleans, which helps. Pisco Punch and signature coladas share the menu, and the whole thing moves like a history lesson you'd actually stay for.

Bare cement walls, a rope-strung ceiling, and Edison bulbs doing almost nothing to warm the place up: Churchill is a neighborhood cocktail bar that leans into its chill rather than fighting it. Early-90s hip hop keeps things honest, the cocktails are carefully made, and the bourbon-spiced nuts are the kind of detail that earns loyalty. Car headlights sweep through the windows as drivers take the Market Street turn, which adds a bit of unplanned theater.

The name comes from Aristophanes: "Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine so I may wet my mind and say something clever." An intimate neighborhood wine bar connected by a knocked-through wall to the Cork & Bottle shop next door, Clever leans into its origins without being precious about them. The list is serious, the cocktails are well made, and the beers are worth a look too, which is either scope creep or just good sense.

Frenchmen Street runs on live music, but D.B.A. is there for the beer, the spirits, and the wine, with bands as a bonus rather than the point. Two redwood-lined rooms share a central bar, one leaning lounge, one leaning jazz club, both dim and ceiling-fan slow. The New York sister bar genes show a little, which gives this New Orleans dive a slightly unlikely polish that the regulars seem happy to ignore.

The building is roughly the size and shape of a railway car, wedged next to a gas station on Saint Charles with fairy lights strung through the overhanging trees. Delachaise is a wine and beer bar where the front terrace somehow becomes exactly where you want to be, watching the street roll by. Over 40 wines by the glass keep the options interesting without the prices getting precious about it.

A basement cocktail bar in the Financial District with dark red walls, a chandelier, and macramé screens that somehow land between 1980s lounge and faint tiki, all packed into semicircular banquettes that seat over a hundred. The inventive menu carries the fingerprints of the Death & Co. team. On quieter weeknights they may seat you at the bar only, which is worth knowing before you bring a crowd.

The bar curves like the stern of a Spanish galleon, which should tell you what kind of night to expect. This candlelit cocktail lounge off the TriBeCa steakhouse of the same name leans into the drama: heavy drapes, tapestry walls, shaded pendant lights, and booths deep enough to disappear into. The back bar is loaded with premium spirits, and the Key Lime Pie cocktail was invented here, for better or worse.

Red Hook sits off every subway line, which keeps Fort Defiance comfortably local. This all-day neighborhood bar fits eight tables and a bar counter that seats twelve if everyone breathes in. The name nods to a nearby Revolutionary War fort that once blocked the British from the East River, which gives the place more historical gravitas than most spots this relaxed have any business claiming.