The Best Places to Drink and Stay in the United States

Perched in Chattanooga's Bluff View Art District, the Edwin Hotel is a contemporary property where the art collection spills from the lobby straight into the loft-style rooms, so even unpacking feels vaguely cultured. Whitebird handles dinner with some seriousness, and the Whiskey Thief rooftop bar handles everything else. Chattanooga draws the outdoor crowd, but the Edwin doubles as a social destination for people who also want a good drink after the hike.

Twelve rooms above a Grand Ballroom in the one building that survived a 1940 fire, which tells you something about what you're getting into. The Piccolo is a small, historic inn on Paso Robles's main square, with fireplaces, soaking tubs, and private balconies in each room. The Michelin Guide has it in their Selected Hotels list. Celebrity chef Charlie Palmer runs the restaurants downstairs if you'd rather not wander far for dinner.

Pendleton blankets, wood paneling, and leather everything: Urban Cowboy Lodge commits to the rustic bit without apology, which is partly the point of escaping the city in the first place. This Catskills retreat spreads 28 rooms and suites across five buildings, from cabin-style quarters to a sprawling six-bedroom lodge floor. An Estonian Iglu sauna sits in a trailer on the property, apparently the only one in the country, because of course it does.

A 19th-century Italianate mansion on 22 acres of Olmsted-designed parkland, with 19 rooms and a French restaurant running eight tables. It is the kind of hotel that makes you wonder briefly if you've wandered into a novel. The Gilded Age bones are intact, the modern touches stay quiet, and Tanglewood is a short walk away for anyone who needs a reason to justify the room rate beyond sheer indulgence.

Royal blue booths, an open kitchen you can pull a counter seat at, and a baked Alaska that arrives on fire make the room feel like it has something to prove, in a good way. Bludorn is a New American restaurant and bar where the menu swings wide, from oysters (some Texan) to cioppino to seafood towers. The chef is a James Beard semifinalist, and the hospitality is the kind that makes you notice it without being able to say why.

Caipirinhas built from fresh sugar-cane juice anchor this small Brazilian bar and kitchen in Adams Morgan, where a vinyl soundtrack keeps the room at a low simmer all night. The open kitchen sends out charcoal-oven dishes and fried tapioca squares with spicy guava sauce that Washingtonian singled out as a favorite dish of the year. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Bar, it draws the kind of crowd that skips the menu on the second visit.

Club Frills is a cocktail bar dressed as a 70s basement, with fake wood paneling, a disco ball, and tabletops that are marble only in spirit. It wears the dive costume without the sticky floors or the low prices. The drinks run low-ABV and funky, often in colors not found in nature, and the kitchen turns out a burger built around diced olives. It was a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service.

A strip-mall address in Scottsdale is doing its best to throw you off, but step inside Course and it's a full tasting-menu restaurant, white-tablecloth intentions and all. The kitchen runs a rotating seasonal menu, five courses on weeknights and eight on weekends, with a James Beard semifinalist nomination for the chef and another for pastry. The Pinnacle Guide awarded it one Pin for 2026.

A corn broth that quietly dismantles everything you thought about corn broth is a good sign you're in the right place. Elcielo is a Michelin-starred fine dining tasting menu restaurant near Union Market where the Colombian-born chef turns his home country into a deeply personal, course-by-course argument. The chocotherapy dessert has become a thing people mention unprompted. The room runs warm in a way that doesn't feel managed.

A Taiwanese café and cocktail bar tucked into a Star Metals office lobby, which sounds like it shouldn't work until you're sitting on a green velvet couch at noon eating a scallion pancake stuffed with braised beef shank. The menu shifts as the day does, coffee and pastries giving way to oyster omelets and rice bowls, then cocktails after dark. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Bar, it holds a Michelin Guide selection too.

The smoke hits you before the door does, which is about right for a Southern steakhouse built inside a former church in Plaza Midwood. The wood-fired range dominates the room, and prime meats and fish come off the embers in cuts meant for the table to share. The sides hold their own alongside anything off the fire. A Michelin Selected pick, it also draws a cocktail following serious enough to earn an Esquire nod.

A pre-war cellar beneath the Flatiron that once hosted a gambling den is now a cocktail bar with avant-garde techniques and presentations critics have called sippable art. The room has the bones of a genuine speakeasy, and the drinks menu leans into that drama hard, with smoke, science, and ceremony that would feel overwrought somewhere less atmospheric. A good spot for a first date, assuming you want them slightly impressed.

Deborah VanTrece's modern Southern restaurant in a Westside industrial strip is the kind of place where the bar program is as serious as the kitchen, a James Beard semifinalist on both counts. The menu takes the food your grandmother made and runs it somewhere she probably didn't, with collard dip alongside pimento cheese fondue and fried chicken arriving with a collard green roll. The New York Times put it on their Atlanta list, and the room earns the attention.

Eight hundred and twenty-five acres perched at the edge of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with twelve miles of trails for hiking and horseback riding threading through the property. Cataloochee Ranch is a mountain resort that's been around forever but has shed the rustic-rough edges for something considerably more comfortable. An on-site restaurant, Switchback, takes High Country cooking and puts a French-trained hand behind it, which is not a sentence you expect to write about Maggie Valley.

The rooms have no televisions, no phones, and no alarm clocks, which is either the selling point or the dealbreaker depending on who you are. This resort on Maui's remote eastern shore is the kind of place people describe as a "reset," and for once that word fits. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels. Come with nowhere to be and no one expecting a reply.

Flight-themed décor fills this 375-room hotel near the U.S. Air Force Academy, where mid-century modern bones meet aviation nostalgia at every turn. Rooms run tech-forward with views toward the Rampart Range, and the rooftop Aviator bar handles cocktails and small plates when you're done looking at mountains. A spa, a classic American dining room, and a spot serving hot dogs with yard games and flight simulators round out the options.

Checkerboard floors and warm wood tones set the mid-century modern tone at this all-suite boutique hotel a short walk from the Pismo Beach sand. Every suite comes with a full kitchen, a separate living area, and ocean views, which makes it popular with families staying more than a night or two. Casper California Kings and Malin and Goetz bath products signal that the details are taken seriously. Wine country and Avila Beach are both close.

A century-old downtown hotel reimagined as a wellness-forward boutique stay, SCP stands for Soul Community Planet, which tells you exactly the kind of place this is. Rooms lean into calming, minimalist design with materials and artwork that nod to Oregon's landscape. A rooftop restaurant and bar, a ground-floor lounge, and a grab-and-go market keep you fed without ever making you feel like you've wandered into a regular hotel.

The only full-scale resort on the Outer Banks, which tells you something about how carefully this stretch of North Carolina has stayed out of the brochures. Miles of stark, wide beach, sand-swept two-lane roads, and a faint Southern accent define the surroundings. The Sanderling sits in Duck, a quiet town where the competition is mostly homey seafood shacks, making this the outlier, and for some guests, the whole point.

Glamping in the shadow of the Absaroka Range, with canvas tents pitched in Paradise Valley and Yellowstone's north entrance less than an hour away. Under Canvas does the upscale outdoor lodging thing: proper beds, outdoor showers, fire pits, and a sky that earns its keep after dark. You're closer to Bozeman than Old Faithful, which suits most guests fine once they see the elk.

The red-brick shell of a century-old industrial building still stands, and inside it sits one of the more charming boutique hotels on the Maine coast. Rooms and suites lean into the bones of the structure, so the gas fireplaces and built-ins feel like they belong rather than arrived from a catalog. Steps from Camden Harbor, and central enough that you can walk everywhere the town has to offer without once moving your car.

Weathered ceiling slats in the lobby nod to Maine's shipbuilding past while everything around them is firmly contemporary, which is a neat trick for a boutique hotel in a town that has always had an artistic streak. Rooms are clean-lined but warm, with rich textures and original art that keep things from feeling sterile. The Farnsworth's Wyeth collection is a short walk away, and the kitchen sends out breakfast before pointing you toward Rockland's quietly impressive dining scene.

A red-brick Federal building sitting directly across from the Dartmouth Green, Hanover Inn is the kind of hotel that has absorbed a few centuries of visiting academics and commencement speeches without losing its composure. Rooms fold contemporary comfort into the old architecture neatly. The on-site restaurant, PINE, runs a seasonal New England menu that earns its own following. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

The original 1960s bathroom tiles are still there, and that pretty much tells you everything about Hotel Lucine's approach. This boutique hotel on Seawall Boulevard leans into its mid-century motel bones: courtyard pool, brown and mustard palette, palm prints, and pastels. Guests drift between the rooftop, a coffee-and-cocktails den, and an on-site restaurant doing Gulf Coast classics. The Michelin Guide has it in their Selected Hotels list.

A rambling 19th-century inn in the Vermont countryside where the rooms still have actual antique furnishings and Woodstock is genuinely out the window. The Michelin Guide has it in Selected Hotels. On property you'll find Ransom Tavern, doing wood-fired Neapolitan pizza and a long wine list Thursday through Sunday, plus a country store café for breakfast and lunch when you need somewhere to be slowly about coffee.

A private gondola connects this One&Only mountain resort directly to Big Sky's lift system, which goes some way toward explaining the seclusion. Olson Kundig handled the architecture, and the result is the kind of serious modern-luxe that doesn't shout. Winter draws the obvious crowd, but the expansive spa and outdoor recreation calendar make a summer case too. Big Sky runs rougher than Aspen, and the resort leans into that rather than apologizing for it.

Iron bed frames, patterned wallpapers, and red accent chairs make this 60-room downtown hotel feel like a considered nod to Utah's pioneer past rather than a generic trailhead stopover. Part of Marriott's Autograph Collection, it sits an hour from Zion and Snow Canyon, which tells you exactly who's filling the rooms. The in-house restaurant leans into Western cooking tradition, and balconies frame the red rock landscape when you've had enough of being in it.

A contractor and an interior designer bought an unremarkable roadside motel in one of California's last genuinely sleepy beach towns and turned it into a boutique stay worth seeking out. Cayucos sits a few minutes from San Luis Obispo and operates at a remove from the whole sun-bleached circus of SoCal coast life. The Pacific Motel is a block and a half from the water, selected by the Michelin Guide, and priced like it hasn't noticed.

Edna St. Vincent Millay launched her career in this very house, which is either the best fun fact in Maine hospitality or a very good reason to stay somewhere else if you failed AP English. A renovated mansion hotel on High Street, Whitehall blends 19th-century New England bones with mid-century modernism, and puts you walking distance from both Camden's harbor and Mount Battie's hiking trails. Open May through October.

Each room in this Catskills mansion hotel commits completely to a single fantasy: one recreates a blacksmith's forge, another is an ice-white winter fantasia that a Disney princess would find a touch understated. Sister property to the famously TV-and-movie-obsessed Roxbury Motel, this place carries the same gleeful maximalism into a grander building. Guests who find regular hotel decor too timid tend to fit right in.

The original Dear Irving on Irving Place is a cocktail bar that commits hard to the speakeasy aesthetic, complete with dim lighting, velvet, and the sense that someone might ask for a password. The menu roams across classics, seasonal builds, and aperitivo riffs, so there's always a reason to linger past the first round. A Spirited Awards Regional Honoree, it draws a dressed-up crowd that takes its evening seriously without taking itself too seriously.

Pine forest on one side, the Atlantic on the other, and a porch pointed straight at Linekin Bay. This boutique inn along East Boothbay's craggy shoreline was a summer colony once, and it still feels that way, with nautical stripes, weathered wood, and a fire pit where guests end up eating s'mores later than they planned. Kayaks, schooner sails, and lobster rolls from an Adirondack chair round out the days. A Michelin Selected Hotel.

Five bedrooms tucked into a Telluride townhouse, decorated in a style that tips its hat to the town's Tyrolean roots rather than the usual antler-and-plaid. This is a boutique guesthouse, meaning a party of ten can take the whole place, and given how far in advance it tends to fill, that's worth knowing early. It sits in the same family as Dunton Hot Springs and Dunton River Camp, which have made a name for outdoor luxury that skips the Rocky Mountain clichés.

A 45-foot saltwater pool tucked behind eight rooms is the first hint that this is not your average Jersey Shore motel. Lokal is a boutique hotel that leans into the residential fantasy, contemporary-rustic rooms with quietly upscale details, no party-scene energy in sight. Cape May already runs quieter than the rest of the Shore, and the Michelin Guide has this place on its selected hotels list. Think less "beach rental" and more "friend with a very nice house."

A farmhouse and cow barn that traded their original purpose for a boutique hotel gig, and pulled it off. The modern-rustic rooms sit steps from the Appalachian Trail and close enough to the Killington K1 gondola that you can plan your day around either. Mornings start with a country breakfast; the Kent Bistro & Bar handles the rest of the day with locally sourced cooking. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

Stone tubs sit outside facing the mountains, and the firepits on each private patio do most of the entertaining after dark. RESET is a design-forward desert hotel on 180 acres near the north entrance of Joshua Tree National Park, with modular, earth-toned rooms stocked with pour-over coffee and not much else on purpose. There's a saltwater pool, sauna, and cold plunge for anyone who needs a reason to stay on the property.

Fifty-seven acres of Maine peninsula, with the Atlantic on three sides and spruce trees filling in the rest. Spruce Point Inn is a full-service coastal resort outside Boothbay Harbor, ranging from rooms in the old inn to scattered cottages and lodges, all done in breezy nautical without going kitschy. There are restaurants, a spa, and an oceanside pool, plus every kayak-and-hiking combination you'd expect from a place that takes the outdoors seriously.

Perched on the shores of Penobscot Bay between Camden and Belfast, this boutique hotel splits its rooms between a main inn, a hilltop building, and a poolhouse, with king beds and gas fireplaces throughout. The infinity pool does the heavy lifting on lazy afternoons, and there's a small spa for good measure. Acadia is ninety minutes away if you feel like being ambitious, but Midcoast Maine has a way of making ambitious feel unnecessary.

Four 19th-century buildings on Maryland's Eastern Shore, renovated by a pair of D.C. sisters with design backgrounds into a small, stylish hotel just off the Chesapeake Bay. St. Michaels is one of those historic waterfront towns that leans hard into its colonial bones, so the Wildset's contemporary interiors make a quietly pointed statement. Baltimore and Washington are both about ninety minutes away, which tells you exactly who books a long weekend here.

A converted boarding house on Tilghman Island, the Wylder is a boutique hotel that does the Chesapeake Bay aesthetic without the usual kitsch, leaning on wood, brass, and rattan rather than lighthouse prints. Rooms come with Egyptian cotton and tablet concierge service, outside there's a saltwater pool and a private marina, and the hotel pairs guests with local charter captains. Maryland blue crab arrives via two on-site restaurants, one helmed by a longtime José Andrés collaborator.

Bar Diane is a wine bar in Northwest Portland where the hand-painted walls look like the rings left behind by a thousand glasses of rosé on a tablecloth. You can perch at the marble bar and get into the weeds on Oregon pinot, or grab a bistro table for a cocktail and a lobster roll. Pours run from affordable table wine to splurgy champagne, so nobody has to pretend to be a sommelier or a billionaire.

Collins is the lobby bar at Fontainebleau, where deep blue furniture and gold trim set the tone and a live piano does the rest. The cocktail list pairs house originals with throwback drinks from the 1930s, so the bartenders can make a proper old-fashioned or a Viva Villa without a lecture. Come in before a show or after a long flight, when you want one decent drink and no sprint through a casino floor.

Dots Cafe is a neighborhood dive on Clinton Street where the vinyl booths, flocked wallpaper, and velvet portraits seem to have been told it's still around 2010, and nobody's corrected them. You order at the bar, which leaves time to study a menu of cheesy fries and vegan burgers. Cocktails are on offer, but a shot and a local beer fits the room. The patio has slushies and cheap rosé, and Portland Monthly lists it among the city's best bars.

A five-foot resin Pomeranian sets the tone for this dark, moody cocktail lounge inside the Vanderpump Hotel on the Strip. Lisa Vanderpump's Las Vegas footprint runs to black-and-red decor, a martini for two arriving on a skewer of a dozen-odd olives, and a cocktail that comes with caviar. The house gimmick of sealing a secret into a tiny envelope and locking it in a vault is either charming or deeply on-brand, depending on your relationship with reality television.

Globe pendant lights, brass accents, and two misters-in-summer courtyards make this woman-owned taproom on Roosevelt Row feel like the anti-brewery brewery. The flagship pale ale is called Herstory, which tells you everything about the vibe. Rotating experimental brews sit alongside core taps, and if you get hungry, a QR code on the table summons food from nearby spots. Trivia nights and live music fill the calendar, and Phoenix New Times named it one of the city's top 100 bars.

This is an English-style pub on Belmont, low-ceilinged and wood-beamed, with decades of cigarette smoke apparently still living in the walls. The beer comes in proper 20-ounce pints, there are real metal-tipped darts, and the Scotch eggs and fish and chips have outlasted every menu update. Regulars fill it by evening, and the vintage posters, flags, and brass plaques suggest nobody has felt the need to redecorate since the Reagan administration.