The Best Places to Drink and Stay in the United States

Red-brick facade, wrought-iron balconies, mosaic tilework, and the Pacific about twenty feet away: Casa del Mar is a grand beachfront hotel in Santa Monica that has been drawing California's well-heeled to the sand since the Roaring Twenties. The eight-story property holds restaurants, a spa, and an outdoor pool overlooking the waves, plus a beach concierge who can sort you a surfboard. It holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star, in case the ocean view left any doubt.

Shutters on the Beach is a luxury hotel sitting right on the Santa Monica sand, designed by Obama White House decorator Michael S. Smith in a style that mixes California ease with a little Northeast polish. Hockney and Oldenburg hang on the walls, fireplaces anchor the cozy corners, and the sea air follows you through the lobby. It holds a Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key, and the crowd that books it tends to already know that.

A tiny tiki bar tucked into Wailuku well off the resort circuit, Esters Fair Prospect pours tropical cocktails from a patio that feels like it was built for lingering. The drink list leans into local ingredients, including okolehao, a plantation-era spirit made from tī root. Food & Wine named it one of the top bars in the US in 2025. Bar snacks, ceramic mermaid cups, and happy hour daiquiris round out the picture.

Fried chicken wings stuffed with andouille dirty rice tell you everything about this Southern-leaning cocktail bar and dining room in the Jay Hotel. The chef's Alabama roots show up in pimento cheese dressed with trout roe and banana cream pie reimagined as a chocolate-pretzel tartlet, dishes that straddle Sunday supper and something more deliberate. The room is dusky and quietly glamorous, the kind of place that makes a Tuesday feel like a reason to dress up.

Sierra Nevada's East Coast brewery comes with a sprawling taproom where the beer list runs from flagship lagers to whatever they're playing with this season. The on-site garden supplies the kitchen, which does wood-fired pizza and duck-fat fries alongside the pints, but drinking is the point. Outside there's a patio with a fire pit, a bocce court, cornhole, and an amphitheater, which sounds like overkill until you're on your third flight.

Vaughan's is a Bywater dive where the Mardi Gras tinsel never comes down and Thursday nights mean a brass band that doesn't start until 10:30. The red beans and rice are free, which makes it easier to stay on the dance floor with whichever neighborhood regular grabs your hand first. The owners live nearby and have run the place for decades, so the community events and Pride tea dances feel more like hosting than programming.

The lobby, pools, and restaurants all live on the eighth floor, which means no street traffic filters up and no one is cutting through to anywhere. This Waikiki high-rise hotel holds a Forbes Four Star, and every room is a privately owned residence with a kitchenette, laundry, and enough square footage to feel like you actually live here. The upper floors shift color palettes by level to mirror the island's landscape, which is either lovely or a lot, depending on your floor.

Polished marble, low lighting, and plush fabrics signal exactly the kind of cocktail bar that doesn't care about honky-tonk clichés. Four Walls sits inside The Joseph Nashville, but it operates on its own logic, one that skews global and sleek while the rest of the city leans into its cowboy boots. Esquire put it on their Best Bars in America list, and Food & Wine ranked it among the top hotel bars in the country.

Velvet booths, globe lights, and wallpaper that belongs in a Left Bank salon set the mood at this Fulton Market cocktail bar, one of the few standalone drinking spots on a street that is otherwise all restaurants. The Paris-in-the-sixties premise runs through everything: French wines, classic martinis, caviar with chips. Named to North America's 50 Best Bars and a James Beard semifinalist, Bisous earns its kisses.

The salad arrives spinning in a metal bowl over ice chips, which tells you everything about how this prime rib shop operates. Servers wheel cuts of roast beef tableside and carve thick slabs to order, with mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, and gravy all part of the deal. Ask for the English cut if you want thinner, juicier slices. The martinis have their own reputation. An old-school institution that treats a Tuesday like a special occasion.

The newspaper-themed menu doubles as a history lesson on the Sunset Strip, which fits, given the leather booths and vintage vinyl setup of this dimly lit neighborhood cocktail bar. Signature drinks are named for local landmarks, the Viper Room, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the like, and priced like someone actually wants you to have a second one. Named to Wildsam's 50 Most Essential Bars in America, it trades the Strip's usual gloss for something considerably more worn-in.

On 340 acres in the Blue Ridge foothills, this full-service luxury resort was modeled after founder Sheila C. Johnson's own nearby home, and it does look suspiciously settled-in for a modern build. Horse trails and working stables share billing with a sprawling spa and several restaurants, putting equestrian country at the center rather than the background. It holds a Forbes Five Star and a Michelin Key, and one of too few Black-owned hotels at this level.

The pyramidal glass skylight hovering over eight tiers of cast iron railings is the kind of thing you look up at and forget what you were doing. This Financial District boutique hotel, a Michelin Key holder, occupies an 1881 building whose atrium alone draws people who aren't even staying. Rooms have the soaring ceilings the Victorian bones promise, and the neighborhood keeps things quieter than Midtown without feeling remote.

Pearl shells in the bathrooms are not the usual Financial District flex, but the Paspaleys, an Australian pearl-harvesting family, own this 180-room luxury boutique hotel and it shows throughout. The Beaux-Arts building has been around forever, once housing the original New York Stock Exchange, and it now holds Aboriginal art, vintage family photos, and a lobby lounge stocked with coffee-table books. It holds a Michelin Key.

Grass-roofed hillside suites, creekside cabins, and cliffside rooms with views over Alexander Canyon give this Auberge resort on 4,000 acres outside Park City three genuinely different ways to sleep in the same landscape. Stone, glass, and wood are arranged to keep the mountains and canyon doing the decorating. Horseback riding, fly fishing, and heliskiing fill the days. It holds a Forbes Five Star and a Michelin Key.

A former auto garage with a butcher-paper cocktail menu still hanging above the makeshift kitchen, Liquid Diet is a creative cocktail bar where the bartenders juice and blend everyday ingredients into drinks that read like a dare. Bell pepper martinis, key lime sippers, banana bread cocktails with cookie shards frozen into chiseled ice cubes. Esquire named it one of the best bars in America, and curious tourists and pub crawlers seem to be putting that to the test nightly.

A cocktail bar in the Financial District built around the legend of John Morrissey, a bare-knuckle Irish immigrant who ran one of the city's rougher gangs in the 1800s. The menu reads like a graphic novel, each volume dropping the Rabbit into a new era of New York's murkier chapters. The drinks are theatrical without being silly, and the Irish pub downstairs keeps things grounded for anyone who just wants a pint.

Half a mile of private Gold Coast beach sets the terms here before you've even checked in. The Beach Club is a Forbes Five Star resort where cabana-style rooms face the Atlantic, three pools compete for your afternoon, and the main restaurant pours ocean views with every meal. When the sand loses its hold, there's championship golf, pickleball, tennis, a marina, and a spa that regulars treat as a destination on its own.

White-brick walls and wrought-iron accents give this luxury hotel a European resort feel that sits a little incongruously at the foot of Camelback Mountain, which is sort of the whole point. The ownership group includes an NBA star and a country legend, and the crowd has taken note. Art Deco rooms come stocked with hand-selected books, five restaurants range from poolside to rooftop, and the spa is serious about it. A Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key.

You enter through the back of a neighboring cafe, down a hallway, through a wooden door, and suddenly you're somewhere else entirely. This moody Oak Cliff speakeasy-style cantina stocks only bottles sourced from Mexico, and the cocktail menu is organized by historical era, walking you through the evolution of Mexican drinking culture. A James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist, it also does pre-Hispanic Oaxacan small plates for when the mezcal needs company.

Dark wood, sink-in seating in bold colors, and cocktail names that tip you off early: this is a cocktail bar that wants you to stay longer than you planned. The menu leans playful and genuinely inventive, and the room has enough tucked corners for a long conversation. A James Beard Best New Bar semifinalist and an Esquire Best Bars pick, it earns both without trying too hard about either.

A converted cottage on McDowell Road that smells faintly of old rugs and good intentions, Sauvage is a natural wine bar and bottle shop where the list leans toward obscure regions and the staff will talk you through all of it. Charcuterie and tinned fish are always on hand, and local chefs occasionally pop up to cook. Esquire named it one of the best bars in America, which the room, unhurried and candlelit, seems entirely unbothered by.

The bones of a 19th-century brewhouse, chimney stacks and all, give this mid-sized hotel its industrial-chic personality before you even check in. It holds a Michelin 2 Keys distinction and sits inside the Pearl, a riverside stretch that has become San Antonio's most interesting neighborhood, with farmers markets, a CIA campus, and a cluster of serious restaurants all within walking distance.

The Spanish Revival facade on Ashford Avenue has been watching the Atlantic since the Vanderbilt family built it, and the foyer still delivers: ocean visible straight through the lobby the moment the grand doors open. This is a full-scale luxury hotel with three pools, a spa, beach butlers, a tanning specialist (yes, really), and rooms across the historic building and two modern towers, all facing the water. Forbes Four Star.

A 23-foot sculpted head named Laura greets you out front, which sets the tone for this Century City luxury hotel. The curved midcentury tower got a full Fairmont makeover, and the rooms now run to floor-to-ceiling windows, marble bathrooms, and balconies angled toward the LA sunset. The spa mixes deep-tissue massage with red light therapy and power naps on an anti-gravity bed, and the rooftop pool earns its views. A Forbes Four Star property.

The Flatirons fill the windows of this polished downtown Boulder hotel, which sits close enough to Pearl Street that you can walk to dinner and back without a car. Rooms lean toward the understated side of luxury, and the Forbes Four Star spa handles the heavy lifting with a eucalyptus steam room, sauna, and a full treatment menu. Jill's Restaurant pulls from the Boulder Farmers' Market, which is either charming or expected, depending on your tolerance for Colorado.

No casino floor, no cigarette haze: the Waldorf Astoria sits inside the CityCenter complex as a quiet outlier on the Strip. The 47-story hotel leans hard into the lobby, where 11,000 square feet of Italian Calacatta Gold marble meets a custom crystal chandelier and two-story ceilings. Renovated rooms run to deep-soaking tubs and floor-to-ceiling views of the city below. The 23rd-floor bar is the right place to watch the neon from a comfortable distance.

Standby is a cocktail bar you reach by ducking down the Belt Alley and heaving open a pair of ponderous doors, which makes ordering a martini feel like a minor heist. The menu sorts drinks by mood, from "Purist" to "Certified Bangers," so nobody has to explain themselves to a bartender. Matty Matheson of The Bear built the food menu. It's dim, polished, and worth a Resy booking.

A hundred classics and eight seasonal originals on the cocktail menu, which is either a philosophy or a dare. This is the Houston cocktail bar that regulars will tell you changed the city's drinking culture, and they are not wrong to say it. The brass-accented room runs loud and energetic, the staff can talk you through any corner of that list, and the salty snacks exist to keep you at the bar longer.

The name comes from Milton, and the bar takes the premise seriously: this is a tropical hellscape, not a luau. Paradise Lost is a tiki bar in the East Village that keeps the piña coladas and mai tais but drops the cheerful kitsch for something a little more Beelzebub. The décor leans sinister in ways that reward a second look. Esquire named it one of the best bars in America in 2024, and the Spirited Awards shortlisted it for Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar.

The ninth floor penthouse suites have their own private elevator, which tells you everything about how The Dupont Circle Hotel pitches itself. It's a Doyle Collection boutique property with a midcentury-meets-contemporary feel, planted squarely between embassy row and the White House. Downstairs, the bar carries a serious Irish whiskey list and the coffee counter runs striped pink-and-white cups. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Beehives on the roof and a bike valet at the door, which tells you everything about where this Uptown Charlotte luxury hotel has placed its bets. The Ritz-Carlton holds a Forbes Four Star and keeps a lively house: The Punch Room for cocktails, BLT Steak for a serious cut, Bar Cocoa for chocolate afternoon tea, and a wine boutique where you blend your own. The lobby fills before Hornets games, and the weekday power-lunch crowd arrives with an appetite for Scotch.

The Robert A.M. Stern limestone tower rises 42 stories over Peachtree Road, though you'd almost miss it tucked behind the Del Frisco's out front. This is a full-service luxury hotel in Buckhead, which means Lenox Square is walkable and the indoor pool, three-floor spa, and English courtyard gardens are waiting when you're done. A Forbes Four Star property, it earns its keep with personal concierge service and a marble lobby that feels genuinely unhurried.

Ski-in-ski-out access is the whole pitch here, and Four Seasons Vail delivers it without apology. The hotel holds Michelin's 1 Key and a Forbes Four Star, runs from elegant rooms up to six-bedroom private residences, and sits squarely in the middle of the walkable village. The spa was fully redone recently and has the largest treatment rooms in the valley. Après-ski at The Remedy draws locals, which is usually a good sign.

The wellness resort that essentially invented the genre, set against the Sonoran Desert outside Tucson. Canyon Ranch is an all-inclusive spa and fitness destination where the itinerary can run from sunrise hikes to integrative medicine consultations, and nobody judges you for doing neither. It holds a Michelin 3 Keys distinction. The vibe is less "punishing cleanse" and more "genuinely rethink how you live," which was a radical idea when it opened and remains a persuasive one.

The Veranda Lounge's botanical cocktails and small plates give you an excuse to linger, but the rooms are reason enough to stay at this 50-room boutique hotel in Charleston's French Quarter. It's a new build that doesn't embarrass the historic streetscape around it, and the interiors split the difference between antique good looks and quietly high-tech comfort. The Michelin Guide awarded it two Keys.

The Txuletón, a Basque-style ribeye from mature dairy cows, grilled over open charcoal with salt, heat, and not much else, is the organizing principle of this Basque-inspired chophouse in River North. The kitchen takes its cues from the asador tradition, applying that discipline to seriously sourced beef, carefully aged. Spanish reds anchor the wine list. Esquire named it among the best new restaurants in America, and it lands at number 15 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

Floor-to-ceiling illuminated pillars playing curated digital art greet you before you even reach the casino floor, which sets the tone for this sprawling Strip resort. The Cosmopolitan runs a serious collection of restaurants from celebrity chefs, popular bars, boutique shops, and a pool scene that converts to an ice rink come winter. The crowd skews stylish and self-aware, which fits a hotel that opened during a recession and never once acted like it.

The Original Muscle Beach sits just out front, which tells you something about the neighborhood this hotel walked into. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Pacific, the pool deck pulls everyone outside, and rooms come with marble soaking tubs and yoga mats in case you'd rather not think about the gymnasts next door. Michael Mina runs the Mediterranean restaurant. A Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star.

A pastel Italian villa dropped into Houston's Uptown neighborhood, Hotel Granduca plays the part with enough conviction that you half-expect to hear Vespas. It's a Forbes Four Star hotel with a private-residence feel: chauffeur service, personal trainers, a heated outdoor pool, and multiple spots to dine tucked into the veranda, conservatory, and club room. Quiet and self-contained enough to forget the city exists outside.

The clock tower that once held the city's tallest point now holds Ian Schrager's boutique hotel in the Flatiron District, a collaboration with Marriott that somehow kept its cool. Rooms sit above Madison Square Park, which means the 360-degree views range from good to unreasonable depending on the floor. Chelsea, NoMad, and Greenwich Village are all within easy reach, though the hotel itself gives you decent reasons to stay put.

A corner wine bar in a rambling old house in the Bywater, with a backyard that somehow becomes the whole point. The wine list roams globally and you buy bottles at the shop counter, then take them outside where live music is usually happening and the vibe is somewhere between dinner party and block party. Cheese plates, light bites, no dress code implied. Named among the 50 most essential bars in America by Wildsam.

There's no sign on Eldridge Street, just a faux tailor's shop window with a glowing "A" and a buzzer you'll wait at long enough to second-guess yourself. This is the cocktail bar that opened in the old Milk & Honey space after Sasha Petraske moved on, and it runs on the same no-menu, tell-us-what-you-like philosophy. North America's 50 Best Bars lists it, and the wait outside on any given night suggests people have read that list.

Forty-nine Spanish hacienda casitas spread across 45 acres of rolling Rancho Santa Fe hills, each with a fireplace trimmed in hand-painted tile, beamed ceilings, a private garden patio, and a soaking tub big enough to take seriously. This Forbes Five Star resort sits far enough from the coast to feel genuinely removed, yet Del Mar and La Jolla are close. A spa, racquet sports program, and golf privileges round things out for guests who consider unplugging a full-time project.

The grand staircase descending from the Villard Mansion gates is the kind of entrance that makes you feel like you've arrived somewhere, even if you live nearby. This midtown luxury hotel spreads across a landmarked 19th-century mansion and a modern tower, with marble bathrooms, deep beds, and work desks in the standard rooms. The Triplex Suites climb to 5,000 square feet with Art Deco details and private rooftop terraces, if you're keeping score.

The lobby is a long, dim, Art Deco-inspired corridor that makes you walk past a very glamorous staircase before you find the front desk, which is a choice. This Midtown hotel is Sofitel's North American flagship, 29 floors a short walk from Bryant Park, and the whole thing leans into a Franco-New York elegance that stops just short of being a bit much. Rooms are quiet and well-dressed, and the staff keeps things moving.

A neoclassical tower in the middle of Midtown, half a mile from the Renzo Piano-designed High Museum and a short walk from Piedmont Park. Rooms run to leather headboards, velvet sitting chairs, and original work by Atlanta painter Caroline Bullock. Bar Margot, named after the Wes Anderson character, pulls in DJ nights on weekends. The spa's weekday happy hour treatment menu suggests someone had fun with the concept.

The hook here is a tabletop grill: you cook your own steak, then order a freezer martini cold enough to make your teeth ache. The Butterscotch Den calls itself a "fine dive bar," and the label does the work, precision cocktails and live jazz alongside hot dogs and fondue. Esquire named its freezer martini among the top in America, and the crowd seems to know it, treating the whole room like a very good secret they've stopped keeping.

The vaulted stained-glass ceiling in the lobby alone makes a case for booking a room. This landmark hotel in downtown Nashville holds a Michelin two-key distinction and two restaurants from Jean-Georges Vongerichten, which is either a perk or a trap depending on your willpower. Guest rooms lean into Southern warmth without tipping into kitsch, and the building itself has been a fixture of the city long enough to feel genuinely rooted in it.

A Forbes Four Star hotel tucked into an East Palo Alto office park, which is either an odd choice or a very deliberate one depending on your relationship with Sand Hill Road. The lobby leans smart and modern, with digital art and velvet loveseats that soften the corporate surroundings. Two hundred guest rooms come with spacious bath suites and the kind of beds Four Seasons has built its reputation on. Quattro handles California-Italian; the lobby café handles the pre-meeting espresso.

A bowling alley, an ice rink, and a nightclub share a building with 294 rooms, private bungalows, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten running the kitchen. Ian Schrager's oceanfront hotel on Collins Avenue stacks mid-century bones against a very modern idea of a good time, with two pools, a spa, and a stretch of semi-private beach for when the indoor chaos gets to be a bit much. Forbes Four Star.

Forty-seven rooms occupy what was once a department store in Uptown Charlotte, and the bones of that building give this boutique hotel a grandeur that newer construction can't fake. French ironwork, chandeliers, and a secret library lean into the Paris-meets-Charlotte-society vibe without tipping into theme park. A Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key. Church and Union steakhouse anchors the ground floor, and the rest of Uptown is a short walk.

A four-tap absinthe drip at the center of the bar is a replica of the one at the Absinthe House in New Orleans, and that tells you most of what you need to know. Maison Premiere is a cocktail and oyster bar in Williamsburg that commits fully to the bit: dim golden light, mock antique everything, marble bar top, the faint sense that you've wandered into another city and century. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks.

Kenneth Treister's curved, organic architecture from the eighties has been kept intact here, just polished up by a New York studio with good taste. This hotel sits in Coconut Grove rather than on Miami Beach, which tells you something about who it's for: people who'd rather have shady sidewalks and actual trees than a parade of resort umbrellas. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys, and the mood throughout is romantic and a little eccentric, in the best Coconut Grove tradition.

The facade of a 1929 Chicago landmark wraps this boutique luxury hotel on Rush Street, where Art Deco details share space with 21st-century comforts. It's named for sculptor Gwen Lux, whose work still ornaments the exterior, and the fifth-floor lobby leans into that Jazz Age identity hard. A rooftop bar with firepits, a weekend Tipsy Tea, and a see-and-be-seen cocktail lounge round out a property that holds a Michelin Key.

Ian Schrager's Lower East Side hotel skips the front desk entirely: check-in happens when a "PUBLIC Advisor" finds you in the lobby. The idea behind the place is that luxury and accessibility don't have to be mutually exclusive, which sounds like a tagline until you see it in practice. It's on the World's 50 Best Hotels list, and the Michelin Guide has it selected. Stylish without the velvet-rope attitude, which in New York counts for something.

A Beaux-Arts building from 1911 meeting W Hotels' anything-but-1911 sensibility is exactly as entertaining as it sounds. The Rockwell Group handled this hotel's original 2001 debut and came back to renovate it, which either shows loyalty or a need to finish what they started. The Living Room lobby has soaring ceilings and marble columns that read a little Grand Central, and a rooftop bar sits up on the 22nd floor for anyone who needs a view with their cocktail.

Two buildings knocked into one give Scofflaw two distinct personalities: an industrial front room with the bar counter, and a Victorian-ish back room with wingback armchairs that somehow doesn't feel ironic. It's a gin-focused cocktail bar in Logan Square that also leans dive, with craft beer and pub grub to prove it. Expect a line on weekends; they don't take reservations, and forty minutes is a reasonable opening bid.