The Best Places to Drink and Stay in the United States

The Columns is a hotel bar on Saint Charles with chandeliers the size of small cars and antique furniture that makes a glass of house wine feel like an occasion. Esquire has put its martini on a list of the country's best. The porch is the move on a slow afternoon, with a drink in hand and the streetcar rolling past every few minutes like a very slow parade. Dress nicely, but nobody will check.

Wood-paneled walls, low ceilings, and stacks of empty beer cans that the owners drank themselves make this Gateway District beer bar feel like a 1970s Midwest den that somehow got transplanted to Las Vegas. The rotating draft list is the point, and bartenders will steer you through it without making you feel like a student. The Underberg shot at the end is apparently non-negotiable. Wildsam named it one of the 50 most essential bars in America.

Tiger Bar is a gin-leaning cocktail bar on Gallatin Pike dressed as a 1930s carnival sideshow, and it commits without tipping into costume party. There's a mystery cocktail wheel you can spin to let fate pick your drink, which saves you from the menu and also from yourself. The Flamin' Hot Mozz Sticks have a Nashville Scene award, and Esquire put the place on its list of America's bars.

Saguaros crowd the view in every direction at this Ritz-Carlton resort tucked against the Tortolita Mountains outside Tucson, and the property leans hard into that setting. More than twenty miles of hiking trails, three pools, a Jack Nicklaus golf course, and a spa built around holistic desert treatments all sit on the grounds. Private stargazing is on offer too, which makes sense when the sky is that dark. It holds a Forbes Five Star and a Michelin Key.

Private cottages tucked into 550 acres against the Santa Ynez Mountains, with the Pacific spread out below. San Ysidro Ranch is a resort that has been a discreet hideaway forever, the kind of place where Winston Churchill and the honeymooning Kennedys came specifically to be left alone. The cottages are the point, not the lobby scene. It landed on the World's 50 Best Hotels list, which tracks for somewhere this quietly serious about making guests disappear.

Low ceilings with thick wood beams, amber light, and banquettes that make every table feel like a booth in the back of someone's private club. Bartolo is a Spanish restaurant in the West Village, the kind where you order oxtail braised in red wine and suckling pig and let the table fill up. The martini list has its own following, and the servers are sharp enough to keep a long night moving without making it feel rushed.

The dirty martini here landed on Esquire's list of the finest in the country, which tracks: the bar occupies the old Picasso space at the Bellagio, with the fountains putting on their show just outside. It's the cocktail outpost of the Carbone empire, so the room skews dressed-up and the pours skew generous. Order the martini, watch the water, and feel no obligation to explain yourself.

The turquoise Garden District mansion has been turning out Modern New Orleans Creole since Ella Brennan and a young Emeril Lagasse were essentially inventing the genre together. Fine dining in the grand sense, white tablecloths and all, though the room skews festive rather than stiff. Meg Bickford runs the kitchen now, keeping the cooking by turns classicist and a little bodacious. Wine Enthusiast put the cellar in its Hall of Fame, and the weekday lunch martinis go for a quarter.

The checkered tile floors and art-lined stone walls make it look like a Parisian bistro that wandered into the West Loop and decided to stay. Creepies is a neighborhood French restaurant from the team behind Elske next door, with a concise menu that leans classic and slides Midwestern where it can. The vesper martini landed on Esquire's list of the best in the country, which is not nothing for a place called Creepies.

Culebra is a narrow, dark Puerto Rican cocktail bar in Logan Square where the entrance is the first puzzle, so expect to ask a stranger where it is. Inside, a loud bomba soundtrack keeps everyone bouncing, drinks run to a Malta-sweetened highball, a spicy rum swizzle, and a plantain shot. The Infatuation put it on its list of the 'it' bars across America, which is how the line out front got started.

Doris is a tiny cocktail bar that keeps weeknight hours only, which tells you who it's built for. The drinks come in small, rippled coupes, some barely a mouthful, and the snack mix has nutritional yeast on it, which sounds like a dare but isn't. Prices run after-work-drinks rather than special occasion. Expect the 4pm-on-a-Tuesday set and a few people who definitely own a ring light.

Frankie's Summer Club is a seasonal outdoor bar tucked into the courtyard of a former art school, which is exactly the kind of sentence that makes you check your shoes. It's a leafy garden with a jazz trio, playful cocktails, and bar food that includes fried swordfish skewers. It's technically members-only, though visitors can sign up online, and it shuts down in September. The Infatuation put it on its list of 'It' bars right now.

Gosh is a cocktail bar in Chinatown that behaves like a funhouse with a guest list, which means showing up and asking nicely is a legitimate strategy. Servers wear Adidas track jackets, the stools look like gnomes, and the basement glows a menacing red. Upstairs there's a confessional for your sins, and the carajillo arrives candy-sweet. The Infatuation put it on its list of the 'It' bars across America.

A live-fire hearth anchors the open kitchen at this midcentury modern restaurant in San Antonio's Pearl District, where the menu is organized around Texas ingredients and built for sharing, with a dedicated steak section and a Texas-focused wine list. The name nods to the patron saint of farmers, and the sourcing follows through. It holds a Michelin star and landed on the New York Times Restaurant List in 2025.

Red leather banquettes, white tablecloths, a snappy U-shaped bar, and a shiny open kitchen pack into fifty seats on Dickerson Pike. This is a French-leaning dinner spot where smoke drifts in from a Basque-style wood-fire hearth and the wine list has Brooklyn credentials. Philip Krajeck's third Nashville restaurant has landed on the New York Times' list of Nashville's 25 best, which for a room this quietly romantic feels about right.

Kenny's Upstairs is a queer-owned cocktail bar you reach by climbing a red neon-lit staircase, which sets expectations for the '80s movie set waiting at the top, complete with a phone booth and old mall food court posters. The drinks get serious attention, down to shots chased with house khao soi broth, though a Hamm's and a corndog are also on the table. St. Louis bartenders send you here if they like your face.

A converted farmhouse in North Salem with sweeping views of actual countryside, which somehow makes the tasting menu feel earned rather than theatrical. This is a Michelin-starred modern French fine dining room with very few tables, run by a husband-and-wife team whose roots are in the south of France. The cooking is precise and quietly confident, and dessert gets its own moment to shine. Esquire named the Vesper martini among the finest in America, which is a strange fact about a farmhouse, and a good one.

Las Rosas is a dive bar on NW 7th Ave that closed for a few years, then reopened looking like nobody had touched it, which is the correct amount of renovation. It's all cheap shots, a back alley where cigarettes change hands between strangers, and a Saturday-night guitar solo at a volume your ears will file a complaint about. It's the opposite of South Beach, with no velvet rope and no one's cousin running the list. Closing time is roughly 5am.

Concrete floors and dark leather in a South Austin building that could pass for a tech lobby, except the menu is French and the martinis have made a small national name for themselves. Le Calamar is a neighborhood bistro where the food leans sharing plates, the wine list sneaks in some Texas pours, and the baked Alaska arrives with honey pecan dacquoise and torched meringue like it has something to prove.

A Flatiron bar tricked out like a 1970s Bangkok shophouse, with vintage televisions and family photos on the walls and Thai cocktails on the menu. The jasmine martini landed on Esquire's list of the best martinis in America, which gives you a sense of how seriously the drinks program is taken. The kitchen keeps pace with late-night Thai food that pairs naturally with the cocktails. Open late, which the neighborhood needed.

Maestro is a downtown Tulsa cocktail bar that skips the crowds and pours a smooth, stiff drink for the end of a long day. Settle in with a caipirinha and pretend the room is a sexy villa while young film-industry types wade through a conversation about tequila terroir. The Infatuation put it on its list of the "It" bars across America, which is a lot of pressure for a place with no patience for pressure.

The green salad here became a Philadelphia talking point, which tells you everything about what kind of tavern this is. Meetinghouse is an American bar and kitchen in Fishtown where the menu looks almost suspiciously plain, right up until the food arrives. The hot roast beef sandwich and pork-and-beans both suggest a kitchen treating simple things as the whole point, not the backup plan. Named to The New York Times Restaurant List for 2025.

The pool table shares the room with people in stilettos, which tells you most of what you need to know about Parley. It's a neighborhood bar on East Cesar Chavez run by two Irishmen who seem unbothered by the idea that a bar can be dim and comfortable and also genuinely cool. Screens handle both the big game and arthouse film. The drinks run strong, the food leans comfort with a global detour, and the dress code is apparently optional.

A 22-seat Korean fine dining room where the staff never once mentions that the kitchen runs as a nonprofit focused on zero waste, letting the tasting menu speak for itself instead. Edward Lee's cooking gives traditional Korean ingredients a modern setting, moving through courses that land somewhere between precise and quietly surprising. The Korean spirits list leans into the esoteric, including a crimson makgeolli made with red yeast rice.

The French onion soup has been on the menu since day one, which tells you something about how Oxford feels about this place. Snackbar is a warm, wood-paneled Southern restaurant with an oyster bar, cocktail bar, and booths deep enough to disappear into. The kitchen weaves Indian flavors through the menu without making it a theme, so masala pot pie sits comfortably next to whatever's seasonal. Esquire named its martini among the finest in the country.

Coffee arrives at Specs spiked with Cynar, corrected with maple cream liqueur, or topped with Angostura whipped cream, all from 8am. It's a coffee shop and daytime cocktail bar in Winooski, the former mill town next door to Burlington, where the crafty set debates linocut workshops in the sunny windows while big dreamers at the bar puzzle over how to dome the town rotary. When talks stall, the attached bev mart stocks 24-ounce Busch Ice and cigarettes.

The views of Mission Bay and the Giants' ballpark hit you before the menu does, which is saying something at this fine dining Italian in Mission Rock. The room leans into sun-faded Tuscan coastal tones, warm wood, and low light that flatters everyone. Pasta is the kitchen's clearest argument: hand-rolled pici in slow-cooked garlic and tomato, Dungeness crab orzo cooked risotto-style. Esquire named the martini one of the country's finest, which gives you somewhere to start.

The unmarked door on the second floor of a Japanese restaurant looks exactly like where a broom lives, which is precisely the point. Angel's Share is a speakeasy-style cocktail bar with booth banquettes, bare brick, velvet curtains, and lighting set to confession-booth low. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, and the room feels like it has always known that. Come early, come two, and find the door before someone else needs the mop.

The menu at this natural wine bar is whatever your bartender decides to tell you about, because nothing is written down. That's a feature, not an oversight. Light Years occupies a converted bungalow on Alabama, pouring organic, biodynamic, and low-intervention bottles that Esquire flagged for its Best Bars in America list. Sit at the bar and let whoever's pouring lead; the conversation is kind of the point.

A porch plopped in the driveway and a wall of giant palms make the front door a small scavenger hunt. Inside it's a coffeehouse by day and a cocktail bar by night, all worn midcentury furniture, with laptop people nursing cortados and a short wine list that includes an orange. The food is croissants from elsewhere, and the espresso martini is on the menu, as it legally must be.

The wide black awning stretches almost the full width of Park Avenue, which tells you everything about the register this hotel is playing in. It's a luxury Upper East Side property with an old-money residential feel, rooms styled like Manhattan apartments, and the kind of quietly confident lobby that makes newcomers stand up a little straighter. Central Park is a short walk, Madison Avenue boutiques are closer still.

The patio seating is made from repurposed toilets and road signs, which tells you everything about the vibe before you've ordered a drink. Double Wide is a Deep Ellum dive bar with a trailer park aesthetic, cheap and stiff pours, and a music venue across the patio hosting bands and DJs on most nights. Wildsam named it one of the 50 most essential bars in America, which somehow feels both surprising and completely correct.

Bungalows carved into black lava rock replace the usual hotel tower here, which tells you a lot about the Four Seasons Hualalai's approach to resort life on the Big Island. The saltwater pool has cabanas that close for full privacy, and a separate encounter pool lets you swim alongside eagle rays. The adults-only pool and a Jack Nicklaus golf course exist for those not chasing fish. A Forbes Five Star and two Michelin Keys.

Gas fireplaces, four-poster beds, and heated limestone floors set the register at this boutique hotel tucked into a red-brick Mount Vernon mansion. One of the few Black-owned boutique hotels in the country, it holds a Michelin two-key distinction. A courtyard handles breakfast and afternoon tea; the on-site restaurant, Magdalena, draws its own following. The spa is small and the whole operation is quiet, which is rather the point.

The building was the Federal Reserve Bank once, and The Langham has kept enough of that fortress-grade exterior to remind you money used to feel serious. Inside, it's a full-service luxury hotel done in softened British style, which sits amusingly well in Boston's Financial District. A lap pool, Italian dining at Grana, and a New England-inflected pub called The Fed cover most moods without ever leaving the building. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys.

Beacon Hill is the kind of neighborhood that eyes new arrivals with suspicion, so a boutique hotel on Charles Street has something to prove. The Whitney pulls it off with red brick on the outside and interiors that split the difference between old-money Boston and something you'd actually want to photograph. It holds two Michelin Keys, and the Longfellow Bridge is right there if you need a walk to justify the room rate.

Meadowlark is a cozy cocktail bar in Chicago where the menu is a hardbound book, and it takes its research more seriously than most dissertations. Past editions have covered Midwest birds and the 1893 World's Fair, each drink tied to a landmark with a sepia watercolor beside it. Neighbors, bartenders on their night off, and tourists share the room. It also won the Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award at North America's 50 Best Bars.

The neon sign and wrought-iron balconies have been drawing poets, musicians, and general troublemakers to this West Chelsea hotel for generations. A recent restoration brought it back without sanding off the mythology, which is a harder trick than it sounds. Rooms feel like somewhere a person could actually live, which many people famously did. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Dylan Thomas drank here; Taylor Swift wrote a song about it.

Live music fills the room most nights at this Cuban cocktail bar and restaurant on Calle Ocho, where the décor slides between Havana and mid-century Miami without quite landing in either. Michelle Bernstein and cocktail veteran Julio Cabrera run the place together, which means the food and the drinks get equal attention. It holds a spot on The World's 50 Best Bars list, and the James Beard Foundation named it an Outstanding Bar Semifinalist.

A 30-foot teal wall inscribed with Marcel Proust greets you in the lobby, which sets the tone for this Gold Coast boutique hotel with more personality than most. The 180 rooms lean midcentury, with a warm gold-and-teal palette and guest room doors in mismatched colors. A rooftop bar handles cocktails and skyline views, and Oak Street Beach is a short walk. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Bitters are both the obsession and the inventory at this tiny East Village cocktail bar, which also sells an overwhelming wall of the stuff to take home. A dozen seats, a menu split between house originals and riffs on classics, and a bespoke option built around a Negroni, Manhattan, or Old-Fashioned if you'd rather just tell them what you're feeling. House-made vermouth pours on tap. A James Beard semifinalist, and the kind of place that makes you feel smarter for having gone.

Named for Lucian Freud, this 40-seat wine restaurant and bookshop in Buckhead stocks art and fashion volumes alongside a list serious enough to earn a James Beard semifinalist nod for its beverage program. The seasonal American menu runs to ricotta gnudi and caviar-topped omelets, the kind of food that pairs naturally with whatever the wine director opens next. Shelves full of books for sale make lingering feel practically obligatory.

Yachts outnumber cars in the parking situation here, which tells you what kind of hotel this is. The Ritz-Carlton sits on a large man-made marina about five miles from LAX, and the water views are relentless, from the pool deck to the guest rooms. A Forbes Four Star property, it offers paddleboarding, parasailing, and jet-skiing alongside a spa for those who prefer their recreation horizontal. LA's beach chaos feels surprisingly distant.

The keypad combination lives behind a bookcase at the Four Seasons, and the concierge will share it once you've booked one of the twenty seats. Bandista is a speakeasy cocktail bar whose drinks draw from Prohibition's smuggling routes and the tequileros who ran the Mexican border, which gives the menu a Latin angle that the 1920s decor alone wouldn't suggest. North America's 50 Best Bars placed it at number 47.

Highballs and boilermakers anchor the menu at this jovial Japanese cocktail bar tucked into a Greenwich Village basement, where the drinks list stays refreshingly short and Japanese spirits do most of the talking. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which feels about right for a room that punches well above its unpretentious footprint. Go for the sake selection if you're curious; stay for the cocktails once you are.

A Romanesque Revival building that spent its postwar years full of artists' lofts is now a boutique hotel that essentially defined what a SoHo loft hotel looks like. Christian Liaigre's renovation gave the rooms their spare, low-slung calm, and that aesthetic has aged better than most of its imitators. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Style-world regulars still treat it as a default, which is either a recommendation or a warning, depending on your feelings about that crowd.

The name comes from an era when locals climbed to the roof to watch atomic test blasts light up the Nevada sky. This old-school bar on Fremont Street has been around forever, and the Rat Pack drank here after their shows, which sets the tone pretty neatly. The red-tinted interior leans into Atomic Age kitsch, sour beers are a specialty, and the patio out back is where late nights tend to end up.

A full page of negronis is either a menu or a dare, and Dante in Greenwich Village has been inviting people to find out for longer than anyone cares to count. This Italian cocktail cafe and all-day aperitivo spot leans into its old-school bones without getting musty about it, pairing the drinks with burrata and charcuterie. Named a James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist and ranked on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

A 43-room hotel tucked into Pacific Heights so quietly it reads as a mansion on the block. Wood-paneled lobby, inlaid floors, and actual metal keys behind the front desk telegraph the vibe: old San Francisco, the residential kind, not the tourist kind. Cream-and-white rooms, heated bathroom floors, complimentary breakfast, and a wine reception round it out. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Roman & Williams brought their loft-luxe aesthetic to a 26-story tower in Tampa's Water Street district, and the result is an EDITION hotel that feels less like a Gulf Coast newcomer and more like a confident transplant from somewhere with stronger opinions about lobby design. Seven dining and drinking venues include some built for live performance, with menus overseen by John Fraser. A rooftop pool, a full-service spa, and a Forbes Four Star round out the picture.

Each of the 28 rooms and cottages at this all-inclusive Vermont resort is decorated in its own distinct world, from a fishing-themed rustic retreat to a full Moroccan hideaway with painted ceilings and tilework. Set on 300 acres of Southern Vermont farmland and forest, it lends itself to hiking, canoeing, fly fishing, and cross-country skiing. The resort holds a Forbes Five Star. Couples tend to find their way here, which says enough.

A 35-story glass tower with a gem-shaped dome is an unusual choice for a brand associated with white stone and afternoon tea, but Portland is an unusual city. The Ritz-Carlton here holds a Michelin Key and leans hard into the Pacific Northwest, with forest-themed interiors, an alpine-inspired pool, and rooms meant to evoke Oregon's mountain rivers. The 19th-floor spa and Mount Hood views make a persuasive case for staying in rather than exploring.

Spanish Colonial Revival bones dressed up with Moorish tilework and Moroccan touches give this Forbes Four Star hotel a look that's hard to place geographically, which seems to be the point. Three buildings arranged like a small village sit a short walk from East and West Beach, with two restaurants, a rooftop pool, and enough fountains and red-tiled rooflines to make Santa Barbara feel like a foreign country, which Santa Barbara sort of already does.

A stone exterior and courtyard fountain set the tone for this mid-mountain ski-in hotel in Silver Lake Village, a short run from Deer Valley's slopes. The look is French mountain chalet; the amenities are firmly American, including a heated pool, two hot tubs, a spa, and suites with fireplaces, jetted tubs, and kitchens. The Forbes Four Star property houses an Italian restaurant and a lounge with live music for après-ski that skips the pretense.

The tiger-print carpet and floor-to-ceiling scarlet bookshelves are a clue: this was once a city hall library, and the Parisian team behind Candelaria and Le Mary Celeste had the good sense not to gut it. Now it's a French cocktail bar leaning heavily on vermouths and amaros, the kind of place where the aperitif hour has a way of quietly becoming midnight.

A plantation-style inn tucked into the Blue Ridge foothills where most guests book a room and a table in the same breath, treating dinner as the main event and sleep as the gracious afterthought. The chef has held a Michelin star for years, and the Forbes Five Star rating keeps the staff sharp. Afternoons run to tea and scones; evenings to tasting menus that take a while. Hike, balloon, or antique between the two.

Money-green walls and brown leather set the tone at this approachable cocktail bar where Filipinotown, Echo Park, and Downtown all bleed together. The crowd reflects the neighborhood mix, and the bar leans into that, keeping menus short and descriptive so nobody feels lost. Seasonal cocktails share space with a Frozen of the Month, which is exactly the kind of menu that means everyone leaves happy. A James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist and on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

Caviar on Bugles with crème fraîche is either the most knowing joke in Seattle or a perfectly sincere snack, and at Roquette it reads as both. This Belltown cocktail bar runs on a French-spirits obsession, armagnac and calvados and absinthe doing most of the heavy lifting while classic shapes get quietly rerouted through Normandy or Cognac. A James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist that landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

A chandelier made of real antlers hangs in the living room beside one shaped like icicles, which tells you everything about the tone here. This 12-suite boutique hotel occupies a limestone schoolhouse in Old Town Park City, with reclaimed barn-wood floors, European antiques, and a fireplace that earns its keep. The chef cooks a complimentary breakfast and après-ski snacks, and a ski valet handles the gear. Park City Mountain is a short walk away.

Fancy Jell-O shots and distilled emu neck share a menu here, which should tell you something about the ambitions of this underground cocktail bar beneath the Riggs Hotel. Red plush, silver trophies, and low ceilings give it the feel of a gentleman's club that took a very interesting turn. The bar comes from Ryan Chetiyawardana, Mr. Lyan himself, and it landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

Poison Girl is a dark, narrow Montrose dive on Westheimer where personal space is treated as a rumor. The bourbon list is deep, but plenty of people at the bar are just ordering Lone Star and nodding at it. Everyone eventually drifts out to the backyard patio, where the evening opens up a little. Dress for sweat and spilled beer, and plan on a cheap tab and a bathroom with a past.

Forty-one rooms and private houses cantilevered over Big Sur's cliffs, each built from reclaimed wood, steel, and stone to look like it grew there. Post Ranch Inn is a luxury clifftop resort where the activity list runs from guided hikes to stargazing, and the things absent are as deliberate as the things present: no TVs, no alarm clocks. The infinity pool stares straight at the Pacific. It holds a Michelin three-key designation and a Forbes Four Star.

Ski-in/ski-out inside the gated Deer Crest community, this St. Regis resort sits on 12 slopeside acres above Park City with stone fireplaces and Juliette balconoes in every room. The split-level infinity pool appears to float over the snow-covered Wasatch Range, and the Yurt Village's heated stargazing domes handle private dining with a certain theatrical flair. Nightly champagne sabrage by the Fire Garden keeps things from getting too wholesome. A Forbes Four Star property.

Lanai has no traffic lights, most of its roads are unpaved, and the Four Seasons sits on a bluff above one of the few beaches in Hawaii inside a marine reserve. It's a full-scale luxury resort, Forbes Five Star and Michelin Key, with a Jack Nicklaus golf course, a spa, koi ponds, and enough pool area to get genuinely lost. Spinner dolphins pass offshore while guests book Jeep excursions or do nothing whatsoever, which is also a perfectly defensible plan.

Kelly Wearstler designed every inch of this hotel inside a century-old flatiron building on Market Street, and the result looks like a well-traveled great-aunt's apartment if that aunt had very strong opinions about pattern. Florals, mirrors, graphic prints, and art clustered floor to ceiling fill the 131 rooms, none identical. Charmaine's rooftop draws a line down the block on weekends, so the lobby's moody bar tends to be the smarter move.

Twenty-seven wooded acres tucked just inside the 610 Loop make this full-service hotel feel less like Houston and more like a very comfortable escape from it. Guest rooms look out over the trees through floor-to-ceiling windows, and the sprawling health club, three pools, and a Forbes Four Star spa fill the hours between. The decor leans into its Texas address without going full steakhouse. Families fill the place on weekends, and nobody seems to be in a hurry.