The Best Places to Eat and Do in the United States

Eight seats behind a half-moon counter, tucked past the cocktail lounge like a room that doesn't want to be found. Noda is an omakase spot with a Michelin star and a genuine speakeasy mood, dark and close, where the chef moves through each piece of nigiri with a calm precision that makes the room go quiet. A deep sake list and vintage Champagne round things out, which is either restrained luxury or showing off, depending on your table.

Hidden behind Sugarfish in Beverly Hills, this jewel-box omakase counter operates as its own thing entirely, with no connection to the chain out front. The chef, a traditionalist who still finds room for surprises, runs a tight sequence of nigiri, sashimi, and handrolls built around exceptional seafood. It holds a Michelin star, and the room seats few enough that you're watching every cut happen in front of you.

A hidden omakase counter tucked inside a sushi restaurant that itself sits inside a shopping center with Rolex and Dior for neighbors, which tells you something about the clientele and the price point. The chef runs a long, deliberate procession of nigiri and small courses, with hay-smoked fish and hay-smoked coals doing real work throughout. A Michelin-starred room where the sake list, available by the glass, is longer than you'd expect.

A tasting menu restaurant tucked into a strip mall on Ventura Boulevard, which is either a joke or a dare. The format is intimate and genuinely theatrical: drinks and a snack up front in a bar, then a procession of modern Italian-leaning pasta courses that push well past Italian tradition. The cooking holds a Michelin star, and the staff seem to know it without being insufferable about it.

A Michelin-starred omakase counter tucked into a Laguna Beach strip mall, which is either a joke or a lesson in not judging by the parking lot. Chef Jordan Nakasone runs two seatings a night, and the menu moves between precise, traditional nigiri and kitchen courses with a looser, more playful hand. Service is the kind that's present without being felt. The room is quiet, the pacing deliberate, and the whole thing lands closer to ceremony than dinner.

The name means "queen" in Sanskrit, which sets the tone before you've even sat down. Rania is a prix-fixe contemporary Indian spot in DC, Michelin-starred, where the kitchen treats the subcontinent's pantry as a starting point rather than a boundary. Cocktails are built to hold their own against the bold, layered food rather than just stand politely beside it. The room draws the kind of crowd that dresses for the occasion.

Old-school Hollywood glamour on El Camino Real sounds like a contradiction, but Selby's pulls it off. This is fine dining, the kind where the servers are sharply dressed and seem to have been born knowing which fork goes where. The kitchen leans into classic American comfort, given a subtle lift by produce from the team's own private farm. The chocolate cake has become a signature for a reason. Michelin has awarded it one star.

A Michelin-starred omakase counter tucked into a Ventura Boulevard strip mall, which is either a surprise or a very Los Angeles thing, depending on your outlook. The chef trained for decades at serious sushi houses on both coasts, and his rice alone signals that something careful is happening here. The mood runs warmer than the minimalist room implies, and solo diners slot in comfortably at the counter without feeling like an afterthought.

The Jerusalem bagel arrives piping hot with olive oil and holds its own in a city that takes bagels personally. That confidence runs through everything at Eyal Shani's neo-Levantine restaurant in Greenwich Village, a one-Michelin-star spot where the compact room fills before the door swings open. Vegetables, seasonality, and sharing drive the menu, but the bone-in short rib tends to settle any debate about whether you needed meat.

Rice milled in-house, fish dry-aged on-site, and a room small enough that everyone sits down at the same time, as if you've all been invited to the same dinner party. This Michelin-starred omakase sushi counter on Helena Ave moves through nigiri at a pace the chef sets, not you. The menu shifts daily or weekly, so repeat visits don't repeat themselves. Sparkling wine in the entryway while you wait is a civilized touch that earns its place.

Tucked inside Paso's industrial Tin City, this tasting menu spot holds a Michelin star and a wood counter that wraps around an open kitchen like a front-row seat at the best show in town. The chef dry-ages fish and meat, lets the sauces do the talking, and somehow makes desserts the thing you'll remember longest. Small wine producers get most of the list.

A rooftop garden feeds the kitchen at this fine dining room on a quiet Pacific Heights block, so the herbs and edible flowers on your plate were growing upstairs not long ago. The chef, trained at Quince, makes pasta the way people talk about pasta, and holds a Michelin star for it. The menu moves through small bites and crudo before landing on those handmade shapes, each one a quiet argument that Northern California and Italy have a lot to discuss.

A tasting menu built on the idea that modern Korean cooking had a gap in San Francisco worth filling. Hyunyoung and Junsoo Bae brought serious fine dining backgrounds to Polk Street, and the result is a Michelin-starred room where the cooking leans on familiar Korean flavors but strips everything back to something quieter and more precise. The crowd dresses up, the pacing is unhurried, and the kitchen seems happiest when a single clean bite does all the talking.

A spa tucked into 300 acres of Vermont farmland and wilderness, Bridge House sits within the Twin Farms property, where seclusion is the point and the surroundings do most of the work. The setting alone, all rolling fields and forest, makes a strong case for doing very little very slowly. Twin Farms holds a Forbes Four Star and two Michelin Keys, so the spa operates at a particular altitude of calm.

Sixteen treatment rooms keep this Forbes Four Star mountain spa feeling more like a private retreat than a hotel amenity. Organic facials and massages lean on seasonal ingredients, and the treatment rooms look straight out at towering pines, which does most of the interior decorator's work for free. The fireplace lounge afterward is the kind of place where people lose track of entire afternoons.

The spa at the Ritz-Carlton Sarasota holds a Forbes Four Star rating, which sets the tone before you've even changed into a robe. It sits inside one of those hotels that can't stop itself from offering everything, golf course, beach club, seafood restaurant, so the spa functions as the quiet room where you pretend the rest of it isn't happening. Treatments skew toward the indulgent end, and the surroundings make it easy to lose track of the afternoon.

The Harbor salt scrub is a clue: this spa leans into its Inner Harbor address rather than pretending to be a mountain retreat. Eleven treatment rooms, a cluster of relaxation spaces, and a Forbes Four Star rating give it the full resort-spa feel without leaving the city. Come early enough to work through the relaxation rooms before your appointment, or the whole thing starts to feel like rushing a nap.

A three-story spa inside the famous chocolate-themed resort, where the treatment menu leans hard into the theme: whipped cocoa baths, chocolate bean polishes, and presumably staff who've made peace with the irony. Beyond the cocoa conceit, the 30,000-square-foot facility covers the full range, with soaking tubs, steam rooms, saunas, an inhalation room, hydrotherapy showers, and a pool. It holds a Forbes Four Star rating.

A spa where the treatments are essentially a love letter to the cliffs outside: coastal sage scrubs, pine exfoliation, and seawater hydrotherapy baths that borrow directly from the landscape. The champagne facial, using yeast extracts, sounds like a premise from a sketch show but draws a loyal following. A Forbes Four Star property, and the kind of afternoon that makes driving back to reality feel genuinely inconvenient.

A kaiseki counter in the East Village built around a single idea: moonlight. The name translates to "moon viewing," and the room takes that literally, with illuminated ceramic shelves and mirrored panels catching every gleam. The seasonal tasting menu moves with the kind of quiet confidence that doesn't need to announce itself, and the sake list, ordered à la carte, is the right move. Tsukimi holds a Michelin star.

Uberto is a tasting-menu dining room on a resort's rolling green hills, about an hour from Atlanta, open for dinner on Fridays and Saturdays only. It holds a Michelin star. The kitchen leans on farm-grown ingredients, with plenty of fermenting and preserving going on behind the scenes. Expect a special-occasion budget, a drive that doubles as a minor expedition, and a reservation you'll want to secure well ahead.

A kaiseki tasting counter in a San Mateo strip mall, which is either a great joke or a great lesson in not reading the room by its cover. Chef Katsuhiro Yamasaki runs the kitchen solo, his wife runs the dining room, and together they turn out a monthly changing menu that marries classical Japanese technique with California produce. The place holds a Michelin star, and the food makes that feel like a matter of fact.

A mosaic-tiled lap pool and changing rooms lined with white stone set the Greek-inspired tone at this hotel spa on the fourth floor of the Waldorf Astoria. Massages and facials are the bread and butter, but the signature two-hour treatment layers a coffee-and-lemon scrub, a clay wrap, and a full-body massage into something that reads less like a spa menu and more like a Roman senator's afternoon. Forbes Four Star.

Verzênay is a Lincoln Park patisserie where the French classics arrive in textbook form: chocolate eclairs, crackly kouign-amann, a sourdough baguette that's often still warm. It also keeps an apple pie and a mango passionfruit cheesecake in the case, which the French would presumably allow. The Chicago macaron, filled with caramel, popcorn, and cheddar, is a Garrett Popcorn tribute in cookie form. Saturday mornings call for an early alarm.

The open kitchen glows at the center of the room like the whole thing was staged, which it sort of was, by Daniel Rose. This is a proper French fine dining restaurant, unapologetically so, with a Michelin star and a menu that runs to quenelles and sweetbreads without a trace of irony. The crowd is worth watching but so is the food, which is classical enough to feel like a lesson and personal enough to feel alive.

Dan Barber's Greenwich Village dining room runs a single fixed menu, served family-style, that arrives at the table with almost no interference from the kitchen. Vegetables from Blue Hill at Stone Barns upstate carry most of the meal, with grains and proteins woven in to support rather than star. It holds a Michelin star, and the room has the kind of quiet confidence that comes from a team that has stopped needing to prove anything.

The menu changes entirely with each new theme, so you might land on ancient Rome or a meticulous recreation of Escoffier's Paris. It's a tasting-menu restaurant in Fulton Market where the conceit is the whole point, and the kitchen takes it seriously enough that it works. A Michelin star lives here. Come curious, leave wondering what the next theme could possibly be.

A glass-walled wine cellar you can see right through the dining room sets the tone at this elegant Saratoga fine dining destination, which holds a Michelin star. The kitchen runs on California's seasons, offered as a tasting menu or a multicourse prix fixe, and the chef navigates meat, seafood, and vegetables with the same easy confidence. The room is quiet and unhurried, the kind where the sommelier actually knows the cellar cold.

The Parker House rolls come out warm before anything else, which sets the tone for what this is: a proper Michelin-starred New American restaurant that quietly ignores its roadside-tavern name. The prix fixe menu leans on impeccable sourcing, and the wine list runs deep into Burgundy and Bordeaux. The room is polished, the service graceful, and the crowd tends to arrive having already made a reservation months in advance.

Berlu is a Vietnamese bakery on SE Belmont where everything is gluten- and dairy-free, and the star is a springy green pandan sponge cake so beloved that its portrait decorates the bathroom walls. You can also buy socks printed with its face. The chef won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific, which tells you he can cook, though the line is mostly there for the cake with the merch.

Travis Lett, who put Gjelina on the map, runs this izakaya on Abbot Kinney with a partner. The room reads warm despite the cool-kid address, and the kitchen leans hard into vegetables, with that section of the menu running longer than most places' entire offerings. The drinks pull as much weight as the food. Named a James Beard Best New Restaurant Semifinalist and on the New York Times Restaurant List, it's the kind of spot where even the clam ramen feels like a considered argument.

A blown-glass chandelier hangs over the bar at this contemporary French fine dining room tucked into one of Midtown's newer towers, and the soaring ceilings and warm tones make the room feel less corporate than the address suggests. Daniel Boulud and his team steer the menu toward seafood and vegetables with global touches throughout. The whole thing holds a Michelin star, which fits the quietly serious crowd that fills it on a weeknight.

Rootstalk is a contemporary restaurant in a refurbished Victorian on Breckenridge's Main Street, the sort of house where you half expect to be asked to wipe your boots, though the plates inside are far more composed than the exterior suggests. The chef holds a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mountain, and there's a chef's counter tasting menu for anyone who'd rather be narrated to than order.