The Best Places in the United States

Uptown Sporting Club is a sports bar with a giant LED wall and a cocktail list that never got the memo about sports bars. The Caprese Martini runs on tomato-infused vodka, and the brûléed pineapple in the Out of Office suggests someone in the back owns a blowtorch for reasons beyond the game. Wagyu smashburgers and Korean fried chicken cover the food, and DJs take over once the final whistle blows.

Valley Tavern is a neighborhood sports bar in Noe Valley with a back patio split into tiers, each with its own picnic table and TV, so every group gets the feel of a private box. When San Francisco fog ends the outdoor plan, the freshly updated interior has U-shaped booths angled toward big screens, which makes watching a game feel a bit like sitting in a very casual theater. It's on the Infatuation's list of sports bars.

A coffee shop with a rotating seasonal menu and a strong espresso program, Valor leans into drinks that split the difference, literally and figuratively. The Middle Child straddles espresso and drip coffee in a way that sounds like a therapy session but drinks better than it has any right to. Regulars track the seasonal drops the way others follow drops of a different kind, cycling back each fall and winter for whatever the team has conjured next.

The windows project a fake thunderstorm over the Eiffel Tower, which tells you everything about the vibe here. This French-ish cocktail lounge at Paris Las Vegas leans hard into gothic Baroque camp, all purple booths and tiered birdcages of figs and cheese, with lychee martinis keeping the Housewives faithful cheerful through the manufactured lightning. It's Lisa Vanderpump's name on the door, and no one inside is pretending otherwise.

Turkish coffee prepared in a cezve sits alongside shaken espresso and whatever baklava-flavored latte the team dreamed up this week. It's a small, cozy coffee shop in the King William area, with proper work tables and living-room chairs depending on your agenda. They rotate through local and national bakers for pastries, and tea drinkers have a London Fog waiting for them. The kind of neighborhood spot that pulls you in for twenty minutes and keeps you for two hours.

A square pizza shop in a far-west Miami strip where the pies split the difference between Detroit, Sicilian, and grandma-style. The chef came up in fine dining before the pandemic sent him home, and Miami flavors crept into the toppings: Cuban mojo pork, Colombian hot dog vibes, summer peaches. The New York Times put it on their short list of Miami restaurants right now, which, for a slice shop this far from South Beach, is the kind of attention that fills a parking lot.

Duck is the whole point here, a Little Saigon restaurant in San Jose where the menu circles around one bird and doesn't apologize for it. The duck salad is the thing to order: a towering pile of poached slices, shredded cabbage, banana blossom, fried shallots, and rau răm, all pulled together with a ginger-spiked fish sauce vinaigrette. Most people take it to go, which tells you something about the vibe. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the top Vietnamese spots in the Bay Area.

Voi Cà Phê is a takeout counter in Georgetown that treats Vietnamese coffee like a serious subject, sourcing single-origin beans from Vietnam and brewing them through a phin or an espresso machine. The cà phê sữa đá is the classic, but the pho spice latte, with star anise and coriander seed, is what a pumpkin spice latte would be if it had a passport. There are banh mi too, so one stop covers breakfast and lunch.

An old poi factory turned roadside Hawaiian food spot on the Windward Coast, run by native Hawaiians who have been feeding people here for a while. The kanaka nui plate arrives loaded with pretty much everything the kitchen makes, and the warm kulolo with haupia ice cream is the kind of dessert that ends the conversation. Pull off Kamehameha Highway and eat outside; the atmosphere does a lot of the heavy lifting.

The red and green sign is easy to miss from San Pablo Ave, but regulars know to look. This Lebanese diner has a U-shaped counter and an endearing no-fuss quality that suits heavily spiced shawarma and kafta, served on combo plates with rice, garlic sauce, tzatziki, and brothy lentil soup. The baba ghanoush is flame-roasted and worth the detour. Picnic tables out front if you prefer sky to ceiling.

Washed Up is a small coffee shop on Kercheval, and the pastry case is the plot twist: Wednesday through Friday it's stocked with scones, cookies, and muffins from Sister Pie, a few doors down. The drinks run to espresso tonics, matcha, chai, and hojicha, with beans from a rotating cast of roasters. Eater put it on its list of Detroit's best coffee shops, and the neighborhood seems to have taken the hint.

Illustrated cartoon versions of the kitchen's own ingredients cover the walls at this Isaan Thai spot in Oakland's Dimond District, which sets the tone nicely. The khao soi has a creamy, spicy broth that earns its keep, and the nam khao, fried rice with fermented pork and sharp slivers of ginger, has a crunch you can hear across the table. Grilled salmon wrapped in coconut leaves arrives with a sauce that manages sour, sweet, and spicy all at once without negotiating.

A crimson-and-white house wedged between Druid City and West Tuscaloosa, this breakfast spot greets you at the door with a cardboard Nick Saban and doesn't let up from there. Bear Bryant's usual corner table still has his bust, houndstooth fedora and all. The biscuits are soft and buttery, and the meat-and-three combos keep regulars coming back past the decor. Alabama football isn't a theme here so much as the whole atmosphere.

The smoke smell hits before you open the door, which is a good sign. This Petaluma counter-service spot turns out flame-roasted pollo asado marinated in adobo, with a cold salsa bar that does a lot of work, especially a black salsa built from scorched chiles. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the Bay Area's best Mexican restaurants. Bring cash for a four-piece plate and leave room for the handmade corn tortillas.

The location near the airport is the whole point: fish flown in from both coasts lands here before it lands anywhere else in Tulsa. White River has been a market and old-school lunch counter forever, and you order at the counter for oysters, frog legs, and a slice of pie to finish. The industrial surroundings are a feature, not a bug, and the regulars know it.

Hemp-infused lattes and rum-spiked coffee cocktails share the menu at this Heights café and cocktail bar that doubles as a dispensary. CBD or Delta-8 goes into the elixirs, and the shelves hold oils and gummies to take home alongside the merch. It occupies an interesting lane somewhere between third-wave coffee shop and wellness boutique, which the crowd seems to find perfectly normal on a Tuesday morning.

Wildland is an all-day restaurant, bar, and bakery in Carlsbad, from the same people behind Jeune et Jolie and Campfire. A Tokyo-style standing bar cuts through an 8,000-square-foot dining room, and the coffee counter behind it hums from morning on, olive oil-honey latte included. Breakfast leans toward a folded pizza stuffed with runny egg and mortadella, which is a sandwich only if you squint. Eater lists it among San Diego's coffee roasters and cafes.

With Love, Always is a retro diner off the Strip that started as a parking lot pop-up and now draws lines for smashed onion burgers with lacy, crispy edges, finished with a creamy sauce and shoestring fries. It's casual and loud in the good way, packed with families fresh from practice. The soft serve comes with a pickup ticket, so your custard arrives after the burger instead of as soup beforehand. It's on The Infatuation's list of the 25 best restaurants in Las Vegas.

The grandfather's hummus and falafel recipes from his 1951 Jordanian restaurant anchor the menu at this cheerful fast-casual Middle Eastern spot in Dublin. The chicken shawarma comes with a sharp, garlicky toum that earns its own reputation, and baklava soft-serve with honey and flaky phyllo does the work of dessert. The walls say "We have a great sense of hummus," so you know exactly where you stand. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top Middle Eastern restaurants.

Yancy's is an Inner Sunset sports bar that looks like an antiques fair and a pool hall had a child, minus the pool table. What you get instead is a row of well-lit dart lanes, a wall of TVs, and stained glass lamps doing their best against the faded carpet and a patina of dust. Chips in the corner are the whole kitchen, and the drinks are cheap and strong enough that the decor starts to look intentional.

Yeast is a small East Nashville bakery built around the kolache, the Czech pastry Texans have been quietly keeping to themselves. The sweet Bohemian versions come filled with fruit, and the savory Tex-Czech ones run toward sausage, cheddar, and jalapeño. A few tables and a tiny patio exist, but the move is to carry your bag across the street to East Park and eat on a bench like a person with nowhere to be.

A sushi spot in San Mateo where the non-sushi menu quietly steals the show. Regulars fill the seats and rarely need to look at a menu, and the chef keeps them coming back with rice dishes worth the trip on their own: hitsumamushi arrives in a hot stone vessel, the grains scorched and crackly, folded with salmon and yellowtail and finished with a kelp and green tea broth. Five variations of chirashi round things out, and lunch brings a chicken curry worth knowing about.

A converted redbrick warehouse in the thick of downtown Grand Rapids, with Van Andel Arena next door and the art museum a short walk from the front door. The 130 rooms lean European in a clean, unhurried way, and the AC Lounge pours Spanish-leaning tapas and the brand's signature gin and tonic. A small in-house library offers a quiet corner nobody seems to expect. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

A renovated roadside motel in Saratoga Springs, the Bluebird Spa City Motor Lodge is what happens when boutique hoteliers and California designers get their hands on a classic American motor lodge and resist the urge to erase what made it charming. The result is stylish and modern without feeling like it was airlifted from Brooklyn. Come summer, the town fills with horse racing crowds, and having a cool, well-designed place to sleep matters more than people admit.

Amish-crafted furniture and locally made mattresses are an unusual flex for a hotel, but Canopy by Hilton pulls it off. This boutique lifestyle property in the Studio Park development is surrounded by breweries and cafés, and dogs are welcome. The rooftop beer garden, Knoop, pours a wide selection of local beers alongside a Dutch-accented menu, which is either charming or baffling depending on how much you've had.

Bulgari toiletries and French linens in a white-clapboard Vermont inn on a classic village green is a combination that shouldn't work but somehow does. Rooms feel renovated without feeling scrubbed of their old farmhouse warmth, and a small spa hides in a cottage on the grounds. The on-site restaurant leans hard into local sourcing, which feels right given the inn's history with the idea. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

The reception desk is a display case filled with historic Nike running shoes, which tells you everything about where you are. This hotel in downtown Eugene, a few blocks from the University of Oregon campus, leans hard into its college-town identity, right down to Ducks green throughout. A former Hilton rebranded as a Graduate property, it puts you close to the action without pretending the action isn't football.

The Foundry restaurant opens onto a small live music venue, which tells you exactly what kind of hotel this is. Hotel Abacus is a boutique stay in a college town that takes its music scene as seriously as its football, and the place threads that needle with mid-century modern rooms, an in-house grab-and-go café, and enough down-to-earth warmth that neither the Bulldogs fans nor the 40 Watt pilgrims feel out of place.

A 24-story glass tower over the Grand River, this downtown hotel has 340 rooms angled toward either the water or the city skyline. Margaux handles French-inspired cooking with herbs from the hotel's own garden, and the bar out front runs heated domes in winter and open-air river seating in summer. A spa, indoor pool, and dedicated wellness floor round things out for anyone who planned a longer stay than they meant to.

A Bavarian facade that the 1960s built and nobody has had the heart to remove, and inside, a boutique adventure hotel where the blond wood and cruiser bikes for loan make considerably more sense than the lederhosen outside. The bar pours beer and cocktails, breakfast runs until you're ready to move, and the whole operation sits an easy walk from both the main drag and the riverside park skiers, climbers, and cyclists treat as a second living room.

Drive-up parking survives at this revamped motor lodge on the highway out of Boone, which a Raleigh hospitality group turned from a classic family motel into a boutique hotel without erasing the old bones. Rooms are cozy and freshened with custom furnishings and local artwork; upper-level ones have balconies, and many look out toward the Blue Ridge. A courtyard fire pit ringed with rocking chairs handles the evenings, and an on-site eatery covers comfort food.

SCP stands for "soul, community, planet," which tells you this isn't a regular chain hotel before you've even unpacked. It's a boutique stay on Banyan Drive with a sustainability-first ethos, minimalist rooms that don't feel punishing, a fitness studio, and a small market stocked with local coffee and provisions. The staff will help you map out the Big Island without making you feel like a tourist, which, to be fair, you are.

Five cabins on a bluff above Kachemak Bay, each named for a local creature and built to match its personality: the Wolf's Den goes underground, the Puffin leans yurt, and the Eagle's Nest stays reassuringly cabin-shaped. This small collection of rentals comes with kitchenettes, BBQs, and views that do most of the decorating. A shared hot tub sits on the property for when the scenery stops being enough. The Michelin Guide has selected it among its hotels.

The Golden Gate Saloon has been pouring drinks long enough that the bar itself is basically a local landmark. The Holbrooke is a historic hotel in the Sierra Nevada foothills, with rooms split between the original building and a carriage house, both dressed in period character without skimping on the modern amenities. A speakeasy-style cellar lounge called the Iron Door sits downstairs for anyone who prefers their atmosphere subterranean.

A Finger Lakes resort on Canandaigua Lake where the traditional clapboard exterior opens into rooms done in pale wood and white linen, the kind of Scandinavian calm that makes you feel like you've already had a nap. There's a lakefront pool, a full spa, and the region's vineyards close enough to fill an afternoon. Winter draws skiers; summer draws everyone else. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

The tree houses sleep adults, which tells you something about the ambition here. This sprawling mountain resort sits on its own 12,000-acre estate in the Blue Ridge, with rooms in the main lodge, chalet-style suites, and those treetop cabins perched above the Dan River Gorge. It's the kind of place where "stepping outside" means something wilder than a hotel courtyard, and guests tend to stay lost in the woods for days.

The grand Victorian facade has been standing on Broad Street since the Gold Rush, and the boutique hotel inside it now looks nothing like a place that survived the 1800s, in a good way. Rooms lean retro-styled rather than dusty-museum, the National Bar pours craft cocktails, and Lola does European-accented California cooking. Nevada City itself is equal parts hiking trails and bohemian charm, so guests tend to arrive muddy and leave well-fed.

Ten rooms in the Poconos, which the owners call a "micro-hotel" with a straight face. What it is, more plainly, is a small boutique hotel that bets on the Poconos having a moment the way the Catskills have been having theirs for a while now. City comforts land in the middle of good northeastern Pennsylvania woods, near Promised Land State Park, for the East Coast urbanite who wants nature with decent bedding.