The Best Places in the United States

String lights and vivid artwork set the tone at this colorful Indian street food restaurant in Decatur, where the menu reads like a series of small arguments for ordering just one more plate. The kitchen leans on local, seasonal ingredients for its South Asian cooking, and the format works as well for two as for a full table going family-style. A James Beard semifinalist and Michelin selected, it draws a crowd that tends to ignore the menu only because they already know what they want.

Hugo Ortega's Oaxacan restaurant inside the Marriott Marquis is the kind of place that makes you think differently about mole, a sauce most people treat as a single thing rather than a whole universe. The kitchen explores that universe seriously, working through pipián, mole negro, and variations in between. A James Beard Outstanding Pastry Chef nominee rounds out a meal that doesn't skimp on the sweet end. The Sunday brunch draws a devoted crowd.

Filipino cooking in a small Spring Street dining room where many tables just order the whole menu. Chef Nikko Cagalagan, a 2024 James Beard Emerging Chef nominee, runs the kitchen on induction burners and a small oven, which explains either the focus or the ambition, probably both. The dishes read like home cooking filtered through a chef's eye, precise in portion and element count, and grounded in local pork, oysters, and fish.

The restroom walls are lined with illustrated wine descriptions, which tells you exactly what kind of neighborhood restaurant this is. A cozy Columbia Heights pasta house and wine bar, Reveler's Hour runs a rotating slate of seasonal Italian small plates under arched ceilings and muted green tiles. The sommelier who co-owns the place steers you toward bottles you've never encountered, and the housemade pasta is the thing to build an order around.

A sushi restaurant in Omaha that isn't playing it safe, Yoshitomo builds on traditional Japanese technique and then quietly goes its own direction, folding local instincts into the menu in ways that read as natural rather than gimmicky. The rodeo maki, stuffed with wagyu and finished with tonkatsu sauce, makes the argument on its own. A 2026 James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Midwest.

Tucked into a strip of drab storefronts near a hair salon called Bouffant Daddy, Robin is a tasting-menu restaurant that somehow feels like a warm secret. The room is soft-lit and earthy, and the four-course format leans into Midwestern ingredients with enough wit to keep things lively. Land on the New York Times Restaurant List and earn a James Beard nomination in the same year, and the mille-feuille of amaro chocolate mousse starts to make a certain kind of sense.

The Lebanese restaurant in the 15th and 15th neighborhood keeps one of the largest Mediterranean wine and beer lists in the country, with bottles pulled from Lebanon, Morocco, and Greece. It's the kind of casual spot where a meal properly starts with dips and works toward a braised lamb shank. The chef earned a James Beard nomination in 2024, which feels about right for a room that takes traditional Lebanese cooking this seriously.

Potato-stuffed puris doused in yogurt and tamarind are the opening argument at this Indian street food spot tucked into Union Market. The room is loud and color-splashed in the way that makes you feel like you showed up underdressed no matter what you're wearing. Meherwan Irani, a James Beard Award winner for his Asheville original, brought the concept north, and the DC version has carved out its own following among the city's suddenly crowded field of Indian restaurants.

An all-day American bistro across from Rittenhouse Square where, on Sunday afternoons, some of Philadelphia's own chefs quietly eat their days off. The menu tracks regional farmers closely, and the natural wine list is among the longer ones in the city. The New York Times named it among the 25 best restaurants in Philadelphia, which the Sunday regulars already knew.

Some of the cocktails here took days to develop, which you can either find charming or slightly alarming depending on your relationship with drinks. Bar Colette is a reservation-only cocktail bar in Uptown Dallas where reinterpreted classics share the menu with exotic spirits, global wines, and sashimi. A James Beard nominee for Best New Bar, it draws the kind of crowd that dresses like they Googled the place first, which, honestly, they probably did.

The martini here gets shaken with both vodka and gin, which is either a provocation or a correction depending on your religion. Death & Co is a cocktail bar that started in New York and landed in RiNo, bringing the same intricate, unhurried approach to drinking. The room is loungey and deliberate, the kind of place where settling in for three rounds feels like the obvious move rather than a guilty one.

The entire room is wood-plank from floor to ceiling, which either reads as cozy or a fire hazard, depending on your mood. This West Randolph wine restaurant has been packed since forever, with regulars jostling for counter stools and close-set tables to graze through a seasonal Mediterranean menu. The plates are bold, colorful, and generously sized, and the wine list leans into the food rather than upstaging it.

The wood-roasted chicken at this Clayton neighborhood restaurant arrives with rapini and an immaculate jus, nowhere to hide and nothing to prove. Louie is the kind of Italian-leaning spot where the room feels luxurious without feeling stiff, and the seasonal pastas and pizzas do quiet, confident work. A 2026 James Beard nominee for Outstanding Hospitality, it draws regulars who treat it like a standing reservation with old friends.

Urbe is a counter-service Mexican spot in Uptown Park, with walls covered in bright folk art and a bakery case near the register that makes a strong case against returning to your desk. Hugo Ortega's casual place does margaritas at lunch, which the office crowd treats as a loophole. The restaurant is the kind where you order, find a table, and sneak a pastry for the road. Ortega is also up for a James Beard nod as Outstanding Restaurateur.

The building used to be a Dairy Queen, and the kitchen leans into that legacy rather than running from it. Woodford F&B is a neighborhood restaurant where the chef, a James Beard nominee, turns out unfussy food with serious technique: charcuterie with a devoted following, a brisket burger stacked high, a croque-monsieur that earns the trouble. The room is relaxed enough that no one's performing, but the cooking suggests someone back there very much is.

The kitchen is literally front and center here, open to the room so the whole team works in full view, moving like they own the place, which they kind of do. Nolia is a casual dinner spot where servers wear branded sweatshirts and the skillet cornbread arrives with a scoop of cane-syrup butter melting dramatically on top. Southern ease, exposed brick, and a menu that quietly runs gluten-free without making a cause of it. The house hot sauces are made from scratch, and one will have you fanning yourself.

Oak Creek runs right through the 11-acre property, which means the sound of moving water follows you nearly everywhere at this Forbes Four Star luxury resort in Sedona's Red Rock Country. Cottages, cliff-side suites, and lodge rooms all lean into the setting, with creek or red rock views depending on your luck. The rugged landscape does most of the decorating, which is a relief given how hard resort design usually tries.

The seating choices alone tell you something: big communal tables, a long bar, or low couches, all inside a roomy industrial space on North Broad. Honeysuckle is an Afro-centric American restaurant built around a prix fixe that moves from hush puppies with country ham to wagyu beef cheek and oxtail tamales without ever losing its thread. The chef earned a 2026 James Beard nomination, and the cooking shows why, course after careful course.

Each of the twelve rooms in this Midtown Village boutique hotel is named for a woman who passed through when the building housed the New Century Guild, an early feminist organization. The rooms themselves are eclectic and photogenic without feeling like a theme park, and the service is full hotel, not glorified B&B. No restaurant on-site, but the concierge earns their keep pointing you toward the neighborhood. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Jewel-toned marble tiles in the bathrooms set the tone for this boutique hotel on Carondelet: unapologetically luxe but somehow never stuffy. The rooms feel like sleeping in the home of a wealthy friend with excellent taste and a light touch, the kind of place that holds a Michelin Key without making you feel like you need to dress for it. New Orleans has no shortage of grand hotels; this one just makes grand feel easy.

Fourteen rooms and suites dressed in retro European style, split between a busy French Quarter street and a quiet inner courtyard, with just enough eclectic detail to make you feel like you're staying somewhere rather than merely sleeping somewhere. The Celestine is a small hotel with a Michelin Key, and its social life pools around Peychaud's, the courtyard cocktail bar named for the local bitters, where guests gather as if on cue.

A French bakery tucked into a Parker strip mall, Poulette turns out croissants, kouign-amann, éclairs, brioche, and macarons from a pastry case that gets restocked daily and emptied fast. The team behind it spent years in serious kitchens, and the technique shows without the attitude. The New York Times named it among the country's top bakeries, and it's landed James Beard nominations for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker.

MĀBO is a tiny omakase counter in a Berkshire Lane strip center where the main event is chicken, cooked over binchotan charcoal, one skewer at a time. The room is hushed and softly lit, so you'll lower your voice to discuss poultry. Expect a set tasting menu, a serious sake and wine list, and a bill to match. It was a James Beard Best New Restaurant nominee in 2025.

Sado is a high-end sushi bar where the fish is dry-aged, which is a sentence that would have baffled your grandfather. Eight seats at the counter put you inches from cooks slicing with the focus of surgeons, while a full dining room handles everyone who'd rather not be watched while they chew. A six-person omakase called Pavilion hides out back. James Beard keeps nominating the chef, so budget accordingly.

Fourteen seats around a charcoal counter in the back of Chinatown's Canal Arcade, where every course of the yakitori omakase is built around a chicken that gives up everything. The chef coaxes cuts most menus never mention, oyster, heart, cartilage, into something precise and quiet. The New York Times gave it three stars, and a James Beard nomination for Best Chef followed. Wear something that can take a little smoke.

A fast-casual stall inside Houston's The Post food hall, ChòpnBlọk is the chef Ope Amosu's case for West African cooking as everyday food, not occasion food. Jollof rice, coconut curry bowls, and grilled suya skewers dusted in yaji peanut spice anchor the menu. The Michelin Bib Gourmand and a spot on the New York Times Restaurant List followed, which is a lot of attention for a rice bowl, and not undeserved.

Six acres of winding garden paths and Victorian farmhouse buildings in the heart of Sonoma wine country, MacArthur Place is a boutique hotel that moves at a slower speed than the tasting-room circuit outside its gates. The 69 rooms spread across 20 low-slung historic buildings, so it feels less like checking in and more like borrowing a friend's very well-appointed ranch. Forbes Four Star. The spa keeps guests horizontal well past noon.

Perched on a cliff above the Pacific in Dana Point, this Waldorf Astoria resort fans out across lush gardens that step down through pools, a sculpture garden, and a Robert Trent Jones Jr. golf course before hitting a private beach club. Six ocean-view restaurants, a full spa, and enough on-property activity to make nearby attractions feel like homework. A Forbes Four Star property where "casual elegance" is less a cliche than an actual operating philosophy.

Montage Hotels built its name on rarefied seclusion, so their Pendry line is a deliberate pivot: an urban boutique hotel planted in the thick of the Gaslamp Quarter, where the six bars and restaurants are meant to pull in neighborhood regulars as much as guests. Rooms run loft-apartment styling rather than resort grandeur, and the whole thing skews younger and more affordable than its Montage cousins, without exactly being a bargain.

A terrace overlooking the Washington Marina keeps the vibe grounded even though the Jefferson Memorial is a short walk away. This 373-room hotel on the Southwest Waterfront sits close to The Wharf and the National Mall, with a lobby that signals money without shouting. Chef Kwame Onwuachi's Afro-Caribbean restaurant Dōgon runs separately downstairs, and the spa gives you a reason to stay in.

The room key reads "no need to break in," and the hotel leans into that history rather than apologizing for it. Luigi Moretti's curving building on the Potomac got a sweeping renovation, with Ron Arad handling the interiors and the "Mad Men" designer dressing the staff, resulting in something that feels genuinely retro-modernist rather than merely themed. Monochrome rooms, Potomac-facing balconies, a rooftop bar, and a whisky bar for co-conspirators round out the package.

A Federalist townhouse on Beacon Hill, XV Beacon is a boutique hotel where all 63 rooms come with a four-poster bed, a working fireplace, and fresh flowers, which is either very romantic or a lot of pressure, depending on your companion. A house Lexus will ferry you around the city, and the concierge knows the neighborhood the way only someone who works it every day can. Old Boston in the best, least stuffy sense.

Family portraits of the bartender's Cuban relatives line the upstairs walls, which tells you something about what kind of cocktail bar this is. Ricky Gomez, who came up through New Orleans institutions like Cure and Teardrop Lounge, channels his Miami-meets-NOLA-meets-Havana upbringing into a tropical menu where blenders run loud and the hospitality runs warmer than the drinks.

Moon Rabbit is a dimly lit Vietnamese restaurant in the Heights where the cocktails are as much a draw as the bowls and spring rolls. The menu lets you build your own meal by picking a protein, like lemongrass pork or garlic butter shrimp, which suits anyone who has ever edited an order in the middle of ordering. Its pastry chef is a James Beard Award nominee, so leave room.

Pascaline Lepeltier, one of a handful of Master Sommeliers in the world, built the wine list here, and it shows: back vintages, unexpected producers, prices that don't require a quiet moment alone with your bank app. The food runs from composed salads to fresh pasta, all of it seasonal and sharper than the "wine bar snacks" framing might suggest. A James Beard nominee for its beverages program, and sitting at number 29 on the Times' 100 Best list.

A Forbes Five Star resort on Cape Cod's southeastern elbow, with a private beach, a full-service spa, and a Lexus shuttle that'll whisk you wherever the peninsula demands. The shingle-style main house has been around forever, and the formula hasn't changed much: fishing charters, sunset sails, a kids' program in summer, and the general understanding that leaving the property is optional.

Twenty-seven acres of salt marshes, gardens, and woodlands sit between this Forbes Five Star resort and Pleasant Bay, with the Atlantic just beyond. It's classic Cape Cod country-inn territory, the kind where staff track you down on the tennis court to ask if you need anything. Rooms run from spacious suites with gas fireplaces and marble baths to snug private cottages, all done in upscale New England style without tipping into fussy.

A small fish and wine bar from the team behind State Bird Provisions, built around the anchovy in all its salty, versatile glory. The menu wanders from toast loaded with local anchovies and grated tomato to squid stir-fried with kimchi and flat rice noodles, and somehow a vanilla tamarind sundae finished with dried fish lands as dessert. The room is warm and woody, the vibe relaxed enough that the ambition sneaks up on you.

The hummus comes with schug, herb tehina, and enough conviction to make every other hummus in town feel like it needs to apologize. This is a casual Eastern Mediterranean restaurant drawing from Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, with a menu that roams widely and settles nowhere predictable. The chef behind it earned a James Beard nomination for Best Chef Southeast. Come hungry enough for babka.

This is a family-run Basque spot on Main Street where the sausage does most of the talking, in bocadillos and appetizers, with chorizo you can also take home by the pound. The menu mixes old-country standards with newer moves like beef tongue in tomato and pepper sauce. They cater too, so your next office party could finally have a point. The Ansotegui family has been in Basque Boise a long time, and the chef was a James Beard Best Chef: Mountain semifinalist in 2024.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame either the Mississippi or a cosmopolitan sunset, depending on which side you land. This Four Seasons tower sits at the center of downtown Minneapolis, opening directly onto the Skyway, so the lobby pulls in a buzzing local crowd alongside hotel guests. Rooms lean into soft curves and a quiet Art Deco sensibility. The hotel holds a Michelin Key and is part of a group that took the Most Admired Hotel Group Award at the 50 Best.

A Lao noodle parlor that grew out of a single chicken soup too popular to stay on one menu, Bar Sen sits next door to its sibling restaurant in a dark, lively room with a sunny patio out back. The khao piek sen, thick chewy rice noodles in a rich, almost milky broth, is the founding idea and still the move. Cold beer is the drink of choice here, which tells you everything about the vibe. The chef earned a 2026 James Beard nomination and a spot on the New York Times Restaurant List.

The cachito, a soft Venezuelan ham-and-cheese roll, is as good a reason as any to find your way to this Venezuelan bakery tucked into Doral. The team blends a Latin sensibility with French-style bread baking, so golfeados and pastelitos sit alongside proper croissants without anyone making a fuss about it. A 2024 James Beard nominee for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker. Bring cash and a little patience; the line tends to have opinions.

The Burger Joint, a self-consciously divey counter slinging smash patties, is tucked behind a curtain in an otherwise polished lobby, which tells you something about this hotel's sense of humor. Thompson Central Park is a high-end boutique hotel in upper Midtown, rebuilt from a legacy property with mid-century Modernist bones courtesy of architect Thomas Juul-Hansen. Upper floors look out over Central Park.

A gold-embellished bar takes up half the dining room at this wood-fired pizza shop in North Central Charleston, facing an open kitchen and a serious natural wine collection. The pizzas lean creative, the booths fill fast with groups who came for the full spread, and there's Korean fried chicken for anyone who showed up mostly for the wine. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2026.

The building was a working stable once, and the vaulted ceilings and warm brick still carry that memory into what is now one of Minneapolis's most celebrated dinner destinations. Chef Gavin Kaysen runs a Midwestern French kitchen where the seasonal sourcing is taken seriously without being announced at you. A 2025 James Beard Outstanding Restaurant semifinalist, it draws a dressed-up but not stiff crowd happy to linger over heritage grain pasta and a very good cocktail.

Pasta at 8 a.m. is either a cry for help or a reasonable lifestyle choice, and Fiore makes a compelling case for the latter. This tiny Italian cafe on Frankford Ave grew out of a larger restaurant that shed its wood-fired oven and half its menu, keeping only what the chef does best: regional Italian baked goods, bright seasonal salads, and cacio e pepe that regulars order before most places have unlocked the door.

The vaulted ceilings and Venetian Gothic stonework on Michigan Avenue give away that this was never meant to be a hotel, and it wasn't, for most of its life. The Chicago Athletic Association is now a boutique hotel under Hyatt's Unbound Collection, holding a Michelin Key, and the bones of the old private club, once restricted to the city's male elite, do most of the atmospheric heavy lifting without anyone having to try too hard.

The lobby doubles as an active train station waiting room, which makes check-in feel like a minor performance art piece. The Crawford is a boutique hotel tucked inside Denver's restored Beaux-Arts Union Station, holding a Michelin Key, and sitting at the center of the LoDo neighborhood's comeback. The 112 rooms sit above the bustle of one of the city's genuinely communal gathering spots, with rail passengers and cocktail drinkers sharing the same grand hall below.

The Koji Club is a sake bar of about sixteen seats in the Allston Speedway, where the bottle storage doubles as a coat rack and a rice cooker sits behind the bar like it pays rent. The staff will walk the sake-curious through the list, so no one gets quizzed. The snack of choice is a bowl of rice with furikake, miso, and pickles. It's dim and cozy, and it's on the Esquire list of best bars in America.

Set on a working organic farm and historic inn, this refined New Mexico restaurant builds its menu around what's growing nearby, from the blue corn hominy and green chile on the plate to the lavender in your margarita. The kitchen makes its own bread, charcuterie, and pickles, and the cocktail list leans on Los Poblanos' own gin. A James Beard semifinalist, it's the kind of place where the farm outside the window is also the reason dinner tastes the way it does.

A wine bar in Middleburg horse country with over 70 pours by the glass, though the food holds its own against the list. Snacks lean indulgent, and the bigger plates, duck confit, lobster curry, hanger steak au poivre, are serious enough that calling this a wine bar starts to feel like underselling it. The chef's cocktail policy runs "no fru fru," which apparently still leaves room for mezcal, Chartreuse, and Aperol in one glass.

EZ's is a Heights dive bar that has somehow acquired a very good bottle list, so you can pair a pool game and a chili dog with a pour of champagne, or stay loyal to the beer that calls itself the champagne of beers. The jukebox swings from George Strait to DJ Screw without apology. It's suspiciously clean for a dive, but give it time, this is Houston.

Vineyards press right up to the guest room windows at this lodge and spa tucked into Carmel Valley, which sets the tone for everything: limestone fireplaces, marble soaking tubs for two, Italian linens, and a spa that works with wine grapes and lavender grown on the property. The pool anchors the center of the resort, and the restaurant draws its own crowd. It holds a Forbes Four Star and two Michelin Keys.

Eastsound, on Orcas Island, is not where you expect to find a restaurant that landed on the New York Times's restaurant list, but here we are. Matia Kitchen (say "may-shah") is a small, ingredient-driven restaurant where local produce gets the kind of careful treatment that earned a James Beard nomination. The menu shifts with the season, and the cooking has a quiet confidence that the room itself, unpretentious as it is, seems entirely unbothered by.

At Anjin, guests choose their own sake cup from a wall of them before settling in around a 20-seat bar wrapped around an open cooking area. It's a Japanese izakaya where the kitchen leans on local and seasonal ingredients, turning out skewers, seared eel, and a tempura walleye sandwich on housemade milk bread that's hard to stop thinking about. A 2026 James Beard nominee and on the New York Times Restaurant List the same year.

The complimentary cocktail hour is hosted by your personal valet, who already knows your name before you've set down your bags. Casa Palmero is a boutique resort at Pebble Beach built around a Spanish Colonial manor house, all fountains and courtyard and lush Mediterranean landscaping. It holds a Forbes Four Star. With only a handful of rooms, it operates less like a hotel and more like borrowing a wealthy friend's estate, assuming that friend also pre-books your tee times.

A Scottish-style links course wraps around this Forbes Four Star resort on the northwest edge of Pebble Beach, which means you can watch golfers trudge through coastal wind from the heated pool without lifting a club yourself. Rooms are well-appointed, the grounds roll straight into sand dunes and the Pacific, and the property has enough bars and restaurants that you never need to leave, which some guests appear not to.

The lobby frames the 18th hole and Stillwater Cove behind it, which tells you immediately what kind of resort this is. Golfers do make pilgrimages here, but the Forbes Four Star property also has a beach and tennis club with a heated pool, horseback trails on the same grounds where National Velvet was filmed, and rooms with big windows or private patios pointed squarely at the Big Sur coastline.

A boutique hotel built around the fact that Boise sits on the 43rd parallel in the 43rd state, which is either charming or a lot, depending on your tolerance for a theme. Rooms are contemporary with local artwork and a gem-toned palette, and the staff runs an arts passport program with access to the city's ballet, philharmonic, and opera. Chandlers, the onsite restaurant, doubles as a martini bar with live jazz most nights.

A rooftop beehive supplying honey to the bar and kitchen is a flex most waterfront hotels don't bother with. This 424-room hotel sits on the harbor between Faneuil Hall and the Seaport, so the views are doing a lot of work whether you're in the lobby, lined in Italian marble and Texas limestone, or up in your room. Three dining options, a spa, and a health club round things out for a property that leans toward the polished business-traveler end of the scale.

A 33-story oval glass tower two blocks from the Broadway honky-tonks, the JW Marriott is a full-service downtown hotel with 533 rooms, a spa, a rooftop pool, and three restaurants. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the skyline, and the bronze and gold metalwork throughout is meant to echo the Cumberland River. Michael Mina's rooftop bar sits at the top of it all, which is either very Nashville or very not Nashville, depending on your mood.

Stained-glass windows were the starting point for the entire bar design, which tells you something about how deliberately this Eastern European restaurant was built. The menu pulls from the chef's grandmother's recipes, pierogi and pelmeni and khachapuri landing hot, and the medovik changes flavors every few months just to keep you coming back. A James Beard nominee, and Cincinnati Magazine's number-five restaurant.

Sommelier Brent Braun runs the cellar here, with a wine list heavy on Riesling, Oregon producers, and natural bottles, plus small-batch collaborations with local winemakers usually poured by the glass. The kitchen leans seasonal and vegetable-forward, the kind of room where the food earns its place alongside the wine rather than playing second fiddle. A James Beard Semifinalist for Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program, this chic Hawthorne wine restaurant draws the crowd that actually reads the back label.

The moles here travel by region, Oaxacan one night, Yucatecan the next, because the chef grew up in Zacatecas and cooks like he has something to prove about how wide Mexican cuisine actually runs. This is a proper sit-down restaurant with plated ambitions and a menu that resists the Southwestern shorthand most of Santa Fe defaults to. A James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Southwest in 2024.

The pasta here is why Mike Easton built a cult following at his old Seattle spot, Il Corvo, and it's why people now drive 20 miles north of Walla Walla to a tiny Italian dinner restaurant in a historic Main Street building. Eighteen seats, no minors, and reservations that go fast. The menu leans into nearby farms and changes with the seasons, with Italian wine and cocktails keeping pace. A James Beard nominee for Best New Restaurant in 2024.

The foie gras profiteroles have been on the dessert menu so long they've become a Portland landmark in their own right. Gabriel Rucker's modern French tasting spot on East Burnside has been doing ambitious, slightly unhinged prix fixe since forever, the kind of cooking where sturgeon pastrami with caviar shows up next to a vegetarian finger sandwich and both feel inevitable. A James Beard semifinalist, and still the room where Portland chefs go to be impressed.

Duck fat tortillas arrive alongside a smoked half chicken dressed in red chile and pepita crema, which tells you what kind of American cooking this Nob Hill restaurant is doing. The chef draws on Southwestern flavors without turning the menu into a tourism brochure, and a James Beard nomination for Best Chef: Southwest followed accordingly. The room is quiet enough that you can hear yourself change your order after the food arrives at the next table.

Anna's is a Marigny dive bar in a former 19th-century bank, which means the cocktails are better than the Gatorade cooler by the pool table would suggest. The jukebox works, the beer-and-shot specials are cheap, and the Tequila Daisy goes down easy on a hot day. Guest chefs rotate through for pop-ups, and upstairs there are DJs, film nights, and a balcony over Royal Street. The James Beard folks named the owner a semifinalist.

Ten seats, one seating, everyone served together: Chef's Table runs like a dinner party where the host happens to have a Michelin listing and a thing for caviar. It sits inside the private Astor Club on the Gold Coast, though non-members can book a spot. The tasting menu leans luxe, with ingredients that suit the hushed, gilded setting. Forbes Four Star. Jacket-and-a-good-story territory.

A marble staircase leads to this fine dining jewel box above Madison Avenue, where the whole point is caviar and the menu makes no apologies about it. Tins range from a modest Pacific Sturgeon scoop to Osetra by the 500 gram, priced accordingly. The French-inflected menu runs prix fixe or à la carte, with dishes like Dover sole in curry cream that somehow feel restrained given everything else going on.

Down a flight of stairs inside the Monterey Plaza Hotel, this fine dining room opens onto an unobstructed view of the bay, which does a lot of the work before the food even arrives. The tasting menu leans on local catch and regional produce, then pulls in global flavors, wood-fired techniques, and miso-cured fish to keep things from feeling like a postcard. Forbes Four Star, and the wine pairing is well matched to the format.