The Best Places in the United States

Beets buried under coals for eight hours is either an act of patience or a personality disorder, and at Francis Mallmann's open-fire Argentine steakhouse inside the Faena Hotel, it reads as both. The room commits fully: leopard-print booths, red cushions, gold on everything. The asado is serious, the proteins are large, and the bar at the far end fills with people dressed for exactly this kind of place.

The kitchen garden outside supplies much of what lands on the table at this elegant tasting and à la carte restaurant inside Bernardus Lodge, and the kitchen treats it as a point of pride rather than a talking point. New American cooking with a seasonal, vegetable-forward lean, though the lamb has its admirers. A stone fireplace, muted tones, and a patio overlooking the Carmel Valley vineyards keep the room from feeling like a hotel obligation. Forbes Four Star.

The warm English muffin that arrives before anything else has, by all accounts, developed a following of its own, which tells you something about how Mar'sel operates. This fine dining room at Terranea Resort on the Palos Verdes Peninsula pairs ocean views and a fireplace with New American cooking that takes its time. Forbes Four Star service matches the setting. Dress accordingly, and leave room for the caramel pot de crème.

The rolling ladders are not decorative. They reach a full twelve feet to access shelves of over 1,500 bottles lining the bare brick walls of this former piano-store stockroom, and the bartenders use them. A thick bound menu catalogs everything by region and spirit type, library-style, because the name is sincere. It's a serious whiskey bar that takes the bit all the way, and the room is dramatic enough that even non-whiskey people tend to stay longer than planned.

The tenth floor of a downtown hotel turns out to be a fine place to stare at Walt Disney Concert Hall while José Andrés's team works through a menu of modern Californian cooking with a Spanish lean. The facade opens fully, making the room feel more rooftop than restaurant. A Forbes Four Star. Earth tones, greenery, a busy bar, and a tomato tartare that arrives looking like the beef version but absolutely is not.

A former dairy farm turned village, with white-linen tables and intimate rooms that make every dinner feel slightly ceremonial. This fine dining room sits at the heart of Fearrington Village outside Pittsboro, and the kitchen leans into its pastoral surroundings with a seasonal menu that pulls from the property's own gardens. The chocolate soufflé has become the kind of thing regulars plan around. A Forbes Four Star property.

The fireplace and rough-hewn beams set the mood before the menu even arrives. This is fine dining inside a historic stone cottage on the San Ysidro Ranch grounds, where the kitchen leans hard on herbs, fruit, and vegetables grown on the property. Patio regulars tend to order the burger; others work through a prix-fixe that runs toward hamachi and Meyer lemon. The wine list is wide and considered, and the servers know it cold.

Chenin is a tiny wine bar tucked inside The Siren Hotel, pouring natural and biodynamic bottles to a room lit softly enough to forgive anyone's skin-contact experiments. Salty snacks and a mortadella sandwich piled onto focaccia keep the evening going longer than planned. Seats are scarce, so arrive when the doors open. It was a James Beard Award nominee for Best New Bar.

Rows of labeled spice jars line the walls, which tells you something about how seriously this contemporary Indian restaurant takes its pantry. The chef sources ingredients from his own farm and runs a tight menu that swings between fiery naan and delicate tuna bhel without losing focus. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and landed on the New York Times' Miami list. The suburban strip-mall setting is the only thing that doesn't match the ambition.

Casitas scattered across 57 acres of high desert, each with a kiva fireplace and a private terrace, give this Four Seasons the feel of a small compound rather than a hotel. The Southwest decor is restrained enough that you won't feel like you wandered into a gift shop. A shuttle runs to Santa Fe proper, though the spa and the Sangre de Cristo views make a strong case for staying put. Forbes Four Star.

Chancho King started as a food truck wedged into Murray Hill block parties and now has a proper casual dining room serving Ecuadorian street food, which is rare enough in Jacksonville that people drive across town for the pork sandwich. The chef is a James Beard nominee for Best Chef: South. Birthdays get a steak with candles in it, a holdover from the oven-less years, and Sundays are for build-your-own ceviche.

Dolores is a bright blue Mexican restaurant on Hope Street, cooking dishes from Puebla and Oaxaca, which is a lot of sunshine to commit to in a New England February. The bar goes well past tequila and mezcal into sotol and Oaxacan rum, and the sangria arrives by the pitcher, so bring people. The chef was a James Beard Best Chef: Northeast nominee, and you can also just sit down for tostadas and a drink.

Mesa is a casual Indian restaurant where the chef still walks over to greet every table, which is rarer than the marigolds. The menu pairs South Indian cooking with Southern comfort, so shrimp and basmati grits share a page with something called naanchos. There's no liquor license, so the drinks lean on port, sake, and vermouth, and the saffron-and-jaggery Manhattan has no interest in apologizing for it. James Beard Best Chef: Southwest nominee, 2024.

The dining room is carved from an actual downtown warehouse boiler room, all industrial bones and art on the walls. It's a meat-forward restaurant with a serious wine list, where the kitchen cures its own charcuterie, makes its own sausages, and runs through a lot of wagyu. The chef earned a James Beard nomination for Best Chef: Midwest in 2024. The crudo is a quiet argument for not ignoring the seafood.

Bluefin maguro topped with a Georgian sauce of apricots and walnuts gives you the idea fast: this is an omakase counter where the chef treats Edomae sushi as a starting point rather than a finish line. The meal builds like a composed piece, lighter sashimi giving way to richer bites, before landing on A5 Wagyu and foie gras lacquered with chocolate balsamic. The New York Times named it among Boston's 25 best restaurants.

Exposed brick, polished concrete, and soft leather set the tone before a dish arrives at this osteria tucked into Palmer Alley. The chef trained under a Roman legend and keeps the cooking rooted in regional Italy, letting seasonality do the heavy lifting. The pastas in particular are the kind that make you rethink your standing dinner plans. A James Beard Outstanding Restaurant semifinalist, and one of the Washington Post's 40 best in the area.

Sage Lodge sits on the banks of the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley, which is either the most on-the-nose name in Montana or earned by the view, probably both. This Michelin three-key resort pairs modern-rustic rooms with a spa and two restaurants drawing from local ranches and farms. The northern entrance to the park puts you away from the crowds, which is the whole point.

A small, unfussy room on Observatory Hill where Italian fine dining quietly bends the rules, folding kimchi and fried garlic into ricotta-parsnip ravioli without making a scene about it. The chef, a James Beard Award nominee, keeps the menu tight and the flavors bolder than the room's modest size would suggest. This is the kind of Cambridge spot where the cooking is doing something genuinely odd and you're glad it is.

The annual menu at this downtown Phoenix cocktail bar arrives as a lavishly illustrated tome, and the bar takes its ice quality as seriously as its recipes. Ross Simon's self-stated motto is "whimsical as fuck," which coexists happily alongside one of the coldest martinis in the city, served in red-leather booths under tall ceilings. A Spirited Awards Regional Top 10 Honoree, it draws a queue worth joining online before you arrive.

Ski-in/ski-out access at the base of the Tetons, with a dedicated ski concierge to handle the lift tickets so you never have to queue at a kiosk like a civilian. This is a full-service mountain resort, which means gas fireplaces in the rooms, Western-leaning decor, and the general sense that someone is always around to solve your problems. Forbes Four Star. Summer fly-fishing trips replace the ski crowds, but the unhurried pace stays year-round.

The pool at this mid-century hotel has hosted more lives than most buildings, including a stretch as an office, a radio station, and a filming location for Top Gun. Now it's back as a full urban resort on El Cajon Boulevard, renovated by a local hospitality group with retro glamour intact. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Expect good cocktails, a scene around the pool, and a vibe that takes the past seriously without being stuffy about it.

Rough Oklahoma sandstone cut into a hillside at 7,000 feet, with suites that look straight out over the Tetons, describes this Aman resort well enough to explain why Wyoming made sense for a brand that started in Bali. Fewer than 40 suites means the whole place feels private, each room with a fireplace and a soaking tub angled toward the mountains. A Forbes Four Star property, and genuinely unlike anything else in the Rockies.

This is the old-line Creole dining room on Royal Street where bananas foster was invented, and the servers still set it on fire at your table without losing track of your questions. It's fine dining in the jacket-and-good-posture sense, so you'll find yourself saying "powder room" without being asked. The bar program has James Beard attention of its own, and the Sazerac arrives the way it should.

A gray limewash exterior sets this boutique hotel apart from the red-brick streetscape around it, and the care inside matches the gesture outside. A walled garden channels old Charleston without the kitsch, marble and brass bathrooms feel like a decorator's pet project, and the spa was modeled on the developer's own carriage house. A Michelin Key hotel in the heart of downtown, it's the kind of place that was clearly someone's obsession before it was anyone's reservation.

A Michelin Key hotel just outside the Chinatown Gateway, The Hoxton, Portland brought its London post-industrial bones to a century-old building and then let the in-house design team loose on Northwest modernism of the Sixties and Seventies, which turns out to be a very good fit. The result feels less like a branded import than a building that always looked this way, which is probably the highest compliment a hotel can earn without admitting it was trying.

Three buildings, two Victorian and one new, were stitched together on George Street to make this 25-room luxury boutique hotel a Michelin Key holder in the heart of Charleston. The interiors lean into the bones of the older structures, bold wallpapers and period ornament, then pull it all forward with a sharp modern palette and furniture that clearly someone had strong opinions about choosing.

Two historic buildings merged into one downtown hotel, steps from Powell's and Portland's better tables. Woodlark holds a Michelin Key and leans into the city's quieter, more polished register, the one that gets overlooked in all the weirdness coverage. The location, sitting between downtown and Burnside, means you can walk almost anywhere worth going.

The wall murals were painted by Ludwig Bemelmans, the man behind Madeline, and he never paid rent, trading the art for a year's lodging instead. This Carlyle hotel cocktail bar has been a stronghold of old-money Manhattan for decades, all leather banquettes and low piano notes, the martinis notoriously strong. The crowd runs toward people who have a lot to lose and dress accordingly.

The multicolored lights wrapping the 16-story tower make the resort hard to miss in the low-slung Coachella Valley skyline. This is a full-service casino resort with 71,000 square feet of gaming floor, two outdoor pools, a spa, a concert venue, and a sports bar with screens big enough to cause a mild panic. Las Vegas is four hours away, which the resort is clearly fine with. Forbes Four Star.

The chandelier alone is worth pausing on, a sprawling coral-reef of a thing hanging over one of Seattle's most coveted oyster bar stools. This lively Ballard neighborhood spot runs on meticulously sourced oysters and a short, focused seafood menu, and the wait for a table is long enough that the tile-clad bar next door exists partly as a waiting room. A James Beard nominee for Outstanding Restaurant, it's the place locals bring visitors who ask where to eat in Seattle.

A sweeping spiral staircase and a towering wine cellar greet you in the lobby, which sets the tone for this 234-room luxury hotel on West End. Champalimaud designed the interiors, and the result lands somewhere between art hotel and serious whiskey destination. Three in-house dining and drinking spots lean into Southern fare, and the rooftop pool deck has skyline views that make Nashville's reputation for a good time feel like an understatement.

A hidden inn spread across a cluster of restored adobe houses in what locals call the oldest neighborhood in the country. The owners spent a lifetime collecting, and it shows: Persian rugs, Tibetan furniture, carved Indian doors, and bathrooms tiled in onyx and lapis. Wood-burning fireplaces, quiet courtyards, and a spa rooted in Silk Road rituals round it out. A passageway off the patio leads to the Dragon Room bar, where Georgia O'Keeffe used to drink.

The old Charles Street Jail, a granite hulk from the mid-1800s, is now a full-service luxury hotel where the do-not-disturb sign reads "Solitary" and the in-room safe doubles as a bedside table. The conversion leans into the bit without apology: a cocktail bar in the original cellblock, restaurant names that wink at incarceration, and mugshot art on the walls. The rooms are comfortable, the theming is committed, and the location near Beacon Hill is hard to argue with.

A Romanesque Revival house on Piedmont Avenue, Stonehurst Place is a Midtown B&B where eight rooms sit inside a building that has been around forever, with two tucked into the carriage house out back. Rooms range from cozy attic retreats to suite-sized quarters with spa bathrooms. A screened porch handles the slow-morning reading crowd, and a sleeping porch moonlights as a TV lounge. Gourmet breakfast is included. It holds a Michelin Key and AAA Four Diamonds.

ChopnBlok is a casual, order-at-the-counter West African spot that outgrew its food hall stall and settled into Montrose. Lunch means rice bowls with braised short rib or suya-spiced steak, plus a red stew rooted in the chef-owner's childhood. The cocktail list leans on West African ingredients, so a midday meal can slide into happy hour without anyone filing a complaint. The chef is a James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Texas.

Past the vintage movie posters and through the double doors is an interior courtyard with a back wall that doubles as a 35mm projection screen, metal drive-in speakers lining the walls. It's a Californian restaurant where you can turn the sound up for dinner-and-a-movie or down to coo over anchovy-stuffed olives. Outdoor heaters handle the Mission fog. A James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurant.

Jeffrey Morgenthaler, one of Portland's bartending legends, helped set up this cocktail bar in the lobby of the Kex Hotel as an unabashed love letter to the Pacific Northwest. The space feels like a well-appointed living room, and the menu lists alcohol percentages alongside each drink, which sounds nerdy until you're grateful for it. The range runs from zero-proof options to a 39% Old Fashioned over a single oversized ice cube.

Oysters and crab claws on ice set the tone at this bright seafood restaurant in Los Olivos, where the team behind Bell's in Los Alamos turned their attention to things that swim. Slide into a booth, order the shared plates, and let the wine list run deep, including their own label. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and Esquire put it on their Best New Restaurants list. Santa Barbara County has an embarrassment of riches, and this is one of them.

The lobby ceiling drips with Murano glass, modeled after a Renaissance castle in Genoa, which is exactly the kind of sentence that prepares you for The Breakers. This grand oceanfront resort covers 140 acres and runs to two golf courses, a tennis complex, a sprawling spa, and a beach club where uniformed concierges deliver cold drinks to guests in private poolside bungalows. It holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star.

Rooms at this 64-room adults-only hotel look directly onto the Beringer Estate vineyards, which sets the tone before you've unpacked. The Indonesian-born Alila brand usually goes modernist, but St. Helena softened it into something with Arts and Crafts warmth. The spa is lavish, the restaurant sits in a separate Georgian farmhouse that reads as an intentional counterpoint to the rest, and downtown St. Helena is just outside. A Forbes Four Star property.

The name nods to the Prohibition speakeasy that once operated in the basement, which is a better origin story than most boutique hotels can manage. Lark Hotels gave the old house a full renovation, and their signature formula is intact: photogenic rooms, genuinely comfortable beds, and a walkable neighborhood that makes you feel like a local who somehow has nicer lodgings than anyone else on the block. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

The red brick shell of a 19th-century orphanage in the Lower Garden District has been turned into a boutique hotel that wears history without being suffocated by it. Rooms lean into retro detail while staying genuinely comfortable, and the food program is serious, with a French-Vietnamese cafe and an Italian restaurant on site. The Paradise Lounge lobby bar opens to a patio, which in New Orleans is exactly the right idea. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Shinola, the brand that sells you a handsome watch and a bicycle you'll never ride, also runs this downtown Detroit hotel, and it lands with the Michelin Guide's one Key designation. The rooms carry the same crafted-in-America aesthetic the brand trades on, and the address on Woodward puts you squarely in a neighborhood that has visibly decided it isn't done yet. A stay here feels less like a hotel booking and more like a small wager on the city.

A polished-concrete courtyard, warmed by mid-century Danish armchairs, sets the tone at this boutique hotel on East Cesar Chavez. The Heywood holds a Michelin Key, and what's quietly notable is how thoroughly Austin-rooted it is: the architects, designers, artists on the walls, and most of the supply chain are local, with women running the show from ownership down. Style with a conscience, and it doesn't feel the need to remind you constantly.

Period lanterns, glossy windows, and varicolored brickwork set the tone before you even walk in. The Spectator is a boutique hotel where the French Quarter and Market Street meet, wearing its Roaring Twenties bones lightly, with Modernist awnings keeping things from tipping into full costume drama. Four floors, a debonair bearing, and a Michelin Key make it a natural base for Charleston at its most photogenic.

Rows of towering palms line the drive up to this Spanish colonial resort sitting at the base of Camelback Mountain, and the inside follows through: Oriental rugs, deep saturated colors, and none of the beige Southwestern pastels you'll find everywhere else in Phoenix. Stone paths wind through orange groves and tucked-away courtyards. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. It reads less like a hotel than like a very grand private home someone forgot to lock.

Fifty-nine suites and villas clad in weathered cedar sit on 160 acres above the crashing Pacific, with redwoods behind and rugged cliffs in front. This is a luxury resort in the genuinely inconvenient, genuinely spectacular stretch of Highway One, and the mild disorder of the scenery is rather the point. Safari-style tents handle overnight camping for guests who find the suites insufficiently outdoorsy. It holds a Forbes Four Star and two Michelin Keys.

Every room has a Juliet balcony and an electric fireplace, which tells you something about what Mirbeau is selling. This Forbes Four Star inn and spa in Rhinebeck takes its aesthetic cues from French Impressionism, soft palettes and all, though the Hudson Valley does most of the heavy lifting. The 12,000-square-foot spa is the main event: a Himalayan salt sauna, eucalyptus steam room, and a heated outdoor whirlpool with its own bar for anyone who needs a rosé with their jets.

Ocean Drive is all neon and bass drops, which makes The Betsy's quietly art-forward lobby feel like a different city entirely. This boutique hotel holds a Michelin Key and earns it through restrained, gallery-like interiors and a pace that has no interest in competing with the clubs next door. Guests who want South Beach energy but need somewhere civilized to recover from it tend to find their way here.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Midtown skyline from rooms that got a serious refresh, with local art on the walls and furniture that no longer suggests a corporate retreat. This is a contemporary hotel on Peachtree Street, polished and spacious, with a lobby full of comfortable couches that actually invites lingering. The bar next door pulls in the neighborhood crowd, which in Midtown means you'll never feel like you wandered into an airport Marriott.

Harbor views come standard at this full-service hotel in Boston's Seaport District, where the rooms angle toward the water and the nautical nods in the decor are tasteful enough to forgive. Three dining options, a health club with massage, and complimentary bikes keep things moving. The Convention Center is steps away, which tells you something about the weekday crowd, but the ICA and the waterfront are right there too.

Rice Vice is the taproom for Proper Sake, a casual sake bar where the menu describes each pour in flavor notes so specific they border on a confession ("bubblegum funk" is a real category here). Order the citrusy nigori if you're new, or something earthier if you're not. Food means snacks, with the occasional pop-up out front. Esquire put it on its best bars in America list, and sake fans fill the room.

Vintage mirrors, cherry wood, and brass gas chandeliers give this Downtown Brooklyn steakhouse an amber glow that makes every Tuesday feel like an occasion. The kitchen draws on the legacy of Edna Lewis, who ran it in the late eighties, so fried chicken and crab cakes share the menu with dry-aged prime beef. Dessert gets taken seriously, which a baked Alaska deserves. It has a spot on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

The 285 rooms were built partly from 75 tons of local fallen trees, which tells you immediately what kind of hotel this is. Perched at the foot of the Hollywood Hills on the Sunset Strip, the place goes all-in on sustainability without apologizing for the upscale surroundings: recycled-paper hangers, a rooftop beehive, composting. Neutrals and organic materials keep the rooms calm. Harriet's Rooftop handles the drama, with views that make the whole city feel like your screensaver.

John Pawson's cedar-doored, travertine-and-tropical-greenery tower sits exactly where the Sunset Strip bleeds into Beverly Hills, and the hotel doesn't pretend that's a coincidence. Rooms run spare and luxurious, with city or Hills views, while downstairs the restaurant, lobby bar, rooftop, and subterranean nightclub form a full ecosystem for people who want refinement and decadence in the same evening. The spa exists, diplomatically, to make tomorrow possible.

High ceilings, glowing brass, leather banquettes, and enough wood detailing to make you feel like you're boarding the Orient Express: Costa is a coastal Italian restaurant inside The Jasper that reads as genuinely grand without trying too hard. The kitchen leans into housemade pasta and raw preparations, pairing classic Italian technique with unexpected flavor combinations that shouldn't work on paper but land cleanly on the plate.

Canard is a loose, loud French-ish diner on East Burnside, next door to Le Pigeon, where fast food gets a sommelier. Steam burgers, garlic fries, and tartare scooped with fried saltines share the table with serious Burgundy, and the whole thing costs less than you'd fear. Eater named it one of the best new restaurants in America, which the cheeseburger-and-foie crowd seems to have taken in stride.

The team behind Oxalis opened this Clinton Hill wine bar as a casual second act, and the kitchen takes it as seriously as the cellar. Both lean Spanish: natural wines from small producers, simple seafood, grilled toast, and vegetable plates that hold their own. The bar and open kitchen anchor a cozy room that fills up fast, so arrive early or embrace the wait with a glass of something zippy.

A tiny New American tasting menu spot on Massachusetts Ave with a four-seat bar and just a handful of tables, which means snagging a reservation feels like winning something. The chef, a James Beard Award nominee, runs a hyper-seasonal kitchen where foraged ingredients and New England farms do most of the talking. The Michelin Guide has taken notice, and the room earns its intimacy.

The wood-fired oven in this Ravenswood Neapolitan pizzeria burns through dough the way it's done in Naples, leaving a soft, charred crust that folds without argument. The chef trained in Italy and the obsession shows, with many ingredients sourced from there directly. The menu stays traditional, appetizers and desserts rounding out the pizza, and the room has an easy warmth that makes an hour feel like twenty minutes.