The Best Places in the United States

Ski-in-ski-out access is the whole pitch here, and Four Seasons Vail delivers it without apology. The hotel holds Michelin's 1 Key and a Forbes Four Star, runs from elegant rooms up to six-bedroom private residences, and sits squarely in the middle of the walkable village. The spa was fully redone recently and has the largest treatment rooms in the valley. Après-ski at The Remedy draws locals, which is usually a good sign.

A glass of manzanilla arrives before you've quite settled in, which tells you everything about the pace here. Toro is a Spanish tapas bar that's been a South End fixture forever, and the room earns its noise, with bone marrow, croquetas, and paella rotating through tables of people who clearly planned this weeks out. The all-Spanish wine list and good cocktails keep things moving, and the music is loud enough that nobody's whispering.

The wellness resort that essentially invented the genre, set against the Sonoran Desert outside Tucson. Canyon Ranch is an all-inclusive spa and fitness destination where the itinerary can run from sunrise hikes to integrative medicine consultations, and nobody judges you for doing neither. It holds a Michelin 3 Keys distinction. The vibe is less "punishing cleanse" and more "genuinely rethink how you live," which was a radical idea when it opened and remains a persuasive one.

The Veranda Lounge's botanical cocktails and small plates give you an excuse to linger, but the rooms are reason enough to stay at this 50-room boutique hotel in Charleston's French Quarter. It's a new build that doesn't embarrass the historic streetscape around it, and the interiors split the difference between antique good looks and quietly high-tech comfort. The Michelin Guide awarded it two Keys.

Mesquite and pecan wood smoke drifts out of the open kitchen at this Chihuahuan-rooted restaurant inside Tempe's Culdesac neighborhood, where the grill does serious work on meats, peppers, and open-faced quesadillas. The team behind Tacos Chiwas built something more personal here, moving from taqueria to family table. Moles, micheladas, and brunch dishes like concha French toast fill out a menu that runs morning to night. A James Beard Outstanding Restaurateur semifinalist in 2024.

The Txuletón, a Basque-style ribeye from mature dairy cows, grilled over open charcoal with salt, heat, and not much else, is the organizing principle of this Basque-inspired chophouse in River North. The kitchen takes its cues from the asador tradition, applying that discipline to seriously sourced beef, carefully aged. Spanish reds anchor the wine list. Esquire named it among the best new restaurants in America, and it lands at number 15 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

Floor-to-ceiling illuminated pillars playing curated digital art greet you before you even reach the casino floor, which sets the tone for this sprawling Strip resort. The Cosmopolitan runs a serious collection of restaurants from celebrity chefs, popular bars, boutique shops, and a pool scene that converts to an ice rink come winter. The crowd skews stylish and self-aware, which fits a hotel that opened during a recession and never once acted like it.

The open kitchen anchors a room where wood floors and exposed ductwork split the difference between industrial loft and neighborhood restaurant. J.C. Holdway is a Southern-leaning American dinner spot in downtown Knoxville, the kind where buttermilk biscuits arrive topped with braised pork belly and the pasta is house-made. The New York Times put it on their Restaurant List, and the chef is a James Beard semifinalist. Tennessee ingredients run through nearly everything.

A Knoxville pizzeria that bets everything on sourdough, with 12-inch Neapolitan-style pies split into red, white, and build-your-own. It's casual, jeans-and-sneakers territory, though it takes reservations, which a slice joint would find hilarious. Starters run to a pickle plate and mushroom pâté, and the gelato board changes often. The Michelin Guide lists it as a Bib Gourmand.

The L-shaped marble bar and brass fixtures in the Flatiron Hotel's ground-floor Italian restaurant set a tone that's polished without being stiff. The kitchen butchers whole animals in-house and sources from local farmers' markets, running the results through wood-fired pizzas, handmade pastas, and solid main plates. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, which here means you eat very well and still recognize your credit card statement afterward.

The sunny yellow exterior and orange canopy on the corner of Melrose are hard to miss, which is fitting because neither is the pizza inside. Nancy Silverton's pizzeria has been an LA institution forever, with bare wood tables, skylights, and a Bib Gourmand to its name. The pies come out of the oven with puffy, golden edges, and the seasonal dessert selection runs deep enough to cause genuine indecision.

The Original Muscle Beach sits just out front, which tells you something about the neighborhood this hotel walked into. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Pacific, the pool deck pulls everyone outside, and rooms come with marble soaking tubs and yoga mats in case you'd rather not think about the gymnasts next door. Michael Mina runs the Mediterranean restaurant. A Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star.

The bread is the whole philosophy here: Union Loafers is a bakery-turned-full-service restaurant in Botanical Heights where naturally leavened loaves set the tone for everything else on the menu. The pizzas split the difference between New York chew and Neapolitan char, and the sandwiches built on house bread give you a very good reason to show up before dinner. St. Louis-style pizza is conspicuously absent, which some locals treat as a provocation.

Dolly's is a bakery-cafe on Rockaway Avenue that also runs a soft serve window, and the soft serve is where the strangeness lives. The blueberry pancake one comes with an actual pancake on top, so you can eat the dessert and its inspiration side by side like a tiny experiment. Flavors rotate through cereal and banana pudding, and it's all cheap, casual, and eaten standing up. The Infatuation has listed it among the best bakeries in NYC.

Vindicktive is a Belltown beer bar built the opposite way from most sports bars: you come for the wings and the game is background noise. The skin shatters like a potato chip over juicy meat, and the flavors run from buffalo to salt and vinegar. It's a blue-cheese-only house, so ranch requests will be received with a long, quiet look. The Infatuation put the wings on its national list, which tracks.

Nong's is a casual counter-service Thai spot that grew out of a one-dish food cart and still mostly sticks to the plan: poached chicken over rice cooked in the schmaltz, with a cup of clear broth on the side. The ginger sauce has the kind of following that has Portlanders keeping a bottle in the fridge door like a family heirloom. It's cheap, easy, and the city's default answer to a cold.

Lost Larson is a Scandinavian-leaning bakery and cafe in Andersonville that mills its own flour, which sounds like a bit until you see the loaves. The pastry case looks like a Great British Baking Show finale, all tarts, cardamom buns, and savory croissants. Order at the counter, grab a sandwich or an afternoon bun with Earl Grey sugar, and expect to linger over coffee longer than you planned.

Sugar Moon is a takeout-only bakery in Logan Square, so there's no table to claim, just a sidewalk line that starts forming a good half hour before the 9am opening and doesn't care about the weather. The reward is a curried cauliflower croissant or a Nutella-pear brioche bun, plus scones that crumble the way scones should. Pastry runs cheap, the wait costs you a Saturday morning, and it's been named among the country's favorite bakeries by The Infatuation.

A pastel Italian villa dropped into Houston's Uptown neighborhood, Hotel Granduca plays the part with enough conviction that you half-expect to hear Vespas. It's a Forbes Four Star hotel with a private-residence feel: chauffeur service, personal trainers, a heated outdoor pool, and multiple spots to dine tucked into the veranda, conservatory, and club room. Quiet and self-contained enough to forget the city exists outside.

The clock tower that once held the city's tallest point now holds Ian Schrager's boutique hotel in the Flatiron District, a collaboration with Marriott that somehow kept its cool. Rooms sit above Madison Square Park, which means the 360-degree views range from good to unreasonable depending on the floor. Chelsea, NoMad, and Greenwich Village are all within easy reach, though the hotel itself gives you decent reasons to stay put.

A corner wine bar in a rambling old house in the Bywater, with a backyard that somehow becomes the whole point. The wine list roams globally and you buy bottles at the shop counter, then take them outside where live music is usually happening and the vibe is somewhere between dinner party and block party. Cheese plates, light bites, no dress code implied. Named among the 50 most essential bars in America by Wildsam.

Marble-top bar, globe pendants, and coffee-brown tables give this Basque restaurant on the Lower East Side a midcentury feel that somehow never reads as costume. The room runs loud and convivial, the way a good tapas night should, and everything is built for sharing. The wine list leans deep into small Spanish organic and biodynamic producers, which is either very convenient or a very pleasant trap, depending on your evening.

Il Canto is a takeout counter in the Financial District, a Mediterranean spot best known for a breakfast burrito that has a lot of cheese going on. Scrambled eggs and creamy chipotle aioli come wrapped around it, and for a couple extra dollars you can add sausage, bacon, shrimp, potatoes, or beans. It's served all day, so the suits in line at noon don't have to pretend they're there for the Mediterranean part.

Mama's Luncheonette is a daytime takeout window in Cow Hollow that has built a following on things wrapped in foil. The breakfast burrito comes stuffed with smashed tater tots, soft scrambled eggs, avocado, and cheddar, and the thick-sliced house brisket is an add-on you'll want to say yes to. The salsa arrives in a small cup, so ask for extra. There's also a chicken caesar wrap, because lettuce deserves a tortilla too.

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.

There's no sign on Eldridge Street, just a faux tailor's shop window with a glowing "A" and a buzzer you'll wait at long enough to second-guess yourself. This is the cocktail bar that opened in the old Milk & Honey space after Sasha Petraske moved on, and it runs on the same no-menu, tell-us-what-you-like philosophy. North America's 50 Best Bars lists it, and the wait outside on any given night suggests people have read that list.

This is a Vietnamese bakery counter tucked inside the Hong Kong City Mall, more prep station than dining room, and it takes cash only. The case is stacked with small snacks, from banana-leaf sausages to rice balls, but the bánh mì đặc biệt is the one people circle back for. It runs about five bucks, which makes ordering two on the first visit more sensible than greedy. It turns up on The Infatuation's list of Houston's Chinatown restaurants.

Toyori is a casual ramen shop on Bellaire Boulevard in Houston's Chinatown, where the dark walls and utilitarian booths hand all the drama to a floor-to-ceiling gold mural. The menu reads a lot like every other ramen menu in the neighborhood, which makes the consistency bowl after bowl the whole trick. The meal ends with a tiny probiotic drink, a small cute gesture that somehow feels like a dessert course.

An old Schlitz tavern in Bay View that smells like someone's grandmother has been cooking since morning. This cash-only Serbian dinner spot runs on its own clock, which means a 45-minute wait is fairly standard and nobody seems to mind. Goulash, moussaka, chicken paprikash, and flaky böreks fill out a menu built for cold weather and real hunger. An old-school institution doing exactly what it has always done.

This is a Viet-Cajun crawfish house on Bellaire Boulevard, where you wear a bib and gloves big enough to look like a bit. The crawfish come boiled with lemongrass and ginger, and the turkey necks arrive pre-spiced. The room works like a sports bar that lost the plot, with the Astros on every TV and a Darth Vader helmet in the corner nobody will explain. It's casual, loud, and messy, and the check stays reasonable.

The name honors San Pasqual, patron saint of cooks, and someone in the kitchen grinds masa from heirloom corn every single day. This energetic Capitol Hill Mexican restaurant is built around the hearth, and the chefs spent two years working with local farmers just to secure the right herbs. Everything lands in the middle of the table for sharing. It landed on North America's 50 Best list, and getting a reservation still takes some planning.

A sea-foam green Victorian near downtown Eugene is an unlikely home for a West Indian rum bar, but here we are, and Oregon is better for it. Yardy started as a food truck and graduated to a cheerful brick-and-mortar where sorrel punch anchors the cocktail list and pholourie, fried chicken sandwiches, and twice-fried plantain jibaritos do the heavy lifting. A 2025 New York Times Restaurant List pick and a James Beard semifinalist.

Forty-nine Spanish hacienda casitas spread across 45 acres of rolling Rancho Santa Fe hills, each with a fireplace trimmed in hand-painted tile, beamed ceilings, a private garden patio, and a soaking tub big enough to take seriously. This Forbes Five Star resort sits far enough from the coast to feel genuinely removed, yet Del Mar and La Jolla are close. A spa, racquet sports program, and golf privileges round things out for guests who consider unplugging a full-time project.

The grand staircase descending from the Villard Mansion gates is the kind of entrance that makes you feel like you've arrived somewhere, even if you live nearby. This midtown luxury hotel spreads across a landmarked 19th-century mansion and a modern tower, with marble bathrooms, deep beds, and work desks in the standard rooms. The Triplex Suites climb to 5,000 square feet with Art Deco details and private rooftop terraces, if you're keeping score.

The lobby is a long, dim, Art Deco-inspired corridor that makes you walk past a very glamorous staircase before you find the front desk, which is a choice. This Midtown hotel is Sofitel's North American flagship, 29 floors a short walk from Bryant Park, and the whole thing leans into a Franco-New York elegance that stops just short of being a bit much. Rooms are quiet and well-dressed, and the staff keeps things moving.

A neoclassical tower in the middle of Midtown, half a mile from the Renzo Piano-designed High Museum and a short walk from Piedmont Park. Rooms run to leather headboards, velvet sitting chairs, and original work by Atlanta painter Caroline Bullock. Bar Margot, named after the Wes Anderson character, pulls in DJ nights on weekends. The spa's weekday happy hour treatment menu suggests someone had fun with the concept.

The art deco bones of this Walnut Hills live-fire Mediterranean restaurant are half the reason to book a table, the kitchen being the other half. The chef leans hard into the eastern Mediterranean, the kind of cooking where roasted vegetables become pita dips and hamachi collar gets a glossy glaze. Regulars have already claimed favorite bartenders, which for a restaurant this new is saying something. A 2024 New York Times Restaurant List pick and a 2025 James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist.

The hook here is a tabletop grill: you cook your own steak, then order a freezer martini cold enough to make your teeth ache. The Butterscotch Den calls itself a "fine dive bar," and the label does the work, precision cocktails and live jazz alongside hot dogs and fondue. Esquire named its freezer martini among the top in America, and the crowd seems to know it, treating the whole room like a very good secret they've stopped keeping.

The vaulted stained-glass ceiling in the lobby alone makes a case for booking a room. This landmark hotel in downtown Nashville holds a Michelin two-key distinction and two restaurants from Jean-Georges Vongerichten, which is either a perk or a trap depending on your willpower. Guest rooms lean into Southern warmth without tipping into kitsch, and the building itself has been a fixture of the city long enough to feel genuinely rooted in it.

A Forbes Four Star hotel tucked into an East Palo Alto office park, which is either an odd choice or a very deliberate one depending on your relationship with Sand Hill Road. The lobby leans smart and modern, with digital art and velvet loveseats that soften the corporate surroundings. Two hundred guest rooms come with spacious bath suites and the kind of beds Four Seasons has built its reputation on. Quattro handles California-Italian; the lobby café handles the pre-meeting espresso.

Vanilla soft serve finished with olive oil from the owner's Italian vineyard tells you plenty about what kind of place this is: a neighborhood cookshop in North Naples where the kitchen is having fun and doesn't mind if you notice. The menu swings from caviar served with Bugles to chorizo potatoes with chipotle hollandaise, and the room is warm enough that first-timers feel like regulars by the second round. A James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist.

The handmade tortillas, corn or flour, come out warm and the salsas live in a cooler you're invited to raid freely. This beloved Austin taco shop started as a food truck and the sisters behind it still run the show, turning out breakfast tacos loaded with eggs and chorizo alongside a mole negro chicken option at lunch. The migas taco, stacked with thick crispy chips, is hard to leave without. Order a La Bomba juice and you'll feel embarrassingly virtuous about it.

A bowling alley, an ice rink, and a nightclub share a building with 294 rooms, private bungalows, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten running the kitchen. Ian Schrager's oceanfront hotel on Collins Avenue stacks mid-century bones against a very modern idea of a good time, with two pools, a spa, and a stretch of semi-private beach for when the indoor chaos gets to be a bit much. Forbes Four Star.

Forty-seven rooms occupy what was once a department store in Uptown Charlotte, and the bones of that building give this boutique hotel a grandeur that newer construction can't fake. French ironwork, chandeliers, and a secret library lean into the Paris-meets-Charlotte-society vibe without tipping into theme park. A Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key. Church and Union steakhouse anchors the ground floor, and the rest of Uptown is a short walk.

A four-tap absinthe drip at the center of the bar is a replica of the one at the Absinthe House in New Orleans, and that tells you most of what you need to know. Maison Premiere is a cocktail and oyster bar in Williamsburg that commits fully to the bit: dim golden light, mock antique everything, marble bar top, the faint sense that you've wandered into another city and century. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks.

Kenneth Treister's curved, organic architecture from the eighties has been kept intact here, just polished up by a New York studio with good taste. This hotel sits in Coconut Grove rather than on Miami Beach, which tells you something about who it's for: people who'd rather have shady sidewalks and actual trees than a parade of resort umbrellas. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys, and the mood throughout is romantic and a little eccentric, in the best Coconut Grove tradition.

Mesquite charcoal does the heavy lifting here, giving the carne asada a smokiness that flour tortillas, silky and lightly crisped, are well suited to carry. This is a no-frills Sonoran taco shop in Glendale with a salsa bar and a menu that runs from al pastor to tripa to cabeza, none of it timid. Phoenix New Times gave it Best Tacos and Best Carne Asada in back-to-back years, and USA Today named it a Restaurant of the Year.

The facade of a 1929 Chicago landmark wraps this boutique luxury hotel on Rush Street, where Art Deco details share space with 21st-century comforts. It's named for sculptor Gwen Lux, whose work still ornaments the exterior, and the fifth-floor lobby leans into that Jazz Age identity hard. A rooftop bar with firepits, a weekend Tipsy Tea, and a see-and-be-seen cocktail lounge round out a property that holds a Michelin Key.

The name means "to fuss around in the kitchen," which tells you everything about this Jewish deli in Knoxville's Old City. It started as a pop-up and grew into a proper room serving comfort food that bubbe would recognize but maybe not endorse, like matzoh ball soup finished with chili oil. The challah comes out of the oven daily, the babkas rotate flavors, and the sandwiches are large enough to warrant a to-go box. A James Beard semifinalist.

Ian Schrager's Lower East Side hotel skips the front desk entirely: check-in happens when a "PUBLIC Advisor" finds you in the lobby. The idea behind the place is that luxury and accessibility don't have to be mutually exclusive, which sounds like a tagline until you see it in practice. It's on the World's 50 Best Hotels list, and the Michelin Guide has it selected. Stylish without the velvet-rope attitude, which in New York counts for something.

A Beaux-Arts building from 1911 meeting W Hotels' anything-but-1911 sensibility is exactly as entertaining as it sounds. The Rockwell Group handled this hotel's original 2001 debut and came back to renovate it, which either shows loyalty or a need to finish what they started. The Living Room lobby has soaring ceilings and marble columns that read a little Grand Central, and a rooftop bar sits up on the 22nd floor for anyone who needs a view with their cocktail.

The dining room walls, red and hung with African-American art, tell you this is a place with a history before you've touched the menu. A Creole fine dining institution in New Orleans, it holds a James Beard America's Classics Award and a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the cooking, gumbo, fried chicken, peach cobbler, earns every regulars' loyalty. The matriarchs still walk each table personally, which at a certain point stops being service and starts being something else.

Two buildings knocked into one give Scofflaw two distinct personalities: an industrial front room with the bar counter, and a Victorian-ish back room with wingback armchairs that somehow doesn't feel ironic. It's a gin-focused cocktail bar in Logan Square that also leans dive, with craft beer and pub grub to prove it. Expect a line on weekends; they don't take reservations, and forty minutes is a reasonable opening bid.

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.

A modern Southern restaurant on University Boulevard where the menu moves from shrimp dip and fried green tomatoes straight into honey garlic pork chops and gumbo, with peach cobbler waiting at the end. It has the feel of a place that hit its stride fast and knew exactly what it wanted to be. The crowd skews Alabama faithful, which tells you something about the portion sizes.

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.

Banh Mi Hue Thai is a takeout sandwich counter on Garvey Avenue, where the baguette does most of the talking. It's thin-crusted and airy enough to crinkle when you bite it, without shredding the roof of your mouth, so even the house special with cold cuts tastes good. There's one table inside, which is more of a suggestion than a dining room, and it's cash only. Make a stop at the ATM first. The Infatuation put it on its list of the best bánh mì across America.

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.

BBAD is a daytime counter in Pasadena that stands for Breakfast Burritos All Day, and it commits to the bit with a menu of just four burritos. The tortillas are wrapped tight enough to hold a full breakfast plate, soft eggs, crispy potato that can pass for bacon, and slow-roasted pork with a tart tomatillo salsa on the side. The Infatuation put the chile verde burrito on its list of the best breakfast burritos in America.

Bebe Zito is a pint-sized ice cream shop in Minneapolis where the spoons change color and the flavors reference both Brazilian desserts and a childhood spent near a cereal aisle. Guava swirls into cream cheese custard, Fruity Pebbles get caramelized, and a flight lets the indecisive sample widely. The burgers come out of a food truck parked in the alley, which is a bold move for a place with this much sprinkle exposure. It's on The Infatuation's list of the best ice cream in America.