The Best Places in the United States

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.

A glass-encased walkway with water cascading around you is the first thing that happens, which sets the tone for a hotel that seems determined to pretend Times Square isn't happening outside. The seventh-floor lobby is all-white and calm, a minor act of defiance against the chaos below. It's still a W in the middle of the tourist vortex, but the interior makes a reasonable case for ignoring that entirely.

Dolphin pods drifting past the oceanfront balconies have a way of making evening plans negotiable. This Four Seasons resort sits on the Leeward Coast, far from Waikiki, facing a sheltered lagoon with the Wai'anae Mountains behind it. The Naupaka Spa runs fourteen treatment rooms, the kids' club is one of the stronger ones in the portfolio, and Michael Mina's seafood restaurant anchors five dining options. Forbes Four Star.

A living wall of air plants greets you in the lobby, which still manages to feel less like a hotel check-in and more like a very tasteful friend's house in Yountville. Bardessono is a wine country resort built around serious green credentials, all low wood-and-steel buildings, olive trees, water features, and the kind of air that smells faintly of rosemary whether you want it to or not. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys.

A Victorian-era mansion built in Aesthetic Movement style anchors this boutique hotel on Healdsburg's west side, a pointed rebuke to the region's endless Tuscan fantasies. The interiors, by co-owner and designer Jay Jeffers, layer period details against modern interventions, a serious art collection, and decades of accumulated antiques and curios. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys.

A speakeasy above a pho shop is a concept that earns its own zip code, and Phocific Standard Time delivers on the premise. The Vietnamese coffee martini has become a reason people climb the stairs specifically, but the bar snacks, caramelized crab dip with sesame saltines among them, make lingering easy. Named one of The Infatuation's most fun Seattle bars, it's a cocktail bar that happens to pair very well with whatever you just had downstairs.

Wood paneling, vintage platters, and a Nordic-inflected seafood menu that's refined without being precious: Fet-Fisk reads like it's been on Liberty Ave forever, even if it hasn't. The cooking moves between delicate and rustic without blinking. A James Beard nominee for Best New Restaurant in 2025, and on the New York Times Restaurant List in 2024. The room is the kind of comfortable that makes a long dinner feel like a reasonable idea.

A fireside butler will light your cottage fire pit on request, which sets the tone for this sprawling Wine Country resort on the Napa-Sonoma border. The location is its quiet trick: both valleys are under twenty minutes away, so you can do Scribe one afternoon and Trefethen the next without committing to a county. The spa sees hotel guests only. Forbes Four Star.

Three restored 19th-century buildings sit steps from Lexington Green, where the Revolutionary War opened for business. The Inn at Hastings Park is a Relais & Châteaux property with 22 rooms spread across a former private home, a politician's residence, and a carpentry barn, which is either atmospheric or a trivia question depending on your mood. Walden Pond is nearby for the philosophically inclined. It holds a Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key.

A hand-cranked rotisserie sits at the center of the open kitchen, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Italian restaurant on Beverly. The room has the warm, dark energy of a place that knows it's good, with backlit booths and a crowd that books early. Hearty pastas, big proteins, and vegetables that actually want to be there. The New York Times put it on their LA list, and the Los Angeles Times ranked it in their top ten statewide.

Six rooms in a residential house a few blocks from the Danforth Street sibling, this Lark Hotels guest house holds a Michelin Key and wears its size lightly. Vintage furnishings and local artwork give it the feel of staying with someone who has better taste than you do. The neighborhood is quiet, walkable, and genuinely residential, which means you'll pass actual Portlanders on the way to breakfast.

The rooftop radio tower sign still blinks over Ponce de Leon, and the Clermont Lounge still does its thing in the basement, which means this 94-room boutique hotel exists, rather perfectly, as the respectable middle of a very Atlanta sandwich. The red-brick building has been around forever and renovated thoroughly, with a restaurant by a celebrated local chef and a Michelin Key to its name.

A farm-to-table restaurant inside a historic home in Marshall, where the prix fixe menu extends to dogs, because of course it does. You can go deep into the multicourse tasting or just order the smash burger on a potato roll with bacon jam, and the kitchen won't judge you either way. The menu shifts with the seasons and what's local, so regulars come back to see what changed. Cabanas out back, thoughtful service throughout.

Stacked stone, rusted metal, and reclaimed barn wood layer up into something that feels like a mountain lodge edited by someone with actual taste. Hotel Jackson is a boutique hotel a short walk from the town square, which puts you close to everything without the parking ordeal. The lobby art runs Western, the chandeliers run Mediterranean, and the combination is less confused than it sounds. A Michelin Key and a Forbes recommendation back up the vibe.

A 23-room boutique hotel on El Camino Real where valet, gratuities, room service, and a personal concierge are folded into the rate, so the only decision left is what to do with your hands. Staff greet you by name with your preferred drink, the shared library and kitchen are yours to treat as home, and the guest pantry freezer is stocked with Tin Pot Creamery ice cream. Silicon Valley's expense accounts have found their natural habitat.

Floors 22 to 26 of a 54-story tower above L.A. Live, which means you wake up with the Staples Center in your sightline and a surprisingly quiet room for being that deep in the downtown buzz. The Ritz-Carlton here is a full-service luxury hotel, with a spa, club lounge, and meeting spaces that draw the corporate retreat crowd as readily as weekending couples looking for a staycation with valet parking.

A Morris Lapidus building at the foot of Lincoln Road, sitting right on the Atlantic, is a pretty strong opening argument for a hotel. The Ritz-Carlton South Beach is a full resort in the classic Miami Beach mold, with ocean-view rooms done in warm interiors, marble baths, and beds topped with feather mattresses. The spa anchors the property, and a VIP Club Lounge is the only one of its kind on South Beach, for guests who prefer their perks with a zip code.

Melba Wilson, a born-and-bred Harlemite, named this Southern comfort restaurant after herself, which sets the tone immediately. Fried chicken with eggnog waffles is the move, and a fruit cobbler that has no business being that good closes things out. The room feels like a gathering spot rather than a destination, warm and unhurried in a way that explains the James Beard nominations for Outstanding Hospitality two years running.

A cooler of free beer greets the line outside this Saturday-only BBQ shop, which tells you almost everything about the vibe. The chef, a 2025 James Beard nominee who landed on the New York Times Restaurant List, does South Carolina chopped pork with cracklings folded in, plus Hill Country sausages and beef ribs that disappear before noon. Show up early or recalibrate your weekend plans accordingly.

Dry-aged swordfish is not something most seafood restaurants attempt, but it's the kind of move that tells you exactly what kind of place GW Fins is. This upscale French Quarter dining room goes deep on seasonal fish, running cuts like sheepshead and fish collars alongside the more expected. The chef's been a James Beard semifinalist, and the room draws people who came prepared to order carefully and stay a while.

Magnums of natural wine lean toward empty glasses and conversations bounce off metallic high-tops in a low-ceilinged room that feels more like someone's dinner party than a restaurant. This Lower East Side wine bar runs on eclectic small plates and a list that skews biodynamic and organic, with a vibe that's deliberately, unapologetically Parisian. The New York Times gave it two stars, and Wine Enthusiast put it on its Forward 50 list.

Calvin Eng's Cantonese restaurant and bar sits on a nondescript east Williamsburg corner, close enough to the BQE that you'll feel the trucks. Inside, it reads like a retro Hong Kong diner, but the kitchen runs modern interpretations of regional Cantonese food, and the MSG Martini earned a spot on Esquire's national list. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, and the James Beard Foundation named Eng an Emerging Chef nominee.

Don't let the word "inn" fool you: this is a full Spanish Colonial resort sprawling across a couple hundred wooded acres in the Ojai Valley, with a championship golf course, a serious spa complex, and enough pools to lose track of your afternoon. Hollywood has been retreating here since forever, and the laid-back Santa Barbara-area energy keeps it from feeling stuffy. A Forbes Four Star property that earns its keep with mountain views and room to exhale.

The red-and-white striped lighthouse at Harbour Town is practically the symbol of Hilton Head, and this Forbes Four Star inn sits right underneath it. It's a resort stay built around the outdoors, with five miles of private beach, miles of bike trails, an equestrian center, and three golf courses, the most famous being Harbour Town Golf Links, which hosts the PGA Tour's RBC Heritage each April.

A rooftop pool in the Meatpacking District has a way of announcing itself, and this boutique hotel has been making that announcement since the neighborhood was still figuring out what it wanted to be. The surroundings have since settled into high-end retail and the Whitney, and the hotel has kept pace with a refreshed interior and a contemporary art collection that gives the common areas something worth slowing down for.

Each of the 40 rooms is a freestanding glass atrium on steel piers, so you wake up with red rock formations where the wall should be. Ambiente is an adults-only design hotel on three acres outside Sedona, built around the idea that the landscape is the amenity. A private rooftop fire pit comes with each room, which is the right call under these skies. The Velvet Spa and an on-site restaurant round things out. It holds two Michelin Keys.