The Best Places in the United States

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.

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.

Wood-burning fireplaces, whirlpool tubs, and antique-furnished rooms spread across a cluster of restored barns and cottages on the Maine coast. This is an inn in the old sense: unhurried, a little formal, the kind of place where afternoon tea by the fire feels like the obvious plan. Bikes are available for riding along the coast, there's a stone pool, a spa, and a candlelit restaurant on the property that guests tend not to leave.

The abacus-inspired light fixtures alone could convince you this is a design hotel lobby, but Mott 32 is a fine dining room doing serious contemporary Chinese food inside The Palazzo. The menu pulls from Cantonese and Sichuanese traditions, and the applewood-roasted Peking duck has a following of its own. The dim sum spreads run all-you-can-eat without feeling like a cafeteria, which is a harder trick than it sounds.

A boutique hotel planted in the middle of Charleston's historic district, steps from Waterfront Park and a short walk from the South of Broad townhouses that look like they were painted for a calendar. Rooms, the atrium, and the roof terrace all catch harbor views, though the Michelin Key it holds suggests the location is doing the real heavy lifting. The galleries, antique shops, and Southern restaurants nearby are the actual argument for staying here.

The name is a portmanteau of Swiss and Texan, which tells you almost everything about the mood here. This Harwood District hotel plays continental service standards against big-hat Texan swagger, and the combination reads less like a theme than a personality. Spacious rooms with commanding views, decor with a freewheeling sense of humor, and a rooftop worth returning to every night. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

MOLLIE Aspen earns a Michelin Key for doing what almost no Aspen ski hotel bothers to attempt: taking design seriously. The look is somewhere between Bauhaus and Japanese-Scandinavian minimalism, which sounds like a grad-school thesis but reads as calm and cool in person. It sits just off Main Street, a short shuttle from the mountain, and the on-site bar and restaurant keep things lively once the lifts close. Not a log in sight.

You reach Little Palm Island by boat, which sets the tone immediately. This private-island resort in the Keys keeps things deliberately unhurried, with thatched bungalows, canopied beds, and hammocks positioned for maximum sunset interference. There are kayaks and paddleboards if guilt demands activity, and a classic wooden boat for mainland runs. Michelin awarded it 3 Keys. The kind of place where silence costs more than the minibar.

A long bar on one side, black marble banquettes on the other, and manchego herb biscuits coming out of the oven warm enough to ruin your appetite for everything else, except you won't let them. This is a neighborhood New American restaurant that happens to read upscale without much effort. The menu stays short and seasonal, which in Oakwood apparently includes a James Beard nomination for Outstanding Hospitality.

Buckhead was never going to be the neighborhood for reclaimed-wood cocktail bars, and the InterContinental leans fully into that logic. This is classic luxury-hotel territory: marble bathrooms, a spa, an Italian steakhouse called The Americano, and staff who apparently remember how you take your coffee without being asked. Business travelers and Southern-charm seekers will find nothing surprising here, which seems to be precisely the point.

The Rockwell Group redesigned every room and public space here, steering the W Hollywood from hot-pink maximalism into moody mid-century gold and emerald, with an oculus motif running through the whole thing. It's a full-service hotel sitting on Hollywood and Vine, above the Walk of Fame, with 319 rooms, suites, a rooftop pool bar, and weekly DJ sets and live music keeping the lobby from feeling too grown-up about itself.

A neon fish glows over the door in Asheville's South Slope brewery district, and the vibe inside this seafood counter is as no-nonsense as the name. Chef Ashleigh Shanti runs a fish fry built around North Carolina catfish and dayboat shrimp, with the fish sandwich, dredged in locally milled cornmeal and finished with spiced buttermilk tartar sauce, drawing the most attention. The New York Times put it on their 2024 Restaurant List, and a James Beard semifinalist nod followed.

Colorful walls hung with aso oke fabric and Nigerian celebration paintings set the mood before the food even arrives. ChòpnBlọk is a West African bowl-and-bites spot that grew from a food hall stall into a full-service restaurant, and the menu stayed short on purpose: a handful of bowls, salads, and snacks, plus frozen drinks that earn their place on the menu. The New York Times put it on their 2025 Restaurant List, which makes sense for a room this precise and this cheerful.

The twice-fried bacon has its own reputation in this city, which tells you something about how long the Avila family has been getting things right on East 7th. Joe's is an all-day breakfast shop and Tex-Mex bakery, built-in booths and no pretension, with migas tacos on house-made flour tortillas and a bakery case full of conchas. A 2023 James Beard America's Classics winner, which is the kind of honor a place earns by being itself for decades.

The old bus depot downtown is now a Spanish tapas bar warm enough to make you forget you had anywhere else to be. Jamón hangs over a dedicated carving station, croquettes and patatas bravas fill the table, and a bottle of something Iberian seems to materialize on its own. The team took home a James Beard Award for Outstanding Hospitality, which tracks: the room pulls you in and the staff keeps you there.

Parachute HiFi is a Korean listening bar from the Parachute team, built for people who'd rather hear a record than their own thoughts. Vinyl spins while the menu runs street-food mashups, like a burger drowned in Comté fondue and tteokbokki in a pad Thai situation, alongside cocktails. It's casual and dressy-ish in the way a good record collection is, and it takes reservations but still keeps room for walk-ins.

The chef still works the line most nights, which tells you something about a creative restaurant that's been an Old Town Scottsdale fixture long enough to feel inevitable. Vegetables are taken seriously here, pulled from Arizona farms and steered through a menu that drifts from the Sonoran Desert to the Levant without announcing itself. The wine list leans hard into Arizona producers, and the tucked-away bar is a fine place to work through both.

Boynton Canyon is a Yavapai ancestral site and one of Sedona's famous energy vortexes, which gives Enchantment's setting a charge that the usual "mountain resort" framing doesn't quite cover. Adobe casitas and hacienda suites have private decks and working fireplaces, and a dedicated pool concierge keeps the chaise situation sorted against a backdrop of red rock formations reflected in aquamarine water. The Trail House outfits guests for the 300-plus miles of trail outside the door. Forbes Four Star.

Calistoga is the scruffy, more rural end of Napa, and this Auberge Collection resort leans into that with 22 acres of outdoor space, mountain and vineyard views in every direction, and spa treatments that nod to the town's old mud-bath tradition. The crowd skews wine-serious but loosens up fast around the pool. A Forbes Four Star property where the grounds themselves are the main event.

Dim sum from a chef who treats borders as loose suggestions, set inside a ground-floor office building in Coral Gables that looks like it should house a dentist. The dumplings started as a pop-up and earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard semifinalist nod before finding a permanent home here. The cooking pulls from China, Japan, and Italy in the same breath, and somehow it coheres. A Niman Ranch short rib filling alongside charred cabbage in chili butter will tell you more than any summary.

A Fishtown red brick that did time as a women's home and a retirement community before its current life as a boutique hotel. The 50 rooms mix warm minimalism with antique touches that don't feel forced, and an interior courtyard with a heated pool is a quiet surprise for the neighborhood. A Mediterranean restaurant called Bastia is on site. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

A restored Queen Anne house a few blocks north of downtown, the Blind Tiger is a 14-room guest house from Lark Hotels, the boutique group that has a habit of finding good neighborhoods and settling in quietly. Chestnut Hill keeps it residential and unhurried, which suits the whole approach. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Three rooms above a restaurant and café on Lower Greenville, Casa Duro is less a hotel than a very good friend's Italian apartment, assuming your friend is obsessed with Italian culture and happens to own the building. The Duro Hospitality Group runs it the same way they run the two spots downstairs: with a specificity of taste that makes the whole thing feel more like a considered stay than a booking. It holds a Michelin Key.

Dum biryani folded with lamb barbacoa is a reasonable sign that this Bucktown restaurant is not picking a lane between Mexican and Indian, and has no intention of starting. The kitchen weaves the two cuisines into a menu that earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand and an Eater Chefs of the Year nod. Exposed brick, a long banquette, an open kitchen, and a crowd that arrives loud and leaves louder. Share everything.

This is a José Andrés steakhouse inside The Venetian, and the open kitchen is basically a stage for a very large fire. Bone-in wagyu ribeyes get charred there, while the menu also stocks Ibérico ham and an aged-cow beef most steakhouses skip. Caviar comes in single-bite cones, which tells you about the tax bracket. Dress like you're celebrating something, since most tables are.

The 2025 U.S. Brewers Cup champion works the bar here, which tells you something about the coffee before you've tasted it. Helm is a roastery cafe selling small-batch microlots in 100-gram bags, roasted on site and pulled toward clarity over comfort. Gesha varieties, floral aromas, lightly roasted. It's also, somehow, the official coffee sponsor of Gen Con, which means the tabletop gaming crowd found good taste before the coffee crowd found them.

The wood-fired oven sits open to the room in a space that feels more like a late-night bar than a pizza parlor, which tells you something about the crowd. This is a Neapolitan pizza spot with a serious reputation, ranked in the 50 Top Pizza USA and a James Beard semifinalist. The dough is the whole argument here, and the team has been refining it long enough that regulars tend to skip the menu.

The line forms before the doors open, which has been the rhythm at this Seguin BBQ shop since Ernest Servantes and Dave Kirkland, both decorated in the competition circuit, opened together. The industrial room with iron beams and exposed brick fills fast. Brisket, ribs, and sausage lean toward tender and lightly smoked rather than aggressively bark-forward. A Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard nomination keep the queue honest.

A Taiwanese restaurant in Denver's Capitol Hill where jellyfish and pickled mustard stems show up on the menu but somehow feel like comfort food by the time they reach the table. The cocktails lean into it too, with an Old Fashioned built around rose jam and black tea. Eater named it one of Denver's best restaurants, and Westword gave it Best New Restaurant honors.

A flower-strung alley leads to an order window in East Austin, which is a whole vibe before the coffee even arrives. Mercado Sin Nombre is a Mexican coffee shop built around heirloom corn and specialty coffee, with pastries that take the idea seriously, including a biscuit that takes 100 hours to make. A Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard Outstanding Bakery semifinalist, it keeps the name deliberately small so the farmers doing the work stay front and center.

Two turn-of-the-century brick buildings joined into one hotel, with 18-foot trees growing under a vaulted glass atrium ceiling that blurs the line between indoors and the park outside. The bar in the middle of that atrium is the obvious place to settle, but the all-seasons rooftop has the city view. Guest rooms run to warm wood and deep navy. It's a thoughtful place to sleep in Cincinnati's oldest neighborhood.

Warda Bouguettaya won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef in 2022, and her understated cafe on West Alexandrine is where that makes sense. Warda Pâtisserie is the kind of patisserie where the tarts are architectural and the bread smells like someone actually cares. Bistro seating if you want to linger over a latte, takeaway boxes if you don't. Detroit didn't exactly have a shortage of opinions, but this one is quiet and confident about it.

Southern cooking and a cocktail program that pours buttermilk and benne seed into the glass share equal billing at this casual Five Points restaurant and bar. The chef runs with heirloom grits and collard greens but also hot-and-sour catfish and sorghum-tamarind pork shoulder, so the kitchen respects the tradition without being hostage to it. The team behind the preeminent cocktail bar Yacht Club runs the drinks side, which explains the ambition in a room that looks relaxed about the whole thing.

The table by the window on St. Charles is the one to request, and once you're in it you'll understand why this place has been around forever. It's a full-service restaurant where French and Italian instincts run through Cajun and Creole cooking without apology or explanation. The house-made spaghetti fills tables every night, and the duck confit with dirty rice keeps people coming back.