The Best Places in the United States

This French wine bar on Columbia Road is spread over several floors of an Adams Morgan brownstone, which means you can pick a level and a mood like you're choosing a streaming tier. The menu is small and made for passing plates, French at heart but wearing a better outfit than your usual bistro. It was a James Beard nominee for Best New Restaurant, and it's an easy yes for date night or a wine-forward catch-up.

Gnocco fritto, the puffy Italian fry bread, sets the tone at this Thornton Park osteria: comfort classics with a little attitude. The Italian-American menu runs chicken parm alongside house-made pastas and truffle arancini, all in a room that manages to feel both stylish and genuinely relaxed. A 2025 James Beard nominee for Outstanding Restaurateur, and a Michelin selected spot that draws a neighborhood crowd who treat it like their personal dining room.

Low plush chairs, patterned tiles, and booths that encourage you to stay another glass make this Downtown Orlando wine bar feel like an evening rather than just dinner. The menu leans Spanish and European, and the chef draws on family recipes for much of it, which gives the food a specificity that generic "European" usually doesn't. A 2025 James Beard nominee for Outstanding Restaurateur runs the room, and it shows.

The 315-foot copper-toned tower has been a Coral Gables landmark forever, and the hotel underneath it leans hard into Old World Mediterranean grandeur without apologizing for a second. Rooms are quietly elegant, the grounds are tropical and unhurried, and the pool holds 600,000 gallons, which feels like a flex until you're actually in it. A professional gym, a French restaurant, and a lobby bar round out a property that moves at a slower, more deliberate pace than Miami proper.

Missy Robbins runs an open kitchen inside a former car body shop in East Williamsburg, which tells you something about the bones of the room before a single plate arrives. Lilia is the kind of Italian pasta restaurant where everything is handmade and the mafaldini with pink peppercorns has turned regulars into a kind of informal cult. The New York Times gave it three stars, and a James Beard semifinalist nod followed.

Dave Beran's Santa Monica bistro leans hard into France with no apologies and no asterisks. Wood beams, exposed brick, and white kitchen tile set the scene, and the pressed duck for two is the kind of centerpiece that makes the table next to you lean over and ask what you ordered. The marble bar handles a more casual drop-in just fine, with Champagne and caviar if you're feeling it. A New York Times pick for the city's best.

The meal ends with saltwater taffy tucked into the check, which tells you everything about Greg Vernick's intentions at this sleek seafood restaurant inside the Four Seasons. Terrazzo floors and floating orb fixtures signal expense-account territory, but the menu keeps drifting back to Jersey Shore summers. The branzino, the sardine toast, the ceviche all read serious, and then there's a diner slice from the pastry case waiting at the end.

The broad patio sweeps out from a small turquoise-trimmed adobe inn with the Camelback range as a backdrop, which is doing a lot of work before the food even arrives. Lon's is a white-tablecloth Southwestern restaurant in Paradise Valley, seasonal and quietly inventive, with weekend brunch drawing the kind of crowd that lingers over customizable margaritas and monkey bread loaded with caramel and cream. The bar is serious, the mountain views are free.

The resort is poured into a canyon floor in the Four Corners desert, its low concrete pavilions shaped around a natural rock outcropping so the land stays the main event. Amangiri is a remote luxury resort on 600 acres of Utah scrubland, the kind of place where the silence is the amenity. It holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Hotels list. Slot canyons and mesa views come standard; crowds do not.

The patio looks out over the 18th hole of Torrey Pines Golf Course, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe: California-casual with a country-club undercurrent, Craftsman beams and amber lanterns inside. The kitchen leans hard into Southern California's year-round growing season, so the California New American menu shifts with what's actually good. A AAA Four Diamond fine dining restaurant where the dress code is implied but never oppressive.

Caviar arrives on mother-of-pearl spoons, and the potato gets the Robuchon purée treatment, which tells you exactly where you are: a polished French restaurant in an era when that's a rarer breed than it once was. The kitchen still bakes madeleines to order, and for a modest surcharge a waiter will shower Périgord truffles on whatever you're eating. The New York Times named it among Chicago's 25 best restaurants. Dress accordingly.

Perched on the Palos Verdes Peninsula with Catalina Island sitting offshore like a postcard prop, this Forbes Four Star coastal resort sits just 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles and manages to feel like another country entirely. Eight restaurants and bars, a sprawling spa with treatment rooms facing the water, kayaking, tide pooling, and falconry keep guests occupied long enough to forget the freeway exists.

Fifty-four acres of north-shore Maui with Pacific views that reach Molokai on a clear day. This Forbes Four Star resort sits inside the larger Kapalua property, which means guests get two championship golf courses, miles of hiking trails, marine sanctuaries, and a tennis garden without ever hitting the tourist scrum down in Lahaina. The three-tier pool and its 20,000-square-foot sundeck handle the days when doing nothing is the whole point.

The smoked dome arrives at the table before anyone lifts it, which tells you something about the ambition here. This is an upscale Japanese restaurant and sushi bar in Montrose from chef Manabu Horiuchi, and the menu moves between precise nigiri and dishes that are harder to categorize, in the best possible sense. Texas Monthly named it the top new restaurant in the state, and the James Beard Foundation named Horiuchi an Outstanding Chef semifinalist in 2026.

Original Warhols and Picassos hang in the Gallery Suite, which tells you something about how this 23-story downtown hotel sees itself. The lobby reads as a working gallery, with rotating exhibitions from the Long-Sharp Gallery filling the walls while guests drift between the lobby bar and a Capital Grille. A sixth-floor indoor infinity pool and a spa give you every excuse to ignore the Indiana Repertory Theatre two blocks away.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame views of Tampa Bay and Amalie Arena from every room in this 27-story hotel, which anchors the Water Street mixed-use development downtown. It's a full-service JW Marriott: modern and warm without tipping into excess, with a spa, resort-style pools, a rooftop bar that climbs high enough to see most of Tampa, and dining options ranging from a street-level window to a proper American bistro beside the pool.

The cocktail menu pays tribute to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, which makes sense given the museum is practically next door. This is a full-service luxury hotel in downtown Cleveland, where housekeepers note which side of the bed you sleep on and leave the water bottle there accordingly. The Club Floor runs food from breakfast through cordials and opens the bar at noon, which is a civilized policy. Pets are welcome, too.

Jeremy Ford runs this modern tasting menu restaurant inside the Venetian, and the kitchen leans hard into vegetables without pretending it isn't also very interested in wagyu and foie gras. Two tasting menu lengths give you a choice of how long to commit, but the bar menu with its cacio e pepe puffs and charred jerk carrots is a genuinely good argument for just pulling up a stool instead.

A Creole barbecue trailer parked behind a kolache shop is either a strange detour or exactly the point, and at Parish it's the point. Cajun spice rubs and Tabasco glazes nudge central Texas classics sideways, and the menu runs past brisket into pulled duck and boudin. Sides like pimento mac topped with Zapp's chips and crawfish cornbread stuffing do their own convincing. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

Spruce sits in one of San Francisco's quieter money neighborhoods, Sacramento Street, where the locals dress well and never seem to be in a hurry. It's a fine dining room doing Modern American with a California lean, the kind of place where lunch runs to composed salads and sandwiches and dinner quietly shifts registers. The cooking is precise and seasonal without announcing itself, and the California wine list gives you plenty of reasons to linger.

An oxblood lacquered ceiling and a menu displayed on a glowing marquee running the length of the room set the scene at this French wine bar across from the Transamerica Pyramid. The kitchen leans on peak produce and serious seafood, with the wine list thick with under-the-radar Gallic producers. The New York Times named it to their Restaurant List in 2025. Walk-ins compete for counter seats; reservations go fast either way.

The underground RiNo dining room glows with neon, and the menu swings just as freely, pairing global flavors across courses in combinations that shouldn't work as well as they do. This is a casual but serious dinner spot where the cocktails lean on dates and balsamic vinegar and the kitchen hosts pop-ups for emerging local chefs. Westword named it among Denver's top fifty restaurants, and Eater puts it on their city essentials list.

On the 17th floor of the Four Seasons Orlando, Capa is a Spanish-leaning steakhouse where the view over the resort competes hard with the menu. Michelin one-starred, it spans gambas, sherry-braised mushrooms, and substantial bone-in ribeye, with a pastry program that turns gazpacho into dessert. The setting pushes it toward celebration territory, and the crowd dresses accordingly.

Wolfgang Puck's steakhouse inside the Four Seasons on Wilshire is the kind of room where the banquette seating and the beef grades arrive with equal seriousness. Cuts run from American prime to Australian Wagyu to Japanese A5, and the price of your entrée will make this feel like a consequential evening regardless of what's being celebrated. The crowd tends to be well-dressed and on somebody's expense account.

Tavel Bristol-Joseph built his Austin reputation on pastry, so opening a modern Caribbean restaurant rooted in his Guyanese childhood was a genuine pivot. The cooking runs tangy, smoky, and coconutty, with fermented jerk seasoning and a roti that disappears faster than you'd expect. He earned a James Beard semifinalist nod, and the New York Times put Canje on its national restaurant list the year it opened.

The Art Deco bones of this West Hollywood hotel go back to the golden age, when the apartment tower housed the kind of tenants whose names still sell magazines. The renovation kept the earth-toned, mid-century atmosphere without turning it into a theme park, which is harder than it sounds on the Sunset Strip. Michelin has given it a Key. The guests leaning into the bar look like they have meetings, not autograph books.

A roaring fireplace anchors the dining room at this modern Mexican tasting menu restaurant inside Oceanside's Mission Pacific Hotel, where the pier view competes with what's on the plate. Chef Roberto Alcocer named the place after Baja's Valle de Guadalupe wine country, and the list leans into it. A Michelin star landed here for cooking that manages to be inventive without feeling like a dare.

The wood-fired octopus and French-Italian Riviera menu signal the ambitions clearly: this is fine dining, downtown Milwaukee, with tablecloths to match. Adam Siegel, who holds a James Beard Best Chef Midwest award for earlier work, shapes a kitchen that leans toward the sun-drenched coast without ever feeling like a theme. A James Beard nominee for Best New Restaurant, it draws the kind of crowd that books ahead and doesn't check the prices twice.

A Michelin-starred French fine dining room on the third floor of South Coast Plaza, which sounds like a punchline until you're actually sitting at the chef's counter watching a pristine kitchen run through a prix fixe that manages to feel personal rather than ceremonial. Tony Esnault's cooking leans classic French with a roaming curiosity. The patio is a quiet bonus, and the whole place moves at a pace that makes a mall feel very far away.

The sign is so discreet you'll walk past the townhouse twice before finding it, which is, in its way, a promise about how the evening goes. Vetri Cucina is an intimate Italian tasting room on Spruce Street, been around forever, with the kind of unhurried service that feels like it has nowhere else to be. A 1950s espresso machine holds court at the end of the meal, a fitting final argument from a kitchen that takes its classics seriously.

Views of the Gateway Arch from a good chunk of the rooms set the tone at this luxury hotel sitting right on the Mississippi. The modern building and contemporary interiors read less "chain hotel sameness" than you might expect from a Four Seasons, and the spa and fitness center are suitably extensive. Gerard Craft, a James Beard Award winner, runs Cinder House downstairs, which keeps guests from having to venture far for a serious meal.

Belted Galloway cows still graze the pastures of this converted dairy farm turned country inn, midway between Chapel Hill and nowhere in particular. The 32 rooms are individually designed, with fresh flowers cut from the grounds and a decanter of port left at your bedside each evening. Tennessee fainting goats add an absurdist footnote to the strolls. The restaurant leans European-Southern, and afternoon tea is a thing here, taken seriously.

The Rockwell Group's renovation of this 27-story tower turned it into the most polished address on an already sprawling waterfront resort, and a Michelin Key and Forbes Four Star followed. Rooms look out over 200 acres of pools, a marina, a private beach, and enough dining options to skip the car entirely for days. It's a hotel-within-a-hotel concept, which means you get the full Boca Raton complex and then a quieter, considerably chicler retreat inside it.

A former boat repair shop on the canal, now doing the Lord's work with cardamom croissants and Japanese melonpan. Saint Bread is a bakery with a full menu organized, with some nerve, by how many slices of bread your order contains. The "No Bread" section includes okonomiyaki, which tells you the kitchen has opinions. A James Beard Semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery, and the New York Times put it on their short list of top U.S. bakeries.

The room tiers at this 28-room boutique hotel in downtown Palm Springs are simply Good, Better, and Best, which either signals confidence or a refreshing allergy to hospitality jargon. All rooms come with original artwork and Waterworks bath hardware; Better adds a wet bar, and Best earns mountain views with a private balcony. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Midcentury Palm Springs, so pack accordingly: linen and sunscreen.

The patio at this Culver City contemporary French restaurant seats as many as the dining room, which tells you something about how the place pictures itself. Dinner is when the kitchen finds its stride, moving through chicken liver mousse in a delicate tart, clean fish preparations, and proper desserts. The wine list leans hard into by-the-glass options, which the room seems to appreciate.

A short, ever-changing menu of Spanish and Portuguese cooking in a cozy downtown dining room, where piri piri chicken gets finished with Wisconsin cheese without anyone apologizing for it. The chef is a James Beard Outstanding Chef semifinalist, and the kitchen takes dessert as seriously as the savory courses, which not every serious restaurant bothers to do. The kind of place where you eat things you won't find anywhere else in the city.

The curving Morris Lapidus facade alone tells you this is the kind of hotel that wants you to notice it. A big, loud Collins Avenue resort with over 1,500 rooms, multiple pools, and a nightclub, LIV, that keeps the lobby moving well past midnight. Bachelorette sashes and convention lanyards coexist peacefully by the pool bar. The Lapis spa offers a quieter counterpoint, with extensive wet areas that feel genuinely removed from the spectacle outside.

Ivy creeps up the facade of this all-suite boutique hotel one block from the Santa Monica Pier, where every room faces the Pacific and comes stocked with Frette linens, local art, and a minibar that takes itself seriously. The courtyard pool, ringed with lemon trees and James Perse loungers, is the kind of spot that makes you cancel afternoon plans. Sandpiper, the open-air restaurant, leans into California seasonal cooking.

Five minutes from Reagan National and steps from the Pentagon City mall, this Ritz-Carlton pulls off the usual trick of making a business-travel corridor feel like somewhere you'd actually want to be. Rooms come with feather beds and Egyptian cotton linens, the club level adds its own quiet remove, and the on-site restaurant, Santé, runs a Mediterranean menu with a fireside lounge good for a post-flight drink.

Ecuadorian and Peruvian cooking meet in a North Miami restaurant where the room feels genuinely celebratory without trying too hard. Chef Alejandra Espinoza runs a menu that moves from coastal ceviches through braised stews and into cassava fritters, all of it vivid and warm in a way that matches the decor. A Michelin Selected restaurant that doesn't feel like it's holding its breath about it.

The bottle gourd for their signature lau chingri comes from the parking lot out back, which tells you most of what you need to know about this small Bangladeshi-Indian neighborhood eatery in Jersey City. The chef and her daughter run the room, the cooking is homestyle but precise, and the dish landed on a New York Times list of the year's best across the country. A James Beard semifinalist, and NJ.com's top-ranked restaurant in the state.