The Best Places to Eat and Stay in the United States

Wayfarer Tavern is a pizza place in Dayton, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati, with a thin, square-cut tavern-style pie that borrows crisped edges from Detroit and New England. The toppings read like the contents of a church potluck table: pickles, potato chips, ranch, and a Korean corn cheese riff. It sounds like a dare, and the Infatuation lists it among the best pizza places in America.

Lakeside tables at this swanky steakhouse inside Wynn look out over a waterfall and light show, which gives the white-tablecloth setting a slightly surreal edge. The menu hits every chophouse note, but the draw is the beef program: true Japanese Kobe from Hyogo alongside American wagyu, both with the kind of marbling that makes a menu feel like a financial decision. Forbes Four Star and AAA Four Diamonds.

The noodle machine has its own little vestibule off the dining room, which tells you where priorities lie at this 24-seat ramen shop. The chef spent years in Japanese noodle kitchens before opening here, and it shows in the tsukemen, thick cold noodles you dip into hot broth, and the brothless mazemen tossed in scallop or chile oil. Food & Wine named him a Best New Chef. The line out front moves faster than it looks.

The lobby full of old menus and stockyard memorabilia tells you exactly where you are before you've ordered a drink. Johnny's is an old-school steakhouse in south Omaha's Union Stockyards neighborhood, the kind of place that has a cowboy-themed bar and a house salad dressing people ask about. The family has been running it forever, and it picked up a James Beard America's Classics award for the Midwest in 2026.

The Carousel Bar in the lobby actually revolves, one full rotation every fifteen minutes, which tells you almost everything about the Hotel Monteleone's commitment to a good time. This old-school French Quarter institution has marble floors, brass fixtures, and enough chandeliers to give the lobby its own weather system. A rooftop pool and full spa mean you can stay put, which, given the address on Royal Street, is a genuine temptation.

The glass-roofed Garden Court, with its original chandeliers and marble columns, stops people mid-step every time. This grand old San Francisco luxury hotel has been around forever, and the sprawling rooms, redone with a designer's eye for marrying ornate architectural bones to quiet modern comfort, don't feel like a museum or a renovation. The Court may inspire you to dress for dinner, though whether that means a gown or a very nice hoodie is apparently a local judgment call.

This is the Italian dining room inside Wynn, built around Frank Sinatra, with portraits on the walls and a few of his old microphones standing by in case anyone feels like a song. It's a white-tablecloth, Four Diamond, Forbes Four Star kind of evening, so dress like you've got somewhere to be afterward. The dessert is a chocolate mousse shaped like his fedora, which is a very Vegas way to eat your hat.

Parked at the foot of Rodeo Drive, this grande dame hotel has been a soft landing for Hollywood royalty since forever, most famously a long-term residence for Warren Beatty back in his bachelor years. Rooms run to white and pastel blue, Wolfgang Puck's CUT steakhouse anchors the ground floor, and the pool is the Mediterranean-fantasy kind that makes you feel famous even if no one recognizes you.

The six-acre pool deck alone gives you some sense of the scale here. This resort on the Strip draws from its Miami Beach namesake but runs considerably larger and louder, with a vast casino, a 3,800-seat theatre, and a spa that requires its own navigation. Rooms are plush without apology. The dining lineup reads like a celebrity-chef roll call. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

A wall of bread greets you before you see a single pizza, which tells you everything about Dan Richer's priorities. This wood-fired pizzeria in Jersey City runs on long-fermentation dough and a sourcing philosophy that treats New Jersey farms as co-authors, not suppliers. The original dining room, once a theater, still has that weathered-plaster gravitas. Ranked third in the country by 50 Top Pizza, and a James Beard nominee.

An open kitchen anchors this seafood-focused fine dining room inside the Bellagio, where soft beige walls and light wood paneling keep things calm enough that the food can do the talking. Michael Mina's tasting menu pulls Japanese and broader Asian influences through the catch, ponzu and miso showing up often. Service is polished in the way that Vegas fine dining does best, which is to say attentively and without making you feel watched.

The dim sum here comes plated like jewelry, each shumai crowned with a different color of tobiko. This is Chinese luxury dining of the kind you rarely find outside Asia, served on the fourth floor of the Peninsula with Michigan Avenue spread out below. A dedicated abalone section signals where the menu is headed, and the prices follow. Come with a reservation and dressed for the occasion.

The menu changes daily based on whatever came up from the coast, which means Saltbox Seafood Joint has a line out the door and nobody knows exactly what's on offer until they get there. Chef Ricky Moore, a James Beard Award winner, runs a casual counter-service seafood spot where sea bass, blue crab, and oysters rotate in and out. Devoted regulars track the social media for lobster roll days like they're concert tickets.

Recycled wood, river stone, and living moss walls set the mood at this eco-minded luxury hotel on the Embarcadero, steps from the Ferry Building and whatever the farmers market left out this morning. The 186 rooms lean bright and airy, a contrast to the moody lobby, and the Bay Bridge sits right there in the window. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Thatched-roof bungalows on a field of black lava beside a crescent bay: it sounds like fantasy, but that's just the view from your kauhale at this Rosewood resort on the Kona Coast. After a decade-long closure following a tsunami, it reopened to 81 acres of volcanic landscape, basalt rock furnishings, and coconut husk sidings that make the whole place feel grown from the ground. It holds a Forbes Four Star and three Michelin Keys.

Tucked behind a grove of quaking aspens on a quiet back street, this 32-room boutique lodge sits close enough to downtown Jackson to be convenient and far enough to feel like a different world. Rocky Mountain timber and stonework meet custom Italian linens and soaking tubs inside. The Body Sage Spa handles post-ski recovery with some authority, and the Wild Sage restaurant looks out toward East Gros Ventre Butte. A Forbes Four Star property.

The exterior is blanketed in ivy, which tells you everything about this hotel's priorities before you even check in. A high-design, sustainability-forward luxury stay on Demonbreun, 1 Hotel Nashville trades neon and boot-scootin' for reclaimed wood, organic textures, and views over downtown that some terraced rooms get all to themselves. The Bamford spa, a rooftop bar, and a farm-to-table restaurant round things out. It holds a Michelin Key.

A sharp-angled modernist building on the Southwest Waterfront, a short distance from Capitol Hill but feeling nothing like it. This 131-room hotel from the Montage group holds a rooftop bar with a circular bar and Potomac views, an all-day Latin American restaurant with water vistas, and a moody ground-floor bar wrapped in navy and gold palms. Check-in happens seated, at a desk by a fireplace, which sets the residential tone. It holds a Michelin Key.

Eight private cottages and a Tournament of Roses suite signal what kind of hotel this is before you've even seen the pool. Set on 17 acres in Pasadena, the Langham Huntington is old-money grand, the kind of place with multiple historic ballrooms and two gardens, where tennis courts get lit at night and the spa has its own philosophy. Forbes Four Star. Summer afternoons tend to dissolve at the pool bar.

A skybridge connects this Ritz-Carlton directly to Tysons Galleria, which tells you something about the clientele and their priorities. The hotel sits in Fortune 100 territory about fifteen miles from D.C., making it a logical base for both boardroom visits and wine country day trips. Upper-floor rooms look out over the Tysons skyline, the spa leans contemporary, and the wine bar runs live music. Forbes Four Star.

Liberace's mirrored Nickelodeon piano sits in the lobby next to a hovering Holos sculpture and a cluster of pink elephants floating in painted bubbles, which is a normal amount of art for a hotel check-in. The Conrad is the largest in its brand, a full-service Las Vegas hotel tower where the rooms lean into the same bold palette. The casino, a 5,000-seat theater, and 40 places to eat and drink are all on the same campus.

Crystal chandeliers run the full length of the marble lobby, which makes entering feel like an event before you've even checked in. This grand Waldorf Astoria hotel has been around forever, and the bones show it, from the vintage timepieces anchoring the corridor to the historic Sazerac Bar just off the lobby. The rooms are plush and numerous, the staff quietly expert at making famous guests disappear.

The adobe walls on Canyon Road have been standing since before the United States existed, and Geronimo leans into that history with the full fine-dining treatment: valet, impeccably plated courses, a wine list your server will happily navigate at any budget. The kitchen leans toward serious meat preparations, elk and lamb territory. Forbes Four Star, AAA Four Diamond, and priced accordingly.

Braised collards dusted with peanut dukkah tells you everything about where Calliope is coming from: a modern Levantine restaurant in Chattanooga where the chef, who grew up in Amman as the son of a cook, has quietly made Southern ingredients his own. Falafel arrives under preserved mango tahini, lamb andouille crosses over muhammara, and the room feels more cosmopolitan than the address might suggest. The New York Times put it on their Restaurant List in 2025.

The line outside on Sunday mornings tells you what kind of place this is before you even read the menu. A Southern breakfast institution in Inglewood, The Serving Spoon draws the post-church crowd in numbers that would alarm a fire marshal, all coming for pancakes that arrive buried under butter and maple syrup. A 2026 James Beard America's Classics winner, it's been a neighborhood anchor for decades and shows no sign of quieting down.

Shingled walls, porches aimed at the water, bocce on the lawn, and a private beach on Quonochontaug Pond: Weekapaug Inn has been a summer retreat on Rhode Island's southern coast for as long as anyone's grandparents can remember. Antiques and coastal touches fill the rooms, sailing and bird-watching fill the days, and the whole thing holds a Forbes Five Star without feeling the need to remind you of it. Old New England ease, genuinely unforced.

Dean Fearing's restaurant inside the Ritz-Carlton looks like a traditional steakhouse until the food arrives. It's a polished Southwestern dining room where the menu wanders confidently into buffalo and antelope territory alongside filets, and a carpaccio riff assembles tuna, wagyu, salmon, and barbecued eel into something resembling stained glass. The kind of place that earns a Forbes Four Star and still manages to serve a baklava s'more without embarrassing itself.

The thing that sets this West Pico pizza shop apart is the cornicione, puffy and pinched with a mochi-like chew that signals the Japan-meets-Italy premise before you've taken a proper bite. Individual pies come red or white, traditional or quietly strange, and a counter with a front-row view of the prep keeps the room honest. Ranked second in the country by 50 Top Pizza USA, Pizzeria Sei draws a crowd that treats a Tuesday like a reservation worth keeping.

Seven ovens, eleven styles of pizza, and one corner spot in North Beach that takes the whole argument about which regional pie is superior and simply refuses to pick a side. Tony Gemignani's pizzeria runs Neapolitan next to Detroit next to New Haven next to Roman, all under one roof, which is either heresy or the only sane position. It lands at number two on 50 Top Pizza USA and number ten in the world.

The name comes from the sprinkler company that occupied the space before, which is either a great origin story or a reminder that Birmingham contains multitudes. Adam Evans, a James Beard Award winner, runs this seafood restaurant out of a 5,000-square-foot room in Lakeview, with a raw bar up front and a menu built around regional fin fish, Southern sides, and the kind of collard greens that make you reconsider every other collard green you've had.

The vaulted ceilings and carved stone arches of a 19th-century bank are still very much the point at this Penn Quarter hotel, and the Michelin Guide recognized it with one Key. The bones are stately, the renovation decidedly less reverent, with D.C.'s history reinterpreted as design inspiration rather than preserved under glass. It lands somewhere between grand civic institution and a hotel that knows it's allowed to have fun.

The lobby is as big as a city block and designed, without apology, for people who will open a laptop in it. Ace Hotel Brooklyn is a Michelin Key hotel sitting on the edge of Boerum Hill, where the industrial bones and deliberately low-key atmosphere draw the kind of guests who prefer brownstone streets over Midtown. The Brooklyn Heights Promenade is a short walk, and the ground floor bar handles the rest of your evening.

Anguilla is famously flat, which sounds like a liability until you realize it means unobstructed views in every direction and beaches that stretch without interruption. This Forbes Five Star resort sits between two bays on the island's northwest shore, its Mediterranean architecture doing exactly what you'd want from a luxury resort: framing the Caribbean rather than competing with it. The crowd comes here to do absolutely nothing, and the property is very good at facilitating that ambition.

Kelly Wearstler's maximalist redesign of an old private club turned this 147-room hotel into something you'll spend a full check-in trying to take in. Original monogrammed doorknobs, hidden messages embedded in the art, a sweeping lobby mural by Abel Macias, rugs and tiles pulled from Turkey, Morocco, and Mexico. Two restaurants, three bars, and a rooftop pool mean you can stay busy without leaving. It holds a Michelin Key.

The kiva fireplace in the lobby is going year-round, and the handcrafted doors are so heavy they make every entrance feel vaguely ceremonial. This Rosewood hotel sits a block from the Santa Fe Plaza in a pueblo-style building that reads more like a serious local artifact than a luxury property, with vigas overhead, local art on the walls, and a restaurant that takes New Mexican culinary tradition at face value. It holds a Michelin Key.

A 17-million-gallon lagoon sits outside the door, and guests spend their days kayaking, paddleboarding, or simply floating around what amounts to a manufactured beach in landlocked Orlando. The Conrad is a Forbes Four Star resort with 433 rooms, floor-to-ceiling windows, and two Jack Nicklaus golf courses competing for attention with the water slides. Walt Disney World is less than three miles away, so the clientele write themselves.

Wood-paneled lobby, fresh flowers, chandelier light, and parlor furniture that signals you've arrived somewhere that takes comfort seriously. This West End hotel runs on the classic Ritz-Carlton formula: big rooms by D.C. standards, Frette linens, soaking tubs, and Asprey products in marble bathrooms. The minibar comes stocked with champagne, which is either indulgent or practical depending on your afternoon.

Two blocks off the Strip, this all-suite hotel skips the casino floor entirely, which means no slot machines, no cigarette fog, and no one blocking your path with a yard-long cocktail at nine in the morning. The 64-story gold-and-glass tower is exactly as understated as it sounds, with Swarovski chandeliers and marble lobbies doing the heavy lifting. Good option if you want Vegas proximity without full immersion in the spectacle.

Eight suites, twenty-four guests at a time, and a thousand acres of Clark Fork riverfront along the edge of Lolo National Forest: RiverView Ranch keeps the headcount low on purpose. This Forbes Five Star all-inclusive ranch outside Missoula covers everything from airport transfers to meals to fly-fishing, with horses, snowmobiles, and hiking trails filling the gaps. The kind of place where the wilderness is the amenity and solitude is the whole point.

The façade is modeled on the Ritz Paris, which tells you exactly what you're in for at this Forbes Five Star resort in the Pennsylvania countryside. Inside, vaulted ceilings, crystal chandeliers, and white-gloved butlers on the club level set the tone. The grounds, though, are where things get interesting: two golf courses, Polaris off-road adventures, and, yes, actual zoo animals wandering the property.

Spanish-revival arches and Turkish rugs set the tone at this Forbes Five Star resort on its own private island off the Georgia coast. The original building came from Addison Mizner, the architect who shaped Palm Beach, and the Mediterranean bones are still intact. A raw bar handles the post-beach oysters; the Georgian Room handles the formal Southern dinners. Families with sandy kids and couples in linen share the same long driveways without it feeling awkward.

Three championship golf courses roll right up to the guestrooms at this Forbes Five Star lodge on St. Simons Island, styled after an English manor with hardwood floors, exposed beam ceilings, and private balconies facing either the fairways or the Atlantic. Forty-three rooms and suites keep things intimate, and the Golf Performance Center draws the kind of guest who brings their own glove. Sister property The Cloister, just nearby, adds a spa and beach club to the itinerary.

A converted 1901 factory building in Williamsburg with 13-foot ceilings, original wood beams, and floor-to-ceiling windows framing the Manhattan skyline. The Wythe holds a Michelin Key, and the in-house credentials are real: Le Crocodile, the French brasserie downstairs, draws its own crowd, and Bar Blondeau on the sixth floor has views that make the room feel optional. Industrial-chic without the irony quotes, and about as Williamsburg as a hotel gets.

Casitas scattered across 40 desert acres make it easy to forget the other 209 guests exist. This Forbes Four Star, Michelin Key resort sits at the foot of Pinnacle Peak, where saguaros do the landscaping and Troon North's two golf courses are practically at the door. The pool is a genuine refuge from the Scottsdale heat, the spa runs Four Star as well, and Talavera handles dinner. Phoenix is a short drive whenever the desert quiet starts feeling too quiet.

The only adults-only hotel on the sprawling Boca Raton resort grounds, the Yacht Club is an all-suite property where champagne meets you at check-in and a floor butler handles the rest. All 112 suites have private balconies facing the marina, the lake, or the Atlantic. A Forbes Five Star. The top-floor restaurant is exclusive to guests, and the wider resort's beach, golf, spa, and pickleball courts are all yours.

The open kitchen runs long and hot, with live fire doing most of the talking at this upscale American restaurant inside the Fairmont Austin. The menu moves between bright, acid-forward starters and serious grilled meat, so a table here tends to drift toward the Akaushi wagyu by the end of the night. The cooking holds its own well away from hotel-restaurant expectations, which is saying something in a city with no shortage of smoke and ambition.

Glossy emerald-green tiles frame an open kitchen inside the Tampa EDITION, where John Fraser runs a plant-forward contemporary Mediterranean prix-fixe. The menu moves through a sequence of bites, small plates, and mains, leaning on seasonal vegetables without making a point of it. The wine list skews expensive. Lilac holds a Michelin star, a Forbes Four Star, and four AAA Diamonds, which together give a fair sense of how dinner is likely to go.

Porthole windows punched into a bright white facade give this boutique hotel the silhouette of an elegant liner docked in Coconut Grove. The Cipriani family designed it around the idea of a modern yacht club, so the nautical theme earns its keep rather than feeling like a theme park. A rooftop Italian restaurant, a science-focused spa, and bay-adjacent surroundings round things out. It holds a Michelin Key.

A churro waffle with a cult following and a soft pretzel served with butter blended from guinea hen fat says about everything you need to know about Valentine's priorities. This all-day cafe and restaurant in the Melrose District does wood-fired Sonoran cooking with Arizona ingredients treated like the whole point, not a talking point. The chef is a James Beard semifinalist, and the elote pasta has its own fan club. The vintage furniture store in the back is not a joke.

A Greg Norman-designed golf course and a 40,000-square-foot spa suggest this Forbes Four Star resort has no real interest in competing with the theme park circus a few miles up the road. The JW Marriott Orlando, Grande Lakes sits on its own landscaped grounds with a waterpark for the kids and a reimagined lobby lounge for the adults who pretend they don't also enjoy a waterpark.

The clock in the lobby and the gilded Peacock Alley lounge are lifted straight from the New York original, which is either charming or slightly unsettling depending on your relationship with theme parks. This Forbes Four Star resort earns its keep with a nature preserve on one side, a golf course on the other, and genuinely attentive service throughout. Magic Kingdom is fifteen minutes away, but the pool makes it easy to forget that entirely.

The hotel has its own resident dog, Georgie, available for guest cuddles, which tells you something about how seriously the Fairmont takes its wellbeing pitch. This Georgetown hotel is a comfortable, upscale base for the city, with spacious rooms and a three-floor wellness center running a 50-foot saltwater pool, sauna, steam room, and spin classes. A renovated lobby and courtyard bar draw the power-lunch crowd even when they're not staying over.

Chef John Tesar's chophouse inside the Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes fills a large, dimly lit room done in weathered wood and beachy tones, with an open kitchen in the back and a well-stocked bar up front. Dry-aged steaks share the menu with top-shelf seafood and pastas that take a turn nobody saw coming, cacio e pepe made with ube noodles being the kind of detail that earns the conversation. The cocktail list keeps pace.

A 52-floor tower built from the ground up in Streeterville, a few blocks east of the Mag Mile and a short walk to Navy Pier. The hotel leans into Chicago's architectural legacy with design choices that feel considered rather than corporate, and a 75-foot lap pool and rooftop lounge raise the stakes for an urban stay. Business travelers and weekenders both find their footing here without too much awkward overlap.

Floor-to-ceiling windows face the Pacific at this fine dining room inside the Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay, where sunset turns the whole place gold about halfway through your second course. The cooking is polished contemporary California, classical in technique and easy in register, the kind of meal where luxury is implied rather than announced. A Michelin Selected Restaurant holding AAA Four Diamonds and a Forbes Four Star.

A gilded woolly mammoth by Damien Hirst anchors the courtyard outside, and the gold-domed dining room inside doesn't exactly dial it down. This hotel restaurant at the Faena runs a short menu that pulls from across Asia, loosely interpreted, with dishes that move between sweet, savory, and spicy in the same bite. The kind of place where the room is doing a lot of work, and the food quietly keeps pace.

The copper kitchen gleams open to the dining room, so you can watch the brigade work while you eat. This is the hotel restaurant at JW Marriott Grande Lakes, doing contemporary Italian with enough confidence that it doesn't feel like a hotel restaurant. Small plates, housemade pasta, and roast chicken in parmesan brodo sit alongside each other without apology. The room runs to booths and banquettes in soft, muted tones, and the bread arrives before anything needs deciding.

The hotel sits inside Water Tower Place, which means stepping off the elevator lands you in a shopping mall with over 125 stores, and stepping outside puts Chanel, Cartier, and the Art Institute within a few blocks. It's a luxury hotel on the Magnificent Mile, so the Gold Coast energy is built in. Rooms run at Ritz-Carlton prices, and the location does a lot of the justifying for them.

Mid-century lines, leather and velvet, and eclectic artwork set the tone in the lobby of this boutique hotel tucked into the Gold Coast, where historic mansions and designer boutiques crowd the sidewalk outside. The 247 rooms lean luxe without tipping into stiff, the vibe is hip without the velvet-rope attitude, and a complimentary Lexus house car is the kind of quiet flex that earns its keep. Nico Osteria draws locals in off the street.

Olson Kundig designed the building, and you can feel it: forest greens, midnight blues, velvety textures, and lobby shelves stacked with books about treehouses and cabins. This hotel sits a short walk from Pike Place Market, threading the needle between Pacific Northwest rusticity and a sleek urban nightlife pedigree. The rooms lean masculine and warm, with furnishings that look comfortably broken in rather than showroom-fresh.

Genting Palace is a white-tablecloth Chinese dining room inside Resorts World, with high ceilings, floral wallpaper, and tables spaced far enough apart that nobody hears your negotiations over the duck. Dinner is Cantonese fine dining, and the Sunday seafood buffet sets up in the same formal room, complete with a carving station. It holds a Forbes Four Star, so wear something with a collar.

A lakeside terrace with a direct view of the water is a strong opening argument for any pizza shop, and Robert's doesn't squander it. The pies have a crispy, well-salted crust and toppings that lean generous rather than restrained, built for sharing. The room itself is airy, anchored by a big bar counter, and the staff treats you like an actual guest. It landed at #8 on 50 Top Pizza USA, which tracks.

Reclaimed wood and polished concrete set the tone at this eco-minded luxury resort on Collins Avenue, where the design borrows from surf culture and the building materials were sourced before the Instagram grid was even a concept. It occupies a full city block of beachfront with Atlantic views on one side and the Biscayne Bay skyline on the other, and carries a Michelin Key. The crowd arrives with reusable water bottles and very good luggage.

Rows of reclaimed leather belts line the wall behind the front desk, which sets the tone for this 171-room boutique hotel in the Domain Northside shopping district. Hill Country rusticity runs through the whole property: cowhide chairs, blue velvet armchairs by a fireplace, and a neon phrase borrowed from a Texas Tornados song. It holds a Forbes Four Star rating, and sits close enough to the Austin tech campuses to pull a reliably well-dressed business crowd.

Fifteen acres of Newport Beach waterfront, a Forbes Four Star resort where the concierge can send you off in a vintage Mustang, color of your choosing, with maps and a packed picnic basket. Summer concerts, outdoor films, and Fourth of July barbecues keep the calendar full. Drive the coast toward Laguna Beach, and if the timing cooperates, blue whales and dolphins are out there doing their thing too.