The Best Places to Eat and Stay in the United States

The bar stocks around 150 agave spirits, which tells you something about where the priorities lie at this NoDo Mexican restaurant. The interior channels Tulum and Quintana Roo in a way that makes you want to stay for another mezcal cocktail. The kitchen works through Mexico's regional traditions, from Veracruz to the coasts, and the chapulines, tiny fried grasshoppers seasoned with tamarind and chili, are offered completely without apology.

A glass dome over the upper terrace announces that this is not a casual tikka masala stop. Ettan is an upscale Indian restaurant in downtown Palo Alto where chef Srijith Gopinathan builds a Cal-Indian menu around coastal Keralan cooking and whatever California farms are doing that week. The two-level room, dressed in indigo fabric and beaded chandeliers, draws Desi families for milestones and couples who like their date nights with some drama.

Chef Hugo Ortega's flagship is a dressy, sit-down Mexican restaurant on Westheimer that's been the city's go-to for regional cooking for what feels like forever. Brunch pulls a crowd on both days, Saturday à la carte and Sunday buffet with live music. Dinner runs deeper, with dishes like cabrito roasted and pulled from the bone. A James Beard nominee for Outstanding Hospitality.

Nasim Alikhani spent decades as a home cook in the Iranian diaspora before opening this Persian restaurant in Park Slope at 58, which explains why the food feels like someone's mother finally decided to show the city what she'd been holding back. Whitewashed brick, marble bar, black wood beams. The kitchen is faithful to Persian tradition but loose enough to foam a yogurt or call a pomegranate-marinated rib-eye a kebab. A James Beard nominee for Best Chef New York State.

A welcome sangria at the door, a poem written for the menu, and a bouquet arranged by the chef's mom set the tone at this intimate tasting menu spot tucked behind an unremarkable door on Madison. The chef earned a James Beard nomination in 2026, and the kitchen rotates its menu completely every few weeks, chasing the season. The counter seats feel less like a restaurant and more like a dinner party thrown by someone who thought of everything.

A backyard patio that somehow feels like a secret, even though Sonoma Plaza is right there. Valley is a neighborhood wine bar and bottle shop where the list leans into organic and biodynamic bottles from corners of California you haven't thought to explore yet. The short menu of small plates is built for sharing and changes often, with a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard semifinalist nod confirming the kitchen punches well above its modest ambitions.

A four-course tasting menu in Bay View where the chef's Top Chef celebrity lands a little lighter than you'd expect. Dan Jacobs and Dan Van Rite run a focused, seasonal room, the kind where you follow the menu wherever it leads, from liver mousse and shrimp toast toward squash with red curry or something involving boudin blanc. A James Beard Nominee for Best Chef Midwest, the duo earns the room's easy trust.

The scalloped sushi bar inside Rosewood Miramar's moody Japanese-house dining room sets the mood before a single piece of fish lands. AMA is a hotel sushi shop doing edomae-style nigiri, available à la carte or as a full omakase. The name nods to Japan's legendary female pearl divers, and the vibe follows through, all dark wood and lantern light. The Michelin Guide lists it among its selected restaurants.

A marble bar, duck fat fries, and oysters on the half shell make a strong case for showing up before dinner even starts. Elvie's is a French-leaning bistro that moves easily from morning pastries through a cheery lunch to a more polished evening service. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, the New York Times put it on their Restaurant List, and a James Beard nomination followed. Jackson, Mississippi, apparently has thoughts about French food.

Perched on a ridge above Batiquitos Lagoon, this Forbes Four Star resort near San Diego keeps guests busy enough that leaving feels optional. An Arnold Palmer-designed golf course, a 15,000-square-foot spa, six tennis courts, and a croquet lawn cover the bases, with mountain-to-Pacific views doing the rest of the convincing. Fine dining and casual spots are both on-site, so you can calibrate the formality as you go.

The dining room runs peach and carrot tones with a retro-meets-modern feel that signals a proper occasion, and the uniformed servers confirm it. This is upscale New American with a wink: potato "churros" with caramelized onion dip, roasted chicken with sauce vin jaune, a chocolate candy bar for dessert. The chef is a James Beard Emerging Chef nominee, and the Michelin Guide has taken notice. Prices are serious, but so is the kitchen.

The Vaucroissant, a lattice croissant stuffed with sausage from Vaucresson's, a venerable Black-owned Seventh Ward institution, is a good place to start understanding what this neighborhood bakery is doing. The chef, a former dancer, bakes with a historian's eye: benne seeds on toffee cookies, cornbread muffins wrapped in their own husks. A 2025 James Beard Emerging Chef nominee, she's built something that tastes like New Orleans and remembers where it came from.

A gray limewash exterior sets this boutique hotel apart from the red-brick streetscape around it, and the care inside matches the gesture outside. A walled garden channels old Charleston without the kitsch, marble and brass bathrooms feel like a decorator's pet project, and the spa was modeled on the developer's own carriage house. A Michelin Key hotel in the heart of downtown, it's the kind of place that was clearly someone's obsession before it was anyone's reservation.

Three buildings, two Victorian and one new, were stitched together on George Street to make this 25-room luxury boutique hotel a Michelin Key holder in the heart of Charleston. The interiors lean into the bones of the older structures, bold wallpapers and period ornament, then pull it all forward with a sharp modern palette and furniture that clearly someone had strong opinions about choosing.

Two historic buildings merged into one downtown hotel, steps from Powell's and Portland's better tables. Woodlark holds a Michelin Key and leans into the city's quieter, more polished register, the one that gets overlooked in all the weirdness coverage. The location, sitting between downtown and Burnside, means you can walk almost anywhere worth going.

Dark walls covered in Japanese murals set the mood at this Chinatown fine dining spot, where the kitchen blends Vietnamese, Mexican, Italian, and Japanese influences into something that shouldn't work as well as it does. An open fire does a lot of the heavy lifting. The chef earned a James Beard nomination for Best Chef Southwest, which tracks for a room this quietly serious about food that refuses to settle on any one identity.

The smoked duck, with its lacquered, crackling skin, is the thing people come back for at this Mission bistro. A veteran sommelier opened it and named it after his father, so naturally the wine list punches well above neighborhood-bar weight. The cooking is unfussy California bistro food, heavy on charcuterie and good meat. Warm without trying, the kind of room that makes a Tuesday feel like a reasonable night out.

White tablecloths, candlelight, and a wine list so deep in Barolo it borders on a personal obsession: this Cherry Creek fine dining room has been a northern Italian anchor in Denver for as long as anyone can remember. The front-of-house team takes annual trips to Europe, and it shows in a warmth that never tips into theater. The four-course degustazione with pairings is the move, though grazing at the bar on a weeknight has its own quiet appeal.

Six acres of winding garden paths and Victorian farmhouse buildings in the heart of Sonoma wine country, MacArthur Place is a boutique hotel that moves at a slower speed than the tasting-room circuit outside its gates. The 69 rooms spread across 20 low-slung historic buildings, so it feels less like checking in and more like borrowing a friend's very well-appointed ranch. Forbes Four Star. The spa keeps guests horizontal well past noon.

Perched on a cliff above the Pacific in Dana Point, this Waldorf Astoria resort fans out across lush gardens that step down through pools, a sculpture garden, and a Robert Trent Jones Jr. golf course before hitting a private beach club. Six ocean-view restaurants, a full spa, and enough on-property activity to make nearby attractions feel like homework. A Forbes Four Star property where "casual elegance" is less a cliche than an actual operating philosophy.

A rooftop beehive supplying honey to the bar and kitchen is a flex most waterfront hotels don't bother with. This 424-room hotel sits on the harbor between Faneuil Hall and the Seaport, so the views are doing a lot of work whether you're in the lobby, lined in Italian marble and Texas limestone, or up in your room. Three dining options, a spa, and a health club round things out for a property that leans toward the polished business-traveler end of the scale.

A 33-story oval glass tower two blocks from the Broadway honky-tonks, the JW Marriott is a full-service downtown hotel with 533 rooms, a spa, a rooftop pool, and three restaurants. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the skyline, and the bronze and gold metalwork throughout is meant to echo the Cumberland River. Michael Mina's rooftop bar sits at the top of it all, which is either very Nashville or very not Nashville, depending on your mood.

Montage Hotels built its name on rarefied seclusion, so their Pendry line is a deliberate pivot: an urban boutique hotel planted in the thick of the Gaslamp Quarter, where the six bars and restaurants are meant to pull in neighborhood regulars as much as guests. Rooms run loft-apartment styling rather than resort grandeur, and the whole thing skews younger and more affordable than its Montage cousins, without exactly being a bargain.

The old Charles Street Jail, a granite hulk from the mid-1800s, is now a full-service luxury hotel where the do-not-disturb sign reads "Solitary" and the in-room safe doubles as a bedside table. The conversion leans into the bit without apology: a cocktail bar in the original cellblock, restaurant names that wink at incarceration, and mugshot art on the walls. The rooms are comfortable, the theming is committed, and the location near Beacon Hill is hard to argue with.

String lights and vivid artwork set the tone at this colorful Indian street food restaurant in Decatur, where the menu reads like a series of small arguments for ordering just one more plate. The kitchen leans on local, seasonal ingredients for its South Asian cooking, and the format works as well for two as for a full table going family-style. A James Beard semifinalist and Michelin selected, it draws a crowd that tends to ignore the menu only because they already know what they want.

Hugo Ortega's Oaxacan restaurant inside the Marriott Marquis is the kind of place that makes you think differently about mole, a sauce most people treat as a single thing rather than a whole universe. The kitchen explores that universe seriously, working through pipián, mole negro, and variations in between. A James Beard Outstanding Pastry Chef nominee rounds out a meal that doesn't skimp on the sweet end. The Sunday brunch draws a devoted crowd.

Filipino cooking in a small Spring Street dining room where many tables just order the whole menu. Chef Nikko Cagalagan, a 2024 James Beard Emerging Chef nominee, runs the kitchen on induction burners and a small oven, which explains either the focus or the ambition, probably both. The dishes read like home cooking filtered through a chef's eye, precise in portion and element count, and grounded in local pork, oysters, and fish.

The restroom walls are lined with illustrated wine descriptions, which tells you exactly what kind of neighborhood restaurant this is. A cozy Columbia Heights pasta house and wine bar, Reveler's Hour runs a rotating slate of seasonal Italian small plates under arched ceilings and muted green tiles. The sommelier who co-owns the place steers you toward bottles you've never encountered, and the housemade pasta is the thing to build an order around.

A sushi restaurant in Omaha that isn't playing it safe, Yoshitomo builds on traditional Japanese technique and then quietly goes its own direction, folding local instincts into the menu in ways that read as natural rather than gimmicky. The rodeo maki, stuffed with wagyu and finished with tonkatsu sauce, makes the argument on its own. A 2026 James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Midwest.

Tucked into a strip of drab storefronts near a hair salon called Bouffant Daddy, Robin is a tasting-menu restaurant that somehow feels like a warm secret. The room is soft-lit and earthy, and the four-course format leans into Midwestern ingredients with enough wit to keep things lively. Land on the New York Times Restaurant List and earn a James Beard nomination in the same year, and the mille-feuille of amaro chocolate mousse starts to make a certain kind of sense.

The Lebanese restaurant in the 15th and 15th neighborhood keeps one of the largest Mediterranean wine and beer lists in the country, with bottles pulled from Lebanon, Morocco, and Greece. It's the kind of casual spot where a meal properly starts with dips and works toward a braised lamb shank. The chef earned a James Beard nomination in 2024, which feels about right for a room that takes traditional Lebanese cooking this seriously.

Potato-stuffed puris doused in yogurt and tamarind are the opening argument at this Indian street food spot tucked into Union Market. The room is loud and color-splashed in the way that makes you feel like you showed up underdressed no matter what you're wearing. Meherwan Irani, a James Beard Award winner for his Asheville original, brought the concept north, and the DC version has carved out its own following among the city's suddenly crowded field of Indian restaurants.

An all-day American bistro across from Rittenhouse Square where, on Sunday afternoons, some of Philadelphia's own chefs quietly eat their days off. The menu tracks regional farmers closely, and the natural wine list is among the longer ones in the city. The New York Times named it among the 25 best restaurants in Philadelphia, which the Sunday regulars already knew.

The entire room is wood-plank from floor to ceiling, which either reads as cozy or a fire hazard, depending on your mood. This West Randolph wine restaurant has been packed since forever, with regulars jostling for counter stools and close-set tables to graze through a seasonal Mediterranean menu. The plates are bold, colorful, and generously sized, and the wine list leans into the food rather than upstaging it.

The wood-roasted chicken at this Clayton neighborhood restaurant arrives with rapini and an immaculate jus, nowhere to hide and nothing to prove. Louie is the kind of Italian-leaning spot where the room feels luxurious without feeling stiff, and the seasonal pastas and pizzas do quiet, confident work. A 2026 James Beard nominee for Outstanding Hospitality, it draws regulars who treat it like a standing reservation with old friends.

Named for Lucian Freud, this 40-seat wine restaurant and bookshop in Buckhead stocks art and fashion volumes alongside a list serious enough to earn a James Beard semifinalist nod for its beverage program. The seasonal American menu runs to ricotta gnudi and caviar-topped omelets, the kind of food that pairs naturally with whatever the wine director opens next. Shelves full of books for sale make lingering feel practically obligatory.

Urbe is a counter-service Mexican spot in Uptown Park, with walls covered in bright folk art and a bakery case near the register that makes a strong case against returning to your desk. Hugo Ortega's casual place does margaritas at lunch, which the office crowd treats as a loophole. The restaurant is the kind where you order, find a table, and sneak a pastry for the road. Ortega is also up for a James Beard nod as Outstanding Restaurateur.

The building used to be a Dairy Queen, and the kitchen leans into that legacy rather than running from it. Woodford F&B is a neighborhood restaurant where the chef, a James Beard nominee, turns out unfussy food with serious technique: charcuterie with a devoted following, a brisket burger stacked high, a croque-monsieur that earns the trouble. The room is relaxed enough that no one's performing, but the cooking suggests someone back there very much is.

The kitchen is literally front and center here, open to the room so the whole team works in full view, moving like they own the place, which they kind of do. Nolia is a casual dinner spot where servers wear branded sweatshirts and the skillet cornbread arrives with a scoop of cane-syrup butter melting dramatically on top. Southern ease, exposed brick, and a menu that quietly runs gluten-free without making a cause of it. The house hot sauces are made from scratch, and one will have you fanning yourself.

Oak Creek runs right through the 11-acre property, which means the sound of moving water follows you nearly everywhere at this Forbes Four Star luxury resort in Sedona's Red Rock Country. Cottages, cliff-side suites, and lodge rooms all lean into the setting, with creek or red rock views depending on your luck. The rugged landscape does most of the decorating, which is a relief given how hard resort design usually tries.

The seating choices alone tell you something: big communal tables, a long bar, or low couches, all inside a roomy industrial space on North Broad. Honeysuckle is an Afro-centric American restaurant built around a prix fixe that moves from hush puppies with country ham to wagyu beef cheek and oxtail tamales without ever losing its thread. The chef earned a 2026 James Beard nomination, and the cooking shows why, course after careful course.

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.

A Michelin Key hotel just outside the Chinatown Gateway, The Hoxton, Portland brought its London post-industrial bones to a century-old building and then let the in-house design team loose on Northwest modernism of the Sixties and Seventies, which turns out to be a very good fit. The result feels less like a branded import than a building that always looked this way, which is probably the highest compliment a hotel can earn without admitting it was trying.

A French bakery tucked into a Parker strip mall, Poulette turns out croissants, kouign-amann, éclairs, brioche, and macarons from a pastry case that gets restocked daily and emptied fast. The team behind it spent years in serious kitchens, and the technique shows without the attitude. The New York Times named it among the country's top bakeries, and it's landed James Beard nominations for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker.

MĀBO is a tiny omakase counter in a Berkshire Lane strip center where the main event is chicken, cooked over binchotan charcoal, one skewer at a time. The room is hushed and softly lit, so you'll lower your voice to discuss poultry. Expect a set tasting menu, a serious sake and wine list, and a bill to match. It was a James Beard Best New Restaurant nominee in 2025.

Sado is a high-end sushi bar where the fish is dry-aged, which is a sentence that would have baffled your grandfather. Eight seats at the counter put you inches from cooks slicing with the focus of surgeons, while a full dining room handles everyone who'd rather not be watched while they chew. A six-person omakase called Pavilion hides out back. James Beard keeps nominating the chef, so budget accordingly.

Fourteen seats around a charcoal counter in the back of Chinatown's Canal Arcade, where every course of the yakitori omakase is built around a chicken that gives up everything. The chef coaxes cuts most menus never mention, oyster, heart, cartilage, into something precise and quiet. The New York Times gave it three stars, and a James Beard nomination for Best Chef followed. Wear something that can take a little smoke.

A fast-casual stall inside Houston's The Post food hall, ChòpnBlọk is the chef Ope Amosu's case for West African cooking as everyday food, not occasion food. Jollof rice, coconut curry bowls, and grilled suya skewers dusted in yaji peanut spice anchor the menu. The Michelin Bib Gourmand and a spot on the New York Times Restaurant List followed, which is a lot of attention for a rice bowl, and not undeserved.

A Scottish-style links course wraps around this Forbes Four Star resort on the northwest edge of Pebble Beach, which means you can watch golfers trudge through coastal wind from the heated pool without lifting a club yourself. Rooms are well-appointed, the grounds roll straight into sand dunes and the Pacific, and the property has enough bars and restaurants that you never need to leave, which some guests appear not to.

Moon Rabbit is a dimly lit Vietnamese restaurant in the Heights where the cocktails are as much a draw as the bowls and spring rolls. The menu lets you build your own meal by picking a protein, like lemongrass pork or garlic butter shrimp, which suits anyone who has ever edited an order in the middle of ordering. Its pastry chef is a James Beard Award nominee, so leave room.

Pascaline Lepeltier, one of a handful of Master Sommeliers in the world, built the wine list here, and it shows: back vintages, unexpected producers, prices that don't require a quiet moment alone with your bank app. The food runs from composed salads to fresh pasta, all of it seasonal and sharper than the "wine bar snacks" framing might suggest. A James Beard nominee for its beverages program, and sitting at number 29 on the Times' 100 Best list.

A Forbes Five Star resort on Cape Cod's southeastern elbow, with a private beach, a full-service spa, and a Lexus shuttle that'll whisk you wherever the peninsula demands. The shingle-style main house has been around forever, and the formula hasn't changed much: fishing charters, sunset sails, a kids' program in summer, and the general understanding that leaving the property is optional.

Twenty-seven acres of salt marshes, gardens, and woodlands sit between this Forbes Five Star resort and Pleasant Bay, with the Atlantic just beyond. It's classic Cape Cod country-inn territory, the kind where staff track you down on the tennis court to ask if you need anything. Rooms run from spacious suites with gas fireplaces and marble baths to snug private cottages, all done in upscale New England style without tipping into fussy.

A small fish and wine bar from the team behind State Bird Provisions, built around the anchovy in all its salty, versatile glory. The menu wanders from toast loaded with local anchovies and grated tomato to squid stir-fried with kimchi and flat rice noodles, and somehow a vanilla tamarind sundae finished with dried fish lands as dessert. The room is warm and woody, the vibe relaxed enough that the ambition sneaks up on you.

The hummus comes with schug, herb tehina, and enough conviction to make every other hummus in town feel like it needs to apologize. This is a casual Eastern Mediterranean restaurant drawing from Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, with a menu that roams widely and settles nowhere predictable. The chef behind it earned a James Beard nomination for Best Chef Southeast. Come hungry enough for babka.

This is a family-run Basque spot on Main Street where the sausage does most of the talking, in bocadillos and appetizers, with chorizo you can also take home by the pound. The menu mixes old-country standards with newer moves like beef tongue in tomato and pepper sauce. They cater too, so your next office party could finally have a point. The Ansotegui family has been in Basque Boise a long time, and the chef was a James Beard Best Chef: Mountain semifinalist in 2024.

Casitas scattered across 57 acres of high desert, each with a kiva fireplace and a private terrace, give this Four Seasons the feel of a small compound rather than a hotel. The Southwest decor is restrained enough that you won't feel like you wandered into a gift shop. A shuttle runs to Santa Fe proper, though the spa and the Sangre de Cristo views make a strong case for staying put. Forbes Four Star.

A Lao noodle parlor that grew out of a single chicken soup too popular to stay on one menu, Bar Sen sits next door to its sibling restaurant in a dark, lively room with a sunny patio out back. The khao piek sen, thick chewy rice noodles in a rich, almost milky broth, is the founding idea and still the move. Cold beer is the drink of choice here, which tells you everything about the vibe. The chef earned a 2026 James Beard nomination and a spot on the New York Times Restaurant List.

The cachito, a soft Venezuelan ham-and-cheese roll, is as good a reason as any to find your way to this Venezuelan bakery tucked into Doral. The team blends a Latin sensibility with French-style bread baking, so golfeados and pastelitos sit alongside proper croissants without anyone making a fuss about it. A 2024 James Beard nominee for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker. Bring cash and a little patience; the line tends to have opinions.

The pool at this mid-century hotel has hosted more lives than most buildings, including a stretch as an office, a radio station, and a filming location for Top Gun. Now it's back as a full urban resort on El Cajon Boulevard, renovated by a local hospitality group with retro glamour intact. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Expect good cocktails, a scene around the pool, and a vibe that takes the past seriously without being stuffy about it.

A gold-embellished bar takes up half the dining room at this wood-fired pizza shop in North Central Charleston, facing an open kitchen and a serious natural wine collection. The pizzas lean creative, the booths fill fast with groups who came for the full spread, and there's Korean fried chicken for anyone who showed up mostly for the wine. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2026.

The building was a working stable once, and the vaulted ceilings and warm brick still carry that memory into what is now one of Minneapolis's most celebrated dinner destinations. Chef Gavin Kaysen runs a Midwestern French kitchen where the seasonal sourcing is taken seriously without being announced at you. A 2025 James Beard Outstanding Restaurant semifinalist, it draws a dressed-up but not stiff crowd happy to linger over heritage grain pasta and a very good cocktail.

Pasta at 8 a.m. is either a cry for help or a reasonable lifestyle choice, and Fiore makes a compelling case for the latter. This tiny Italian cafe on Frankford Ave grew out of a larger restaurant that shed its wood-fired oven and half its menu, keeping only what the chef does best: regional Italian baked goods, bright seasonal salads, and cacio e pepe that regulars order before most places have unlocked the door.

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.