The Best Places to Eat and Stay in the United States

Your pillowcase will feature Bill Murray or David Bowie rendered as a Napoleonic general, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Belltown boutique hotel. Nicole Hollis designed the rooms to play the building's century-old glamour against something wry and contemporary, so the bathrooms manage to feel both vaguely Victorian and quietly modern at once. A Michelin Selected Hotel, and a solid base just north of downtown Seattle.

Two restored Federal-style row houses on a quiet Georgetown block hold just fifteen rooms, which means the staff knows your name by checkout. This luxury boutique hotel sits in Washington's oldest neighborhood, a short walk from the university and well clear of the monumental everything downtown. The interiors run spare and bright against the historic facades. Breakfast and an evening spread of craft beer and local wine are included, and Georgetown handles the rest.

Clawfoot tubs in the loft suites and reading nooks in the singles give The Frances Modern Inn a range that most boutique hotels never bother with. It sits in Central East Austin, a neighborhood where small businesses have held their ground forever, and the in-house restaurant, Siti, runs an unexpectedly focused Southeast Asian kitchen. The Michelin Guide has selected it among its hotels, which tracks for a place this considered.

Three robin's-egg-blue cottages tucked right where Frenchmen Street meets the French Quarter line, this 27-room boutique hotel is the right base if you're here for the music and not the minibar. Rooms vary wildly in size and shape, the best ones with loft bedrooms or balconies over the street below. The in-house bar, Midnight Revival, doubles as a jazz venue, and there's a rooftop bar for when you need air.

The Art Deco exterior belongs to what was once home to Chicago's two biggest banks, which tells you something about the scale of ambition inside. The LaSalle Chicago is a luxury hotel in the Financial District where the retro styling isn't a costume but a genuinely fitting one, from the lobby lounge built for deal-making over cocktails to suites sized for people who sign things. Grill on 21 handles the steakhouse duties upstairs.

Breakfast comes in a picnic basket each morning, which sets the tone nicely for a fifteen-suite hotel that behaves more like a borrowed apartment than a place to stay. Exposed brick, original hardwood floors, and full kitchens make up the bones, with well-chosen antiques keeping things from feeling like a loft conversion. It sits in the old downtown district, right in the middle of Charleston's restaurant scene, and the Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

Rolling garage-door windows that open flush to the Colorado air are the detail that makes this RiNo boutique hotel click. It sits on an old ironworks site in Denver's River North arts district, and the 100 rooms lean into that industrial past with polished concrete, Baltic birch, and spare Japanese-influenced furniture. The neighborhood's warehouse-and-mural energy is right outside, which is exactly why people book here instead of downtown.

This is a seafood restaurant dressed like an Old Hollywood set, with a raw bar and a caviar service whose sturgeon eggs come from fish the chef raised himself. The menu keeps one eye on the Gulf, with redfish, grouper, and a clam chowder that means it. The bar has a Golden Martini from Esquire, so a drink first is only prudent. Expect to dress like someone might photograph you, because someone will.

The quiche arrives as though it's never heard of the stodgy version you've had before, light and trembling where quiche has no business being either. MÅURICE is a French-leaning pastry luncheonette from chef Kristen Murray, drawing from French and Norwegian traditions for a small menu of smørbrød, soups, and sweets. The black pepper cheesecake has its own local mythology. A cold bottle of white at midday in downtown Portland, and nowhere else quite like it.

The French cheeseburger blanketed in raclette has its own reputation in this city, which tells you something about the mood at this Heights neighborhood restaurant. European-inspired comfort food anchors the menu, which shifts with the seasons, running from chicken liver pate and crudo through to roast chicken and pasta. The chef landed a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2024, and the Houston Chronicle put Squable at number two on its top 100 list.

Hakkasan is a five-story Cantonese restaurant and nightclub in the MGM Grand, so dinner and the dance floor share a building and a dress code. A set menu keeps the bill friendlier than most Strip showpieces, and the dim sum arrives in colors that photograph better than they have any right to. The peking duck comes with caviar, which tells you how the evening is meant to end: upstairs, with a DJ and a bottle.

The honey onyx bar is the same one New York regulars know, transplanted to Beverly Hills and looking very much at home on Camden Drive. This is fine dining, coastal Italian, and the room is styled like a billionaire's yacht without any apparent irony. Homemade pasta is the reason to linger, particularly the fusilli with the red wine-braised octopus that made the Manhattan original famous. The crowd skips dessert at their own peril.

Mirrored walls and moody recessed lighting give this Chelsea restaurant a stage-set quality, and the kitchen leans into it. The menu is short and personal, pulling Caribbean roots through a European frame: salt cod fritters with habanero aioli, braised oxtail under cheddar polenta. A strawberry cheesecake arrives as a Swiss roll, which is either surprising or obvious once you've had it. The cocktail bar runs all night.

Black walls, scarlet booths, polished chrome, and a limestone fireplace that anchors the whole room: the Lambs Club is a Midtown steakhouse that knows exactly what it is and leans into it without apology. Dry-aged steaks with a full spread of sauces are the main event, and the pre-theater prix-fixe keeps the curtain-time crowd moving. Inside the Chatwal Hotel, steps from Broadway, it draws the kind of clientele that orders a second cocktail on purpose.

A worker-owned cooperative in Mt. Vernon where refugees cook from their own culinary traditions, Mera Kitchen Collective serves Middle Eastern, African, and Latin food in a bright, casual room with plenty of vegan and vegetarian options. It started as pop-ups before finding a permanent home, and the menu still has that improvisational spirit. A local mural covers the outdoor dining wall, which is either charming or on the nose, depending on your tolerance for intentional cheerfulness.

A neighborhood house on the Eastside that seats you like a dinner guest, not a diner. Bintü Atelier serves West African cooking with a Gullah Geechee thread running through it, okra and local fish sharing the menu with shito crab rice and groundnut stew. The menu is short enough that tables tend to order most of it and share. It's BYOB for anything alcoholic, but fresh soursop and passionfruit juice soften the blow. Named a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Southeast.

This is a Strip steakhouse run by the Food Network's "bam" guy, and the wine list tops 2,700 bottles, which is a lot of reading before a baked potato. The Caesar is tossed tableside, as the form requires, and the lobster bisque comes loaded with actual chunks of lobster. The banana cream pie is a wall, and a glazed pork chop makes a case against the beef. Expect expense accounts and a jacket or two.

A chicken rice shop on Airport Boulevard where the whole birds go through a poaching-to-ice-bath-to-hang-dry process that makes the skin pull taut and the meat collapse at the knife. The cooking traces back to Chinese immigrants who brought their techniques to Thailand and rewired them with bolder flavors. The chef landed on the 2025 New York Times Restaurant List and is a 2026 James Beard semifinalist. Seven house sauces come with; order all of them.

The wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas come out gently charred, topped with whatever the Pacific Northwest is doing well that week. Cafe Olli is a pizza and brunch spot on MLK that also runs a serious bread and pastry program out of the adjoining bakery. The New York Times put it on their restaurant list and the chef landed a James Beard semifinalist nod, which tracks for a neighborhood place that treats zucchini and peaches like they have something to prove.

A lobby full of playful, colorful sculpture and paintings keeps the black marble and dark wood from taking themselves too seriously at this luxury boutique hotel in Birmingham, the upscale suburb just outside Detroit. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Key. It's the kind of boldly designed, art-forward property that once belonged only to bigger cities, now quietly doing its thing in a leafy Michigan suburb.

A converted textile mill with original worn brick and warehouse ceilings sets the tone for this 33-room luxury boutique hotel in Biddeford, a riverside town that doesn't get nearly enough attention. The design swings between clean modern lines and Art Deco flourishes without losing the thread. A rooftop pool, lobby bar, café, and a brewery-restaurant round it out. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Handmade tajarin, dressed with nothing but butter and sage, has made this Capitol Hill trattoria a quiet institution. The kitchen pulls from Italy's Piedmont region, so the menu runs rich and restrained in equal measure. The room is candlelit and close, the kind of place where a weeknight dinner somehow turns into a long one. The sibling bar next door, Artusi, handles digestifs and desserts if you're not ready to leave, which you won't be.

The squid ink spaghetti is black enough to make you self-conscious about your teeth, which tells you something about the vibe here. BoccaLupo is a casual, bustling neighborhood Italian-American spot in Edgewood where the chef takes the food seriously but the room doesn't take itself seriously at all. Southern fried chicken parm, focaccia brushed with honey, quirky cocktails: the menu reads like someone cooked exactly what they wanted and it all happened to work.

Carversteak is a Strip steakhouse where a martini cart makes laps during dinner service, which tells you how seriously the room takes the word "steakhouse." Expect a dressy, expense-account sort of evening, with investment bankers at the next table who may adopt you for drinks. The chilled seafood platters, stacked with shrimp, lobster tails, and oysters, are as much the draw as the beef.

Holsteins is a casual burger-and-milkshake joint in the Arts District, relocated from its long run inside a Strip casino to a spot where nobody has to walk through a slot floor for a patty. The burgers are stacked high enough to require a strategy, and the boozy shakes arrive buried in doughnuts and marshmallows. Come hungry, wear something you can afford to get sauce on, and plan on being full for a while.

A French-Japanese bistro in an Arts District warehouse, where the croque-madame arrives on house-made shokupan with ham katsu standing in for the ham. The team behind sake-focused Japanese spots has gone full Paris here, or almost full Paris, because the ponzu jelly scattered over the burrata keeps reminding you exactly where you are. Come for an aperitif and stay until the kitchen stops feeding you.

A Davis Love III golf course, a hot-air balloon that lifts off from the property, and a bedside touchscreen that orders dinner to your room: Boar's Head sets a high bar for the Virginia resort weekend. Six hundred acres outside Charlottesville back up to the Blue Ridge, with two pools (one adults-only), an adventure tour company, and a spa leaning on local ingredients. The kind of place that makes weekday life feel like a personal failing.

The pita here gets rolled and hearth-baked to order, and it arrives so pillowy and toasty that whatever else you planned to eat almost feels beside the point. This is a lively Mediterranean restaurant in the Presidio, drawing from the Istanbul playbook, with a menu built for sharing, from flaky borek to short rib kebabs. The room fills with people who came for a quiet neighborhood dinner and stayed for another round of spreads.

Sixteen rooms on Carbon Beach, all teak, all facing the Pacific, and a rate that ensures the other guests are probably not stressing about it. Nobu Ryokan is a boutique hotel modeled on a traditional Japanese inn, which means the design is spare, the pace is slow, and the whole point is that nobody can easily find you. Chef Nobu Matsuhisa's other properties thrive on being seen; this one is structured around the opposite instinct.

The cocktail menu lists a drink called the Big Booty Trudy, which tells you exactly what kind of bar this is: East Dallas neighborhood spot, dressed up but never stiff. The drinks lean classic and a little cheeky, the bar food skews surprisingly serious, with a rotating kitchen pop-up from a James Beard-nominated chef. Furikake fries alongside a Mai Tai is a more natural pairing than it sounds.

The pink stucco facade has been Palm Beach's most recognizable silhouette for generations, and the current owners kept it that way, restoring the scalloped headboards, patterned wallpapers, and retro-tropical palette rather than neutralizing them into something safer. Swifty's restaurant and the pool bar draw a lively local crowd year-round, so it never feels like a museum. Worth Avenue is minutes away, and the beach is closer still.

Murano chandeliers hang over mahogany floors, and the Italian leather furnishings are soft enough that you notice them. This Long Island hotel has been around forever, and a renovation by designer Marcello Pozzi pushed it into something more contemporary without losing the grandeur. Manhattan, JFK, and LaGuardia are all close, which makes it a useful base for more than just the suburbs. The spa sits on the lower level beneath a light-filled atrium.

This is a second-story steakhouse under a glass dome inside the Plaza, where the Casino dinner scene was filmed, so expect at least one table of suits murmuring "they filmed Casino here." The room was named for a former mayor who also worked as a mob attorney, which explains the menu. A zipline now blocks the Fremont views, but the burger with its pile of fried onions still outpaces the steaks.

Tightly packed tables and a menu that shifts with the seasons set the tone at this creative American restaurant in Park City. The mood runs loud and convivial, the kind of place that works equally well for a group après-ski and a date night, which probably explains why it's almost always full. Comfort food gets a thoughtful rework here, and the chef landed a James Beard semifinalist nod. The Michelin Guide has it listed too.

Nite Yun's counter-service spot in the Ferry Building pulls Cambodian cooking toward its quieter, more restorative registers, a different pitch than the bold flavors she built her reputation on in Oakland. The menu moves between soothing and electric without announcing which is which. A James Beard semifinalist and named to the New York Times' 25 best in the city, it's a small room doing serious work on a short menu.

The salt-baked celery root arrives looking like a small geological event, which sets the tone for this French-influenced New American restaurant where technique is the point but the vibe stays loose. Chef Shawn Gawle, a James Beard semifinalist, built the menu around sharing, with tarte flambée, heirloom tomato pie, and carrot cavatelli doing the heavy lifting. Dressy enough to feel like an occasion, relaxed enough that nobody's whispering.

A long counter, an open kitchen, and a pizzaiolo working the back of the room like the whole thing is a performance: this Chinatown strip-mall pizza shop has no interest in blending into its surroundings. The neo-Neapolitan dough is light with a properly blistered edge, and the menu stays tight enough that everything on it seems to mean something. Named among 50 Top Pizza USA's excellent pizzerias.

The wine list leans natural, the cocktails are craft, and the menu changes often enough that regulars rarely order the same thing twice. Copper Common is a wine bar and restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City, from the team behind the Copper Onion next door, and the kitchen ranges widely, pairing sharply drawn flavors without making a fuss about it. Salt Lake Magazine named it one of the city's top restaurants.

Bagels hang in metal racks draped with white sheets, a nod to the coin-operated laundry this place used to be. Now it's an all-day pizza and bagel shop on Balboa, mornings given over to coffee from Grand Coffee and a solid bagel lineup that runs from egg to rye, with schmears folded through green onion or spiked with Calabrian chiles. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the top bagels in the Bay Area, and a Top 100 restaurant pick followed.

A low-lit cottage in the old Clarksville neighborhood, Jeffrey's is a fine-dining steakhouse where the beef is USDA Prime or American Wagyu, dry-aged and finished over an oak-fired grill. The room is close and quietly elegant, the wine list ranges from Napa to Burgundy with confidence, and the service moves like it has nowhere more important to be. The Michelin Guide has selected it, and it appears on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

This is the Caesars Palace Nobu, the biggest of the three on the Strip, a dim, stylish Nikkei dining room where lychee martinis and miso black cod are the opening move. Sequins and big watches fill the tables before a show at the Colosseum across the casino floor. Walk-ins sometimes score a bar seat, but plan on reserving a couple of weeks ahead.

Bird's-eye chiles, not hatch, set the tone at this Southeast Asian restaurant inside a former furniture workshop. Zak Pelaccio, who made his name with Malaysian cooking at Fatty Crab in New York, opened the place with a young chef running the kitchen who handles spice with confidence. The pork belly steak draped in prik phao paste and Thai basil keeps people coming back, and the crab steamed custard sells out most nights. On the New York Times Restaurant List for 2026.

The Chinoiserie wallpaper alone could anchor a design magazine spread, but this is a Chinese American restaurant where the food keeps pace with the room. The chef started with pop-ups exploring identity and landed somewhere more interesting than a thesis: Korean corn cheese egg rolls, dan dan noodles with wagyu guisada. A James Beard semifinalist, and the Victorian veranda fills up fast on sunny afternoons.

By day, a bagel shop where the hand-rolled, kettle-boiled rings get topped with things like hamachi, fresh wasabi, and shiso. By night, the Counter flips to a hyperseasonal kaiseki tasting menu, the kind of multicourse journey that shifts entirely with what's good that week. The chef trained in Japan under serious mentors, and it shows. A James Beard semifinalist in 2026, it's also landed on Eater's best Denver restaurants list.

Two brothers run this Texas BBQ shop near the stadium, open only Thursday through Saturday, which keeps the line long and the brisket moving fast. The setup is classic smoke-and-queue, but house-made flour tortillas stand in for white bread, and the sides swing toward poblano mac and cheese and okra-laced beans. Texas Monthly named it one of the state's 50 best BBQ joints, which the regulars already knew.

Pink and orange neon casts a moody glow over the Camelback Road location of this coffee shop, which leans into creative, photogenic drinks alongside the usual caffeine agenda. The menu runs from lattes built around burnt cream or cookie flavors to matcha, ube, and Lotus energy drinks for the non-coffee contingent. A second, sunlit outpost sits inside the Melrose District's Royale collective, better suited to a quick grab-and-go.

Some rooms look directly across the street at the face of Busch Stadium, which tells you exactly who books this hotel and how they feel about the Cardinals. Live! by Loews is a contemporary boutique hotel planted in the middle of Ballpark Village, St. Louis's stadium-anchored entertainment district. Rooms are bright and colorful, with Stearns & Foster mattresses. Two restaurants and a bourbon bar handle most needs, and the rest of the district handles the others.

Izakaya Go is a small Japanese izakaya in a Spring Mountain Road plaza, and its late-night happy hour from 10pm to 2am is the real draw. Sushi, tuna belly steak, and yaki udon all get marked down, which suits anyone who spent the day losing money and wants to feel like they won something. It's tight on space, so expect a wait when the deals kick in, and get your oyster order in before 1:45.

Twenty-eight seats in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood that has somehow gotten by without Italian restaurants until now. Tonino is a pasta-and-pizza spot where the chef's whole philosophy seems to be finding a handful of good ingredients and then leaving them mostly alone. The tiramisù has built a devoted following. A James Beard semifinalist and on the New York Times' 25 best in Boston, it reads like someone's favorite neighborhood secret that stopped being secret.

The move at this old-school Phoenix chophouse is to come in through the kitchen, which is less a quirk than a statement of intent. Red leather banquettes, scarlet wallpaper, dim lighting, and the kind of martinis that explain why the power brokers still fill the room. The relish tray arrives gratis over ice, which somehow feels exactly right. They've been doing the 48-ounce porterhouse and prime rib forever, and they're not taking notes from anyone.

Jicama ribs that read as meat are the talking point at this Vietnamese sit-down in Saint Paul, where chef Eric Pham opened his first restaurant as a tribute to his mother, a longtime figure at the family's Minneapolis institution Quang. Most plates land at $21 or under, and the menu runs from bún chay to a crispy chicken sandwich without any of it feeling like a compromise. The New York Times put it on their Restaurant List in 2026.

Tucked into a cobblestone Georgetown alley, this Turkish and Mediterranean dining room draws from homestyle cooking, particularly the "From Mom's Kitchen" section of the menu. The sesame-and-nigella-seeded bread goes with everything, and the rice-stuffed artichoke, a recreation of an Aegean dish the chef grew up eating, earned a Washingtonian dish of the year. The chef was a 2026 James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic.

Two bars for the price of one obsession: an energetic street-level cantina with patio and a reservation-only basement room for quieter, deeper agave rabbit-holing. A food truck parks outside when hunger arrives. The agave selection runs wide enough that the bartenders will happily guide you in, and the cocktails, like a mezcal-and-pistachio-milk situation, suggest this is not your average tequila shelf.

A boutique hotel installed in a pair of mid-century buildings on Camelback Road, RISE Uptown runs the room spectrum from deliberately snug to balcony-with-firepit. The courtyard pool is the real draw: Lylo Swim Club handles cocktails, Cartel Coffee Lab handles mornings, and a popsicle stand handles the argument that boutique hotels have run out of ideas. Rooms are colorful and comfortable without trying too hard.

The pitas come out of the wood oven almost too hot to handle, still puffed from the heat, and they anchor a menu built around big Mediterranean flavors in a neighborhood restaurant that also runs a soft-serve window because why not. The chef knows the local dogs by name, which tells you something about the room. Lamb ribs and meatballs fill out the regular order for anyone who can't decide, which is most people.

Menus written entirely in Spanish set the tone at this all-white coffee shop in downtown Phoenix, where the minimalism stops at the decor. The drinks lean on flavors from the chef's Mexican childhood: sweetened condensed milk and piloncillo folded into espresso, cafe de olla fragrant with cinnamon and anise, horchata made with wild rice and almond milk. It's a quiet, unhurried room that draws people who plan to stay a while.

The old stockyards and rail lines that once defined West Midtown are still in the bones of this hotel. Rooms come with folding writer's desks and window seats angled at the skyline, and suites add Japanese soaking tubs for anyone who needs to decompress after a day in the galleries. Drawbar handles cocktails and Southern food with city views, and a lobby market covers the rest. The Garden Courtyard offers outdoor air in a neighborhood that traded freight for creative industry.

Thirteen rooms, each one a little different, wrapped in original fireplaces, forest greens, and Victorian wrought iron that feel genuinely of this neighborhood rather than borrowed from it. A small hotel in the Lower Garden District, the Blackbird leans into Southern Gothic without costuming itself. The pool bar runs craft cocktails and occasional live jazz, and the café handles food better than a room count of 13 has any business doing.

The pool deck has a screen so large it registers as a geographic feature. Circa is an adults-only casino resort on Fremont Street, a deliberate step away from the Strip, with a mid-century modernist look that leans into Vegas glamour without tipping into kitsch. The casino, sports-betting floor, and a stack of bars and restaurants fill the rest of the building for anyone who surfaces from the water.

Czech glass chandeliers and gold-leaf ceilings in a city that built its reputation on reclaimed wood and oat milk. Hotel deLuxe is an old-school, unapologetically ornate hotel in Portland's West End, where art deco mirrors and twinkling lobbies feel like a deliberate provocation. Pack something other than fleece. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

The frosty blue glass crown on the Olive 8 tower makes the building easy to spot from most of downtown Seattle, which is convenient because the Hyatt inside positions itself as a business-boutique hotel with a wellness lean, clean lines, and a general Pacific Northwest calm. It sits about halfway between Pike Place Market and Capitol Hill, which is as central as Seattle gets. Guests who need a tidy, modern base without much fuss tend to like it here.

Rooms named Ben and Betsy, after the neighbors who made this street famous, set the tone at this low-touch, apartment-style hotel in Old City. No front desk fuss, just an iPad stocked with neighborhood intel and urban-loft interiors with contemporary furniture. It's the kind of place that assumes you'd rather feel like a resident than a guest, which, on one of Philadelphia's most historically loaded blocks, is not a bad assumption.