The Best Places to Eat and Stay in the United States

Jantra is an eight-seat Thai tasting menu room carved out of a former private dining room, which makes it the rare restaurant where the whole place is the chef's table. The premise is dinner as seen by someone just landed from outer space, a fitting angle for Houston. It's $175 for eight to 10 courses, one seating at 7 p.m., so show up on time and dressed like you've planned this.

Caramelized onions, sour cream, and chives crown the classic potato-and-cheese pierogi here, and that's more or less the whole argument for visiting. What started as a DeKalb Market stall grew into a lively Ridgewood restaurant and market doing contemporary Polish comfort food. Schnitzel with endive and pickle martinis signal ambition, but the pierogi are still running the show. A casual, cheerful room where the crowd orders like they've been waiting all week.

A player piano sets the tone at this Montrose dining room, where the dress code is "go ahead and try" and the menu leans toward Mayfair via Paris. The kitchen runs British-French, which means duck Wellington and oysters at the bar feel equally at home. The Marigold Club is the kind of place where ordering a martini first is not just acceptable but expected, and Esquire has already taken their side on the matter.

Half seafood market, half full-service restaurant, The Tides sits in a quiet Safety Harbor neighborhood north of St. Pete and pulls off both roles without apology. The menu runs large with a Southern lean, so fried green tomatoes and pimento cheese show up alongside oysters Bienville and po'boys stuffed with fried grouper. The kitchen is open all day, with weekend brunch, and the Michelin Guide has taken notice.

Cocktails named for San Francisco neighborhoods anchor the bar at this fine dining spot in Cow Hollow, where modern Indian cooking gets a California reframe. The kitchen folds seasonal produce into dishes that stay recognizably Indian while drifting somewhere new. Both à la carte and tasting menus are on offer, so you can commit as much or as little as the occasion calls for. The room is elegant without being stiff.

The name means "grand performance" in Hindi, and the room in North Hills plays along with a striking modern interior that makes dinner feel like an event. This contemporary Indian restaurant works local ingredients through traditional techniques, though the kitchen slides between classic and fusion without much fanfare. The chef earned a James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist nod in 2025, which tracks with a menu confident enough to end on a dessert mapping her journey from northwest India to the South.

A glassed-in butchery room off the dining floor sets the tone at this polished American restaurant from Hosea Rosenberg, a James Beard semifinalist. Seats at the counter face the open kitchen, and the bar is well-stocked for lingering. The charcuterie comes from in-house, the pasta is inventive, and the donuts have a way of becoming the whole point of the meal.

The gummy bear chaser that arrives alongside your espresso tells you almost everything you need to know about Brio Coffeeworks. This roastery coffee bar in Burlington's South End Arts District takes its coffee seriously and its atmosphere playfully, with pink and purple fixtures and a rotating cast of microlot single-origins on espresso or drip. Vermont small-business goods fill out the shelves and the drinks menu, and the crowd skews curious rather than caffeinated-and-cranky.

The copper bar catches the afternoon light in a way that makes you want to order a Bloody Mary before you've even sat down. Zuni is a bi-level California bistro that's been a fixture on Market Street forever, shaped like a triangle and decorated like someone with actual taste. The wood-fired chicken for two, served with a warm bread salad, is the dish regulars have been quietly hoarding for decades.

The campfire pie, an Oreo-crusted chocolate and toasted meringue dessert that a New York Times critic compared to Rothko edges, signals exactly what kind of neighborhood restaurant Charlie's is: Napa Valley wine-country cooking without the ceremony. The menu ranges globally, the room skews community rather than occasion, and the whole thing carries a legacy from Cindy Pawlcyn's old Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen in the best, most low-key way.

The line snaking through downtown Palo Alto at noon is the surest sign this ramen shop is doing something right. A Tokyo-based chain with a cult following, it serves rich tonkotsu broth in five varieties, each bowl customizable down to noodle firmness and salt level. The red king, centered with a blazing eye of miso pork and cayenne, is the one people queue for. No reservations, but you can order while waiting, so you sit down to a bowl almost immediately.

Four-poster beds, 18th-century art on the walls, and grounds so carefully tended you half-expect a gardener in a flat cap to materialize from the hedgerows. This Auberge Resorts inn in the Litchfield Hills plays the English country house straight, without irony, and pulls it off. It holds a Michelin Key. Two hours from New York, it draws the kind of guests who pack actual luggage and linger over breakfast without checking a phone.

Brady Williams built his name at Canlis, and Tomo is what happens when a fine-dining chef stops apologizing for also loving a steam burger. The à la carte menu lands somewhere between Japanese comfort food and upscale American, with kakigori towering improbably over its bowl for dessert. The room runs dark and stylish, and the wine list is adventurous enough that the four-glass, diner-paced flight exists as a sensible entry point.

China Mama is a Chinatown Chinese restaurant on South Jones that covers Cantonese, Szechuan, and Dongbei cooking, which makes the menu roughly the length of a short novel. Crispy beef, dry pepper chicken, and mapo tofu share the table with braised pork belly and a taro duck. It's a sit-down, shared-plates affair where ordering for the group turns into a negotiation, and Eater has put it on its Las Vegas lists more than once.

Leather booths, stone and copper accents, and woven rugs on the wall set the tone for a sit-down New Mexican restaurant that skews considerably more swanky than the cuisine's roadside reputation suggests. The marble bar is massive and the patio invites lingering, especially at brunch. Green chile shows up in nearly everything, from eggs Benedict to a pecan-wood-grilled cheeseburger, and the dinner menu runs to rack of lamb and enchiladas.

A chalkboard of rotating cocktail specials and a basement bathed so completely in red light that no other color survives the trip down. This speakeasy-style cocktail bar is tucked beneath the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown Hotel, behind a mural and open only two nights a week, which is exactly the energy. Vintage velvet chairs and low tables give it the feel of a sitting room someone forgot to leave, and the drinks arrive in coupes and crystal-cut rocks glasses.

A ramen shop where the broth might arrive laced with matcha or built around five preparations of garlic in a single bowl. Mensho brought its Japanese noodle concept to Arizona with this Mesa outpost, a light-wood room centered on an open kitchen where handmade noodles go into thick, creamy broths. The kind of place where the bowl keeps revealing itself as you eat, which is a polite way of saying you'll want to stay longer than you planned.

Gondolas glide through the atrium waterways past flamingos, which is either the most Palm Desert thing imaginable or proof that nobody here is thinking small. This sprawling Coachella Valley resort comes with two Ted Robinson golf courses, a 38,000-square-foot spa, multiple restaurants, and tennis on clay, grass, and hard courts. The Santa Rosa Mountains frame the whole scene whenever you step outside.

The dining room pulls from Vienna's Secession movement, all gilded geometry and serious intent, which feels right for a fine dining restaurant inside the Ace Hotel where the food runs Austrian and French with a modern hand. The New York Times gave it three stars, and a James Beard semifinalist nod followed. The chef behind the now-closed Bâtard is back, and the room draws people who dressed up on purpose.

Snowbird averages 500 inches of snow a year, and The Cliff Lodge sits right in the middle of it, ski-in, ski-out against the jagged Wasatch peaks. It's a four-season mountain resort, so summer brings aerial tram rides and snowshoeing gives way to hiking, but winter is the main event. Expert runs and heli-skiing attract the serious crowd, though nearly a third of the trails are beginner-friendly for those who prefer their adrenaline at a lower dose.

Three pools, a harbor view, and the kind of tropical-modern design that manages not to embarrass itself in a town where novelty is usually suspect. The Marker is a waterfront resort on the quieter edge of Key West, and its neighbors, famously hostile to anything new, seem to have made peace with it. Rooms lean into the Caribbean palette without overdoing it, and the water is right there, which in Key West is really the whole point.

A one-acre working farm on the grounds sets the tone for this 22-room boutique hotel on the Hamptons' quieter, less scene-y end. Jean-Georges runs the restaurant, and the kitchen leans heavily on what's growing out back. The rooms are chic and modern without the look-at-me energy that follows money east from Manhattan on summer Fridays. Bridgehampton is a pleasant stroll from here; the Montauk Highway strip is low-key by local standards.

A wood flame burns in the hearth, thin slats line the ceiling, and a gleaming copper bar anchors the room, which tells you everything about where Cotogna sits on the rustic-to-refined spectrum. This is an Italian restaurant where the suited FiDi crowd fills tables at lunch and families slide in beside couples at dinner. The single raviolo, one egg in browned butter, is the move. Deep Italian wine list, lovely outdoor parklet.

A mural of Fillmore Street circa 1962 covers the wall, which makes sense given that the chef grew up in the neighborhood and spent years dreaming of bringing her soul food restaurant here. The rosemary fried chicken, fragrant with fresh herbs and marinated in housemade spices, is the reason people line up, though the butter cornbread and mac and cheese give it real competition. Bon Appétit named it one of America's Best New Restaurants in 2025.

Peter Chang has quietly turned the D.C. suburbs into a Sichuan outpost, and Mama Chang is his tribute to the women of his family who actually did the cooking. The warm-wood dining room is upscale-casual Chinese, the kind where dry-fried cauliflower seems to land on every table without anyone admitting they ordered it. The New York Times and The Washington Post have both put it on their D.C. essentials lists, which for a Fairfax strip mall is a flex.

Pressed tin ceiling, globe lights, and worn wood floors set the mood at this seafood restaurant on South 20th, where the menu stays tight enough that everything on it feels deliberate. The raw bar anchors the room, oysters and scallops up front, while the gumbo pulls in lobster, crab, and Carolina gold rice. Grab a seat at the back bar if you can, the chefs are right there. A James Beard semifinalist in 2026.

Slow-roasted cochinita pibil is the anchor here, available as a plate with rice and beans or folded into tacos at this Mexican cafe and market in Houston's East End. Weekend brunch draws a crowd for chilaquiles and a loaded breakfast platter, while the daily agua frescas change with whatever fruit is in season. The chef behind it is a two-time James Beard semifinalist. Before you leave, the market sells frozen tamales and her cookbook.

CherCher is an Ethiopian spot that took over what was once a rowhouse living room, and the platters still arrive like someone's relatives are visiting. Expect injera for scooping, berbere-spiced meats, and a vegan combination so sprawling it could feed a small congregation. There are no reservations, so go on a weekday and bring friends who don't mind sharing from one big plate. It's casual, loud in the right way, and easy on the wallet.

Smoked brisket finished with awaze, an Ethiopian spice sauce, is the move that separates this casual Arlington barbecue joint from every other spot selling half-pounds off butcher paper. The team built it from a trailer smoker and weekend pop-ups into something the New York Times noticed and a James Beard semifinalist nod confirmed. Order a platter if you want range, and reach past the mac and cheese toward the lentil stews.

The wood-burning oven runs the show at this Italian restaurant tucked inside the Manhattan West development, where everything from onion torta to pasta passes through its heat. It's a Danny Meyer production, so the room is handsome and the service moves like it has somewhere to be. The chef keeps the menu generous and designed for sharing. The New York Times named it among the 100 best restaurants in the city.

Tucked behind a parking lot, Han Oak is the kind of Korean restaurant where you might have to step over a toy truck to reach the courtyard. The chef runs it next door to his own house, which tells you everything about the register: clamorous, buzzing, and genuinely homestyle. The seasonal menu leans into braised short ribs and bold pantry flavors, and the cocktail list throws gochujang into a mezcal drink without apologizing for it.

Lyons is a small river town north of Boulder where you wouldn't expect to find a contemporary French restaurant this precise, yet here it is. The menu shifts constantly, chasing whatever the chef is curious about, and the wine list leans into small Old World producers working with native grapes, which the floor staff navigate with you rather than at you. A James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Mountain.

Carlo Lamagna built out much of this corner dining room himself, and that DIY spirit still reads in the space. Magna Kusina is a modern Filipino restaurant on a quiet Clinton Street block, with a bar program and chef's counter rounding out the room. The squid ink noodles with crab fat have become one of those Portland dishes people bring up unprompted. The chef was a James Beard nominee in 2022.

Marufuku is a ramen shop on the second floor of Japantown's Japan Center mall, and the line snaking out before they open tells you everything about how the neighborhood feels about it. The Hakata-style tonkotsu runs cloudy and deep, with thin noodles and slow-cooked pork belly. The chicken paitan is lighter but no less serious. Expect a wait, and consider using that time to decide whether you're ordering the deluxe.

Avery is a hotel brasserie up front, with cassoulet and the white-tablecloth French the genre promises, plus a British-style pub out back that does shepherd's pie and Guinness. Both rooms run on old Brunswick bars, and the pub's is reportedly the oldest in Boise, so it has seen things. The chef is a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Mountain, and Eater lists it among Boise's essentials.

Terroir is a bistro on Boise's 8th Street restaurant row, where steak frites and chicken Lyonnaise sit on the same menu as sablefish in miso broth, which is the French equivalent of a friend who studied abroad and came back with range. It began as a butchery, then a wine store supper club, then a winery food trailer, so a permanent address counts as settling down. The chef is a James Beard Best Chef: Mountain semifinalist.

A 1903 Georgian Revival building with long wraparound porches and rocking chairs, sitting inside the Presidio with a sliver of Golden Gate Bridge peeking over the trees. This intimate B&B offers full breakfast, evening wine and cheese, and beds that apparently inspire loyalty. It's quiet enough to forget the city exists, which is the whole point, and 24 miles of trails begin more or less at the door.

The kitchen opens by warning you it's not a chips-and-salsa situation, which either excites you or sends you down the road. This modern Mexican restaurant inside the Camptown Hotel takes its cues from regional Mexican cooking, turning out tetelas stuffed with seasonal fillings, pig's head barbacoa with fresh tortillas, and a blood sausage tamale that regulars order at both brunch and dinner. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2026.

The view from the top of Reunion Tower has been making Dallas look good for years, and the steakhouse that lives up there now leans into it hard, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a dress code keeping things appropriately sharp. Sushi shares the menu with steaks from local farms, and the triple-cooked fries are the kind of side you order again before the first plate is cleared. Book well ahead; 200 seats fill faster than you'd expect.

Sitting inside the Four Seasons Fort Lauderdale, this modern Mediterranean restaurant earns its own reason to show up, with a menu that pulls from Levantine cooking and slips in Floridian touches along the way. The room faces the pool and the Atlantic beyond it, which is either inspiring or distracting depending on your dining companion. The kitchen leans into spreads, skewers, and the kind of food that makes a long dinner feel easy.

A 1960s motor lodge on the road between North Adams and Williamstown, now reborn as a boutique hotel with a decidedly hip second act. The Berkshires revival, fueled largely by MASS MoCA around the corner, gave someone the good idea to rescue this roadside relic rather than raze it. The result lands somewhere between nostalgia and design magazine, the kind of small country hotel that earns two Michelin Keys without making a fuss about it.

The dining room is built to look like a Soviet dacha, complete with turquoise shutters and diagonal wood paneling modeled on the owner's great-grandparents' cottage. Kachka is a full-service Eastern European restaurant where the menu runs from happy-hour zakuski and herring salads to Siberian pelmeni and rabbit braised in a clay pot. Horseradish-infused vodka from the team's own distillery handles the rest. The New York Times named it among Portland's best.

Full kitchens, in-unit laundry, and Bulgari bath products make this extended-stay property in Beverly Hills feel less like roughing it and more like subletting someone's very tasteful second apartment. The 88 suites and townhouses run sleek and modern throughout, with room service arriving from the adjacent Spago when cooking feels like too much. A landscaped terrace with fire pits and views toward the Hollywood Hills keeps things social. A seven-night minimum applies.

Stained glass windows and terrazzo floors survive from the original train depot, and the hotel built around them leans into that legacy without apology. Rooms run mid-century rather than Edwardian, but the real draw is the Grand Hall, where a gilded arched ceiling towers over The Bar at Asher Adams. Classic cocktails under that ceiling feel less like a hotel amenity and more like the whole point of the stop. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

A downtown Houston hotel where the saddle-colored leather headboards and earth-toned rugs make it feel like a ranch house that somehow ended up on the 20th floor. The whole place is a tribute to trailblazing Texan women, and every room and the chic lobby bar was designed by female talent. Rooms are spacious, rocking chairs sit by floor-to-ceiling windows, and the top-floor suite comes with a formal dining room and soaking tub.

The Dutch chain's compact formula lands in Pioneer Square: XL king beds, rainfall showers, and tablet controls that handle everything from blackout blinds to room temperature. A 24/7 canteen runs from breakfast through evening cocktails, and the lobby's primary-colored furniture signals that laptops are very welcome. King Street Station is a short walk away. A Michelin Selected Hotel, it's built for people who want a smart, functional night's sleep rather than a personality.

Murals by local artists, including a member of the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, set the tone in the lobby of this design-forward hotel on the edge of South Lake Union, a short walk from the Amazon campus. Rooms are deliberately compact, trading square footage for oversized beds, blackout blinds, and full app control over lighting and temperature. The implicit deal: the city is your living room, and the bed is very good.

A skylighting system engineered to flood the lobby with natural light is a bold promise for a Minneapolis hotel, and the greenery and tall columns do sell the bit. Rooms lean contemporary with generous windows, and some look out over the skyline. Giulia handles Northern Italian and wood-fired pizza downstairs, while Spyhouse draws the neighborhood in for coffee and pastry. The fitness center runs Peloton bikes for guests who travel with ambitions.

A boutique hotel that rents you skis and snowboards from its own shop before sending you toward the Wasatch Mountains, which are minutes away. It sits inside a campus built by a Seattle outdoor retailer, so a bouldering gym, an indoor skate park, and a yoga studio are all on site. The hotel itself has a café and a rooftop bar, which keeps the après-mountain portion of the day well covered too.

Roosevelt Island's only hotel sits on the Cornell Tech campus, which most New Yorkers will learn about only when they book a room here. Graduate by Hilton leans into that campus identity hard, with Snøhetta-designed rooms in bright, cheerful colors and skyline views on most sides. The 18th-floor Panorama Room bar delivers a 360-degree look at New York from an angle the city rarely offers its own residents.

A Greek Revival mansion in the Garden District, built by the Irish architect whose columns and Roman arches still define half the neighborhood. The 18-room boutique hotel layers antiques and hand-painted furniture against boldly patterned wallpaper and geometric canopy beds, so the rooms feel less like preservation projects and more like someone with very good taste actually lives there. Polished wood floors, gilded oil paintings, and Beekman 1802 bathrooms.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Common from nearly every room, which is a solid reason to book a higher floor at this sleek downtown hotel on Tremont Street. The building is a quiet contemporary amid Boston's colonial streetscape, but the interiors go louder: bold patterns, rich materials, and lighting someone clearly thought hard about. Beds come with ten pillow varieties, which is either thoughtful or a decision you'll regret making at midnight.

The terra cotta atrium under a massive skylight is the first thing that stops you in this downtown Detroit hotel, which has been around forever and knows it. Rooms run to tall windows and high ceilings, the bones of a grand old skyscraper kept largely intact through a careful restoration. It sits right where downtown meets Midtown, so the theaters, stadiums, and galleries are all on foot.

Complimentary shoe shines, which most hotels quietly retired sometime around the flip phone, are still on offer here. This full-service downtown hotel leans into classic materials, marble bathrooms, leather sofas, and dark varnished hardwood, without feeling like a time capsule. Nightly turndown service rounds out the picture of a place that simply hasn't bothered cutting corners. Minneapolis gets underestimated by the coasts, and so, probably, does this hotel.

Lokal Fishtown lands somewhere between boutique hotel and vacation rental, which is exactly the pitch. The loft-style apartments run modernist but unpretentious, with hotel bathrooms, apartment kitchens, a cocktail kit stocked and ready, and a curated list of delivery apps for when you can't decide. One unit has garden access, another a deep soaking tub. Fishtown being Fishtown, the bars and restaurants just outside make staying in feel almost wasteful.

Check-in happens at Bar Moxy, which doubles as the lobby, so you're handed a drink before you see your room. The hotel is Marriott's budget-forward brand done with personality: compact rooms in moody charcoal, walk-in showers, motion-activated lighting, and names like Vibe and Groove that are corny enough to circle back around to charming. South Lake Union puts Pike Place and the Space Needle within easy walking distance.

Apartments with a washer/dryer and live plants in every unit, inside the landmarked Book Tower. ROOST is an extended-stay boutique hotel where the studios and one- or two-bedroom suites run closer to a furnished apartment than a standard room, with full kitchens and a bikes-to-borrow program. Dogs are welcome, and when cooking feels like too much, the building's own restaurant options are right downstairs.

The Nash Collection is a boutique hotel that gets Nashville right, trading the honky-tonk clichés for something genuinely stylish without feeling like it's trying too hard. The kind of place where the lobby crowd looks like they flew in for a show and decided to stay an extra two nights. It fits the city's new energy perfectly, warm and a little flashy, but with enough taste to back it up.

A boutique hotel in Charleston's French Quarter, steps from the waterfront, that manages to feel like a stylish country house despite sitting squarely in the city's busiest stretch of East Bay Street. The mansion-style rooms and unhurried atmosphere are a deliberate counterpoint to everything humming just outside the door. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected Charleston hotels, which in this neighborhood is saying something.

The cowhide upholstery and local artwork make clear that this is no generic chain drop-in: the Thompson Dallas is a city-center hotel that wears its Texas credentials alongside its Manhattan modernist bones. Rooms come with minibars stocked with Texas-made products, and a spacious spa sits on the ninth floor. The tower location means the views are part of the deal, and a modern Italian restaurant by a Michelin-starred chef handles dinner.

A hotel with over 1,500 rooms that somehow still has a personality, Virgin Las Vegas leans into its brand's irreverence rather than the usual Vegas gilded-palace routine. The pool situation is a full beach club, there's a Nobu on property, and the entertainment calendar runs more interesting than most strips along the Strip. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels, which tracks for a place that treats design as something other than an afterthought.

The four rooms above Wm. Mulherin's Sons sit inside a former whiskey-bottling plant in Fishtown, which tells you something about the neighborhood's trajectory. This is a boutique hotel in the loosest sense, a handful of rooms rather than a property, and the draw is as much the wood-fired Italian restaurant downstairs as anything happening on your floor. Pack light and eat well.

Open-flame cooking runs through everything at this cozy Levantine restaurant in Redwood City, from spiced chicken to cauliflower roasted until it's tender inside and crisped at the edges. The menu leans into Jordanian-style street food, with falafel, baba ghanoush, and shawarma slicked in garlicky toum alongside larger sharing plates. A James Beard semifinalist in 2025, it draws families into a plant-filled dining room where the light comes in from above.