The Best Places to Eat and Stay in the United States

Hunan cooking gets less Bay Area attention than its Cantonese and Sichuan cousins, which makes this snug Millbrae restaurant worth knowing about. The heat here comes with smoke and funk, built from cured meats, fermented black beans, and pickled chilis rather than pure fire. Grab one of the carved booths in the back if you can, where you're close enough to the kitchen to feel invested. The Michelin Guide has had its eye on this place for a reason.

A busy Korean restaurant anchoring a Buford Highway strip mall corner, with a menu long enough to need its own table of contents. Glance at the neighboring tables and you'll notice most of them landed on the same thing: bibimbap in a stone bowl that keeps sizzling well after it arrives, crisped rice at the bottom doing its quiet work. It's casual, affordable, and listed in the Michelin Guide.

The copper-topped bar fills up early with Rockridge regulars who treat this neighborhood restaurant like a second living room. It's Italian-inflected California cooking in a rustic room, the kind of place where the charcuterie board arrives before you've fully settled in. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and surrounded by bookshops and antique stores, which tells you pretty much everything about the crowd.

Hand-pulled biang biang noodles are the point at this counter-service Xi'an noodle shop in Midtown, an offshoot of the original out in Duluth. You order, you grab a paper plate, you find a seat. The cooking leans on cumin and chili in a way that feels more like a region asserting itself than a kitchen showing off. The boiled dumplings, pork or lamb, come by the baker's dozen with a house dipping sauce that does most of the talking.

The glass-enclosed kitchen at the front is the first thing you notice, and if you can grab a table facing it, you'll watch the whole operation. This Sichuan spot in Chinatown is named for its signature dish, a fiery pickled fish with sour greens that comes in sizes running up to a platter for six. The wontons in chili oil are a foregone conclusion. A long list of cold sides fills out the table without much effort.

A converted house with white walls and dark wood tables, no sushi counter in sight, Yoichi's is a quiet kaiseki tasting room run by a husband-and-wife team. The chef trained at Nobu Tokyo, and the seven-course menu follows kaiseki tradition closely, built around seasonal ingredients and carefully sourced fish. The kind of place where service explains what you're eating without making you feel like a student.

Servers in hanbok and a warren of curtained private rooms signal that this isn't your average Koreatown Korean restaurant. Yong Su San specializes in royal court cuisine, the elaborate dishes once prepared for Korea's aristocracy, and the setting leans into that history with carved wooden seats and cushioned booths. Large groups tend to arrive for set menus, but the à la carte banchan spread alone makes an argument for a quieter table for two.

Live tanks of crab, lobster, and flounder line the back wall, which sets the tone for what this Cantonese dim sum house is doing differently from its strip-mall neighbors. Weekend mornings draw Chinese families through a wide rotation of steamed, baked, and fried dim sum, the dumplings carefully pleated and the barbecue pork buns doing their thing. Evenings shift toward the seafood tanks. The Michelin Guide has it selected.

Nine seats at a counter in Japantown, and the meal starts on time whether you're there or not. Yuji is a kappo counter, the less-ceremonial cousin to kaiseki, where a twelve-course progression moves through cold bites, pristine sashimi, and fried tilefish before landing on a bowl of steamed rice with pickled vegetables and miso. Matcha custard closes it out. The whole thing feels quieter and more personal than the format suggests.

A spacious, no-frills Chinese restaurant that pulls a crowd big enough to suggest most of Tampa is in on the secret. The menu swings wide, from orange chicken and salt-and-pepper calamari to clay pot-braised fish with a deeper, earthier pull. Lunch brings a separate dim sum menu with dumplings, turnip cakes, pineapple buns, and Hong Kong-style egg tarts, which is the move if you arrive before the dinner rush swells the room.

The counter runs the show at this handroll shop on East 3rd Street, a stretch that's become one of the better reasons to venture east of downtown. The room is dark and pared-down, the kind of place that hums without trying. The menu skips the usual handroll playbook, leaning into combinations that read strange on paper and make sense in your hands. Regulars fill that counter fast, so arriving early is its own form of planning.

Cumin is in the name and in the air at this Fairfax District restaurant, where ikat fabrics drape the wood furnishings and the menu reads like a Silk Road itinerary. Zira Uzbek Kitchen serves the food of Uzbekistan, a cuisine that lands somewhere between Central Asian and Middle Eastern, with hand-pulled noodle soup, shashlik off the grill, and fat dumplings that regulars argue over. The Michelin Guide includes it among its selected restaurants in Los Angeles.

Heavy wooden doors and dark metal chandeliers set the tone at this upscale regional Mexican restaurant on Capitol Mall, where the sprawling patio is prime real estate on a warm Sacramento evening. The menu leans on freshness, with bright ceviches, tacos on house tortillas, and lively salsas across the board. The tequila list runs deep, though the mango fresco margarita with its tajín rim has its own loyal following.

Counter service, seat yourself, bus your own table: Zoe Ma Ma runs like a family kitchen that happened to open a door to Pearl Street. The chef behind the counter makes everything from scratch, and the Sichuan cooking leans homey rather than showy. Dan dan noodles are a constant, but the rotating daily specials are worth checking before you order. Prices are low enough that you'll probably order one more thing just because you can.

The red-brick Beaux-Arts facade on Ocean Avenue is a reminder that the Jersey Shore once attracted people who traveled with steamer trunks. This hotel carries that old-money beach-town energy into rooms with plush linens and coastal textiles that manage to feel modern rather than nautical-themed. An outdoor pool with cabanas and a tiki bar gives you a reason to avoid the boardwalk, at least until early afternoon.

A Sixties mid-rise just off the boardwalk that got the full mid-century modern boutique treatment, bold colors and vintage geometry intact. The Dream Inn is a 165-room beachfront hotel that manages to feel like Santa Cruz distilled: sun-bleached, a little retro, and not trying too hard about any of it. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels, which tracks for a place that finally gave this stretch of California coast the beach hotel it deserved.

The pool has been the centerpiece of this 10-acre Santa Rosa resort since forever, and it still earns that status. The Flamingo leans hard into mid-century Modernist fantasy, which puts it closer in spirit to Palm Springs than Wine Country, a distinction the lobby's contemporary art collection only reinforces. Rooms are thoroughly renovated but keep the aesthetic. The Lazeaway Club handles pan-Pacific cooking, and the spa connects directly to a full fitness center.

The landmark bell tower has been standing since the 1920s, and La Bahia is the hotel that finally caught up to it. Set on Beach Street with actual ocean views from many of its 155 rooms, this Spanish Mediterranean property is Santa Cruz's most luxurious place to sleep, with a spa, a pool, and several bars and restaurants ranging from casual poolside to coastal Californian. The rooms mix the building's original Spanish bones with something clean and contemporary.

A cluster of 19th-century buildings spread across half a city block, the Lighthouse Hotel sits next door to its namesake and directly across from the Hemingway house, which is either a selling point or a lot of literary pressure. Rooms go tropical-classic, with vintage-inspired prints and furniture alongside modern comforts. The grounds wind around an old banyan tree and pool, and the bar pours a Hemingway-inspired mojito, as one must.

A working farmhouse aesthetic along the St. Helena Highway, this inn sits in the kind of wine country quietude where the main activity is deciding which bottle to open next. Rooms lean pastoral without being precious, and the Russian River Valley surrounds you with enough vineyard scenery to feel like you've genuinely left civilization, though civilization is about twenty minutes away when you need it.

Sferra linens and antiques sourced with an actual eye sit inside nine rooms of a hotel that has been anchoring the Athens waterfront since the Gilded Age. The Stewart House is a boutique hotel in a historic Hudson River town, with an Art Deco bar, a farm-to-table tavern, and a seasonal waterfront grill right outside. Elegant without being precious, the kind of place that makes Hudson feel less crowded than it is on a Saturday in October.

A comfortable hotel that plays the geography smart, sitting close enough to Newport for the beaches, mansions, and vineyards, but far enough to dodge the summer chaos. Rooms run bright and spacious, some with kitchenettes and balconies. The on-site restaurant, The Helmway, leans into New England standards like lobster rolls made with local ingredients. The Norman Bird Sanctuary is a short drive if you need an excuse to skip the car museum.

Directly across Pacific Coast Highway from the break that gave it its name, the Surfrider Malibu is a boutique hotel that took a Fifties building and quietly made it the thing Malibu somehow never had. The team behind it, a Californian architect and a couple of improbable partners, kept the bones and let the ocean do the decorating. Rooms fill fast with people who'd rather wake up to surf reports than room service carts.

This is a downtown Fremont Street slice joint that doubles as a shrine to Evel Knievel, with memorabilia on the walls and a Knievel pinball machine to keep you busy while the oven works. The New York-style slices are big, the crust is crisp, and the candied bacon is there if you want it. The whole pies are pricey, but an eight-dollar slice and a beer is the move. Nobody here is sober enough to question the motorcycle mural.

Some of the bagels here are so large they've lost their holes entirely, which feels like a metaphor for Midtown but is actually just breakfast. This no-frills bagel shop near Penn Station runs like a commuter train that actually shows up: the line moves, the bagels come out hot, and the chewy, twisty exterior is what you came for. The New York Times named it among the city's best, and the 8 a.m. crowd would agree without looking up.

The rice comes out burgundy, not white, because Harumi uses Forbidden black rice, and that detail alone tells you this is a modern sushi spot with a point of view. It sits in downtown Phoenix, small and lively, with an omakase option that won't require a financial intervention. The fish is clean and familiar rather than obscure, which suits the pre-show crowd it draws. Phoenix New Times named it a top pick for eating before a downtown event.

Nocturno is a low-lit Arts District cocktail bar with a menu of over 100 drinks, which is a lot of homework before your first sip. Sit at the bar instead and the bartender will quiz you on your favorite spirit, then turn it into something like mezcal with honey and chili. The kitchen sends out gnocchi and a fried potato tower, and the smash burger shows up only on Sundays. It was a James Beard Best New Bar semifinalist.

This is a lively coastal Italian restaurant on the Strip that clearly wants you to leave without needing a nap. The kitchen keeps things light and bright, so the casarecce arrives in garlicky tomato sauce with a Calabrian chile kick, and the Roman-style pizzas have a crisp, airy crust. The beet salad draws second helpings, and the limoncello spritzes help you pretend you're somewhere near an actual coast.

The clam pie, made with fresh Little Neck Bay clams shucked to order, has to be requested in advance, which tells you something about the kind of pizza shop this is. Thin, foldable New York slices and airy Grandma squares handle the walk-in crowd on 30th Avenue in Astoria. Named for its late founder, the place has kept its footing under new stewardship. It landed on 50 Top Pizza USA and the Times's best-in-New York list.

Ten rooms on the Bridgehampton stretch of the Montauk Highway, styled as a luxury motel in the way that phrase is meant to make you pause. The team behind it describes themselves as "a team of dedicated maniacs," which tracks: this is the classic motel-with-potential takeover, done with the kind of attention that turns a roadside stay into a detour worth planning around. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

A rooftop pool bar named Perspective, a gallery running seasonal exhibitions, and a lounge called Gallery Lounge: the art theme at this boutique hotel is not what you'd call subtle. Part of Marriott's Autograph Collection, it has the infrastructure of a big operation behind its modernist-chic personality. Overture handles food and drink at ground level when you need a break from admiring things.

The refurbished 1961 palm tree roadside sign out front tells you everything about what this boutique hotel is trying to do: resurrect a classic Texas motor court without the questionable plumbing. Car-seat upholstery, burlwood headboards, and headlamp-shaped fixtures carry the automotive theme through all 143 rooms. A restaurant, a social club, and a rooftop bar mean you can stay in all night, and AT&T Stadium is minutes away when you can't.

A cluster of 19th-century conch houses stitched together into a 44-room boutique hotel, the Kimpton Fitch Lodge barely looks like a hotel from the street, which is half the point. The residential scale keeps things unhurried, and the outdoor pool, loaner bikes, and a nightly hosted social hour keep them social. It sits just off the waterfront, making diving, sailing, or ferry departures easy to reach without much planning.

A hotel a block from the University of Wisconsin campus that actually has something to say for itself, which is rarer in college-town lodging than it should be. The Graduate by Hilton has the feel of a place that knows its neighborhood without leaning on it too hard, cosmopolitan enough to hold its own against a school that punches well above the provincial. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

Wine country has produced its own design dialect, and Kenwood Inn and Spa speaks it fluently: stone fireplaces, courtyard fountains, and enough warm terracotta to make you forget there's a highway outside. It sits on Route 12 in the Sonoma Valley, sized somewhere between an impersonal resort and an aggressively cozy B&B, which turns out to be the right call for cork-chasers and romantics arriving with a weekend and a winery list.

Sunrise yoga on the North Shore, with the kind of setting that makes participation feel less like a chore and more like showing off. Lumeria is a wellness retreat selected by the Michelin Guide, and it leans hard into the healing arts, from meditation to organic farming, without shaming the guests who came mainly to sleep until noon. The vibe is quietly earnest rather than preachy, which puts it firmly in a different universe from Maui's mai tai resorts.

Indian Wells sits quietly between Palm Springs and Indio, and most people drive straight through to the tennis tournament and leave. The Sands Hotel and Spa gives you a reason to stay put, a boutique luxury property with the kind of design and comfort that makes the whole Coachella Valley feel like it was your idea all along. The pool situation, as you'd expect in the desert, is the center of gravity.

Sitting at the southernmost tip of the continental United States, this beach resort straddles the turquoise Atlantic and Key West's chaotic Duval Street, which is either perfect or a lot, depending on your evening plans. A midcentury overhaul swapped tired tropics for cobalt, coral, and woven rugs on wood floors. The adults-only guesthouses, set in a pair of restored Victorians next door, are the quieter bet.

Thirty-five acres of Willamette Valley vineyard and woodland, less than an hour from Portland, make a convincing argument for never going back to the city. The Allison Inn & Spa is a full luxury resort in pinot noir country, where the architecture nods vaguely European but never forgets it's in the Pacific Northwest. Wine country has been creeping toward Napa-level ambition for a while now, and this place has been leading the charge.

A 39-room boutique hotel on three acres above Brushy Creek in Round Rock, north of Austin, where century-old live oaks do most of the decorating. The original farmhouse on the property still stands and now holds the bar, which is the kind of detail that earns a place its character without trying. The surrounding Austin sprawl exists, technically, but you can't really tell from the grounds.

Sagaponack is the Hamptons village that people in the know prefer precisely because it isn't a scene. This freshly renovated resort spreads across seven acres with 30 rooms ranging from detached bungalows with kitchenettes to suites, all done in white, navy, and sage. Beach passes, stocked lockers, and a pantry stocked with morning pastries to ice cream handle the logistics so you don't have to. Long Island's best beaches are close enough to walk.

Named for maritime painter Winslow Homer, this collection of historic houses spreads across Key West's old district with three swimming pools and a poolside Bungalow Bar tying it all together. The rooms mix contemporary interiors with the buildings' original bones, and the common outdoor spaces are generous enough that you'll forget you're in the middle of town. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

Palate is a sit-down restaurant where velvet chairs and chandeliers the size of small cars make the dining room look like a fantasy ballroom. The menu runs on Southern comfort food that wanders off in several directions, and the cocktails arrive with props, including one served beside steel wool that gets set on fire. Swan Dive is upstairs, so dinner here doubles as a warm-up act.

Hank's is a Henderson steakhouse with white tablecloths and glowing fireplaces, plus a piano bar where a cover band might be working through Sublime while you hold a half-off dirty martini. The happy hour menu is the steakhouse-lite route, all tiny tuna tacos and beef wellington bites in beer cheese, though the full dinner runs to Kobe ribeye sold by the ounce, so bring a calculator or a generous spouse.

Wood-fired oven anchoring an open kitchen, high ceilings, warm wood everywhere: Nostrana reads like the kind of Italian restaurant Portland genuinely needed someone to get right. Chef Cathy Whims built the menu around regional Italian cooking and Pacific Northwest ingredients, with pizza holding its own among the broader offerings. The naturally leavened dough and housemade mozzarella keep purists happy without making the rest of the menu feel like an afterthought.