You could lean into tradition with white tablecloths and candlelit Italian - perfect for a Lady and the Tramp-style spaghetti moment. Or perhaps French fine dining is more your speed. Some couples gravitate toward seafood, sharing a chilled platter of oysters or a towering shellfish spread, while others prefer the intensity of an omakase counter, where the evening unfolds course by course.
Back in 2024, after a reporting trip for a whiskey magazine, I got tired of drinking. Perhaps it was the sluggishness I felt each morning, or maybe it was the podcast I'd heard while traveling, which shared the news that one or two glasses of red wine was not, as we had long been told, healthy. Whatever the reason, I tossed in the daily drinking towel after that trip, figuring that going forward, I might only have a drink or two every now and again.
The first thing most people will probably notice is the eye-popping price tag, $1,500 for the full experience, including beverage pairings. That's almost twice as much as the normal bill, including alcohol at Noma in Copenhagen. To secure a table, you'll need to sign up for the Noma newsletter by January 23, and then bookings will open up on January 26 at 9 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. While Noma has done international "residencies" in other cities before, this is the first in the United States.
When Ki Kim was outlining the dishes for Restaurant Ki, his 10-seat modern Korean tasting-menu counter secreted in the basement of Little Tokyo's Kajima Building, he knew his meal needed a center of gravity - a midpoint course to balance the opening parade of seafood snacks with several heftier, saucier, pre-dessert dazzlers. Just before the pandemic Kim had been sous chef at Blanca, a now-closed restaurant in Brooklyn run by the people behind pizza icon Roberta's.
American cinema-verite demigod Frederick Wiseman's latest is a 6,000-course tasting menu of a documentary, like one of those supercuts with all the delicious food on offer in Studio Ghibli films. Most of the 95-year-old's career has been dedicated to chronicling US institutions, but here he returns to the strain of Francophile work he has dipped into since the mid-90s (he lives in the country part-time). In this case, he infiltrates the Michelin triple-starred Le Bois sans Feuilles restaurant in Ouches in the Loire,
When you want a luxurious dinner, seeking out a seafood restaurant is a good choice. You can enjoy everything from a briny shrimp cocktail to a comforting bowl of lobster bisque and even a remarkable seafood tower. Eddie V's Prime Seafood is on the smaller side of chain restaurants but boasts a smattering of convenient locations across the U.S. One of the most interesting things about the establishment is the fact that its seafood is flown in daily, fresh from the coasts.
Our restaurant critic Bill Addison teamed up with longtime columnist Jenn Harris again this year to spread out and sample hundreds of different dining establishments - in addition to crucial return visits - to determine a range of 101 restaurants that exemplify everything we love about dining in Southern California. Read the entire guide below, plus our writers' favorite places to sip tea, coffee or cocktails, and the updated Hall of Fame list.
Among New York City's fine-dining scene, L'Abeille is chef Mitsunobu Nagae's Michelin-starred playground, where he and the team experiment with French and Japanese ingredients and techniques to elegant results. The space is the definition of quiet luxury: stunning yet understated, stunning with velvet chairs and booths but no white tablecloths. It makes sense that director Celine Song filmed a scene for Materialists here, suitable for big-deal occasions, friend hangs, and family meals.
When a restaurant with the pedigree of 1919 at Condado Vanderbilt Hotel makes a leadership change, the food and beverage industry takes notice. The appointment of Chef Ciaran Elliott as Executive Chef marks not just a personnel shift, but a transformative moment that promises to elevate one of Puerto Rico's most celebrated fine dining destinations to new heights. With his distinguished background spanning multiple Michelin-starred kitchens across Europe and New York, Elliott brings the kind of global expertise that hospitality industry leaders dream of securing.
Our aspiration is to bring great Indian food all over this country-not just to New York, Miami, or Los Angeles, but to put it alongside any of the great ethnic cuisines you get in America, and what better city to do that in than Las Vegas?
The restaurant rose from the waterfront like a cathedral of light and glass 30,000 square feet of modern American glamour with the Manhattan skyline glittering just beyond its floor-to-ceiling windows. Inside, warmth took over. The marble bar gleamed beneath soft amber lighting, and the hum of conversation felt almost orchestral against the sound of clinking glasses. The setting was elegant yet unpretentiousa perfect stage for a holiday date night.
Wiltons is a restaurant with a past so long and steady that it feels less like a business and more like a living narrative of London. Its history goes back to 1742, when George William Wilton sold oysters on the streets before moving into premises that would become a fixture of the city's dining life. Step inside today, and the weight of those centuries is felt immediately.
Guests enter the restaurant through the main doors of the Westin and land in the Bourbon Loungeformerly Clock Bara cinematic expanse of marble and brass, with coffered ceilings lit by sparkling spherical chandeliers and warm globe lamps that illuminate soft leather stools. A party of Gatsby impersonators would blend right in. You could linger here all night sipping craft cocktails that nod to Mina's legacy of restaurants.
Perched 1,350m above the Dolomites, this family-run hotel offers luxury wellness, a gravity-defying SkyPool, an innovative 'Heaven and Hell Spa', daily guided hikes, yoga and fine dining with locally sourced ingredients and wines. Featured on the BBC's Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby series with Rob Rinder and Monica Galetti, this stunning hotel is the perfect blend of local hospitality, luxury wellness and sustainable innovation - all anchored in South Tyrolean family values.
In naming it as the top fine dining restaurant as part of its annual Travelers' Choice Awards Best of the Best Restaurants, Tripadvisor lauded Fogón Asado for showcasing the "rich tradition of asado steak with a twist" that "goes well beyond regular steakhouse fare." "Tripadvisor's Best of the Best Restaurants are celebrated for their extraordinary cuisine, attentive service, and remarkable locations, where most importantly, diners go to make special memories," Kristen Dalton, the president of Tripadvisor, said in a statement shared with Travel + Leisure. "From hidden local gems to one-of-a-kind destinations, Tripadvisor's community guides travelers to restaurants that become cherished favorites or once-in-a-lifetime experiences, all backed by trusted reviews."
Spago in Los Angeles is the flagship in Wolfgang Puck's international empire a vital part of the city's culinary history, and represents possibly the greatest vibe shift ever in American restaurants. I went back several times because I wanted to see how this restaurant that, both influenced and anticipated some major American food trends over 40 years ago, fit into the scene it helped shape today.
If you're looking to celebrate an anniversary, treat yourself on your birthday, or wine and dine a potential client, a good steakhouse is hard to beat. For the high prices, you expect impeccable service, an inviting atmosphere, and, of course, a perfectly seared steak served with scrumptious sides. If you want the best of the best steakhouses in the Golden State, there's really only one fine dining establishment that you should consider. We're talking about the ritzy Gwen steakhouse on Sunset Boulevard.
While traditionally the quality and price of dishes on a menu go hand in hand, that's not the case with Community Kitchen. Everyone gets the same quality food, the same care in preparation, with no consideration given to what the diner might pay for it. Community Kitchen works on a sliding scale where you are asked to pay what is fair based on your income. They don't police this idea, either.
Meat is back on the menu at Eleven Madison Park for the first time in four years. And I was there. When I was walking up to the restaurant, it was mostly business as usual gor a Tuesday night at 6 p.m. you walk through the revolving doors and there's a dozen smiling hosts waiting to take you to your table.
Is a teeny tiny po'boy that holds a single oyster. a little bit ridiculous? Yes and is it delicious? That too. I think maybe I forgot fine dining can be all of these things at once until I went to Emeril's in New Orleans. You might associate Emeril's with the famous first name-only celebrity chef who opened it in 1990, but the restaurant was recently taken over by his son.
The multicourse tasting menu, cooked by a highly credentialled chef, would be elegant and refined, made with heirloom produce from local farms. Experienced servers might pour meticulously curated natural wines, ask the obligatory "Have you dined with us before?," and swiftly fold the rumpled napkin of anyone who got up to use the rest room. What would set Community Kitchen apart from the dozens of restaurants like it across Manhattan and Brooklyn was the way patrons would pay:
At Le Chene in Manhattan, chef Alexia Duchene indulges diners with a haute spin on French classics while another kind of artistry hangs on the walls. Diners nibble sweet shrimp tartelettes or golden, pastry-covered pithiviers beneath Warhol's Flowers and sip rare Grand Cru across from a Basquiat triptych. And, for deep-pocketed guests, there's even the chance to take a masterpiece home.
"The prices have gotten out of hand," Nieporent told Business Insider while discussing his new memoir, "I'm Not Trying To Be Difficult: Stories from the Restaurant Trenches."
That wouldn't be entirely fair, but there's no escaping the fact that chef Jason Atherton's ground-floor Berners Tavern is the palpitating heart of the hotel. The lobby cocktail bar, oak-panelled, reservation-only Punch Room and nightclub Basement only increase the pulse-rate. Once upon a time this was five lovely 1835 townhouses, which were combined in 1910 to create the Berners Hotel.
Named after the ancient Roman road that connected Rome to Pisa through Tuscany's coastal regions, Via Aurelia embodies Chef David Nayfeld and Partner Matt Brewer's most ambitious project to date. This isn't just another Italian restaurant; it's their first foray into fine dining, marking a significant evolution for Back Home Hospitality.
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