Best Restaurants in America

In this rustic-elegant hotel dining room with its sweeping mountain views, chef Ryan Swanson draws on local Native American traditions for dishes like wild spearmint gnocchi, local tomatoes and goat cheese with buckwheat and saguaro cactus seed tart, and tribal black cod wrapped in shaved cedar planks.

This eclectic Middle Eastern newcomer — widely hailed as one of L.A.’s best restaurants — was opened last year by chefs Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis, also proprietors of the acclaimed Italian restaurant Bestia. The imaginative menu offers duck ‘nduja hummus, fried quail with cardamom date sauce, slow-roasted lamb neck shawarma, rose clove chocolate donuts, and other non-traditional but evocative southern and eastern Mediterranean fare.

This elegant restaurant’s Alsatian-born namesake, who won plaudits and a Michelin star at The Modern in the Museum of Modern Art, serves a highly imaginative selection of modern French and American fare here. Among the offerings are langoustine tartare with flying fish roe, sturgeon and sauerkraut tart with caviar mousseline, and heritage pork tenderloin with grilled cabbage. The far-ranging wine list is, not surprisingly, particularly strong in Alsatian vintages.

Despite having lost its third Michelin star in 2015, famed chef Daniel Boulud’s contemporary cuisine in this superbly run, elegant restaurant is as good as ever. Choices might include rabbit terrine in a tarragon gelée, broiled squab breast with black tea and vadouvan (French curry powder) crust, and chocolate tarte soufflé with kirsch-soaked cherries.

Niki Nakayama is one of the few women anywhere who serves a kaiseki menu (the ritualized multi-course feast that is considered the pinnacle of Japanese cuisine). In her 26-seat restaurant, open only four nights a week, she serves a seasonally changing progression of delicacies that combine traditional Japanese ingredients (matsutake mushrooms, unagi eel, Miyazaki wagyu beef) with such Western foodstuffs as jalapeños, foie gras, and spaghettini. The late, revered Los Angeles Times critic Jonathan Gold wrote that Nakayama’s cooking “eclipses what you find in grand dining rooms whose chefs appear in national magazines.”