No sad lobby Caesar salads here.

I spend a lot of time talking about hotel rooms.

The beds. The service. The pools. The breakfasts. Whether spending another $200 a night actually gets you anything besides a slightly larger bathroom and the opportunity to tell people you’re staying at the Ritz-Carlton.

But one of my favorite parts of a great hotel is something I don’t talk about nearly enough:

The restaurants.

And before you picture a Caesar salad, grilled chicken breast, and club sandwich being served in the lobby of a Hilton, that’s not what we’re talking about here.

Some of the best five-star hotels have legitimately wonderful restaurants. Restaurants we’d happily eat at even if we weren’t staying upstairs. Restaurants where you’ll often notice that many of the diners aren’t hotel guests at all, but locals who simply came for dinner.

There’s also a practical travel-advisor angle here. Many of the preferred hotel programs I book through include a hotel credit, often around $100, depending on the property and program. We frequently use ours toward dinner. Suddenly that restaurant you’ve been eyeing becomes a little easier to justify.

A few ground rules for this list.

First, these are restaurants at hotels we’ve actually stayed at. There are plenty of famous hotel restaurants around the world that might objectively belong on a “best” list, but if I haven’t stayed at the hotel, it isn’t going on this list. We’ve also had wonderful meals at restaurants inside hotels where we weren’t guests, but I’m excluding those too.

Second, I’m not including special private dinners or one-off experiences. Those can be incredible, but I’m talking about restaurants you can actually make a reservation at.

And finally, this is purely personal taste.

We aren’t really Michelin people. I can appreciate a spectacular tasting menu, but give me delicious food, a beautiful room, great service, and something I actually want to order over seventeen tiny courses involving foam.

So, in absolutely no particular order, here are six hotel restaurants I’d happily go back to tomorrow.

1. Gio’s | The St. Regis Venice

Let’s start with the view.

Gio’s sits directly on the Grand Canal, with a terrace extending toward the water and views across to Santa Maria della Salute.

It’s ridiculous.

This is one of those places where you occasionally have to remind yourself to pay attention to the food because you’re sitting there thinking, Oh right. We’re in Venice.

Fortunately, the food holds its own.

The menu draws on the culinary traditions of Veneto and Puglia, and we had excellent seafood and pasta here. It’s refined without becoming precious, and it feels unmistakably Italian rather than like a generic luxury-hotel restaurant that could exist anywhere in the world.

But I’m not going to pretend the setting isn’t half the experience.

Dinner beside the Grand Canal as Venice changes from daylight to evening is one of those travel moments that makes you understand why you flew across an ocean in the first place.

2. Berners Tavern | The London EDITION

If Gio’s wins for outdoor setting, Berners Tavern may win for room.

The dining room is spectacular. Huge chandeliers, soaring ceilings, walls covered in art. It’s dramatic without feeling stuffy, and there’s an energy to the place that makes it feel like a London restaurant that happens to be inside a hotel rather than a hotel restaurant.

Which is exactly what I want.

The menu is contemporary British, but what I remember most is the chateaubriand.

Matt and I still talk about it.

It is the best chateaubriand we’ve ever had.

That’s it. That’s the review.

Excellent menu, fantastic atmosphere, beautiful

room, enormous piece of perfectly cooked beef.

I require very little else from life.

3. Bombay Brasserie | Taj Cape Town

One of my favorite signs that a hotel restaurant is genuinely good?

The dining room isn’t filled exclusively with hotel guests.

That was immediately noticeable at Bombay Brasserie inside the Taj Cape Town. There were plenty of locals eating there too, which gives the restaurant an entirely different energy.

The concierge warned us to make reservations far in advance, and he was correct. There wasn’t a table to be had by 7 p.m.

The room itself is gorgeous: rich, dramatic, elegant, and exactly the sort of space you hope to find inside a Taj.

And the Indian food was outstanding.

Bombay Brasserie combines Indian cooking with Cape Malay influences, which makes it feel connected to Cape Town rather than simply transplanting an Indian restaurant into a luxury hotel.

This was one of those meals where everything worked: the food, the room, the service, the atmosphere.

We would absolutely go back without staying at the hotel.

That’s probably the highest compliment I can give a hotel restaurant.

4. Informal | Serras Barcelona

If you’ve read basically anything I’ve written about Barcelona, you already knew The Serras was going to sneak onto this list somehow.

I love this hotel.

And Informal is exactly the kind of restaurant that fits it.

It’s relaxed and unfussy, but the food is excellent. The location near the waterfront gives you that unmistakable Barcelona setting, and it’s a wonderful place to settle in after a day wandering the city.

For us, this is some of the best tapas we’ve had in Barcelona.

And Barcelona has a lot of tapas.

What I particularly like is that it doesn’t feel as though the hotel is trying to turn dinner into an “experience.” You’re not committing three hours of your evening to a culinary performance.

You sit down. You order a bunch of excellent food. You look toward the waterfront. You order another plate because apparently you weren’t finished.

Perfect.

5. Toro | The St. Regis Kanai Resort, Riviera Maya

We ate at several restaurants during our stay at The St. Regis Kanai, but Toro was easily our favorite.

The menu is an excellent blend of Latin American flavors with an Asian twist, which sounds like it could be trying to do too much. Somehow, it doesn’t.

The food is creative without becoming weird for the sake of being creative. Everything we had was excellent, and it’s elevated enough to feel like a special dinner without becoming overly formal.

That’s an important distinction for us.

Sometimes I want an incredible meal without needing a four-hour tasting menu and a dissertation about the provenance of my carrot.

Toro gets that balance right.

And then there’s the setting. You’re at Kanai, surrounded by mangroves and the Caribbean, so the restaurant has a considerable geographical advantage.

We enjoyed Toro enough that despite having several other restaurants at the resort to choose from, we wanted to go back.

That’s usually my test.

A restaurant can be excellent once.

A restaurant I’m already thinking about eating at again before I’ve even left the hotel makes this list.

6. La Table du Lavoir | Les Sources de Caudalie

And then there’s La Table du Lavoir at Les Sources de Caudalie, in the vineyards outside Bordeaux.

This one probably tells you everything you need to know about our taste.

Les Sources de Caudalie has La Grand’Vigne, its beautiful two-Michelin-star restaurant.

And the restaurant I want to put on this list?

The bistro that looks like an old barn.

La Table du Lavoir feels like a French country inn, with huge old wooden beams and an enormous fireplace that makes the entire room feel like somewhere you stumbled upon in the French countryside rather than a restaurant at a five-star hotel.

Which, technically, you did.

The food matches the room. It’s seasonal, generous French bistro cooking, and nothing about it feels like it’s trying desperately to impress you.

It’s just really, really good.

And that fireplace.

We ate there with the fire going, surrounded by old beams in the middle of Bordeaux wine country, and the entire thing felt almost absurdly French.

This is also why I laugh when people assume luxury-hotel dining automatically means white tablecloths, tasting menus, and someone explaining your dinner to you with tweezers.

Sometimes the restaurant I remember most is the one that looks like a barn and has a giant fire burning in the corner.

Give me that every time.

What Do These Six Have in Common?

None of these restaurants feels like an amenity the hotel was obligated to provide.

That’s the difference.

A great hotel restaurant should feel like somewhere you’d choose to eat even if your room weren’t an elevator ride away.

And that’s also why I think people sometimes underestimate dining when they’re comparing luxury hotels.

If your hotel has a restaurant you genuinely want to eat at, breakfast you look forward to, and perhaps a hotel credit that can be applied toward dinner, those things become part of the value of the stay.

You aren’t just paying for the room.

You’re paying for the experience surrounding it.

And sometimes the ability to have an incredible dinner and then travel approximately 45 seconds back to your bed is the greatest luxury of all.

Bonus: ALBA | The St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort

I’m cheating.

This isn’t technically one of the six because I’m including it specifically for breakfast.

But I couldn’t write about hotel restaurants without talking about breakfast at ALBA at The St. Regis Maldives.

First, you’re in the Maldives.

So you’re sitting there in the morning looking out over the Indian Ocean, which already gives ALBA a somewhat unfair competitive advantage.

Then there’s the breakfast itself.

The buffet is enormous and genuinely excellent, with an absurd range of choices. And on top of that, you can order from an extensive à la carte menu.

And then order something else.

And perhaps something else after that.

This is vacation. There are no rules.

One of my favorite things about a truly great luxury-hotel breakfast is that it changes the rhythm of the morning. You’re not grabbing something quickly before running out the door.

You sit.

You have coffee.

You stare at the ocean.

You order breakfast.

Then you notice something else and order that too.

Eventually you remember that you’re supposed to be doing something with your day.

Or you don’t.

You’re in the Maldives.

The Point Isn’t Fine Dining

Looking back at this list, I think that’s what connects all of them.

I’m not chasing Michelin stars when I travel.

I’m chasing meals I remember.

Sometimes that’s because the chateaubriand was incredible.

Sometimes it’s because the room was beautiful.

Sometimes it’s because half the restaurant seemed to be filled with locals.

Sometimes it’s because you’re eating pasta beside the Grand Canal.

Sometimes it’s sitting next to a roaring fireplace in Bordeaux wine country.

And sometimes it’s because you’re drinking coffee while looking out at the Indian Ocean and thinking:

Well, this doesn’t suck.

That’s what a great hotel restaurant can add to a trip.

And one final reminder: if you’re staying at one of these hotels, or another luxury hotel with preferred travel-advisor benefits, don’t automatically book it yourself. Depending on the hotel and program, booking through me can include a hotel credit, often around $100, in addition to benefits like complimentary breakfast, potential upgrades, early check-in, and late checkout.

And yes, that hotel credit can often be used at the restaurant.

So if you’re going to order the chateaubriand anyway, you might as well let the hotel pick up the first $100.

Great hotel. Great dinner. Someone else paying for part of it.

Bon Voyage,

Andrew Reiser |Travel Advisor

Website: https://www.foratravel.com/advisor/andrew-reiser

Instagram: @areiser86

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