Big Chill

It’s been said that restaurants with two Michelin Stars are the ones most worth looking out for. What about hotels with two Michelin Keys? We pay tribute to our parent company by picking the coolest Two Key hotels in the USA.

There’s a line of thinking that restaurants with two MICHELIN Stars are the ones to really pay attention to. That’s where you’ll find the strivers, the up-and-comers, still working to reach the mountaintop, not yet charging Three Star prices. Or, the theory goes, they’re more likely to be the risk takers, unafraid to color outside the lines, unconcerned with accolades. How much of that is true? Not sure, but you could certainly see the logic.

As most of you probably know, Tablet was acquired by Michelin in 2018, and every once in a while we like to bend the knee and pay tribute up the proverbial pneumatic tube. This time, we thought it’d be fun to take a look through the MICHELIN Guide’s latest hospitality landmark, the MICHELIN Key, and pick out the Two Key hotels we think are the coolest. Keys are awarded to the world’s top hotels much in the same way Stars are awarded to restaurants. They’re a vast improvement on the traditional five-star hotel rating system, which tends to value sheer amount of amenities over actual quality of service or design, and certainly doesn’t account for how cool a hotel is. That’s where we come in.

Cool can mean many things. With the picks below, you’ll see it applied to everything from interior design and architecture to history, cuisine, and that rarest of combinations, uber-luxury resorts made from abandoned Colorado mining towns. When you’re done here, check out our list of the coolest Two Key hotels in Europe.
 

Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm

Albuquerque, NM, USA

Los Poblanos, located outside of Albuquerque, isn’t just a hotel. It’s a working ranch where lavender grows abundantly in the fields — and finds its way into everything from in-room bath products to the artisanal cocktail menu — along with wheat, corn and chili peppers. The property is best known as the homestead of a 1930s-era power couple who spared no expense in its construction.

The Madrona

Healdsburg, CA, USA

The Madrona may be new, but the Mansion, the hotel’s ornate centerpiece, certainly isn’t — this 1881 mansion was built in Aesthetic Movement style, and its extravagant silhouette isn’t the only surprise for arriving guests; the interiors are eclectic, incorporating period elements as well as modern interventions, a very fine art collection, and a boatload of antiques and curios.

Alila Ventana Big Sur

Big Sur, CA, USA

Big Sur is the jewel of the California coast, one of the most spectacular places in North America, and Alila Ventana Big Sur is Big Sur’s original luxury resort, founded by writer Lawrence A. Spector, using profits from the film Easy Rider. Clearly it doesn’t get much more California than that. This is a hotel at peace with its surroundings, very much a part of the Big Sur landscape.

Hotel Emma

San Antonio, TX, USA

Hotel design icons Roman and Williams were given an amazing canvas in San Antonio: Pearl’s, a 19th-century brewery and one of the nation’s finest examples of Second Empire architecture. Now it’s the centerpiece of a sprawling, restored riverside gustatory complex with no less than 15 big-name restaurants, a Culinary Institute of America, and two farmers markets a week. Including, of course, Hotel Emma.

Tourists

North Adams, MA, USA

MASS MoCA, the contemporary art museum in the Berkshires, has given the formerly industrial town of North Adams a second life as a booming cultural destination. Outside the town center, on the road to neighboring Williamstown, you’ll find another piece of reclaimed Berkshires heritage: TOURISTS, a Sixties motor lodge reborn as a very modern, very hip little country boutique hotel.

ULUM Moab

Moab, UT, USA

Upscale tented camps are one thing, but ULUM Moab is on another level — this is unmistakably a full-on resort experience. The lobby is a permanent brick-and-mortar structure, and each unit is separated from its neighbors by a considerable distance, with plenty of interior space for lounging, as well as comforts you’d normally expect to find only in a proper luxury hotel.

Nine Orchard

New York City, NY, USA

In Dimes Square there’s a buzz that’s reminiscent of some of Downtown’s earlier golden ages — and, in Nine Orchard itself, there’s a hotel with enough character and personality to become a proper neighborhood institution. With its ornate façade and public spaces, what was once the Jarmulowsky Bank building retains much of its century-old grandeur — they quite literally don’t make them like they used to.

Resort at Paws Up

Greenough, MT, USA

Backcountry living in the Montana Rockies never felt quite so luxe. Deep in the heart of the American West, an easy 40 minutes from Missoula airport, the Resort at Paws Up is for the traveler who wants a wilderness escape to include all the comforts of civilization. As for activities, they include just about anything you can imagine doing in the mountains, including an old west shooting gallery.

Chateau Marmont

West Hollywood, CA, USA

What needs to be said about Chateau Marmont at this point, a hotel that’s cooler than all of us put together? Built in 1929 to mimic the Chateau D’Amboise, a castle in France’s Loire Valley, its French late Gothic Flamboyant style includes fluted pillars, vaulted ceilings, and the perfect amount of heavy, dark wood. The drama of the building more than matches the drama that has taken place within its walls.

Ambiente

Sedona, AZ, USA

The full name is Ambiente, a Landscape Hotel, and they aren’t kidding. Conservation and preservation are at the core of Ambiente’s mission to combine unfettered luxury with proximity to nature. And the nature here is profound: the hotel’s 40 elevated guest quarters, called Atriums, sit at the edge of Coconino National Forest and provide views of Sedona’s iconic red rocks and the impressive Brins Mesa mountain range.

Mayfair House Hotel and Garden

Miami, FL, USA

Mayfair House Hotel & Garden offers a different perspective on a familiar destination. The word “garden” is in there for a reason; the hotel’s open atrium is filled with lush greenery, from towering palms to leaves that fringe the upper levels. And the rooms include lively retro ornament, like claw-foot tubs or vintage typewriters. It’s a far cry from glitzy Miami Beach minimalism — that’s an endorsement, not a criticism.

Dunton Hot Springs

Dunton, CO, USA

Here, in remote southwestern Colorado, along the banks of the Dolores river, is an authentic ghost town, an abandoned century-old gold prospectors’ camp, renovated shack by shack and rehabilitated into a truly unique luxury hotel — a place where roughing it in hand-hewn log cabins (and one teepee) neatly coincides with spa treatments, thermal baths and fine organic dining.

Commodore Perry Estate

Austin, TX, USA

Auberge Resorts are known for their tasteful luxury and for their variety — and the Commodore Perry Estate, set on ten acres of land in urban Austin, Texas, is unique by any standard. It’s a Twenties mansion and satellite buildings in Italianate and Spanish Revival styles, and it’s all been brought entirely up to date. The result sacrifices none of the estate’s throwback atmosphere.

The Ivy Hotel

Baltimore, MD, USA

Although distinctly Baltimorean in its red-brick beauty, the Ivy Hotel serves up a brand of luxury hospitality that’ll be familiar to travelers the world over. This restored 19th-century mansion is set in Mount Vernon, just to the north of the Inner Harbor, and is one of just a few Black-owned boutique hotels in America. Its rooms are outfitted with lush fabrics, four-poster beds, and gas fireplaces.

Twin Farms

Barnard, VT, USA

Surrounded by 300 acres of farmland and wilderness, Twin Farms might be as secluded as you can get without leaving the Northeast. In true Vermont style, this luxurious resort comprises a few rooms in Sinclair Lewis’s old farmhouse, surrounded by a handful of cottages, all with interiors by the 20th-century eclectic traditionalist Jed Johnson (and, as of late, five more cottages sporting a more contemporary look by Thad Hayes).