These Are America's Best Restaurants For Celebrating Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving, out of all of the holidays in the year, tends to be one where we feel obligated to gather with family and/or friends to enjoy a home-cooked meal. Well, "enjoy" is a relative term, particularly for the person assigned the Herculean task of preparing the feast. If you're feeling overwhelmed and stressed out just thinking of all the hassle, why not escape the madness and make restaurant reservations, instead?

Each restaurant on this list is laying on a festive spread for Thanksgiving 2022 that's sure to make you feel thankful. The meals here offer an All-American array of options from traditional turkey and trimmings to Asian, European, and Native American dishes, with the venues ranging from luxury hotels to a celebrity chef's pet project to a funky retro-themed diner. Several even offer a table with a view — ocean, lake, or the Macy's parade route (the parade itself will be over, but you might be able to watch the clean-up). Whichever restaurant you pick, be sure to book your table early, then prepare to have a truly memorable holiday meal. Bonus: When you're finished, no one's going to guilt-trip you into washing or drying a single dish.

Arnaud's has been one of the pillars of the New Orleans culinary scene for over 100 years and is a top choice for anyone dining in the Big Easy at any time of year. On Thanksgiving, diners are welcomed with a table d'hote — if you're not familiar with the term, you're certainly familiar with the concept, as Merriam-Webster defines it as "a complete meal of several courses offered at a fixed price."

Arnaud's Thanksgiving table d'hote, priced at $65, is a fairly traditional one. It begins with a choice of salad with blue cheese crumbles and sherry vinaigrette, butternut squash soup, or shrimp in Creole remoulade. Entrées include turkey with candied yams and cranberry sauce, roast pork in a port wine reduction, and pan-fried Gulf fish sauced in brown butter. For dessert, there's a choice of either a French-inspired tarte tatin with Chantilly cream (a type of sweetened whipped cream) or that Southern favorite, pecan pie, which here is topped with praline ice cream and chocolate sauce.

Thanksgiving's main meal, while we tend to call it "dinner," is often eaten in the afternoon, thus leaving the evening free for football watching, food comas, and camping outside Walmart in preparation for the next day's shopping madness. If you'd like to get an early start on the festivities and you happen to be in or around Fort Worth, Texas (or Addison or Plano, for that matter), you may be glad to know that Blue Mesa Grill is offering a Thanksgiving brunch from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The brunch is priced at $30 per person, although that price goes down to just $10 for 6-to-11-year-olds and there's no charge at all for kids 5 and under.

Blue Mesa Grill's Thanksgiving brunch menu does include a roast turkey carving station, of course, although the turkey is served Southwestern style with cranberry-jalapeño relish. There's also red chile-glazed ham, grilled salmon with fruit salsa, and the Texas specialty of smoked brisket which comes sauced with chimichurri. Other less-additional Thanksgiving sides include Chimayo corn, coconut lime rice, and blue corn enchiladas as well as a street taco bar. Breakfast items including cooked-to-order omelets and Belgian waffles are also available, as are desserts including the traditional fall pie trio (pumpkin, pecan, and apple), cookies, brownies, banana pudding, and bread pudding sauced with the Mexican goat's milk caramel spread known as cajeta.

If you travel up and down the East Coast and have a penchant for historical buildings, you'll likely encounter a number of signs proudly proclaiming that "George Washington Slept Here." While the father of our country didn't exactly spend a night under the roof of what is now the Hillbrook Inn, he did once own the land on which this 18th-century building stands and he once resided at a home that was just 200 yards away. Despite its historic pedigree, the Hillbrook Inn is very much up-to-date these days with amenities such as a luxury spa offering CBD oil massages. They also have a restaurant featuring haute cuisine, or rather, Haute cuisine as their Belgian-born chef's last name is Van Haute.

Thanksgiving dinner at the Hillbrook, which is served between 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., is a perfect choice for the indecisive since there are no choices to be made. Instead, there's just a single four-course meal priced at $105. The appetizer consists of scallops with butternut squash, Mimolette cheese, and truffles, followed by a salad of beets, frisée, and duck prosciutto. The main course is roast turkey with sausage stuffing, potato mousseline, red cabbage, and applesauce while the dessert is pecan pie with homemade vanilla ice cream and salted caramel sauce. If you're wondering what wines could possibly pair with these dishes, for an extra $65 per person, you can let the sommelier select the perfect ones to accompany your meal.

There are two types of celebrity chefs, those who are first renowned for their food-world chops and those who start out famous and then get cooking. International Smoke, a restaurant with outposts in San Franciso and Las Vegas, is the collaboration of one of each, with Michael Mina in the former role and Ayesha Curry (wife of Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry) filling the latter. Both restaurants are similar, but not identical, and the Thanksgiving menus both are offering this year show two very different approaches to the holiday meal.

The Las Vegas International Smoke has only one Thanksgiving entrée, a smoked turkey dinner for $49 that comes with cranberry chutney and herbed brioche stuffing. For dessert, there's pumpkin pie mascarpone cheesecake, or key lime tart for $16. In San Francisco, however, International Smoke is doing Thanksgiving dinner buffet-style. $105 (or $49 for kids) covers all-you-can-eat appetizers including chilled shellfish, curried squash soup, and truffled Caesar salad, as well as carving stations with smoked turkey, smoked salmon, and Wagyu prime rib. Sides include cornbread sausage stuffing, pureed potatoes with mushroom gravy, and Brussels sprouts with maple syrup and huckleberries. Of course, there are desserts, as well: traditional pumpkin pie, tradition-adjacent apple cobbler, and good old-fashioned bread pudding made from Ayesha's own recipe.

The Peninsula Hotel chain got its start in Hong Kong in the mid-19^th century and now has a handful of luxury boutique hotels throughout the world, with the only U.S. locations being in New York, Beverly Hills, and Chicago. What makes Chicago's Peninsula unique to the Windy City is all of the little touches that reveal its Asian roots — the hotel celebrates both Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival, and even the Thanksgiving buffet laid on by hotel restaurant The Lobby shows an Asian influence with one station featuring Peking duck and dim sum.

Thanksgiving brunch at The Lobby is priced at $295 for the 10 a.m. seating and $325 for later ones up through 5 p.m. ($85 for children ages five through 12). While it's the priciest meal on this list, it comes with not only food but entertainment, as there'll be a string quartet performing throughout the day and a magician to occupy the kids. As for the food, the Lobby's laying on quite a spread. The carving stations offer turkey, beef tenderloin, and pork belly, while other tables feature sushi, caviar, shellfish, and an international selection of cheeses and charcuterie. There's also a dessert selection that the hotel describes as "lavish." Go ahead and indulge to your heart's content, as the Peninsula's Sky Rink opens for the season on Thanksgiving Day so you can burn off a few calories after dinner with a spin around the ice.

On Thanksgiving morning, the hottest ticket in town is to any hotel or restaurant overlooking Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade route. Many of the latter book private viewing parties for the morning, as is the case with the Italian restaurant Marea. It's hosting an 8 a.m. parade-watching brunch where tickets start at $1,099 per person, and even at those prices, the event may get sold out. Marea, however, is open for Thanksgiving dinner starting at 1 p.m. The parade will have wrapped up by then, but you may be able to see them cleaning up afterward. (Surely it must take some time to deflate all those balloons.)

Whether or not there's anything to see along the parade route, though, Marea's Italian-inspired Thanksgiving menu is well worth a visit. The price is $185 per person, which is about what you'd expect for Manhattan, and the meal will be served from 1 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. It kicks off with a choice of antipasti Campari-dressed salad, squash soup with scallop fritters, or grilled octopus, while the pasta course offers such options as pork agnolotti, chile-shrimp gnochetti, and red wine-braised octopus fusilli. For your main course, you can choose from turkey, ribeye, or pan-seared wild bass, while desserts include cheesecake with cranberries and pumpkin gelato, chestnut custard tart, tiramisu, and chocolate cake flavored with chai and marsala. If you're not driving home (and who drives in New York?), you can always add a wine pairing for $120 per person.

While Milwaukee is a city known for its German heritage, it also has a sizable Serbian community and can boast several restaurants offering this underrated cuisine. One such restaurant, Old Town Serbian Gourmet, will be open on Thanksgiving between 11:30 a.m. and 5 p.m and offering its regular menu. So you could, if you wish, make a holiday meal from the Serbian sausages known as ćevapi, the grilled pork shishkabob called raznjici, or the meat and/or cheese-stuffed pastries called burek. In honor of the holiday, however, the chefs there have added several Thanksgiving specials to the menu.

One of Old Town Serbian Gourmet's Thanksgiving entrées is the traditional all-American roast turkey accompanied by gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce, all priced at $20. The other entrée is a roast goose, a dish typically eaten in Europe to commemorate St. Martin's Day on November 11. It costs $45, but a goose is pretty hard to come by these days and it's not something too many American restaurants have on the menu. Old Town Serbian Gourmet's holiday specials also include acorn squash soup ($5) along with two special desserts. One of these is pumpkin strudel ($8), while the other is the pavlova-like Schaum torte, a type of fruit-topped meringue. Old Town Serbian Gourmet's Thanksgiving Shaum torte ($9) is made with cranberries and spiked with Grand Marnier, making for a festive fall take on one of Milwaukee's favorite desserts.

While you might think a diner Thanksgiving meal would be a pretty sad affair, this is not the case with the Roundabout Diner. While the restaurant has that cool vintage(ish) aesthetic, the Roundabout is no Edward Hopper painting. Instead of attracting down-on-their-luck diners with cheap blue plate specials, it's aimed at more of an upscale foodie crowd with locally-sourced bread, sausages, and cheeses and a menu featuring such items as Grand Marnier french toast and (of course) Brussels sprouts, which here are pan-seared and doused in Thai plum sauce.

While the Roundabout does offer take-home Thanksgiving meals, it will also be featuring a dine-in dinner described as "family-style." The menu offers the traditional turkey, gravy, cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, and dinner rolls supplemented by a few additional sides, these being butternut squash, pearl onions with peas, and cinnamon apple sauce. The Roundabout does not specify what the desserts are, other than to say they're homemade, but the take-home Thanksgiving dinners offer a choice of pumpkin, pecan, apple, blueberry, banana cream, chocolate cream, coconut cream, and key lime pies.

What could be more appropriate than to have your Thanksgiving meal in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the site of the original celebration? While Rye Tavern isn't quite as old as Plymouth Rock, it does date back to 1792, so it's got plenty of historic charm. It boasts as one of its earliest customers John Adams, that unsung founding father/former president who has yet to inspire a musical (although he is a cousin to the Sam Adams of beer label fame). While the tavern's ambiance may be "ye olde," its menu certainly isn't — it reads more like a compendium of greatest hits of the 20-teens/the early '20s what with foodie favorites like kale salads, smash burgers, chimichurri-sauced burrata, and, yes, both charcuterie and the modish-but-malodorous brussels sprouts.

For Thanksgiving, Rye Tavern is offering a special menu with a choice of three main dishes, each one coming with a choice of two sides plus cornbread. These entrees include turkey leg confit or smoked breast for $50, prime rib for $70, or roast butternut squash for $40. The sides, which are priced from $5 to $14 if ordered a la carte, include all of the usual suspects like stuffing, mashed potatoes (both white and sweet), green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, and cranberry sauce along with non-standard items like braised greens, Caesar salad, and brown sugar-glazed carrots. For dessert, you can choose pumpkin pie ($10) or the slightly less traditional, yet equally autumnal, apple cider donuts ($15).

Water's Table is a restaurant whose name reveals its main attraction. It is located in the Hyatt Regency Lake Washington at Seattle's Southport and offers a lovely view of that same lake. The cuisine is also noteworthy, though, as they're into the whole farm-to-table scene. Water's Table's Thanksgiving dinner is offered in the form of a buffet, something that will allow diners to sample a whole range of their locally-sourced seafood, meat, and produce.

The Thanksgiving buffet at Water's Table has a $95 price tag but covers everything from soup (cauliflower potato) to nuts (chestnut stuffing). There's a seafood bar with shrimp, crab legs, gravlax, and lobster (this last is likely not local as lobsters do not thrive along the northwest coast of the Pacific). The buffet also features carving stations with turkey and ham, while pan-seared salmon is available as an entrée. Sides range from Waldorf and acorn squash salads to roast potatoes to the ever-present Brussels sprouts, while desserts include miniature pecan pies and apple tarts, pumpkin spice latte-flavored choux pastry, and cranberry-chocolate pots de crème, There's also a limited children's menu priced at just $23, but that only includes salad, chicken tenders, macaroni and cheese, pizza, and fresh fruit. (No real dessert? Poor kids!)