Hoboken doesn’t need much help proving itself these days, but it just got a national headline anyway.
Halifax, the waterfront restaurant tucked inside the W Hoboken, has landed at No. 7 on USA Today’s 10Best list of the top hotel restaurants in the entire country for 2026, beating out finalists from Boston to Beverly Hills.
It also happens to be sitting almost directly across the Hudson from Manhattan, close enough that the skyline shows up in half the photos anyone posts from dinner there.
The timing makes the whole thing sweeter.
Halifax just turned 10 years old, and the anniversary is arriving stacked with hardware: a 2026 Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, a spot on NJ.com’s best waterfront restaurants in New Jersey for summer 2026, and now a national ranking that puts it ahead of restaurants in far flashier hotel brands.
Here’s why it continues to earn praise and how you can get there in less than 15 minutes from some parts of NYC.
Where it actually landed on the list
The full USA Today 10Best Readers’ Choice ranking for Best Hotel Restaurant came out on August 19, and Halifax beat out 13 other nominated restaurants nationwide to finish at No. 7 overall.
Kuro at the Hard Rock Hotel in Atlantic City took the top spot, followed by La Padrona in Boston and Chez Philippe in Memphis, a fine-dining institution that’s landed in the top three every year since 2020.
Rounding out the list below Halifax were spots in Orlando, West Hollywood, and even one just up the Hudson in the Catskills.
Being the only NYC-area restaurant to crack the top 10 says something.
What’s actually on the plate
Chef Seadon Shouse runs Halifax with a Nova Scotia sensibility and a Northeastern coastal menu that leans hard into ingredients he’s sourced, smoked, or grown himself.
He smokes his own meats and seafood in house, dry-ages the steaks, makes his own vermouth, and even produces his own sea salt from water pulled straight out of Montauk. There’s a working culinary garden behind the operation too, supplying herbs and edible flowers that show up across the menu.
The dishes read like a love letter to the region: saffron rigatoni built around local Maine lobster and trumpet mushrooms, raw bar selections pulled from regional waters, and a beverage program built around local producers.
The view is doing just as much work
Halifax sits directly on the Hudson River Walkway with floor-to-ceiling windows and outdoor patio seating, which means the Manhattan skyline is basically a second menu item.
Sunset hits the water and the city lights start doing their thing, and diners get views stretching from the Statue of Liberty toward the George Washington Bridge without ever crossing the river.
It’s the rare waterfront spot where the food and the view are both genuinely worth the trip, not just one propping up the other.
Getting there from NYC
The whole appeal of Halifax is that it barely counts as leaving the city.
A PATH train from 33rd Street or the World Trade Center gets travelers to Hoboken in well under 15 minutes, and the restaurant itself is a short walk from the station along the waterfront.
Of coures it with being tied to a hotel, many out-of-towners might even stumble upon just from staying at the hotel — but it’s worth a visit for locals too.
🍽️ To see Halifax’s full menu and make reservations, head to their website here.