Hotel restaurants usually exist so guests don’t have to leave. The Canal Club, at The Scott Resort & Spa, is the rare one worth crossing town for: a 1930s Havana-meets-desert room with rum cocktails and Caribbean-inflected American cooking, two minutes north of the Old Town scrum.
Treat it as a bar with a very good kitchen. Start with a drink, linger, then order wherever the rum, citrus and spice show up on the menu.
When to go: October through May for the string-lit patio. Its breakfast and lunch hours are a calm escape from the Old Town brunch queues in high season.