8 Best Fine Dining Restaurants in the Desert

Each year, Palm Springs Life invites readers to vote for their favorite businesses, experiences, and attractions across Greater Palm Springs in our city-by-city Best of the Best competition. Below, you’ll find this year’s winners for Best Fine Dining.

Explore the full list of 2025 winners across all 29 categories at the link below.

The next round of voting opens in April 2026.

Palm Springs

Spencer’s Restaurant

Spencer’s melds elegance and comfort with a menu that pays equal attention to slow-baked meatloaf and filet mignon, or shrimp cocktail and Norwegian salmon.

Rancho Mirage

Wally’s Desert Turtle

Founded in 1978, Wally’s is old-school sophisticated dining, with an elaborate interior designed by Steve Chase and a menu of classics like escargot, Dover sole, and Wally’s soufflés.

Palm Desert

Eddie V’s Prime Seafood

The El Paseo restaurant buoys diners with a posh happy hour, live jazz music, and enhancements to seafood and steaks including a cave-aged blue cheese crust.

Indian Wells

The Pink Cabana

The pink ceiling and green-and-white checked floors designed by Martyn Lawrence Bullard will put you in the mood for Mediterranean delights like mezze platters and harissa chicken.

La Quinta (Tied)

DSRT Club

The restaurant, which pays tribute to the beloved 1930s-built The Desert Club, keeps the vintage vibes and updates the menu with dishes like hibiscus scallops and mint lamb chops.

Lavender Bistro

The charming patio, with trees wrapped in twinkling lights, sets the stage for French-American cuisine including butternut squash risotto and pork with kumquat pineapple chutney.

Indio

Italica

This speakeasy-style restaurant behind a silver door serves swanky cocktails and Italian shareables and entrées, such as wild boar Bolognese and bistecca alla fiorentina. 

Coachella

Seven Feathers

The newly named and reimagined Seven Feathers restaurant (formerly Café 54) at the casino, run by the Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians, features a menu with ingredients that honor the tribe’s history.