The Best Places in Bangkok

Every cocktail here is named after a single ingredient, then built from every part of it, cornsilk and all. Mahaniyom is a sustainability-forward cocktail bar in Bangkok where the kitchen-science ambition is worn lightly enough that the drinks still sound fun. The Cow, a savory-sweet blend of beef fat, brown butter, and blue cheese foam, is exactly the kind of thing you'd describe to someone the next day and watch their face move through several emotions.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Bangkok

A cocktail bar built around the idea that more people should be listening to vinyl, and it shows: the DJs at the record booth chat with nearby tables as they spin soul and hip-hop. The menu sorts drinks by mood and sensation rather than spirit, so you might find a warm gin and earl grey number filed under "gentle cuddles." The bartenders are the kind who actually want to talk, which keeps the whole thing from feeling precious.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Bangkok

Bartenders here breathe fire, literally spin bottles, and set the bar itself alight, so yes, it's that kind of night. This Cuban-tiki cocktail bar on Silom pulls both locals and visitors deep into afterparty territory, with a pandan coconut daiquiri and a DJ doing most of the convincing. A buy-one-get-one deal runs before nine, and the Mexican food stall out front, same owner, is hard to walk past without ordering something.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Bangkok

A cocktail bar in Pom Prap where the drinks lean on Thai herbal spirits and regional liqueurs you won't find on a standard back bar, and a live piphat ensemble or molam band fills the room on a given night. Those bands normally play theaters, so catching one here feels like an accidental stumble into something. Skewers come off a charcoal stove, rice arrives in bamboo. The whole thing is aggressively, cheerfully Thai, and the room knows it.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Bangkok
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Tiger-skin prints and bamboo furniture set the tone at this hotel bar inside Bangkok's Mandarin Oriental, where the house cocktail menu draws its flavors from Thailand's five regions. It's been a fixture of the city's live jazz scene for long enough that the sightlines to the stage feel deliberate. Stylish bartenders in leather aprons take it seriously, which helps, given that the room is already doing a lot of atmospheric heavy lifting on its own.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Bangkok
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A giant LED tree rises through the center of the main bar on the 46th floor of the T-One Building, which tells you most of what you need to know about Tichuca. It's a rooftop bar with 360-degree views over Bangkok, forest-themed decor that commits harder than it probably should, a second bar at an even higher vantage point, and a tequila list long enough to make the elevator ride down genuinely interesting.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Bangkok

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide