The 100 Best Places to Drink in the United States

Julia Momosé's Japanese-inspired dining bar on West Lake holds a James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar and the Spirited Awards title for World's Best Bar, which tells you something before you've even sat down. Staff in sharp black uniforms somehow manage to feel genuinely warm rather than stiff, and the tasting menu now matches the cocktail program's precision, leaning into Japanese flavors and technique. Come for the drinks, stay through dinner, and plan to linger longer than you intended.

A brandy crusta in a 19th-century Creole cottage on the edge of the French Quarter sets the tone for this cocktail bar, which took home the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar in 2024. The room is unhurried and genuinely romantic, the kind of place that makes ordering a second drink feel like the responsible choice. The drinks lean into New Orleans' deep cocktail history without feeling like a museum.

The dining room is styled after a yacht interior, which could read as a gimmick but lands as a mood. Providence is a three-Michelin-star seafood tasting menu restaurant on Melrose, where Michael Cimarusti builds multi-course meals around wild-caught American fish and whatever the farmers market offers that morning. The James Beard Award for Outstanding Hospitality is on the wall, and the front-of-house earns it. North America's 50 Best lists it at number 32.

Jon Yao's tasting menu restaurant lives in the Row DTLA, where polished concrete and an open kitchen set a spare stage for cooking rooted in Taiwanese heritage and San Gabriel Valley muscle memory. The ten courses are not shy about seasoning, and the drinks program, a James Beard winner in its own right, pulls equal weight. Kato holds a Michelin star and a spot on North America's 50 Best, and Yao won the James Beard for Best Chef: California.

Crimson walls, floor cushions, and sculptures that look borrowed from a warehouse no one was using anyway: Schmuck is a cocktail bar on 1st Avenue that landed at number four on North America's 50 Best Bars in its first year open. The Barcelona sibling to Two Schmucks, it splits into a lounge side and a communal kitchen table side, so you can either settle in or make friends faster than planned.

The custom-designed everything, down to the furniture, signals that True Laurel takes itself seriously, which would be more insufferable if the drinks weren't so good. This cocktail bar and restaurant from the Lazy Bear team lands at number 14 on North America's 50 Best Bars list. Small plates rotate with the seasons, and the bar program is tight, inventive, and the clear reason most people show up.

The building was once a carriage house, then a sculptor's studio, and now a three-level Japanese cocktail bar in Gramercy where the drinks are as considered as the history. The team behind it spent years at Angel's Share before going solo here, and it shows in every measured pour. Nikka whisky and yuzu turn up alongside immaculate riffs on classics. Named among North America's 50 Best Bars, and the room earns the quiet confidence.

The fried chicken sandwich at a cocktail bar is either a cry for help or a statement of intent, and at Service Bar it's the latter. This relaxed U Street neighborhood bar keeps the classics balanced and the housemade drinks genuinely inventive, pulling from ingredients most menus wouldn't dare touch. The Spirited Awards named it U.S. Bartender of the Year in 2025, and North America's 50 Best Bars has it at number 39.

Scotch Lodge is a dark, wood-paneled whisky bar with towering walls of bottles, marble counters, and the kind of lighting that forgives everything. It won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar. Drinks come smoky and layered, the kitchen turns out silky pasta and fried brie sticks, and someone in the corner is usually having a quiet moment with a rare pour. Dress like you've read a book, then decline to mention it.

The cocktail menu at this Mission bar changes twice a year, each edition built around a new theme, the kind of concept that sounds like a gimmick until you're on your second drink and deeply invested in 1960s counterculture. Trick Dog won the Spirited Award for Best U.S. Cocktail Bar in 2025, and the room fills with people who know exactly which round they're on. Loaded fries upstairs hold everything together.

A cocktail bar that calls itself a nerdy cocktail bar, a natural wine bar, and your favorite dive bar, and then has the audacity to be all three. The Old Bay Martini landed it on Esquire's radar and the Spirited Awards named it the top U.S. cocktail bar, but the room itself is the tell: hot dogs share menu space with wine you've never heard of, and nobody in here seems to think that's unusual.

A cocktail bar in Los Feliz that treats the agave category as a field guide rather than a menu category. While most bars stop at tequila and mezcal, Mírate goes deep into hyper-regional Mexican distillates, fermented pulque, tejuino, and tepache, much of it personally scouted by the beverage director. It landed at number 28 on North America's 50 Best Bars. The classics framework keeps things approachable; the spirits list is where things get interesting.

A converted firehouse on Freret Street, bare concrete underfoot and a long bar anchoring the room, Cure is a cocktail bar that made Uptown worth the cab ride from the Quarter. The bottle-green banquettes fill with locals who already know what they're ordering. Food & Wine ranked it the top bar in the country, and North America's 50 Best Bars puts it at number 21. The drinks are the argument; the room just makes it easier to stay.

Perched above Eleven Madison Park and co-conceived by Daniel Humm and painter Francesco Clemente, this cocktail lounge wears its inspirations visibly, with Clemente's murals covering the walls in the spirit of Zurich's Kronenhalle Bar. Every cocktail on the menu is vegan and built with serious technical ambition, fermented ingredients and infused oils included. It landed at number fifteen on North America's 50 Best Bars in 2026.

There's no sign on Eldridge Street, just a faux tailor's shop window with a glowing "A" and a buzzer you'll wait at long enough to second-guess yourself. This is the cocktail bar that opened in the old Milk & Honey space after Sasha Petraske moved on, and it runs on the same no-menu, tell-us-what-you-like philosophy. North America's 50 Best Bars lists it, and the wait outside on any given night suggests people have read that list.

A neon-pink exclamation mark glows above the door of this Michelin-starred contemporary Italian restaurant, wedged between a laundromat and a medical center in Buena Vista. The room is small and forest-green, and the staff seem to be enjoying themselves as much as anyone eating there. The menu calls itself Italian, then wanders somewhere more interesting, with house-made pastas and combinations that raise an eyebrow before they make total sense.

A metal beaded curtain on the fourth floor of a downtown Marriott is not where you expect to find one of the country's better cocktail bars, and yet here we are. The menu arrives illustrated like a small field guide, one drawing per drink. The cocktails run from riffed classics to things you won't find elsewhere, with bar snacks serious enough to anchor a full evening. It won the Spirited Award for Best U.S. Hotel Bar in 2025, and a James Beard semifinalist nod followed.

Pacific-leaning flavors, from calamansi and shiso to li-hing mui, anchor the cocktail menu at this Union Square-adjacent bar that rebuilt itself after a fire and came back more focused. The drinks draw on Asian and island influences without feeling like a theme park about it. A 2026 James Beard Award winner for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service, and ranked on North America's 50 Best Bars list, PCH draws a crowd that takes its glass seriously but doesn't dress like it.

Dark green walls, framed art, and a room that somehow feels like midnight at noon, ViceVersa is a Neapolitan pizza and cocktail bar tucked just off the lobby of the Elser Hotel. The thin-crust pies are the anchor, but the bar program is the real argument for staying. The affogato martini landed on Esquire's radar, and the place sits on North America's 50 Best Bars list. A James Beard nominee for Best New Bar in 2025, too.

Live music fills the room most nights at this Cuban cocktail bar and restaurant on Calle Ocho, where the décor slides between Havana and mid-century Miami without quite landing in either. Michelle Bernstein and cocktail veteran Julio Cabrera run the place together, which means the food and the drinks get equal attention. It holds a spot on The World's 50 Best Bars list, and the James Beard Foundation named it an Outstanding Bar Semifinalist.

Velvet booths, globe lights, and wallpaper that belongs in a Left Bank salon set the mood at this Fulton Market cocktail bar, one of the few standalone drinking spots on a street that is otherwise all restaurants. The Paris-in-the-sixties premise runs through everything: French wines, classic martinis, caviar with chips. Named to North America's 50 Best Bars and a James Beard semifinalist, Bisous earns its kisses.

Money-green walls and brown leather set the tone at this approachable cocktail bar where Filipinotown, Echo Park, and Downtown all bleed together. The crowd reflects the neighborhood mix, and the bar leans into that, keeping menus short and descriptive so nobody feels lost. Seasonal cocktails share space with a Frozen of the Month, which is exactly the kind of menu that means everyone leaves happy. A James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist and on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

A back-alley cocktail bar from Erik Bruner-Yang and Paola Velez, where the food refuses to stay in its lane. The menu riffs on Taiwan and El Salvador in the same breath, papusas share space with gochujang mayo, and the baked Alaska, a Washingtonian dish of the year, arrives under torched Dominican meringue hiding guava shaved ice and whatever surprises the kitchen buried underneath. Bon Appétit named it one of America's best new bars, and the room earns the fuss.

Polished wood, tattooed bartenders, and leather aprons as far as the eye can see. Bar Leather Apron is a serious cocktail bar tucked into Fort Street Mall, and it won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar in 2023, which is the kind of thing that makes sense once you sit down. The menu leans on local, seasonal ingredients, so the drinks read like a farmers market with a liquor license. Go slow; this isn't a round-of-shots situation.

A cocktail bar with its own craft distiller's license, which means the team controls everything in the glass from the spirit up. Set in a wildly decorated corner spot in Nob Hill, Happy Accidents runs a sustainability-forward program with a menu spanning tightened-up highballs and martinis to stranger, more playful builds. Food leans New Mexican and Southern. A Spirited Awards Top 4 Finalist and a James Beard semifinalist for cocktail service in 2025.

The keypad combination lives behind a bookcase at the Four Seasons, and the concierge will share it once you've booked one of the twenty seats. Bandista is a speakeasy cocktail bar whose drinks draw from Prohibition's smuggling routes and the tequileros who ran the Mexican border, which gives the menu a Latin angle that the 1920s decor alone wouldn't suggest. North America's 50 Best Bars placed it at number 47.

Chandelier Bar is the glamorous hotel lobby bar at the foot of Canal Street, all marble, crystal, and gold fittings, with a chandelier big enough to have lent its name and its crystal to the martini glass. Cognac shows up in the cocktails, including a fortified sazerac, and the bartenders are nicer than the surroundings strictly require. The potato chips arrive free, so dinner can technically be skipped.

Princess Diana in Eagles gear hangs on the wall, a neon sign says "Never Grow Up," and somehow the kitchen is turning out steak au poivre and egg sandwiches that New York Times critics put on their Philadelphia shortlist. This all-day café runs from thick malted pancakes in the morning through hoagies built with fine-dining precision at lunch, into a full dinner menu at night. Whimsy is the decor; the cooking means it.

A red mirrored hallway leads you down into this speakeasy-style cocktail lounge beneath a north Scottsdale restaurant, which is exactly the kind of entrance that makes people feel they've earned their drink. Inside, gold ceilings, red velvet drapes, and live music set a mood that commits fully to the bit. The cocktails lean sweet-and-savory strange, and small bites keep the evening going. Phoenix New Times named it Best Bar in 2025.

Fancy Jell-O shots and distilled emu neck share a menu here, which should tell you something about the ambitions of this underground cocktail bar beneath the Riggs Hotel. Red plush, silver trophies, and low ceilings give it the feel of a gentleman's club that took a very interesting turn. The bar comes from Ryan Chetiyawardana, Mr. Lyan himself, and it landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

Caviar on Bugles with crème fraîche is either the most knowing joke in Seattle or a perfectly sincere snack, and at Roquette it reads as both. This Belltown cocktail bar runs on a French-spirits obsession, armagnac and calvados and absinthe doing most of the heavy lifting while classic shapes get quietly rerouted through Normandy or Cognac. A James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist that landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

Cocktail menus organized light to full-bodied are a small kindness this bar extends before you've even ordered. Highball is a dimly lit cocktail bar on the second floor of a historic building in downtown Phoenix, doing the speakeasy thing with genuine commitment. Housemade ingredients show up throughout a lengthy menu where the flavor combinations tend toward the unexpected. A James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist, and a first-date spot that actually earns the designation.

Absinthe fountains line the curved bar at this jewel-box cocktail bar steps from St. Louis Cathedral in the Lower Pontalba Building. Oysters and caviar share menu space with a martini that landed on Esquire's national list, and a vintage chandelier keeps the whole room at a glow. It opens at eleven in the morning and closes at ten, the upstairs neighbors having apparently drawn a firm line.

Herbs & Rye is an off-Strip cocktail bar dressed as a steakhouse, all brick walls and red velvet wallpaper, with bartenders in black tie who seem unaware the buffet era ended. The menu is sorted by period, so a pisco sour comes from the Golden Age and a martinez from the Gothic one. It keeps pouring until 3am, which helps, since dinner reservations book up weeks out.

A cocktail bar tucked above a Local Foods in Rice Village, Lee's has a retro speakeasy feel and a menu serious enough to back up the vibe. The drinks lean bitter, briny, and bracingly complex, and a separate mini-cocktail list exists for when you just want a taste. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Bar and on Bon Appétit's best new bars list, it draws the kind of crowd that actually reads the menu before ordering.

Vaughan's is a Bywater dive where the Mardi Gras tinsel never comes down and Thursday nights mean a brass band that doesn't start until 10:30. The red beans and rice are free, which makes it easier to stay on the dance floor with whichever neighborhood regular grabs your hand first. The owners live nearby and have run the place for decades, so the community events and Pride tea dances feel more like hosting than programming.

Highballs and boilermakers anchor the menu at this jovial Japanese cocktail bar tucked into a Greenwich Village basement, where the drinks list stays refreshingly short and Japanese spirits do most of the talking. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which feels about right for a room that punches well above its unpretentious footprint. Go for the sake selection if you're curious; stay for the cocktails once you are.

Multicolored lights, mismatched vintage stools, and enough rum cocktails to stock a small ship set the mood at this funky cocktail bar and dining den inside Krog Street Market. The food leans creative but unfussy, with global touches and most plates meant for sharing. It holds a spot on North America's 50 Best Bars and was a James Beard Outstanding Hospitality nominee, which tracks: the room has that rare quality of feeling genuinely cared for without trying to make you notice.

Brass sconces, emerald armchairs, and a terrazzo counter that looks like a terrazzo counter should look if terrazzo counters had ambition. Identidad is a cocktail bar built around Puerto Rican ingredients sourced from island producers, and the menu rotates often enough that regulars have no excuse to order the same thing twice. It took a 2025 James Beard Award for Best New Bar, which tells you more than the decor already does.

Standby is a cocktail bar you reach by ducking down the Belt Alley and heaving open a pair of ponderous doors, which makes ordering a martini feel like a minor heist. The menu sorts drinks by mood, from "Purist" to "Certified Bangers," so nobody has to explain themselves to a bartender. Matty Matheson of The Bear built the food menu. It's dim, polished, and worth a Resy booking.

Marble bar, leather chairs, thick linens, and windows looking straight down Fifth Avenue: Ai Fiori is a formal Italian restaurant on the second floor of the Langham Hotel that telegraphs expense account before you've ordered drinks. The kitchen leans Italian with enough invention to keep it interesting, and the room is polished enough that nobody's rushing you. Gracious service throughout lunch and dinner.

The long wooden bar came out of a Pennsylvania mining-town dance hall and has been anchoring this Smith Street cocktail bar ever since. Victorian paneling, a tin ceiling, and a curtained parlor with a fireplace in the back make the whole room feel like someone's very well-stocked study. The cocktails are precise and the eponymous Clover Club is on the menu, naturally. The kind of place that makes Brooklyn feel older than it is.

The cocktail bar up front does brisk business before anyone looks at a menu, which tells you something about Prospect's priorities. This is a polished New American restaurant on the ground floor of a Financial District high-rise, with high ceilings, roomy tables, and a room full of people who expensed lunch and stayed for dinner. The cooking is straightforward and well-executed, leaning on good ingredients and restraint over anything flashy.

Polished marble, low lighting, and plush fabrics signal exactly the kind of cocktail bar that doesn't care about honky-tonk clichés. Four Walls sits inside The Joseph Nashville, but it operates on its own logic, one that skews global and sleek while the rest of the city leans into its cowboy boots. Esquire put it on their Best Bars in America list, and Food & Wine ranked it among the top hotel bars in the country.

The newspaper-themed menu doubles as a history lesson on the Sunset Strip, which fits, given the leather booths and vintage vinyl setup of this dimly lit neighborhood cocktail bar. Signature drinks are named for local landmarks, the Viper Room, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the like, and priced like someone actually wants you to have a second one. Named to Wildsam's 50 Most Essential Bars in America, it trades the Strip's usual gloss for something considerably more worn-in.

The cabin is dressed in burnt orange and warm walnut, the windows show a looping blue-yonder reel, and a flight attendant is rolling the beverage cart your way. Carry On is an immersive cocktail lounge built around the first-class, Mad Men-era flight fantasy, preflight announcements and all. Reservations drop weekly and go fast, so plan accordingly. The Spirited Awards named it a Top 10 U.S. Nominee for Best New Cocktail Bar.

A four-tap absinthe drip at the center of the bar is a replica of the one at the Absinthe House in New Orleans, and that tells you most of what you need to know. Maison Premiere is a cocktail and oyster bar in Williamsburg that commits fully to the bit: dim golden light, mock antique everything, marble bar top, the faint sense that you've wandered into another city and century. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks.

A cocktail bar on Portland's tourist-heavy Wharf Street that opened with a stated mission to make the block worth visiting. The drinks lean on reworked classics, with hot dogs and bar snacks to keep things honest. The $28 Flaming Scorpion Bowl arrives in a blaze of mild chaos, which tells you the room doesn't take itself too seriously. Punch named it one of the best new bars in the country, and Esquire flagged its espresso martini among the best in America.

A former bank vault now holds the wine list, which feels about right for a bar that takes its pours seriously. Nopa's cocktail menu runs classics, seasonal, and "spiritual" categories, alongside fifteen wines by the glass. The room earns its own attention: double-height ceilings, cartoonish SF murals, and tall windows that make the long bar feel less like a neighborhood spot and more like somewhere you accidentally stayed for three hours.

NightBloom is a late-night cocktail bar on St. Claude, run by the Bacchanal team, and the lighting is a coral glow flattering enough that you may forget you came to drink. The menu runs from an olive salad martini to a smoky pineapple margarita, and the bartenders will talk playlists with you. Some nights there are dance parties or custom nail art, and a dog may adopt your table. Eater named it Best New Bar.

The digital windows scroll through passing landscapes while you sit inside a wood-paneled Presidential Pullman car that never moves, which is either the concept or the joke, possibly both. Platform 18 is a reservation-only immersive cocktail bar built around Prohibition-era drinks and Roaring Twenties New York. The Pinnacle Guide awarded it 2 Pins. Book ahead; walk-ins go nowhere fast.

There's no menu at Bryant's, just a bartender who asks what you're in the mood for and then makes something better than you imagined. This Milwaukee cocktail lounge has been around forever, all dark wood, velvet booths, and Rat Pack lighting that flatters everyone equally. A 2025 James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Bar, though the room feels too cool to acknowledge it. Come dressed like you mean it.

Nickel City is an East Austin neighborhood bar that has been pouring drinks on this corner since the 1930s and sees no reason to get fancy about it. The focus is cold beer, boilermakers, and draft Pimm's, with the occasional Aperol Spritz for anyone feeling continental. A food truck out back sells Detroit-style Coney dogs and wings, which is how a quick drink turns into a full afternoon.

Housed in a renovated rail depot, Kimball House is a seafood restaurant and serious cocktail bar with tufted leather booths, a carved mahogany bar, and a raw bar menu running past twenty oyster varieties, complete with tasting notes so you don't have to guess. Esquire named the Kimball House martini among America's finest, which should tell you something. The kitchen runs seasonal, and dessert regularly steals the table's attention. A Michelin Selected restaurant.

The big neon sign out front survived the gap years when nothing else did, and it still draws you in off Atlantic Avenue. This Art Deco bar in Cobble Hill has been around forever, and Toby Cecchini, the bartender who invented the Cosmopolitan, brought it back to life with the booths and floral wallpaper more or less intact. The kitchen does a Reuben and a double-patty burger, but the cocktails are what fill the room on a Tuesday.

The wine list has a dedicated section for aged Madeira, which tells you something about the seriousness of the operation. This moody Poncey-Highland wine bar holds a Michelin selection and landed on Bon Appétit's best new bars list, but the kitchen pulls its own weight with snacks, shareable plates, and evening mains that feel seasonal without being precious. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Bar, it draws the kind of crowd that actually reads the back label.

A former auto garage with a butcher-paper cocktail menu still hanging above the makeshift kitchen, Liquid Diet is a creative cocktail bar where the bartenders juice and blend everyday ingredients into drinks that read like a dare. Bell pepper martinis, key lime sippers, banana bread cocktails with cookie shards frozen into chiseled ice cubes. Esquire named it one of the best bars in America, and curious tourists and pub crawlers seem to be putting that to the test nightly.

The eponymous julep anchors the menu, but this Washington Ave cocktail bar stretches well past that single calling card into a sprawling collection of bourbon and a drink list built around herbs and Southern ingredients most bars don't bother sourcing. The vibe is old-school Southern hospitality without the kitsch, and the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar Program in 2022 suggests the approach landed.

The whole room is built to look like the cargo hold of a 19th-century ship, portholes and all, which sets the stakes early at this immersive tiki bar on Indian School. The cocktail menu runs from classics to the team's own riffs on the genre, leaning into the full theatrical bit without apologizing for it. Phoenix New Times named it the city's top tiki bar, and the Spirited Awards put the bar team among the top four in the U.S.

A fortune-teller in the window is not a gimmick so much as a promise about the evening ahead. Past the red velvet curtains, this art deco cocktail bar on Hudson Street runs to carved wood, marble floors, a tin ceiling, and an onyx fireplace, all of it suggesting you should order something serious and stay a while. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which the regulars probably already knew.

A cocktail bar in the Financial District built around the legend of John Morrissey, a bare-knuckle Irish immigrant who ran one of the city's rougher gangs in the 1800s. The menu reads like a graphic novel, each volume dropping the Rabbit into a new era of New York's murkier chapters. The drinks are theatrical without being silly, and the Irish pub downstairs keeps things grounded for anyone who just wants a pint.

Tiger Bar is a gin-leaning cocktail bar on Gallatin Pike dressed as a 1930s carnival sideshow, and it commits without tipping into costume party. There's a mystery cocktail wheel you can spin to let fate pick your drink, which saves you from the menu and also from yourself. The Flamin' Hot Mozz Sticks have a Nashville Scene award, and Esquire put the place on its list of America's bars.

The house martini splits its base between vodka and gin, throws in fino sherry and a river rock tincture, and arrives garnished with olives, a twist, and pearl onions, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Belltown cocktail lounge. Rob Roy calls itself a classic bar "with a bit of punk cheek," and the drinks make the case quietly. A James Beard nominee for Outstanding Bar, it has been a neighborhood anchor long enough to feel lived-in without feeling tired.

A full page of negronis is either a menu or a dare, and Dante in Greenwich Village has been inviting people to find out for longer than anyone cares to count. This Italian cocktail cafe and all-day aperitivo spot leans into its old-school bones without getting musty about it, pairing the drinks with burrata and charcuterie. Named a James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist and ranked on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

Pink and purple neon sets the mood at this intimate cocktail bar, which leans hard into '80s New York nostalgia. Your drink arrives in whatever ceramic vessel the bartender feels like, a bunny, a donut with a handle, something stranger. The menu spans highballs, zero-proof options, and signatures like a blue cheese martini, but the real move is handing the bartender your preferences and letting them pull from a catalog of a thousand recipes.

The Patterson House is a cocktail bar that moved up to the top of a Gulch building and traded its old library-and-cigars gloom for a sweeping room hung with deep purple curtains. After dark they pull the drapes back to show the city lights, which suits a Manhattan fine. The food menu is big enough now that the pork chop might be your whole date night, not a warm-up for dinner.

The name comes from an era when locals climbed to the roof to watch atomic test blasts light up the Nevada sky. This old-school bar on Fremont Street has been around forever, and the Rat Pack drank here after their shows, which sets the tone pretty neatly. The red-tinted interior leans into Atomic Age kitsch, sour beers are a specialty, and the patio out back is where late nights tend to end up.