The Best Places to Drink and Do in the United States

The bar is in the basement, which is the point. The Drifter is a tiny subterranean cocktail lounge tucked beneath the Green Door Tavern, a speakeasy in the old sense of the word, not just the aesthetic. Low ceilings, dim light, and the general feeling that you've wandered somewhere you weren't supposed to find. The kind of place where a well-made drink tastes better simply because you had to descend a staircase to get it.

Lines form before the doors open at this specialty seafood counter, which tells you most of what you need to know. Faroe Island salmon, live sea urchin, razor clams, and whatever else flew in that morning fill the case alongside premium tinned fish and prepared foods. The shop insists it isn't a restaurant, then sells poke banh mi and sashimi boxes to go. Wednesday's lobster roll has its own cult.

A compact caviar and seafood bar just off the Caesars Palace casino floor, where Pringles arrive with caviar French onion dip and nobody blinks. The real trick is a life-sized portrait of a sailing captain that swings open onto a purple-and-turquoise room with a stage, hosting yacht rock nights and karaoke. Expect smoked Old Fashioneds, espresso martinis, and strangers committing to "I Will Always Love You."

The entrance is a walk-in freezer at the back of a Downtown ice cream shop, which is the kind of plot twist a Las Vegas cocktail bar can get away with. On the other side is an Old Hollywood-style hideaway serving movie-themed drinks, some arriving in milk pint glasses. You can also roll a pair of dice and let the bartenders improvise around your fate. Dress for a drink, not a sundae.

Past a door that makes very little effort to hide, this cave-like cocktail bar sits behind a taco spot in a busy Chinatown plaza. The drinks lean loud: tequila infused with Flamin' Hot Cheetos, mezcal with chamoy, a margarita lightened with a splash of Corona. The kitchen next door keeps the snacks coming, birria ramen included, so nobody has to leave the cave hungry.

The Underground is a Prohibition-themed speakeasy tucked beneath the Mob Museum, and yes, there's a daily password, which the museum's website will hand over to anyone who asks nicely. The brick walls double as a 1920s exhibit hall, with flapper outfits and a cocktail kit hidden in a briefcase. It also runs its own working moonshine distillery, so the bootlegging is technically legal, which is the one disappointing part.

Wax Rabbit is a speakeasy tucked behind a tequila cellar at the Durango resort, and getting in means finding the right miniature rabbit among the many on display and pulling it like a lever. Past the door, everything is red, a DJ spins vinyl from blues to 2000s throwbacks, and the guava-and-strega Hidden Passion arrives in a pineapple-shaped glass. Eater and The Infatuation both keep it on their hidden-bar lists.

The Beaux-Arts clocktower has watched the Bay Area's commute patterns change completely, and the building just quietly became a food hall and farmers' market instead. Nearly 100 growers and vendors ring the plaza on Saturdays, with smaller markets midweek. Inside, the stalls run from coffee to chocolate to pantry staples you'll absolutely overpack into your carry-on. It rewards slow wandering over a decisive plan.

The smartest move Accomplice ever made was opening next to Taiwanese restaurant Little Fatty, so when the cocktails do their work, crab rangoon and shrimp chips are one door away. It's a moody cocktail bar in Mar Vista where the drinks lean into unexpected flavors, Japanese whiskey and oolong sharing space with goji berry and ginger. The 50 Discovery named it among their finds, which tracks.

Fried chicken and Champagne share a menu at this retro-glam bowling lounge off Roosevelt Row, which tells you most of what you need to know about its vibe. A handful of lanes, a circular bar, pool tables, and DJs make it more of a night out that happens to involve bowling than the other way around. Sushi and nachos cover the snacking spread. Dress accordingly, because the decor is very much meant to be photographed.

A plain wooden door down a sketchy Belltown alley opens into a speakeasy-style cocktail bar that fits maybe thirty people across two floors. Upstairs, the intimate bar puts you shoulder-to-shoulder with shelves stacked with cocktail books. The menu runs to eight drinks, but the move is Dealer's Choice: name your spirit, name your mood, and let the bartender figure out the rest.

The bullet holes in the walls are original, and so is the escape route through the ladies' lavatory. This Tenderloin cocktail bar started life as a Prohibition speakeasy, complete with a trapdoor and password, and neither gimmick has been retired. The 1920s painted wallpaper and marble staircase survived intact, and you still need the password to get in, which is either charming or exhausting depending on your mood.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with bottles replace the books here, and the ladders are real. This TriBeCa spirits bar has made brandy its organizing principle, stocking vintage Armagnacs, Cognacs, and plum brandies from corners of the world most bars have never considered. Whisky and rum fill the gaps, the cocktail list runs a hundred drinks deep, and the staff who climb those ladders to fetch your bottle know exactly what they're doing.

The zinc-topped bar inside the Ace Hotel is where Jeffrey Morgenthaler built his reputation, and Portland's cocktail crowd hasn't forgotten it. Clyde Common is technically a big, open dining hall, but the bar runs the show here, with vintage stools filling up fast under a double-height ceiling loud with conversation. The food is genuinely good, but nobody's coming just for dinner.

Tucked into Mandarin Plaza on Broadway, this contemporary Chinese American restaurant and bar is the project of a first-generation chef cooking his own story onto the plate. The cocktail program is serious enough to earn national bartender recognition, so start there before the food arrives. Dishes are built for sharing, the kitchen is open to the room, and the whole setup feels more like a dinner party than a transaction.

The cocktail bar on the second floor of the landmark Metropolitan Life building, where the ceilings are tall enough to make you feel like you should order something serious. The drinks program travels with the restaurant group globally, which keeps the bar from feeling like an afterthought to the dining room below. A polished crowd in no hurry fills the seats most evenings, and the room does most of the work before the first drink arrives.

Plant-based Peruvian tasting menus in Shaw sounds like a premise that requires a disclaimer, yet Mita holds a Michelin star and a James Beard nomination for Best New Restaurant. The chef's team pulls from across Latin America, so the flavors run from Andean to coastal without apology. Two tasting menu lengths mean you can commit at whatever level feels reasonable on a Tuesday. The bar program is serious enough that Punch named the team among its best new bartenders.

The bookshelves and well-worn wood make My Loup feel less like a supper club and more like someone's very good dinner party. The French-leaning menu reads casual but cooks with real intent, seasonal and confidently seasoned, the kind of food where the chef is clearly enjoying themselves. The bar is no afterthought either, named among Punch's best new bartenders. The New York Times and Bon Appétit both took notice, and it's easy to see why.

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.

A long sloping entry leads you up into a warm, modern room where communal high tables split the space between a serious bar and proper wood-fired pizza. Ryan Magarian's cocktail program is the draw here, pairing classics and house originals with Italian street food from the kitchen. The design reads clean rather than cozy, which suits the crowd that comes as much for the drinks as anything coming out of that oven.

You get in by picking up the phone inside a wooden booth at a hot dog joint on St. Marks. If whoever's watching the camera approves, the door buzzes open. PDT is a cocktail bar that takes the speakeasy conceit completely seriously, which is either charming or exhausting depending on your mood, and the line outside suggests most people land on charming. The drinks are the kind of careful, considered pours that made the whole city start doing this.

A hundred-foot marble bar runs the length of the room, and the apothecary shelving, brass fixtures, and velvet accents make the whole place feel like a Victorian soda fountain that took a wrong turn into a Parisian atrium. This cocktail bar in Normal Heights has been an anchor of the San Diego drinks scene for ages, built around housemade bitters, syrups, and sodas long before that was a cliché.

Reservations required, a three-night-a-week window, and a bouncer who greets you like a long-lost relative: Saxony sets the terms before you've touched a drink. This late-night cocktail bar lives beneath the Faena Hotel, down a staircase into a basement of black terrazzo, gold-leaf ceilings, and Art Deco bones, with a DJ running things until 4am. The crowd arrived on purpose and dressed accordingly.

The dark oak bar counter twists through the room like it couldn't decide where to stop, with booths opposite and vintage paneling that makes the whole place feel like it's been here forever. It's a steakhouse bar in Ballard's old commercial strip, and while drinks are the stated purpose, the kitchen has a way of making that position hard to defend. Difford's Guide gives it five stars.

The conceit is that a London Underground station was abandoned in 1890, rediscovered, and quietly converted into a gin clubhouse, and the room commits to the bit completely. A cocktail bar from the team behind Smuggler's Cove, Whitechapel stocks a staggering wall of gins and divides into three areas, including an oxidized-patina bar counter called The Platform. Come for a gin and tonic; stay because you forgot you were on Polk Street.

Fluted columns, plush banquettes, and a hand-painted dance-hall mural above a mahogany bar: Bix has been doing Great Gatsby glamour in a Gold Street alley since forever, and it has no interest in updating the brief. The cocktail menu plays it classic, which suits the room, since no one comes here for novelty. The crowd tends to dress for the occasion without being asked, which tells you most of what you need to know.

Hand-cut blocks of ice imported from Japan are the first clue that this isn't a typical whiskey bar. Tucked into the Las Vegas Arts District, Bar Ginza models itself on the quiet whiskey bars of Tokyo, with more than 90 Japanese bottles lining brick walls and flights structured as an omakase. If you don't know where to start, the co-owner behind the bar is happy to pour his way through an education.

The DJ booth alone is larger than some British bars, which tells you something about the scale Blackbird Ordinary is operating at. This is a sprawling American bar, pool table competing with the DJ for the room's soul, and the unspoken rule is that you do not dance. Out back, a terrace with its own bar and an open-air cinema keeps things properly Miami. Office workers and locals find common ground here without trying too hard.

The bar itself is barely the size of a large closet, which only explains why everyone crowds around it anyway instead of taking one of the many outdoor seats in the palm-shaded courtyard beyond. Broken Shaker is a cocktail bar tucked inside the Indian Creek Hotel, its walls and shelves so thoroughly cluttered with objects it feels less designed than accumulated. The drinks are the point, and regulars seem to treat the tight quarters as a feature.

Commune is a listening room and wine bar in Avondale Estates where the DJ booth and the sommelier carry equal weight. Steven Grubbs, formerly of Empire State South, steers an evolving list that includes Georgia wine from Crane Creek Vineyards, a rarity in Atlanta. Food runs from oysters and caviar to roasted chicken, enough to anchor a full evening. Deep-house and indie keep things moving long after the dessert wine arrives.

The restored neon sign out front has been pulling people off Broadway since this building has been a bar, which is basically forever. Bar 404 is an old-school neighborhood watering hole on North Broadway, the kind where the vibe is loose and the programming punches above its weight: free jazz nights, live music, and a food program that Westword keeps recognizing alongside the concerts.

The vaulted ceiling, Victorian-era paintings, and sculpted details make the Bluebird feel more like a recovered ballroom than a live music venue, which somehow makes the indie rock louder. It holds around 550 people, putting touring acts close enough to feel like a secret and giving local bands a room that announces they've arrived. Westword has named it Denver's top stepping-stone venue, and Colfax gets a little better every time the marquee goes up.

A possum framed in cherry blossoms marks the door to this Japanese pop-culture shop tucked under City Hall in the Toy Joy family of stores. Shelves run deep with anime figures, VTuber statuettes, blind boxes, Smiskis, and gachapon machines for anyone who knows exactly what those words mean and is already reaching for their wallet.