The Best Places to Drink and Do in the United States

This is a working distillery in Eastern Market, which means the tasting room serves what's made down the road, mostly whiskey, gin, and vodka, plus the occasional paczki vodka for Fat Tuesday, because Detroit. The lighting is moody, the cocktails shift with the seasons, and in summer the bar spills onto Riopelle Street, where Midnight Temple next door supplies the Indian street food. Eater counts it among Detroit's best bars.

The sign above the door reads "Getting Vegas Drunk Since 1962," and the bar delivers on that promise without much fuss. Dino's is a neon-free dive near the Arts District where drinks are cheap and the crowd skews toward people who own at least one ska-related t-shirt. Thursday through Saturday after ten, karaoke takes over the tiny stage and things get appropriately messy. Celebrities have been known to slip in for a song, which is very on-brand for a city like this.

Double D's is a wood-paneled cocktail bar that looks like a 1970s basement, and it behaves like two different bars depending on the hour. Around six it's draft Palomas and whiskey highballs, handy for a drink before dinner next door. By ten there's a line outside, a DJ working through hip-hop and R&B, and someone ordering a Razzle Dazzle shot to get the dancing started.

Graffiti and stickers cover every surface, dollar bills hang from the ceiling, and the smell of day-old bacon grease meets you at the door. Double Down is a dive bar in the Fruit Loop that's been hosting punk shows and burlesque nights since forever, drawing tattooed regulars and older locals who never look up from the video poker machines. Order a PBR, order an Ass Juice shot, and lower your expectations to CBGB levels accordingly.

Dragonfly is the casual bar next door to Freya's tasting menu, built for people who want a drink but would like to be a functioning adult tomorrow. The cocktails run low-alcohol or zero, flavored with herbal teas, cucumber, and natural sweeteners, so the drinks read more like a garden than a bar. The room is done in cool blues, and shareable plates keep the evening from becoming purely liquid.

Ernie's Boondock is a dive bar tucked below Up-Down in East Nashville, and it commits to the role with pool tables, dollar bills stuck to the walls, and a chain of Underberg hanging by the register. There's no cocktail menu, so order a gin and tonic or a tequila shot and accept the taxidermy's silent verdict from the red leather booths. Someone will mangle "Benny And The Jets" nearby, and you may join in.

A Houston brewery that takes its beer names as seriously as its beer, with year-round taps like Buckle Bunny (a cream ale) and a rotating Limited Awesome Beer Series that lives up to the acronym. The indoor space is cavernous enough to actually beat the heat, which in this city is less a perk than a survival strategy. When the weather cooperates, the outdoor area fills fast with the kind of crowd that stays for three rounds and means it.

The Kilt Lifter Scottish Ale has been filling pints here long enough that it's practically a local institution, and the Mission Revival warehouse it lives in only adds to the effect. Four Peaks is a full-scale brewpub with a cavernous brick interior, a sprawling patio, and a menu that covers wings and nachos but also green chile mac and cheese for anyone who needs more than bar food. Spring training crowds and ASU students pack the place, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe.

Ballpoint pen drawings cover every wall of this tiny lounge at The Venetian, which is doing its best Shinjuku Golden Gai impression, and pulling it off better than it has any right to. DJs push house music loud enough to rattle the sake glasses while the drinks lean Japanese, gin and matcha cocktails alongside serious whiskey pours. Small and clubby, with neon doing most of the decorating.

Gray's Hall is a South Boston wine bar that has the energy of a friend's living room, if your friend kept a natural-leaning wine list and a small-plate menu that includes a burger. It comes from the team behind American Provisions, the neighborhood's sandwich-and-bottle stop, so the instinct is to feed you while you stay put. Staff stay unbothered even when the place fills up, and a loyal local crowd keeps it that way.

The burger of the month rotates, the beer names do not disappoint, and the bar snacks lean harder than most breweries bother to. This Chapman Street brewery pours its own ales alongside house cocktails, wine, and THC options, so there's something for whoever you dragged along. The Flip Flop Cowboy amber and the pineapple-tangerine blonde tell you exactly what the vibe is before you've taken a sip.

The wraparound windows put both ends of the Strip in frame at once, the Eiffel Tower on one side and MGM's emerald glow on the other. This moody cocktail lounge inside the Waldorf Astoria runs Japanese-leaning bar snacks alongside drinks like a cherry cola old fashioned, and the vibe is firmly date-night. Go for the view, stay for the cocktails, and accept that you probably won't need dinner after.

The bar stools here are swings, which tells you everything about the mood. Heyday is a neighborhood restaurant and bar tucked into the courtyard of a midcentury hotel in Waikiki, leaning hard into the retro-tropical bit with mai tai variations and boozy slushies alongside cheesy toast and a fried mahi sandwich that reads as a Filet-o-Fish with ambitions. After dark, the Green Lady Cocktail Room in room eight opens as a dark lounge spilling into a palm-fringed courtyard.

A sports bar in Buckhead's Terminus building where the pork totcho, a tater tot mountain buried under pulled pork, queso, and barbecue sauce, makes the pretense of watching the game completely optional. Multiple screens cover whatever's on, regardless of sport or allegiance, and the menu runs from lobster nachos to shrimp tacos, the kind of spread that commits fully to the bit.

The cocktail menu is organized by spirit, which sounds obvious until you're deep into the amaro section wondering how you got there. Jane Jane is a cozy cocktail bar on 14th Street with a living-room feel, home-style snacks, and drinks that range from gin classics to Basque whiskey creations nobody else would think to make. Small, warm, and genuinely hard to leave once you've settled in.

Velvet couches and Victorian flourishes make this cocktail bar inside the Venetian feel like a drawing room where someone definitely had an affair. The drinks lean inventive and precise, with one arriving in a Viking horn-shaped glass, which is either theatrical or inspired depending on your mood. One of three strong cocktail options in the same hotel, Juliet is the one that leans opulent and a little moody.

Justini's is a cocktail bar on Dauphine Street that nods to Seal's and Bertha's, two Black woman-owned New Orleans bars, with a courtyard mural to prove the lineage. It's dressier than those, with chandeliers and little alcoves built for being noticed in. The drinks are colorful, including a berry martini and a purple champagne cocktail, and the kitchen turns out hot sausage tacos and a jerk BBQ burger.

Karbach started as a scrappy local outfit before Anheuser-Busch bought it, and the sprawling indoor-outdoor brewery taproom it became is a pretty honest reflection of that trajectory. The full kitchen punches past standard pub grub, with a Texas Wagyu smashburger and truffle parmesan fries alongside the Crawford Bock and Love Street. Big enough for a party, casual enough for a Tuesday, and a sister pizza spot sits next door for when the group can't agree.

Kelly's is a neighborhood dive in Hamtramck that has been pouring shots for factory workers since before anyone alive remembers a different Detroit. The back-yard doors are layered in stickers and signatures, the tin ceiling is still up, and the floors have finally been leveled, so your beer stays where you put it. Cans of Hamm's and Modelo are the order, and a rotating cast of food pop-ups handles dinner. Eater has it on its Detroit best bars list.

Kilmac's is a neighborhood pub in Oakcliff, with dark wood, properly poured Guinness, and the same owners as Old Monk, so it knows its way around a bar stool. The cocktail list goes past what the setting suggests, including a freezer martini and a toasted coconut daiquiri. Thin, New York-style pizzas show up too, and they taste better on the big back patio, where you can sprawl out like the weather owes you. The Infatuation has it on its Dallas bars list.

A Greek Salad martini built with Tomato Crop vodka and piparra brine should probably not work, and yet here we are. Kinda Nice is a Williamsburg cocktail bar from two Grand Army veterans who describe the vibe as late-night diner meets dive bar, which mostly means the drinks lean savory and strange in satisfying ways. A downstairs dive called Shenanigans is coming, if you need somewhere to spiral afterward.

The name comes from a childhood nickname meaning "heel of the bread," which tells you something about the spirit of the place. This Wallingford cocktail bar leans into a Soviet parlor aesthetic, all floral upholstery and earthy glassware, with a drinks list built around beets, birch syrup, mushrooms, and green walnut. Slavic snacks fill the gaps between rounds. For purists, a horseradish vodka shot is on the menu and waiting to have a word with you.

L.A. Jackson is the rooftop bar atop the Thompson in the Gulch, where a giant tree strung with tiny white lights sits in the middle like it's auditioning for a wedding. The cocktails lean on tangy shrubs, the sparkling rosé arrives with a guava pomegranate popsicle in it, and the hot chicken croquettes are the smart order. Weekend nights bring a DJ, so dress for a skyline and a crowd that came for both.

A converted firehouse turned wine bar with a retail shop stocking over 200 bottles you can also drink on the spot. The menu rotates around whatever the chef's neighbor harvests from the garden across the street, which keeps things genuinely seasonal in a way most places only claim. The backyard runs to lawn chairs and picnic blankets, with DJs on weekends. It landed on the New York Times Restaurant List and Bon Appétit's Best New Restaurants in the same year.

A miniature wrestling ring doubles as the karaoke stage, which tells you everything about the Lariat Bar's priorities. This White Center dive is floor-to-ceiling WWE memorabilia with an actual craft cocktail menu, a combination that shouldn't work as well as it does. The nonalcoholic drinks are listed under "Kayfabe," a wrestling term for keeping the fiction alive, which is either the nerdiest menu label in Seattle or the most honest one.

Las Almas Rotas is a Dallas agave bar that stocks small-batch mezcal, bacanora, and raicilla instead of celebrity tequila, which means the flights can include pechuga mezcal, distilled with raw poultry, and bottles that fit no known category. It was a James Beard Outstanding Bar Program semifinalist. Margaritas and palomas let the spirits do the talking, and carne asada tacos and pozole rojo keep the evening from getting too educational.

Lookout Tavern is a north Phoenix sports bar with something like 50 screens, so the real challenge is finding a wall that isn't showing a game. It's also the Steelers headquarters during football season, which means plenty of black and gold in the desert. Trivia, bingo, and UFC watch parties fill the calendar, and the weekend brunch involves shareable cocktails. Sliders and loaded fries cover the food side, and two patios handle the rest.

Everything cooks over open white-oak fires behind a tattered ranch house on Johns Island, sailcloth and outdoor chandeliers overhead, the smoke visible from the road. The chef grew up in North Georgia and knows his Lowcountry, so collards and roasted clams show up alongside chimichurri and tamarind. The New York Times put it on their 2024 Restaurant List. Arrive hungry enough for the charred semolina sourdough that lands first, and don't skip the carrots.

Martha My Dear is a neighborhood cocktail bar on Gallatin Ave, in a space that spent a short, theatrical stretch as a WWII-themed Euro bar before closing without much mourning. The new owners kept some of the Old World bones and swapped the concept for something calmer, with drinks built by a bartender who came up through Attaboy. It's casual and low-key, with cocktails that take their job seriously and nothing else around them does.

Melrose is a basement dive bar where the entertainment is built in: pool, ping pong, foosball, darts, and shuffleboard, so nobody is ever forced into conversation. It has survived floods, an era of indoor smoking, and a brief closing, and it came back with a light spitshine and most of the old character. Drinks are local beer and basic liquor, the popcorn is free, and dress code is whatever you wore to work.

Mickey's Tavern is a dive bar on Gallatin Pike with enough light to find your drink and not much more. The bartenders will still make you a proper Negroni or a Last Word without a flicker of judgment. There's a pool table, darts, and a fenced backyard of picnic tables and string lights that turns dirt into ambience. Food is a hot ham and cheese sandwich, which is a full menu if you squint.

My Girl is a glamorous cocktail bar tucked beneath Yvonne's, with gold leaf, rosy marble, and passion fruit martinis that clearly expect you to dress for them. The Sox hat stays home. Reservations help at prime time, though the place hits its stride after 10, when Boston finally decides to stay up late and live music takes over Thursday through Saturday. The Infatuation put it on its list of the best bars in the city.

Off The Record is a downtown cocktail bar that passes for a record shop until you step behind the curtain, where stacked vintage speakers and framed gold records set the tone. The music runs loud enough to feel in your sternum, yet nobody has to shout, and even the bartenders sing along to the DJ's Al Green. Grab a couch upstairs and watch the room. The Infatuation lists it among the best bars in Houston.

OHSO is a brewpub in downtown Gilbert whose backyard doubles as a neighborhood park, with lawn chairs, a dog run, an arcade corner, and a screen the size of a drive-in's, so game day comes with grass underfoot. Groups can claim a shaded cabana with its own TVs, which turns a Sunday into a private viewing party. Expect pints, casual pub food, and flip-flops that nobody questions.

Tucked into a historic greystone next door to Moreno's Liquors, a southside family institution, Osito's Tap is a neighborhood cocktail bar where the drinks lean hard into Latin American classics, agave spirits, and Micheladas done right. The connection to the liquor store isn't just sentimental; the spirits selection reflects it. Low-key enough that you might walk past it, specific enough that regulars don't want you to find it.

Padre's is a wine shop and bar on White Oak where you can grab a bottle for home or settle in with a glass, and the by-the-glass list is long enough to need its own reading time. Chilled reds get unusual respect here, along with mostly European and West Coast bottles and the odd orange wine from the country of Georgia. It's usually packed and loud, so conversation tends to be limited to nodding at your pour.

Pal's Lounge is a neighborhood bar on North Rendon, and the front door comes with a small welcoming committee of smokers, vapers, and dogs you'll have to politely wade through. Beer-and-shot specials and cocktails stay cheap, so the Selfish Lover, a floral vodka sipper, won't drain your wallet. There's no kitchen to speak of, but food pop-ups drift through serving sandwiches and stir-fried noodles. The Infatuation lists it among New Orleans' best bars.

Parachute HiFi is a Korean listening bar from the Parachute team, built for people who'd rather hear a record than their own thoughts. Vinyl spins while the menu runs street-food mashups, like a burger drowned in Comté fondue and tteokbokki in a pad Thai situation, alongside cocktails. It's casual and dressy-ish in the way a good record collection is, and it takes reservations but still keeps room for walk-ins.