The Best Places to Drink and Do in the United States

The glowing floor stayed when the Hudson Hotel's Library Bar got its makeover, but the furniture got considerably more fashionable. This cocktail bar swings between loud dance music and live jazz depending on the night, with exposed brick, low tables, and lighting that flatters everyone equally. It's the kind of flirty hotel bar where the room does most of the work, and nobody seems to mind.

The horseshoe bar juts into the middle of the room like it owns the place, which, given the brown panelled walls and tasselled awning overhead, it kind of does. This St Marks dive bar closed for a few years and came back with its 1970s bones intact, including a mural salvaged from its earlier life as a burlesque lounge. A snack-food mogul bought the building, which is a sentence that belongs here and nowhere else.

A self-described "continental tavern" that reads more like an oversized gastropub once you're inside, Hubbard Inn is a big, convivial bar in River North with a serious beer program: around twenty draught handles and nearly as many cans and bottles, skewing craft. If you came for Miller Lite, it's on the menu too, quietly listed at the bottom of the beer page, which is a very polite way to handle the situation.

The 65-foot marble bar is the first thing you clock, backed by a wall of taps that looks like it was built for a congregation. Jackknife is a high-volume neighborhood bar attached to the Sentinel Hotel, heavy rock on the speakers and a toasted-oak floor that leans more saloon than cocktail lounge. The short cocktail list skews toward house drinks. Come for draft beer and a loud night out, not a quiet first-date conversation.

From the street it reads like a shop, and inside it's barely bigger than one, with around thirty seats tucked under warm light and a hefty oak bar. Kask is a cocktail bar with a leather-bound list organized by spirit, leaning hard on amaro, sherry, and vermouth. The drinks skew classical without being stiff about it. Small rooms either feel intimate or claustrophobic, and this one lands on the right side.

The bar seating glows aquatic blue, ceiling windows let the light pour in, and the outdoor terrace looks straight out at the bay traffic. This Peruvian seafood restaurant on the Embarcadero is the rare Embarcadero spot that earns its view. Ceviche is the main event, and the tasting lets you work through several styles at once. A pisco sour while watching boats maneuver past is a reasonable way to spend an afternoon.

Every bottle behind the bar at Las Perlas comes from south of the border, which means no vodka, no whiskey, and no gin to tempt you off the path. It's a cantina-style mezcal and tequila bar on Sixth Street, candlelit and maximalist, with Del Maguey mezcals and rare 100% agave pours listed by region and paired for the curious. The kind of place that makes an argument without ever saying a word.

Those barrel-aged cocktails sitting in vintage crystal decanters along the back bar are Liberty's calling card, sharing shelf space with 70-plus whiskies, a coffee station, and a sushi setup that nobody questions. It's a casual Capitol Hill cocktail bar with couches by the front windows and bench seating opposite the bar, the kind of room built for lingering. Industry folks and neighborhood regulars tend to find each other here without much effort.

The chandeliers alone explain why every studio executive who ever needed to feel important has passed through here. Library Bar sits inside the Hollywood Roosevelt, a hotel so soaked in old Hollywood mythology it practically seeps into the drinks. It's a cocktail bar where the Spanish Colonial bones do most of the heavy lifting, and the clientele tends to dress accordingly. Order something classic and let the room do the rest.

The lounge bar inside the Mandarin Oriental sits beneath a triple-height lobby ceiling with water views and a front-row look at the bridge tying Brickell Key to the mainland. The clientele arrives with generous expense accounts and matching expectations, and the room meets them precisely there. Everything is exactly so, which is another way of saying the drinks are polished and the energy is not.

Bare brick walls, worn-down bar, and a chalkboard listing three or four cocktail specials that change daily, because a printed menu would be too much of a commitment. This Spring Street cocktail bar reads like a neighborhood dive that happens to employ people who could be working somewhere far fancier. Industry folk fill the stools by night, talking shop with bartenders who clearly know what they're doing. Bring cash, skip the attitude, and just ask what's good.

The chalkboard menu at this corner tapas bar looks like it's been there forever, which is kind of the point. Patatas bravas, garlicky shrimp, octopus, and chorizo rotate through in the Spanish tradition the team fell in love with while backpacking through Madrid. The room is small, retro without trying, and built-in banquettes give it the settled-in feel of a neighborhood place that has nothing left to prove.

Concrete floors that look like the previous tenant's linoleum was ripped up last Tuesday set the tone at this spacious Southern-leaning cocktail bar in west Chelsea. Danny Meyer's first standalone bar leans on the spirit of Blue Smoke, which means Sazeracs and bar food with a drawl. The games room in the back suggests the intention is for you to stay a while, and the raw brick walls give you no reason to hurry.

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.

Todd Thrasher makes his own tonic water, his own bitters, and his own roasted pineapple juice, which tells you almost everything about PX before you've touched the door. It's a cocktail bar in Old Town Alexandria running on a serious DIY ethic, the kind where the drink in front of you contains something nobody else thought to make from scratch. The room is small and unhurried, well ahead of the speakeasy moment before that moment existed.

The cocktail menu at this hotel bar is organized by room, Sitting Room, Living Room, Guest Room, and Garden, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe. Tucked off the Albion's soaring lobby, Repour goes deliberately the other way: low ceilings, homey furniture, the feel of someone's well-curated apartment. The bartender behind it built the interior himself with family and friends, and it shows in the best way.

Four oversized bronze chairs whose frames spell out an "R" set the tone before you've ordered a thing. This is the bar side of a sleek Latin-themed restaurant, where the drinks program leans into tequila and mezcal with the same design seriousness the room applies to everything else. It's a long way from neon cantina signage, both in looks and in the glass.

Concrete floors, steel girders, and a smoking area the size of a small parking lot set the tone at this Tenderloin cocktail bar. The utilitarian look is clearly intentional, the sort of space that can survive a rowdy Saturday without complaint. A chalkboard cocktail of the month keeps things moving, and the menu spans pisco punch to rum-and-port builds with house-made Swedish punsch. Not where you go to catch up quietly, but volume was never the point.

The long pearl bar counter is the first thing that registers, backlit against dark wood and warm gold light, with loose rosebuds packed into displays that somehow don't look like a wedding. This is a cocktail bar inside one of Miami Beach's sleeker luxury hotels, all Asian-modernist design and reclaimed Shanghai brick underfoot. Outside, Martinis get sipped poolside under palms by people who have clearly packed better than you did.

Three antique pool tables on tartan carpet greet you at the top of the stairs, which sets the tone for this whiskey bar doing a convincing impression of a Scottish gentleman's club in downtown L.A. The black walnut bar runs nearly the full length of the room, with shelves so tall the bartenders use a rolling ladder to reach the rarer Scotch, Japanese, Irish, and bourbon bottles, several hundred in all, including single-cask and collectible pours.

The Circle Bar sits on the top floor of this famously members-only Meatpacking District club, its zinc-topped bar jutting into a room of herringbone parquet and enormous Chesterfield sofas. The glass-walled wine cellar is purely decorative, but it sets the mood. Cocktails arrive at low tables where people who definitely knew the right person to get in are trying to look like they didn't have to.

The entrance reads "Lower East Side Toy Company" on an iron gate, which is not a toy company. Beyond it, a semi-subterranean passage runs between buildings toward an unmarked door with a brass peephole, and yes, the rats are part of the atmosphere. One of the few surviving Prohibition-era speakeasies in the city, this bar on the Lower East Side commits hard to the bit, and the whole approach feels like a dare before you've ordered anything.

A gilded rat guards the door, which is the first sign you're in the right place. This cocktail bar sits beneath the Andaz 5th Avenue, easy to miss from the street if you're not looking for the discreet sign. Once down the stairs, the room opens into banquettes and long walnut communal tables where a bartender works one side while drinkers take the other three, which collapses the usual bar geography in a quietly clever way.

Three blocks from Bourbon Street and operating at a different frequency entirely, The Black Penny is a low-key craft beer bar with more than 70 canned options and the kind of room that actually makes you want to stay. One side runs plush leather banquettes against distressed plaster walls; the other is all dark wood and salvaged barge boards behind the bar. The crowd tends to know exactly why they came, and it isn't the tourists.

The name is literal: a neighborhood cocktail bar tucked into a quiet stretch of Washington Boulevard in Culver City, the part of LA better known for art galleries than drinking. Inside, it's casual and intimate, the kind of room that fills up with locals and after-work regulars who seem to have quietly agreed not to tell anyone else about it. The bartenders lean toward inventive riffs on classics.

The cocktail menu changes daily and gets announced on a letter board covering the back wall, which is either charming or anxiety-inducing depending on how decisive you are. This small cocktail bar shares an entrance with restaurant Public and the same drinks program, a compact room made to feel larger by a floor-to-ceiling mirror above leather booths. Regulars arrive knowing roughly what they want; everyone else reads the board.

A cocktail bar tucked into the back of the Iroquois Hotel lobby, the Lantern's Keep still reads like the private dining room it once was: dark paneling, marble-topped tables, and five seats at the bar. The menu organizes its drinks by technique rather than spirit, and the staff actively prefer you skip it entirely and just describe what you're after. For 44th Street, that level of calm feels almost conspiratorial.

The lobby bar you pass through on your way to somewhere else, bright and airy in that hotel-lounge way that somehow makes you stop anyway. Cocktails lean playful and a little precious, the kind with long ingredient lists and names that make you read them twice. A good spot to settle in before or after dinner upstairs, or to skip the reservation altogether and just drink somewhere that doesn't feel like it's trying too hard.

A cocktail bar tucked behind a psychic shop on La Cienega, marked by a red neon hand in the window and, somewhat defeating the mystique, valet attendants and a sign on the pavement. Inside, it's all dark wood paneling, picture frames, antique stained glass, and a vintage mirror above the bar that promises "the best of everything and nothing but the best." Booths line one wall, low tables fill the back, and the lighting is dim enough to feel like a secret even when it isn't.

The complimentary salad is shredded lettuce with a dollop of salsa, and it arrives like a postcard from 1965. Tommy's is a neighborhood Mexican restaurant with red pleather booths, a matriarch who greets you at the door, and a tequila collection that runs into the hundreds. Julio Bermejo is a serious agave authority, and a seat at the bar will leave you considerably more educated than when you walked in. Order the chimichangas and let him talk you through something good.

A square dark-oak bar juts from the wall of this candlelit room on the edge of the French Quarter, just opposite the Louis Armstrong Park arch, which tells you the tourists haven't found it yet. Tonique is a neighborhood cocktail bar that takes its drinks seriously without taking itself seriously, a combination rarer than it sounds. The wine and beer lists hold their own alongside the cocktails, and the vibe is exactly as low-pretense as the place promises.

The shattered-glass bar-top with a built-in refrigerator for fresh produce is a good sign you're in a proper cocktail bar, not just somewhere with a drinks menu. The room is moody and low-lit, with funky music competing gently with classic films on a flat screen, Gone with the Wind one moment, Indiana Jones the next. The polystyrene ceiling tiles are a Quiznos inheritance, which gives the whole effort a certain scrappy charm.

No website, no phone number, and nothing on the exterior but a small street number and white tiles that read more like a morgue than a cocktail bar. Weather Up in Prospect Heights commits fully to the bit. Inside, those same tiles climb the ceiling over a zinc-topped wooden bar with sculptural stools, turning the whole room into something between a former bathhouse and a very stylish fever dream.

The terrace hangs over the mouth of the Miami River where it meets Biscayne Bay, which sets the tone for everything else. This is the bar inside Zuma, the Japanese cocktail and sake operation anchored inside the Epic Hotel, done up in granite, rice paper paneling, and Indonesian wood by a Tokyo designer. The crowd arrives dressed for a scene, which is more or less the point. Sake flights and Japanese-inflected cocktails are the move.

By day it pulls coffee; by night the Latin-American vintage vinyl goes on and the mezcal comes out. Estereo is an agave bar on Milwaukee Avenue where the cocktail list is organized by spirit category and the drinks lean toward the unexpected, think cold-brew tea and shochu sharing a glass with pisco. The crowd tends to find it on the younger, cooler end of Logan Square, which is saying something in that neighborhood.

The bar inside Jupiter NEXT Hotel is draped in plants and local art, designed to feel like somewhere sunnier than Portland on a Tuesday. It's a cocktail bar that shapeshifts across the day, quiet enough to nurse a drink in the afternoon and loud enough to justify a second one by night. The drinks lean tropical, bright and built for humidity the Pacific Northwest rarely delivers.

A downtown Reno dive bar named for the highway that used to run through town, with old signs, vintage photos, and the occasional auto part on the walls. Out back, a fire pit sits beside a silver Airstream that turns out soup dumplings and bao after 5 p.m. There's pool, live music, karaoke, and a house ritual involving steak seasoning, Jameson, and Worcestershire. Dress for a bar, not a brunch.

A café in the old Astro space that kept the soufflé egg sandwich on brioche on the menu, because the neighborhood would have revolted. Coffee comes from Anthology in Eastern Market and Grand Coffee Roasters in San Francisco, and the café de olla, made with piloncillo and canela, is the kind of order that makes you feel slightly smug about your choices. Handmade journals from a local printmaker line the shelves for those who pretend they'll journal more.

Alpino is a Corktown dinner spot dressed as an Alpine ski lodge, with a stone fireplace at the center and no mountain within several hundred miles. The menu wanders through Austria and the neighboring French, German, Italian, and Swiss kitchens, and the team makes its own bread, pasta, and sausage. It was a James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant. Reserve ahead, especially if you're angling for the summer patio.

Arario is a second-floor Korean restaurant in Midtown where the portions run large and the pickled banchan arrives whether you asked or not. The menu splits between traditional dishes and fusion, which is how a bulgogi cheesesteak and a Korean Loco Moco with black bean gravy end up on the same page. There's room for big groups, a terrace for decent weather, and a Negroni made with Japanese gin, because why not.

Barbacana is a chef-driven dinner spot in the Bayou Lofts where the menu keeps changing and borrows from African, Middle Eastern, and Japanese cooking, with Texas ingredients holding it together. You can order a la carte and share a spread, or commit to the tasting menu. The counter overlooks the kitchen, which suits anyone who likes watching someone else be under pressure. Dress nicely, bring a few friends.

Beaujolais Bistro is a proper French bistro in a vintage brick building on a leafy corner near the Truckee River, where tables sometimes spill into the front yard for what passes as a dinner party under the stars. Big groups get the moody wine cellar, and the list leans Burgundy with a few Napa bottles on standby. It holds AAA Three Diamonds and a spot on Eater's Reno list.

Beloved's Bread is a bakery-cafe south of Midtown, where the first sign you've arrived is a patient line outside, obeying a posted rule that only six people may be inside at once. The loaves run from sourdough to Japanese milk bread and a proper pretzel, and the cafe turns to eggs in the morning and sirloin burgers later. Order at the counter, eat on the move, and keep an eye on your place in line.

Casale's Halfway Club is a red-sauce Italian joint with checkered tablecloths, and you can still spot old bedroom doorframes in the dining room from when the family lived here. Meatballs lean on breadcrumbs, lasagna is baked to order in single portions, and the ravioli comes split between meat and cheese. Reno regulars treat it as home, the dive label is optional, and Mama Inez is spoken of the way other towns speak of saints.

Cosmo's is a casual wood-fired pizza spot in a former funeral home, which is the kind of backstory the name does nothing to prepare you for. You order at the counter, and the pies arrive stacked on a tomato can. The roasted vegetables, a whole cauliflower and harissa carrots, keep pace with the pizza, and the soft-serve flavor rotates monthly. Solo diners get the small bar, where a draft Negroni helps.

Folk is a Corktown cafe that doubles as a bottle shop, so you can order a turmeric chai latte and leave with a bottle of biodynamic wine without anyone finding it strange. The brunch menu leans toward biscuits and waffle sandwiches, and the pantry shelves favor makers from the neighborhood and beyond. Seating is limited indoors, so the patio fills first. The wine program was a James Beard semifinalist in 2024.

Frank's is a downtown slice shop near Market Square Park, built for the hours when everything else has closed and your judgment has too. The slices are New York-style and wide enough to require a fold, with dough and sauce made fresh each day. The specialty pies lean Texan, like boudin and bacon or a fajita-and-jalapeño number, though plain cheese and pepperoni still do most of the work. Order at the counter, eat standing.

This is a members-only Irish club in Corktown, though "members-only" here means paying a small annual fee, collecting a card, and ordering a pint of Guinness. The dim room, dark wooden bar, and decor have stayed put so long they've circled back into style. Whiskey, beer, and community events fill the calendar, so the vibe is closer to a neighborhood living room than a pub with a theme. Eater lists it among Corktown's best.

House of Mandi is a Yemeni restaurant in the Gaslamp where you eat on red-and-black floor sofas at low tables, under murals of Sana's brick towers. It's the San Diego branch of an Anaheim original from Little Arabia, and the halal menu runs on slow-cooked lamb, including a haneeth that's traditionally cooked underground. Wear socks you're proud of, and bring people who'll share a platter.

Huntress is a multi-level steakhouse in the Gaslamp, where dinner comes with a soundtrack and the nightlife seems to have been invited to the table. The menu runs from dry-aged porterhouse to tomahawks and Japanese A5 wagyu, with a seafood side for the one person who doesn't want steak. The bar pours whiskey flights from around the world, and the mushroom-shaped dessert is built for two, so plan accordingly.

The robata grill runs hot at this casual Japanese izakaya in Midtown, turning out skewers and karaage alongside udon in deep, earthy broths. The cocktail list is robust enough to justify lingering, and the raw fish plates give the kitchen a chance to show some range. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist in 2023, which tracks with a menu that does comfort and precision in the same breath without making a fuss about it.

Hand-rolled soba noodles are the reason to come to this small, wood-trimmed Japanese noodle shop tucked into Fremont. The chef learned the technique from her grandmother and then kept going, pairing the buckwheat noodles with foie gras tofu or tempura-fried Oreos alongside the classics. A James Beard nominee, and the kind of place that earns a long wait without making any fuss about it.

This is a casual Mexican cantina in the middle of the Gaslamp, where the house ceviche arrives with shrimp, cucumber, and avocado in a spicy serrano sauce. The rest of the menu runs the familiar route of tacos, enchiladas, and carne asada, with a mojito that comes in spicy mango. Happy hour covers every Monday and the afternoons after that, which suits a neighborhood where nobody pays full price for a margarita on purpose.

Kokoro lives inside Bravery Chef Hall downtown, where the team from Uchi turned a food-hall counter into a sushi and yakitori spot that manages to feel genuinely relaxed without the studied casualness of a place trying to prove a point. Nigiri and maki share the menu with grilled yakitori and chicken fat rice. The crowd eating standing up at the counter is not doing it ironically; the food just moves fast.

Kulture is a sit-down comfort food restaurant steps from the George R. Brown Convention Center, where Caribbean and Southern cooking share one menu and nobody makes them fight about it. Gumbo opens things, there's an oxtail melt, and brunch gets theatrical with crab-topped catfish and grits. Happy hour runs all day on Astros home game days, which is a generous reading of the word "hour."

Kwok's Bistro is a casual, stand-alone Cantonese-leaning Chinese restaurant just west of the big downtown casinos, which is about as far from a buffet as Reno gets. The chef, a former casino busboy, takes days to prepare the Beijing duck, so ordering it is a commitment. Wok-fired dishes lean on garlic and ginger, and the lamb brings real heat. The chef was a James Beard Best Chef: Southwest semifinalist.

The line out the door on South 2nd is the most honest review you'll find. This Williamsburg slice shop has a counter, a few standing ledges, and pizza makers working in plain sight from dough to oven. The crust is thin, crisp, and taken seriously. 50 Top Pizza ranked it the top slice shop in the country, and the New York Times put it on their short list too. Order, pay, wait for your name, eat standing up. That's the whole deal.