The Best Places to Drink and Do in the United States

The turquoise Garden District mansion has been turning out Modern New Orleans Creole since Ella Brennan and a young Emeril Lagasse were essentially inventing the genre together. Fine dining in the grand sense, white tablecloths and all, though the room skews festive rather than stiff. Meg Bickford runs the kitchen now, keeping the cooking by turns classicist and a little bodacious. Wine Enthusiast put the cellar in its Hall of Fame, and the weekday lunch martinis go for a quarter.

The checkered tile floors and art-lined stone walls make it look like a Parisian bistro that wandered into the West Loop and decided to stay. Creepies is a neighborhood French restaurant from the team behind Elske next door, with a concise menu that leans classic and slides Midwestern where it can. The vesper martini landed on Esquire's list of the best in the country, which is not nothing for a place called Creepies.

Culebra is a narrow, dark Puerto Rican cocktail bar in Logan Square where the entrance is the first puzzle, so expect to ask a stranger where it is. Inside, a loud bomba soundtrack keeps everyone bouncing, drinks run to a Malta-sweetened highball, a spicy rum swizzle, and a plantain shot. The Infatuation put it on its list of the 'it' bars across America, which is how the line out front got started.

Doris is a tiny cocktail bar that keeps weeknight hours only, which tells you who it's built for. The drinks come in small, rippled coupes, some barely a mouthful, and the snack mix has nutritional yeast on it, which sounds like a dare but isn't. Prices run after-work-drinks rather than special occasion. Expect the 4pm-on-a-Tuesday set and a few people who definitely own a ring light.

Frankie's Summer Club is a seasonal outdoor bar tucked into the courtyard of a former art school, which is exactly the kind of sentence that makes you check your shoes. It's a leafy garden with a jazz trio, playful cocktails, and bar food that includes fried swordfish skewers. It's technically members-only, though visitors can sign up online, and it shuts down in September. The Infatuation put it on its list of 'It' bars right now.

Gosh is a cocktail bar in Chinatown that behaves like a funhouse with a guest list, which means showing up and asking nicely is a legitimate strategy. Servers wear Adidas track jackets, the stools look like gnomes, and the basement glows a menacing red. Upstairs there's a confessional for your sins, and the carajillo arrives candy-sweet. The Infatuation put it on its list of the 'It' bars across America.

A live-fire hearth anchors the open kitchen at this midcentury modern restaurant in San Antonio's Pearl District, where the menu is organized around Texas ingredients and built for sharing, with a dedicated steak section and a Texas-focused wine list. The name nods to the patron saint of farmers, and the sourcing follows through. It holds a Michelin star and landed on the New York Times Restaurant List in 2025.

Red leather banquettes, white tablecloths, a snappy U-shaped bar, and a shiny open kitchen pack into fifty seats on Dickerson Pike. This is a French-leaning dinner spot where smoke drifts in from a Basque-style wood-fire hearth and the wine list has Brooklyn credentials. Philip Krajeck's third Nashville restaurant has landed on the New York Times' list of Nashville's 25 best, which for a room this quietly romantic feels about right.

Kenny's Upstairs is a queer-owned cocktail bar you reach by climbing a red neon-lit staircase, which sets expectations for the '80s movie set waiting at the top, complete with a phone booth and old mall food court posters. The drinks get serious attention, down to shots chased with house khao soi broth, though a Hamm's and a corndog are also on the table. St. Louis bartenders send you here if they like your face.

A converted farmhouse in North Salem with sweeping views of actual countryside, which somehow makes the tasting menu feel earned rather than theatrical. This is a Michelin-starred modern French fine dining room with very few tables, run by a husband-and-wife team whose roots are in the south of France. The cooking is precise and quietly confident, and dessert gets its own moment to shine. Esquire named the Vesper martini among the finest in America, which is a strange fact about a farmhouse, and a good one.

Las Rosas is a dive bar on NW 7th Ave that closed for a few years, then reopened looking like nobody had touched it, which is the correct amount of renovation. It's all cheap shots, a back alley where cigarettes change hands between strangers, and a Saturday-night guitar solo at a volume your ears will file a complaint about. It's the opposite of South Beach, with no velvet rope and no one's cousin running the list. Closing time is roughly 5am.

Concrete floors and dark leather in a South Austin building that could pass for a tech lobby, except the menu is French and the martinis have made a small national name for themselves. Le Calamar is a neighborhood bistro where the food leans sharing plates, the wine list sneaks in some Texas pours, and the baked Alaska arrives with honey pecan dacquoise and torched meringue like it has something to prove.

A Flatiron bar tricked out like a 1970s Bangkok shophouse, with vintage televisions and family photos on the walls and Thai cocktails on the menu. The jasmine martini landed on Esquire's list of the best martinis in America, which gives you a sense of how seriously the drinks program is taken. The kitchen keeps pace with late-night Thai food that pairs naturally with the cocktails. Open late, which the neighborhood needed.

Maestro is a downtown Tulsa cocktail bar that skips the crowds and pours a smooth, stiff drink for the end of a long day. Settle in with a caipirinha and pretend the room is a sexy villa while young film-industry types wade through a conversation about tequila terroir. The Infatuation put it on its list of the "It" bars across America, which is a lot of pressure for a place with no patience for pressure.

The green salad here became a Philadelphia talking point, which tells you everything about what kind of tavern this is. Meetinghouse is an American bar and kitchen in Fishtown where the menu looks almost suspiciously plain, right up until the food arrives. The hot roast beef sandwich and pork-and-beans both suggest a kitchen treating simple things as the whole point, not the backup plan. Named to The New York Times Restaurant List for 2025.

The pool table shares the room with people in stilettos, which tells you most of what you need to know about Parley. It's a neighborhood bar on East Cesar Chavez run by two Irishmen who seem unbothered by the idea that a bar can be dim and comfortable and also genuinely cool. Screens handle both the big game and arthouse film. The drinks run strong, the food leans comfort with a global detour, and the dress code is apparently optional.

A 22-seat Korean fine dining room where the staff never once mentions that the kitchen runs as a nonprofit focused on zero waste, letting the tasting menu speak for itself instead. Edward Lee's cooking gives traditional Korean ingredients a modern setting, moving through courses that land somewhere between precise and quietly surprising. The Korean spirits list leans into the esoteric, including a crimson makgeolli made with red yeast rice.

The French onion soup has been on the menu since day one, which tells you something about how Oxford feels about this place. Snackbar is a warm, wood-paneled Southern restaurant with an oyster bar, cocktail bar, and booths deep enough to disappear into. The kitchen weaves Indian flavors through the menu without making it a theme, so masala pot pie sits comfortably next to whatever's seasonal. Esquire named its martini among the finest in the country.

Coffee arrives at Specs spiked with Cynar, corrected with maple cream liqueur, or topped with Angostura whipped cream, all from 8am. It's a coffee shop and daytime cocktail bar in Winooski, the former mill town next door to Burlington, where the crafty set debates linocut workshops in the sunny windows while big dreamers at the bar puzzle over how to dome the town rotary. When talks stall, the attached bev mart stocks 24-ounce Busch Ice and cigarettes.

The views of Mission Bay and the Giants' ballpark hit you before the menu does, which is saying something at this fine dining Italian in Mission Rock. The room leans into sun-faded Tuscan coastal tones, warm wood, and low light that flatters everyone. Pasta is the kitchen's clearest argument: hand-rolled pici in slow-cooked garlic and tomato, Dungeness crab orzo cooked risotto-style. Esquire named the martini one of the country's finest, which gives you somewhere to start.

The unmarked door on the second floor of a Japanese restaurant looks exactly like where a broom lives, which is precisely the point. Angel's Share is a speakeasy-style cocktail bar with booth banquettes, bare brick, velvet curtains, and lighting set to confession-booth low. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, and the room feels like it has always known that. Come early, come two, and find the door before someone else needs the mop.

The menu at this natural wine bar is whatever your bartender decides to tell you about, because nothing is written down. That's a feature, not an oversight. Light Years occupies a converted bungalow on Alabama, pouring organic, biodynamic, and low-intervention bottles that Esquire flagged for its Best Bars in America list. Sit at the bar and let whoever's pouring lead; the conversation is kind of the point.

A porch plopped in the driveway and a wall of giant palms make the front door a small scavenger hunt. Inside it's a coffeehouse by day and a cocktail bar by night, all worn midcentury furniture, with laptop people nursing cortados and a short wine list that includes an orange. The food is croissants from elsewhere, and the espresso martini is on the menu, as it legally must be.

The patio seating is made from repurposed toilets and road signs, which tells you everything about the vibe before you've ordered a drink. Double Wide is a Deep Ellum dive bar with a trailer park aesthetic, cheap and stiff pours, and a music venue across the patio hosting bands and DJs on most nights. Wildsam named it one of the 50 most essential bars in America, which somehow feels both surprising and completely correct.

Meadowlark is a cozy cocktail bar in Chicago where the menu is a hardbound book, and it takes its research more seriously than most dissertations. Past editions have covered Midwest birds and the 1893 World's Fair, each drink tied to a landmark with a sepia watercolor beside it. Neighbors, bartenders on their night off, and tourists share the room. It also won the Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award at North America's 50 Best Bars.

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.

Bitters are both the obsession and the inventory at this tiny East Village cocktail bar, which also sells an overwhelming wall of the stuff to take home. A dozen seats, a menu split between house originals and riffs on classics, and a bespoke option built around a Negroni, Manhattan, or Old-Fashioned if you'd rather just tell them what you're feeling. House-made vermouth pours on tap. A James Beard semifinalist, and the kind of place that makes you feel smarter for having gone.

Named for Lucian Freud, this 40-seat wine restaurant and bookshop in Buckhead stocks art and fashion volumes alongside a list serious enough to earn a James Beard semifinalist nod for its beverage program. The seasonal American menu runs to ricotta gnudi and caviar-topped omelets, the kind of food that pairs naturally with whatever the wine director opens next. Shelves full of books for sale make lingering feel practically obligatory.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The tiger-print carpet and floor-to-ceiling scarlet bookshelves are a clue: this was once a city hall library, and the Parisian team behind Candelaria and Le Mary Celeste had the good sense not to gut it. Now it's a French cocktail bar leaning heavily on vermouths and amaros, the kind of place where the aperitif hour has a way of quietly becoming midnight.

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.

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.

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.

Poison Girl is a dark, narrow Montrose dive on Westheimer where personal space is treated as a rumor. The bourbon list is deep, but plenty of people at the bar are just ordering Lone Star and nodding at it. Everyone eventually drifts out to the backyard patio, where the evening opens up a little. Dress for sweat and spilled beer, and plan on a cheap tab and a bathroom with a past.

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.

This is a seafood restaurant dressed like an Old Hollywood set, with a raw bar and a caviar service whose sturgeon eggs come from fish the chef raised himself. The menu keeps one eye on the Gulf, with redfish, grouper, and a clam chowder that means it. The bar has a Golden Martini from Esquire, so a drink first is only prudent. Expect to dress like someone might photograph you, because someone will.

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.

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.

The take-home price on any bottle you fall for is half off, which tells you the kind of wine bar this is. Tucked into the Arts District, Garagiste is a low-key room built around boutique pours from the less-traveled wine regions, with a list that shifts constantly. Tasting flights let you range around without committing. No garlic butter nearby threatening the palate. A James Beard Outstanding Bar nominee in 2023.

Everything at this Palestinian live-fire restaurant in Navy Yard passes through a roaring open hearth before it reaches the table, and the renovated dining room leaves the kitchen's fire in full view. Michael Rafidi, a James Beard Outstanding Chef winner with a Michelin star, draws on his family's Ramallah roots while working with mid-Atlantic seasons. The tasting menu is the move, though the wood-fired lamb pies and hummus hold their own à la carte.

The beignets come out warm, filled with ricotta, and draped with Benton's ham, and the question of how many is too many has no clean answer. This is Aaron Bludorn's easygoing neighborhood bar and dining room, wrapped in dark wood with a gleaming open kitchen visible from most seats. The menu runs from pasta to half chicken to devil's food cake, all built for sharing. A Michelin Guide selection, and the kind of place that makes a Tuesday feel like a reasonable excuse.

Bardot is a Michael Mina brasserie tucked inside Aria, a windowless black-and-white room where it's always a flattering 8 p.m. and fresh flowers cover every surface. A shellfish cart rolls past, a martini program has its own national press, and at brunch someone sings Shania Twain over the croissants. It's a dressy-casual, mid-to-upper price French spot, and it holds three AAA diamonds.

The menu cites lumberjacks as inspiration, which sounds like a joke until the food arrives smelling of juniper and pickled elderberries. This is a French American neighborhood restaurant on Nicollet, where the chef works a distinctly Upper Midwestern palate, finding fall vegetables worthy of a special occasion without making the room feel like one. It won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant and landed on the New York Times Restaurant List. The pommes dauphine are, regulars will tell you, really just very good Tater Tots.

A Michelin-starred bistro in the Arts District where the steak au poivre and golden frites hold their ground alongside some genuinely inventive plating. The kitchen leans French but isn't reverent about it, which is part of the appeal. The Provence Martini made Esquire's list of the finest in the country, so the bar pulls its weight too. It fills up fast and the open kitchen keeps the room loud and kinetic.

Red brick walls, local art, and wood worn down by decades of good evenings set the tone at John Currence's Southern restaurant and bar on Oxford's courthouse square. The menu turns with the seasons but stays close to the region, running from fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade to the shrimp and grits that regulars treat as non-negotiable. Portions are built for sharing, and the bar earns its own reputation, landing on Wildsam's list of essential American bars.