The Best Places to Drink and Do in the United States

Some of the cocktails here took days to develop, which you can either find charming or slightly alarming depending on your relationship with drinks. Bar Colette is a reservation-only cocktail bar in Uptown Dallas where reinterpreted classics share the menu with exotic spirits, global wines, and sashimi. A James Beard nominee for Best New Bar, it draws the kind of crowd that dresses like they Googled the place first, which, honestly, they probably did.

The martini here gets shaken with both vodka and gin, which is either a provocation or a correction depending on your religion. Death & Co is a cocktail bar that started in New York and landed in RiNo, bringing the same intricate, unhurried approach to drinking. The room is loungey and deliberate, the kind of place where settling in for three rounds feels like the obvious move rather than a guilty one.

Family portraits of the bartender's Cuban relatives line the upstairs walls, which tells you something about what kind of cocktail bar this is. Ricky Gomez, who came up through New Orleans institutions like Cure and Teardrop Lounge, channels his Miami-meets-NOLA-meets-Havana upbringing into a tropical menu where blenders run loud and the hospitality runs warmer than the drinks.

The Koji Club is a sake bar of about sixteen seats in the Allston Speedway, where the bottle storage doubles as a coat rack and a rice cooker sits behind the bar like it pays rent. The staff will walk the sake-curious through the list, so no one gets quizzed. The snack of choice is a bowl of rice with furikake, miso, and pickles. It's dim and cozy, and it's on the Esquire list of best bars in America.

EZ's is a Heights dive bar that has somehow acquired a very good bottle list, so you can pair a pool game and a chili dog with a pour of champagne, or stay loyal to the beer that calls itself the champagne of beers. The jukebox swings from George Strait to DJ Screw without apology. It's suspiciously clean for a dive, but give it time, this is Houston.

Anna's is a Marigny dive bar in a former 19th-century bank, which means the cocktails are better than the Gatorade cooler by the pool table would suggest. The jukebox works, the beer-and-shot specials are cheap, and the Tequila Daisy goes down easy on a hot day. Guest chefs rotate through for pop-ups, and upstairs there are DJs, film nights, and a balcony over Royal Street. The James Beard folks named the owner a semifinalist.

The rolling ladders are not decorative. They reach a full twelve feet to access shelves of over 1,500 bottles lining the bare brick walls of this former piano-store stockroom, and the bartenders use them. A thick bound menu catalogs everything by region and spirit type, library-style, because the name is sincere. It's a serious whiskey bar that takes the bit all the way, and the room is dramatic enough that even non-whiskey people tend to stay longer than planned.

Chenin is a tiny wine bar tucked inside The Siren Hotel, pouring natural and biodynamic bottles to a room lit softly enough to forgive anyone's skin-contact experiments. Salty snacks and a mortadella sandwich piled onto focaccia keep the evening going longer than planned. Seats are scarce, so arrive when the doors open. It was a James Beard Award nominee for Best New Bar.

The annual menu at this downtown Phoenix cocktail bar arrives as a lavishly illustrated tome, and the bar takes its ice quality as seriously as its recipes. Ross Simon's self-stated motto is "whimsical as fuck," which coexists happily alongside one of the coldest martinis in the city, served in red-leather booths under tall ceilings. A Spirited Awards Regional Top 10 Honoree, it draws a queue worth joining online before you arrive.

The wall murals were painted by Ludwig Bemelmans, the man behind Madeline, and he never paid rent, trading the art for a year's lodging instead. This Carlyle hotel cocktail bar has been a stronghold of old-money Manhattan for decades, all leather banquettes and low piano notes, the martinis notoriously strong. The crowd runs toward people who have a lot to lose and dress accordingly.

Jeffrey Morgenthaler, one of Portland's bartending legends, helped set up this cocktail bar in the lobby of the Kex Hotel as an unabashed love letter to the Pacific Northwest. The space feels like a well-appointed living room, and the menu lists alcohol percentages alongside each drink, which sounds nerdy until you're grateful for it. The range runs from zero-proof options to a 39% Old Fashioned over a single oversized ice cube.

Rice Vice is the taproom for Proper Sake, a casual sake bar where the menu describes each pour in flavor notes so specific they border on a confession ("bubblegum funk" is a real category here). Order the citrusy nigori if you're new, or something earthier if you're not. Food means snacks, with the occasional pop-up out front. Esquire put it on its best bars in America list, and sake fans fill the room.

Vintage mirrors, cherry wood, and brass gas chandeliers give this Downtown Brooklyn steakhouse an amber glow that makes every Tuesday feel like an occasion. The kitchen draws on the legacy of Edna Lewis, who ran it in the late eighties, so fried chicken and crab cakes share the menu with dry-aged prime beef. Dessert gets taken seriously, which a baked Alaska deserves. It has a spot on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

Calvin Eng's Cantonese restaurant and bar sits on a nondescript east Williamsburg corner, close enough to the BQE that you'll feel the trucks. Inside, it reads like a retro Hong Kong diner, but the kitchen runs modern interpretations of regional Cantonese food, and the MSG Martini earned a spot on Esquire's national list. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, and the James Beard Foundation named Eng an Emerging Chef nominee.

Dark wood paneling, deep leather chairs, and a fireplace that makes every barstool feel like the reading room of someone you'd like to know: The Manor Bar is a cocktail bar inside Rosewood Miramar Beach, and it leans hard into a literary conceit, pulling drink ideas from novels, lyrics, and screenplays. The result is exactly as charming as it sounds and only slightly precious. A Spirited Awards Top 10 nominee for Best U.S. Hotel Bar.

The British steakhouse import near Gramercy that made New York carnivores feel slightly underdressed. The room leans into a warm, vintage-century-club atmosphere, and the menu runs from serious cuts to the kind of British comfort food that sneaks up on you. The bar program is no afterthought, landing a regional Spirited Award and a James Beard semifinalist nod for beverages. A New York Times Critic's Pick, and reliably easier to love than the places that take themselves more seriously.

A subterranean New England seafood joint in the East Village where the menu runs heavily toward the ocean and the wine list follows suit, mostly whites chosen to keep pace with it. The New York Times named it among the city's best new restaurants, and the sommelier took a Next Wave Award. The celery root float has become something of a minor cult object, which tells you something about the kitchen's sense of humor.

The cocktail menu changes every time the gallery does, which tells you most of what you need to know about Papercut. It's a minimalist East Austin cocktail bar where the drinks are keyed to whatever paintings are currently on the walls, so ordering becomes a little like picking a favorite piece. A back bar called Konbini serves Mexican-Japanese sushi when you need something to eat. The team came up from San Francisco, and the room feels it.

The mirrored back bar, lit from behind like a stage set, makes the priorities clear before you even sit down. Midnight Rambler is a subterranean cocktail lounge under the Joule Hotel, all art deco bones and low light, with a soundtrack chosen as carefully as the drinks. The cocktail program leans neo-classic, and the bartenders are the kind who can track down whatever obscure thing you're about to describe to them.

Every cocktail on the menu comes in a spirited or spirit-free version, which sounds like a gimmick until you're sipping something smoky and elaborate at midnight with nothing to dread by morning. This plush cocktail lounge inside the Dubbel Dutch Hotel leans into big ice, smoked drinks, and deadpan drink names, "garnished with disaster" being an actual garnish note. A James Beard nominee for Best New Bar in 2025.

This is a bowling alley that got turned into a cocktail bar, which means the lanes, pin setters, and ball returns all stayed, and you can still keep score by hand. The green walls came from the one patch of paint nobody touched, and a skylight now floods the room above a curved mahogany rail. The menu is frozen White Russians and 80s throwbacks, and North America's 50 Best Bars gave it the Bareksten Best Bar Design Award.

A former church in Downtown LA, now a contemporary restaurant with an open ceiling that lets the room breathe and the people-watching practically do itself. The crowd comes for small plates and cocktails at the two circular bars or settles into the sofa-stuffed lounge like they own the place. The menu roams globally, though the kitchen keeps one foot planted in the familiar. Loud, beautiful, and a little theatrical.

The chefs live upstairs, which explains why this Craftsman-on-5th Avenue bistro feels less like a restaurant and more like a very good dinner party you somehow got invited to. The cooking leans Mediterranean with a California coast accent, prix fixe, and a Michelin star to its name. The canelés alone have sparked quiet obsession among regulars. A James Beard nominee, and the kind of place Carmel somehow earned.

Old movies flicker on the back wall while a dozen taps keep the noise level honest in this sprawling Mission dive bar. The high-ceilinged room is hung with oversized art and loud enough that conversation is more of a suggestion. Duck through to The Hideout in back and the whole register shifts: a quieter, more considered cocktail bar hiding inside the chaos. Esquire put it on their Best Bars in America list, and the two rooms together explain why.

The dirty pasta water martini has its own Esquire listing, which tells you something about how Fiorella operates. This South Philly pasta spot, a Michelin Bib Gourmand, runs a short, handmade menu out of what used to be a three-generation butcher shop. Marc Vetri's name is on it, the room is small, and the cacio e pepe is the kind that makes you stop talking mid-sentence.

Pisco is doing serious work here, with Esquire naming the pisco martini among the best in the country. La Royal is a handsome Peruvian restaurant and bar in Cambridge where the menu wanders across the full breadth of Peruvian cooking, including Chifa, the country's Cantonese-inflected tradition. Ceviches are sharp and citrus-forward, and the room has a genuine going-out energy. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant.

Sapphire velvet banquettes and jacketed servers signal exactly what this is: a fine dining room where Angie Mar fuses classic French technique with her Chinese heritage in a Greenwich Village townhouse that glitters like a jewel box. The cooking leans rich and saucy, the way haute French is supposed to, and a tasting menu is available for those who want the full ceremony. James Beard semifinalist, 2026.

The name comes from South Korea's first carrier rocket, which tells you something about the ambitions in the room. Naro is a fine dining Korean restaurant in Rockefeller Center from the team behind Atomix, and where that room chases reinvention, this one returns to classics. The New York Times gave it three stars. Order the Dongji Martini, which made Esquire's list of the best martinis in the country, and let the evening unfold slowly.

A five-course prix fixe of modern Korean cooking in a sleek Flatiron room where the staff outnumbers the guests by a comfortable margin. The chef takes a restrained approach to bold flavors, which sounds like a contradiction until you're eating it. The cocktail program is sharp enough to earn its own following. Michelin awarded it a star, and the James Beard Foundation named the chef a 2025 semifinalist for Best Chef: New York State.

Charleston's Lowcountry pantry filtered through a Mediterranean lens, The Grocery is a neighborhood restaurant where seasonal produce and local seafood share the menu in ways that feel natural rather than calculated. Fried oysters with deviled egg sauce have been here since day one, which tells you something about the kitchen's instincts. The room runs warm and unhurried, the kind of place locals treat like a standing reservation they never made.

A two-story room of wood, stone, and skylights on the Fillmore, this California-meets-Nordic restaurant is built around sharing plates bold enough to stop conversations mid-sentence. The Liberty Farms duck, arriving with a mountain of peanut fried rice, tends to get a round of applause from neighboring tables. The Progress holds a Michelin star and a James Beard nomination, and the martini has its own press clippings.

The Elysian Bar is a cocktail bar in the Marigny, tucked inside a converted church-turned-hotel, where the atrium bar is so relentlessly yellow it feels like a secret study belonging to a pipe-smoking baron. Cajun and Creole small plates, like focaccia with honey butter, keep company with a Hibiscus 75. It's elegant without being stiff, and it made Food & Wine's list of top hotel bars in the country.

You will walk past it. That's by design. Apothecary is a dark, hushed cocktail lounge on Greenville where the seasonal menu gets a full thematic overhaul each year and bartenders can narrate the origin story of every pour from memory. The team spends months developing each recipe, and it shows. A James Beard Outstanding Bar Semifinalist, it draws the kind of crowd that actually reads the menu before ordering.

Tucked next to chef Johnny Curiel's flagship, this agave bar doubles as a serious kitchen, and the two halves push each other into strange, good territory. The mezcal list is long and thoughtful, the cocktails inventive, and the food pulls from Mexico City's restless energy with Japanese and other detours woven in. A Michelin star and a New York Times nod followed quickly. Plan around the bar counter if you can.

Paul Carmichael grew up in Barbados, and Kabawa is his argument that Caribbean cooking belongs in any room it wants. A prix-fixe fine dining restaurant on Extra Place, it seats you at a horseshoe counter in a dark green room with mosaic tilework and a playlist sourced partly from Carmichael's cousin back home. The New York Times named it the top restaurant in New York City, and the cocktail bar next door is his too, for nights when the goat patty feels like the right move.

A Maxfield Parrish mural of Old King Cole anchors this small, high-ceilinged hotel cocktail bar inside the St. Regis, and it's been staring down the room since the Golden Age of illustration. The bar's other claim to history is the Bloody Mary, which Fernand Petiot is said to have perfected here. The menu still leans into that, which is either heritage or a hint. Either way, the room is beautiful and the drinks are stiff.

Evening Bar is a hotel cocktail bar tucked off Parker's Alley, and you find the door by looking for the one with eyes painted on it, which feels like being watched by your own bad decisions. Inside it's small and amber-lit, with a short menu of cocktails, beer, and wine, plus a bell-pepper tequila drink and a few zero-proof options. Food & Wine put it on a 2025 list of the top hotel bars in the US.

Two bars for the price of one obsession: an energetic street-level cantina with patio and a reservation-only basement room for quieter, deeper agave rabbit-holing. A food truck parks outside when hunger arrives. The agave selection runs wide enough that the bartenders will happily guide you in, and the cocktails, like a mezcal-and-pistachio-milk situation, suggest this is not your average tequila shelf.

Jeff "Beachbum" Berry wrote the books that revived tiki culture, and then he went and opened a bar. Latitude 29 sits inside a French Quarter hotel, all mid-century lines and lauhala matting, with a chunky oak bar backed by a tiki map of the world. It leans sophisticated rather than plastic-hula-girl, and the rum and fruit cocktails are the serious kind, made by people who know exactly what they're doing.

You find this tiki bar by following strangers down a narrow alley off Clark Street, which is either a great sign or a terrible one depending on your instincts. A staircase descends under a wall of skulls into a big, dim basement decked out in modern tiki grandeur. The drinks are serious and the room knows it. Difford's Guide gives it five stars, and the wait on weekends is its own kind of endorsement.

Cocktail bar in Oakland's uptown neighborhood, Viridian takes its interior cues from Hong Kong cinema and 90s album covers, which sounds like a mood board disaster but lands as something genuinely electric. The bar director comes from Lazy Bear, and the cocktails lean savory and seasonal with a pull toward Asian flavors. A Top 10 Nominee for a Spirited Award and a 50 Discovery listing round out a résumé that the room feels like it earned.

The horseshoe bar juts into a low-ceilinged room lit by fairy lights, which tells you most of what you need to know before the first drink arrives. This is a cocktail bar with serious craft credentials and a named spot on Difford's Guide, but it wears that lightly. Off-duty bartenders from around Portland fill the stools, which is either the best endorsement or a sign you'll have to work harder to get the bartender's attention.

Dark wood, bare concrete, and blinds angled just enough to keep the early evening gloom intact: The Corner is a cocktail bar that dresses like it has nothing to prove. The beer list is deep, the liquor selection is serious, and the cocktails hold their own without any fuss. A few tables spill onto the sidewalk for watching a street that, frankly, isn't doing much. That turns out to be exactly the point.

Pasta and vegetables carry most of the weight here, at this bright, sun-flooded Italian restaurant in Logan Square that holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The house-made pappardelle and rigatoni keep regulars coming back, but the onion dip with house-made ruffles has become a thing people talk about. A bakery tucked in the back means the pastry situation at the end of a meal is genuinely hard to navigate. The bar program turns heads too, a James Beard semifinalist for hospitality.

The name is a nod to a Prohibition-era collective that disguised speakeasy maps as temperance posters, which tells you exactly the kind of commitment to the bit you're walking into. Death & Co is a proper cocktail bar on a quiet East Village block, dark and close and serious about what's in your glass. The crowd leans dressed-up without being showy, and the bartenders talk about spirits the way sommeliers talk about Burgundy.