The Best Places to Drink and Do in the United States

Dino's is an East Nashville dive that has been feeding the after-hours crowd since the 1970s, mostly with gooey cheeseburgers meant to talk a hangover out of existing. You can sit at a diner table in the dim main room or out on the covered patio, and the punk rock restroom is considered part of the visit. The bar pours Coors, Shiner Bock, and mezcal, Campari, even Malort, and the line peaks right after the bars close.

You get in by pressing a paw-shaped doorbell, which sets the tone. Doberman Drawing Room is a cocktail lounge and social club in the Arts District, dressed in antiques, taxidermy, and surreal art, with a central bar dividing the room into separate moody dens. Non-members are welcome; members get the private loft with a juliet balcony. No phones, no photos, charcuterie served inside a hollowed book, and cocktails that are genuinely the point.

The sunken firepit shoots flames over a pool of sky-blue water, which tells you most of what you need to know about the Fireside Lounge. It's a lounge bar at the Peppermill, frozen in an era of plastic plants, purple mood lighting, and couch fabric that looks like stone. Tiki drinks arrive in 64-ounce fishbowls. Bon Jovi videos play overhead. The crowd is hard-drinking and completely unbothered, which is the only correct response.

Hand-carved wooden statues, glowing pufferfish lamps, and tree-trunk chairs that take two people to lift set the tone at this classic tiki bar off Charleston. The drinks are ranked by booziness on a five-skull scale, which is the kind of menu design that tells you everything you need to know. Most people clutching souvenir mugs near the back came here on purpose, on something of a pilgrimage, and they planned the whole trip around it.

This is a narrow natural-wine bar near Downtown Crossing, the sort of place that introduced a lot of Boston to tinned fish and has been quietly smug about it since. The list is long and a little nerdy, but the bartenders will talk you through it without making you feel graded. Half bottles of nearly everything let you change your mind twice. It was a James Beard semifinalist for its wine program, and on Wednesdays there are fancy hot dogs.

Le Loup is a cocktail bar perched above The Optimist, decked out like a submarine, so you can drink a martini and feel mildly nautical about it. The menu devotes a whole section to martinis, and there are towering barstools, cozy booths, shrimp cocktail, and fries that Nashville has opinions about. Bananas foster gets flambéed tableside, which is a nice way to remind everyone the sea is flammable. After 10pm the snacks give way to sandwiches.

A beer-only karaoke bar in a double-wide trailer that stays decorated for Christmas through every month of the year, run by an owner who looks exactly like the name on the door. Expect PBR, Miller Lite, and a seltzer, cash only, with an ATM outside for the optimistic. The karaoke rules are strict: no cussing, smoking, or drinking while you hold the mic. The Infatuation named it one of Nashville's best bars.

Schulman's is a neighborhood dive bar dressed as the finished basement of your friend's cool parents, with stained glass lampshades, a lacquered bar, and leather booths that have seen things. The martinis run twelve dollars, there's a double cheeseburger and a pickle beer, and the backyard is built for smokers holding frozen margaritas. Nashville Scene named it Best New Bar in 2024.

The walls of this pirate-themed tiki bar are hung with portraits of distinguished canine buccaneers, which alone tells you something about the commitment level here. The lore involves a cursed ship, a sea witch, and a crew turned into dogs, and it's fully committed to the bit without letting the theatrics crowd out the drinks. Traditional tiki pours sit alongside inventive originals, and the cocktail menu earns its keep on its own terms.

Muddy Waters and B.B. King both played this no-frills blues bar near Chinatown, which tells you something about the room. Live music runs every night of the week, and between sets the crowd shoots pool and orders pizza to soak up the local craft beer. The seasonal Halloween and Christmas pop-ups have become their own draw, which is a funny fate for a place with that kind of history, but the bar handles both versions of itself with ease.

The handwritten sign taped to the door reads "Ring Buzzer, Pull Door," which sets expectations accordingly. What's inside this Mid City cocktail dive runs against every signal the prefab exterior sends: serious drinks, a warm room, and a neighborhood crowd that has clearly been coming here since the block was still drying out. It's relaxed in the way only a bar that doesn't need to prove itself can manage.

This is a velvet-draped, 1920s-style cocktail parlor, reached by slipping behind the doughnut stand inside Aria's food hall, which is about as speakeasy as a doughnut counter can make you feel. Live jazz fills the room most nights, and the drinks arrive with props: mushroom-shaped glasses on a mossy board, a Manhattan in a cigar box. Dress for a date, and bring someone who won't mind sharing the dry ice.

The wine list runs from skin-contact naturals to premier cru Burgundy, which tells you this Midtown wine bar is not trying to be one thing. It's been around forever, long enough to have shaped Houston's wine culture before anyone here was talking about orange wine. The cheese and charcuterie plate is an honest reason to stay for a second glass. The room is low-key and comfortable, the kind of place regulars treat as a standing appointment.

Eight Row Flint is a whiskey bar in a former mid-century dry cleaner in the Heights, and the back bar is stocked like it's expecting a long siege. The drink menu runs to a small-novella 25 pages, there are big casks of the good stuff, and you can rent a locker for your own bottles if you want to be That Whiskey Person. The patio is huge, the cheeseburger and wings keep the evening honest, and the margaritas get a lot of press.

Grand Prize is a two-story dive where the interior is blacked out so thoroughly that the neon is mostly there to help you read the drink menu. Happy hour offers a "Happy Meal," which is a beer and a shot, and the pool tables are good for losing to a stranger. The kitchen rotates through bar food, birria tacos one week and chili-cheese dogs the next, and the terrace is where you go to confirm the sun still exists.

Lei Low is a tiny tiki bar in the Heights where the grass cloth, palm trees, and tropical tchotchkes do most of the travel planning. The rum selection is deep enough to require a plan, and the Navy Grog and Singapore Sling are on hand for people who like their classics served with a tiny umbrella's worth of conviction. Large-format drinks are built for splitting, which makes this a good place to find out who in your group can share.

Frozen cocktails and build-your-own pizzas under the same roof sounds like a fever dream, but Monkey's Tail makes it work. This neighborhood bar in Fulton keeps things loose and colorful while running a cocktail program weighted heavily toward tequila and mezcal. The frozen drinks are a genuine draw, and the food menu swings wide enough, tacos, burgers, aguachiles, that no one in the group goes home grumpy.

The bathrooms are papered in decoupaged vintage Playboys, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Midtown dive bar. Named after a Roky Erickson song, Two Headed Dog leans hard into its free-spirited brief, with a colorful patio and a rotating cocktail menu that punches well above the surroundings. The frozen drinks are a particular draw for anyone who finds serious cocktail bars a little exhausting.

Voodoo Queen Daiquiri Dive in the East End is a dive bar that also contains an arcade, a po'boy counter, and eight frozen drink machines churning like a laundromat for neon. Pool and air hockey keep the hands busy, and the menu runs to fried shrimp, hush puppies, and tater tots under roast beef. Come in jeans, split a flaming tiki boat with whoever you trust most, and expect to leave with a very green tongue.

A shack-shaped neighborhood bar that has been selling cold drinks since it sold actual ice, back when that was a business. Lone Stars flow at red picnic tables under open sky, dogs wander in, and a taco truck across the street handles food duties. Houston has a whole category named after places like this, and Houstonians will tell you, with some feeling, that the others are impostors.

A small bridge over a little moat takes you from a residential stretch of Northeast Broadway into what is, with commitment, a full tiki immersion. Woven palm walls, bamboo rafters, illuminated pufferfish, and three hand-carved tiki gods loom over the sunken bar while intermittent thunder rumbles and wisps of volcano smoke drift through. The rum-based cocktails are the actual point of the exercise, and nobody here seems to mind.

The name lies a little: Teardrop is a square room with painted concrete walls, and the curve comes from the island bar itself, which bends the whole space into something warmer than the bones suggest. It's a serious cocktail lounge, the kind where the menu moves between classics, originals, and borrowed recipes from people who've thought hard about this stuff. Classic films flicker overhead, the lighting is kind, and a quiet Monday still feels like somewhere worth being.

The owner is often spotted bussing tables or running food on a busy night, which sets the tone for this Lower Greenville bar and American kitchen that manages to feel like it's been around forever. Cozy enough for a quiet date, loose enough for drinks with friends, it occupies that useful middle ground between neighborhood bar and proper dinner spot. An English chef handles the kitchen, keeping things grounded rather than showy.

Hungarian comfort food in a Deep Ellum cocktail bar is a combination nobody asked for and nobody wants to question. Armoury D.E. runs a casual, lived-in room where the drinks are serious, the kitchen leans into paprika-forward territory, and there's usually a free live show happening out back. The burger of the week has a following. Dallas Observer named it home to the city's best Bloody Mary and best bar food, which checks out.

The Clint Eastwood velvet artwork made the move from Deep Ellum, and so did the regulars. Black Swan Saloon is a cocktail bar in East Dallas with a moody, kitschy interior that somehow lands as genuinely cozy, the kind of room where dressing up and wearing a vintage rock tee both look right. House cocktails and boilermakers anchor the menu, and the frozen martini has become the thing everyone's carrying through the crowd.

A cocktail bar tucked into a genuine old Uptown house, Bowen House leans into the atmosphere without making it a whole thing. The drink menu runs from draft beer and a tidy wine list up to signature cocktails with names like "For Whom the Bell Pepper Tolls," which is exactly the kind of pun that works better than it should. The crowd tends toward the kind of people who like a porch vibe without leaving the city.

Walls of VHS tapes set the tone at this Vietnamese restaurant and bar that's been an East Dallas fixture forever. The '60s lounge vibe makes it feel like a party someone threw and never quite ended. The menu runs eclectic but Vietnamese dishes anchor it, and the espresso martini is made with house-brewed Vietnamese coffee, in limited supply each night. Order the garlic noodles if they have them, and hope quietly that they do.

Shelves of wine bottles line every wall of this small, happily unpretentious wine bar tucked into a strip mall on Indian School. The vibe is couch-and-conversation, the kind of place where you sit down next to strangers and somehow end up closing it down with them. The food menu runs to pimento cheese and Moroccan spiced meatballs, which is a perfectly reasonable way to soak up a second pour. Phoenix New Times named it one of the top 100 bars in the city.

Vinyl spins in a moody room at this Sylvan Thirty cocktail bar that went dark, then came back with a new team and the same instincts. Matcha and Parmesan were already on the menu here before either showed up everywhere else. The current list keeps crowd favorites like the Red Headed Oaxacan alongside new experiments. No reservations now, which suits a place this comfortable with walk-ins pulling up to a well-stocked bar.

The stripper pole is decorative, full stop. That's the first thing to know about this Cedars bar, the second being that management wears suits while you eat a roller-grill hot dog next to a cigarette machine. It's dark and a little flirty, with pool and darts keeping things grounded. The dirty martini, made with fresh-pressed olive juice and an anchovy-stuffed olive, does a lot of heavy lifting for a place that also sells boxed candy.

The house big band at this Bishop Arts bar and music venue plays with enough brass to rattle your drink on the table. Revelers Hall leans hard into 1920s New Orleans, where the mood runs festive and the dancing starts before you've finished your flatbread or charcuterie. It's not a quiet-beer kind of place, and it doesn't pretend to be. D Magazine named it Dallas's top jazz bar in 2024, which tracks.

The tequila and mezcal list at this Deep Ellum bar is long enough to constitute a philosophical commitment. Ruins leans hard into Latin culture, with original artwork on the walls and cocktails that come with actual folklore attached. The Limbo Room out back hosts live music in close quarters. It reads like a dive bar that got serious about agave spirits without losing the plot.

Pendant lights salvaged from a European monastery hang over the bar, which tells you everything about how seriously this place takes atmosphere. An old-school beer bar and pub on Henderson Avenue, The Old Monk pours drafts from around the world alongside a rotating cast of locals, with fish and chips that regulars treat as a birthright. Weekday happy hour runs until seven and has a reputation for extending the evening considerably past anyone's original plan.

Around 700 whiskeys line the shelves at this Exposition Park bar, and the team takes the curation seriously enough that it shows. Dark, warm, and a little seductive inside, Whiskeys sits across from Fair Park in a stretch of Dallas most people drive past without stopping. Flights let you move through the collection systematically, including one that honors Uncle Nearest Green, the man behind Jack Daniel's original recipe.

A tunnel of flowers leads you into a maximalist cocktail bar on the ninth floor of a Dallas hotel, where art deco geometry, a bedazzled Russian doll, and fireplaces compete equally for your attention. The drink menu is just as playful, leaning on pressed mineral water and cold foams. A wraparound rooftop opens up beyond it all, which feels less like a bar patio and more like a bonus level nobody told you about.

The cocktail menu runs past 100 drinks, and some of them arrive as flavored clouds. Barmini is José Andrés's molecular cocktail bar, the mischievous sibling to Minibar next door, where the same spirit of culinary wizardry gets redirected entirely into what's in your glass. Spherified drinks and leather-aged premixes are the house vernacular. A James Beard nominee for Outstanding Bar Program, it's the kind of place where watching the bartender work is half the point.

The Art Deco bones of this Gold Coast lobby bar date back to the Jazz Age, and the cocktail program leans into that: Cuban classics and Caribbean-inflected originals served under ornate ceilings that most bars would kill for. Sparrow calls itself a neighborhood bar, which is technically true, though the neighbors here wear better shoes than most. A named honoree at the Spirited Awards, it draws people in from well outside the Gold Coast.

A lone clothespin near the door is the only sign you're in the right place. This 22-seat speakeasy inside Commonwealth runs on cryptic reservation clues, a red light for walk-ins, and a ceiling lined with antique doors staring down at you. The cocktail menu here doesn't overlap with what the main bar pours, and the vintage Hollywood portraits on the walls set a mood that takes itself seriously, which the drinks earn the right to match.

A rooftop cocktail bar at the Graduate Hotel where the décor commits hard to the wilderness merit-badge aesthetic, think canteens and compasses, while the outdoor patio delivers one of Seattle's better skyline panoramas. The drinks lean into the camping bit without losing their nerve, and the bacon sandwich is there for anyone who needs anchoring. A crowd that skews collegiate but cleans up well fills the space once the sun starts dropping behind the Olympics.

The menu lists grams of alcohol per cocktail, which is either very responsible or a challenge, depending on your disposition. This intimate Capitol Hill cocktail bar is run by an owner who is, in fact, a licensed physician, and who has spent real time traveling the world to stock one of the more unusual spirits collections in the city. Pours come by the ounce or flight, and cocktails run classic, contemporary, or bespoke.

The $12 daily daiquiri sets the tone at this Williamsburg rum bar, where the menu runs from a lager-and-rum shot combo to oysters with tepache mignonette. The couple behind it know their way around spirits, one having run the editorial side of Punch, the other having shaped Chicago's beloved tropical bar scene. A basement rum bar called Undercurrent adds another layer for anyone who shows up and doesn't want to leave.

On the 60th floor of Circa, this rooftop lounge opens onto a sweeping outdoor terrace with fire pits and a view that makes the Strip look like a diorama. Inside, red velvet banquettes and illuminated sculptures of Vegas legends set the mood, and 500 custom gold bars frame the entryway like the lobby of an excellent bad decision. Housemade cocktails and large-format drinks handle the rest.

Reserve 101 is a downtown whiskey bar with over a thousand bottles, a number that makes the menu feel less like a list and more like a library with a liquor license. It sits in an early 1900s building near Toyota Center, so the pre-Rockets crowd mingles with people comparing 50-year-old pours. The cocktails are serious too, and it made the Spirited Awards' regional top 10 for U.S. cocktail bars.

The walls at this dim Roosevelt Row cocktail lounge are lined with polaroids of patrons who've shed a little more than their inhibitions, all tasteful enough that you'd call it art if pressed. The drinks from the veteran team change often and lean experimental, which pairs nicely with the dark, slightly conspiratorial atmosphere. Named a Regional Top 10 Honoree at the Spirited Awards, it earns the recognition without trying too hard to.

A coffee shop where you can also get clay under your fingernails, PIP Coffee + Clay pairs a small cafe with a ceramics studio on North 24th Street. Wheel-throwing classes run about two hours, keep group sizes small, and require you to put your phone away, which turns out to be the whole point. Your mug may come out lopsided. That's fine. Grab a coffee or a beer while the creative juices do their thing.

A neighborhood dive bar that fully commits to the bit: vintage furniture with backstories, a cigarette machine, free arcade games, and a jukebox that always has Marty Robbins on deck. The drinks are cold, the Old Style is colder, and the backyard patio with lawn games fills up with the kind of crowd that looks like they've been regulars for years, even if they just discovered it last week.

A chrome Dayton wire wheel serves as the flower pot, and the espresso machine has been custom-painted, and that sets the tone. Xolo is a coffee shop that doubles as a rotating gallery of Chicano and lowrider art, with tuck-and-roll chairs and vintage photography that looks lifted from an East L.A. album. The family next door runs a tattoo shop with the same soul. Pop-ups bring lowriders into the lot and zoot suits through the door.

Portraits of historical drunkards and ne'er-do-wells line the walls of this downtown cocktail bar, which sets the tone pretty efficiently. Long shared tables give the room a public-hall looseness, and the menu swings wide, pairing gin martinis and oysters with po'boys and tropical painkillers. The occasional burlesque night confirms that nobody here is pretending this is a quiet spot for serious reflection.

Tiki bar named after a Dio song, perched above a dive bar on St. Mary's Strip, with rattan furniture and proper mugs but none of the animatronic pageantry the genre has lately embraced. The drinks run from tropical classics to stranger originals, and the whole setup feels more like a cool relative's cluttered attic than a theme park. Which, given the name, is probably the point.

The cocktail menu here tracks Mexico's geography and history the way a graduate thesis might, except the drinks are good enough that you don't feel lectured. This compact Southtown cocktail bar rotates its program in chapters, currently deep in the years before Mexican independence from Spain. Mezcal meets manzanilla and poblano in one glass; spruce tip and tomatillo air appear in another. The minimal room handles both serious contemplation and a fun night out.

Wynwood's answer to Japan's listening bars, Dante's HiFi is built around an analog sound system fed by a music director's vinyl library that runs north of 8,000 records. The cocktail program leans into Japanese whisky highballs made with the kind of precision that would satisfy a Tokyo bartender, alongside house drinks that pull from local flavors. Come for the music as much as the drinks; no one's rushing you out.

Gramps Getaway is a waterfront cocktail bar under the big palapa that used to house Whiskey Joe's, with creaky floorboards that still hold decades of beach sand. Seventies rock plays, the frozen drinks are stronger than they let on, and the Brickell skyline sits across the water. The menu runs from wings to a fried chicken sandwich, and prices stay modest. Eater lists it among Miami's essential cocktail bars.

Bar Roza is a cocktail bar tucked into the alley beside the Arcade, built around aperitifs and bitters rather than the usual whiskey-and-regrets lineup. The menu sorts drinks into categories, including hot-and-cold pairings and ones that make aperitifs and digestifs share custody. Small plates like mortadella focaccia are on hand for pacing yourself, which the creamsicle-tinged pisco drinks will make you appreciate.

Nook is a cocktail bar upstairs at Bow Market, done up like a midcentury sunken living room, the kind your parents would have thrown a very tasteful party in around 1970. There's a fireplace, and the drink list is all original concoctions, some involving coffee-infused rye and tiki bitters in the same glass. It's small and snug, so a couple of friends and a pre-dinner round is the right-sized plan.

A coffee shop where the décor has opinions about where you sit. PHX Cat Cafe is a nonprofit cat lounge in downtown Phoenix where a rotating crew of adoptable cats nap in elevated perches, bat at toys, and occasionally judge you from across the room. The small admission fee buys you time among the felines, decent coffee, and access to events like cat yoga and drag bingo. Over a thousand cats have found homes through the place, which gives the whole thing a satisfying excuse.

A 1982 Piaggio Apé truck imported from Italy parks in the garden and pulls espresso, which tells you most of what you need to know about Pueblo's priorities. This plant shop and coffee stop on Grand Avenue occupies a lush warehouse where indoor tropicals crowd every corner and a vintage gardening library invites you to stay longer than planned. The pottery, succulents, and houseplants are the main event, but the outdoor patio has a way of making an errand feel like an afternoon.

Fifty floors up in the Ritz-Carlton NoMad, this cocktail bar from the José Andrés group takes its name from the Spanish words for cloud and light, which is either poetic or on the nose depending on how far into the menu you are. The views run 270 degrees over the city, and the drinks lean into reimagined classics, from an adonis to a tom collins. Dress accordingly; the room expects it.

The bar is lit by a marquee sign, the wine list describes something as "the purple nurple of pet-nat," and fresh urchin sometimes arrives in the spiny shell with bread and butter. This wainscoted French bistro on Capitol Hill pairs classic technique with Northwest seafood, keeps the natural wine program largely French, and still serves pimento cheese left over from a pop-up era because the menu has a sense of humor about itself.

Cooter Brown's is a sprawling Carrollton beer bar where the tap list runs long enough to need a study guide, and the game is always on somewhere. There's a front bar for cocktails, a back bar for local experimental pours, and an oyster counter for people who ordered beer and then had ideas. Boudin balls and shots keep things moving. It's been the place to gather a group for a very long time.

Taxidermy on the walls, an Art Deco bar, and big comfy booths: Sportsman's Club is a neighborhood tavern that looks like it's been on Western Ave forever but drinks like something that arrived much more recently. The rotating menu leans spirit-forward and serious, even if the vibe emphatically does not. It's the kind of place that made this particular Chicago formula feel worth copying.