The Best Places to Drink and Stay in the United States

A daisy painted on the facade of what looks like a converted lobby is all the sign you get, so consider this your heads-up. Daisy Lounge is a speakeasy tucked into a Circle C Ranch strip mall, far from the usual Downtown clusters, with built-in bookshelves, armchairs, and a multi-floor floral interior that reads more cozy library than hidden bar. The cocktail menu runs classics alongside house originals. Book ahead.

A 15-seat marble-counter cocktail bar in Edmonds where the only food on the menu is a brie and baguette platter, which turns out to be exactly what you wanted with your French 75. Textbook coupe drinks are the point: aviations, corpse revivers, the occasional off-menu jungle bird. On a Friday it's a sardine-tin singalong; on a slow Monday the counter still fills fast. The kind of neighborhood bar people immediately claim as their own.

Dark Arts is a cocktail lounge hidden behind the fireplace at Grey Witch, which means you enter by walking past some LED flames like a very polite arsonist. Inside is a hunting lodge gone gothic, with animal bones, tarot art, and dried wildflowers. The drinks lean on warming spices and herbs, and there's a deep tobacco list. It's only open a few nights a week, so check Instagram before you go knocking on hearths.

A preloaded card and a WineStation let you pour your own way through California vineyards at this wine bar and retail shop in Roswell. The self-service setup covers up to 24 samples, ranging from everyday bottles to collector-tier Napa, so the pace is entirely yours. Sommeliers and producers swing through for ticketed events, and the retail shelves go home with you after. Ideal for the crowd that finds a server hovering a little exhausting.

Dimmi Dimmi is a corner Italian spot in Lincoln Park that took over a three-decade neighborhood fixture and somehow kept the regulars from rioting. The tavern-style pizzas have crackly edges and come cut in squares, and the handmade pastas hold their own beside them. It's a sit-down dinner, so book ahead, or try your luck at a weekday lunch, which is when the people who know things tend to walk in.

Flo & Santos is a South Loop pub that can't pick a lane, so it picked three: tavern-style thin-crust pizza, Polish comfort food, and a beer garden with daily specials. Order the pie with kielbasa and sauerkraut and a pierogi sampler on the side, and your cardiologist will lose track of the subplots. Casual, reasonably priced, and equally happy to see you in a work shirt or a ballgame jersey.

This Edgewater pizza shop does deep-dish on a sourdough crust that borrows from a Greek bread called lagana, then turns around and makes cracker-thin tavern pies from the same dough. There's barely any seating and the oven is small, so most people order online and take it home, where an uncut pizza stays crunchy. Eater has put it on its lists for deep-dish, thin-crust, and best pizza overall.

The password comes from their social media, which is either charmingly old-fashioned or exactly what a speakeasy is now. Either way, the third-floor of one of Orlando's oldest buildings is a genuinely dim, close-quarters cocktail bar where the drinks are stiff and the couples are very comfortable with each other. A small outdoor ledge offers escape when the room gets cozy. Dress the part and look like you belong.

Getting in means walking through a brightly lit sundry shop that sells newspapers and cherry blossom Kit Kats, then pushing a bookcase that leans inward to reveal a dim cocktail bar. Red lanterns glow overhead, neon tigers face off above leather booths, and the Japanese whiskey list rewards lingering. It sits in the Resorts World food hall, so expect conventioneers feeling very clever.

A neon sign reading "Good Vibes Only" hangs on the living green wall, which tells you something about the room and something about yourself for liking it anyway. This swanky sushi bar on East Colonial does Japanese with Pan-Asian riffs, and the marble bar stays busy most nights. The omakase is where the kitchen gets interesting. A James Beard nominee two years running, and a Michelin Selected pick.

Biscuits and focaccia hold the fort until afternoon, when this Midtown spot near Piedmont Park quietly pivots into a wine bar. The patio overlooking 12th Street is the reason most people linger, especially with a bottle or a vermouth cocktail and something from the tinned fish and cheese spread. It's a shape-shifting kind of place, which means the crowd skews toward people who know exactly what they're doing.

Sofa cushions, dangling bulbs, and a record player set the tone at this Georgeorgetown natural wine bar, where the bottles lining the walls are all for sale and priced like someone actually wants you to drink them. The pours run funky, orange, unfiltered, and nothing near a Columbia Valley pinot, and the staff will talk you through all of it with genuine enthusiasm. Loretta's next door does burgers; the two go together better than you'd expect.

Cocktail names like "Stay the Fuck Outta Malibu" tell you more about the room than any décor description could. This cocktail bar shares a wall with Will's Pub and the self-described metal tiki bar next door, and the crowd arrives ready to argue about politics between rounds of rotating seasonal drinks. The rooms are oddly shaped and a little dingy, with French Provincial details that got lost along the way, which somehow makes the whole thing work.

The bar at London Chop House sits underground in the Financial District, dimly lit enough that you'll swear it's still 1985 and someone's about to close a deal on a handshake. It's a proper cocktail bar with martinis, gimlets, and Negronis that nudge the classics sideways, plus a cigar and billiards room attached. Dress like you have an expense account, even if the ghosts of the three-martini lunch are the only ones who do.

The unmarked door is the whole point. Tucked behind the sushi counter at the Venetian, this speakeasy bar keeps a low profile by design, with a full bar, ube espresso martinis, and snacks that skew sharper than the hand rolls out front. Convention-goers grabbing a boxed set to-go have no idea it's back there, which is more or less how the regulars prefer it.

This Pilsen pizza-and-coffee spot wears its owners' Filipino and Mexican roots on the crust, most memorably with longganisa and giardiniera together on a tavern-style pie. The menu includes pan pies and slices, plus coffee drinks from the people behind Side Practice, so you can have breakfast and dinner in one visit. It tends to sell out, which is the polite way of saying go early and bring a plan B.

String lights, happy green plants, and shelves of natural wine with wacky labels set the tone at this Columbia City aperitivo bar and bottle shop. It lives next door to Italian restaurant La Medusa, which means a lot of people wander in for a quick pre-dinner drink and end up staying. The chalkboard runs deep on amari and bitter red spritzes, with prosecco for anyone who prefers their aperitivo without the herbal lecture.

A speakeasy above a pho shop is a concept that earns its own zip code, and Phocific Standard Time delivers on the premise. The Vietnamese coffee martini has become a reason people climb the stairs specifically, but the bar snacks, caramelized crab dip with sesame saltines among them, make lingering easy. Named one of The Infatuation's most fun Seattle bars, it's a cocktail bar that happens to pair very well with whatever you just had downstairs.

Pizz'amici is a tavern-style pizza shop in West Town, where the thin, cracker-crisp crust gets charred on the bottom and cut into squares. It's a nostalgic room with a pepperoni Negroni on the menu, plus tall focaccia and sausage and peppers for the old-school completists. Tables go quickly, so plan ahead or order carryout, which is easier than winning the lottery and only slightly less crowded.

Pizza Matta is a small Logan Square pizzeria from the team behind Giant and Chef's Special, which tells you the people running it have opinions about pie. You build your own 16-inch pizza from red, white, or green sauce, then pile on things like mortadella or caramelized pineapple, no judgment. Seating is limited, so order online and take the whole project home. Eater has it on its list of Chicago's tavern-style thin-crust spots.

They take your phone at the door, lock it away, and mean it. Hidden behind a casual sandwich cafe downtown, Powder Room is an art deco speakeasy where table service and reservations are both required, which sets the tone. Cocktails run from light and herbal to firmly stirred, and the menu is organized by mood rather than spirit. A good place to be present, as they say, whether you planned that or not.

Professor Pizza is a casual West Town pizzeria run by a competitive pizza maker, which means the pies come with a résumé. The tavern-style thin crust cuts to cracker-snap, and the deluxe pepperoni gets hot honey and whipped ricotta, as if the sausage needed a little more going on. The Grand Avenue spot adds two more pie styles, and the pizzas turn up backstage at comedy clubs around town. Eater includes it among Chicago's best tavern-style thin-crust spots.

Secret Pizza is a counter slice shop on the third floor of the Cosmopolitan, reached by a hallway of Rat Pack-era record sleeves that makes the whole thing feel like a bit. The secret got out years ago. Now it's a New York-style slice reheated until it could laminate your fingers, handed over by a quick-moving crew to bleary-eyed clubgoers who eat standing up in a tiny square room or carry it off into the night.

Shelby is a basement cocktail bar in the Financial District, where finding the door is the first round of the evening. Downstairs, the drinks run from a proper espresso martini to a pineapple Averna negroni riff, backed by shared plates like beef tartare and a mushroom dish that politely impersonates escargot. It was a James Beard semifinalist for outstanding bar program. Book on Resy so you only get lost once.

Side Hustle Lounge is a cocktail bar tucked into the Belt Alley, next door to its partner restaurant Mootz Pizza, and it skips the 1920s speakeasy costume for midcentury modern with a retro Vegas streak. The drinks run bright, sometimes electric, with a Detroit lean, like the Detroit Sour's red wine float. Pizza from Mootz arrives alongside, so it's grandpa's basement, if grandpa had a much better bar.

The lighting in this tiki cocktail bar inside Tuffy's Bottle Shop lands somewhere between "jungle shrine" and the Colonel Kurtz scene in Apocalypse Now, which tells you everything about the mood before you've ordered anything. The tiki program goes well past Mai Tais, and the vessels the drinks arrive in are half the show. Two-hour sittings keep things moving; pace yourself on the namesake Suffering Bastards, or your morning will know about it.

Terrazzo floors and a name that promises sunshine it has no intention of delivering, since this cocktail bar on Mills Avenue doesn't open until evening. The vibe skews beachy and unhurried, with tropical, creatively built drinks that have made it a quiet favorite among people who take their rum seriously. It's a sister bar to the Guesthouse, and the two share a sensibility: thoughtful without being fussy.

Rabbits patrol the back patio garden while you eat pizza and drink draft craft beer, which is about as good a setup as Cannon Beach offers. Surfcrest is a convenience store first, with a few aisles of snacks and souvenirs, but walk past the refrigerators and there's a small counter turning out hand-tossed 16-inch pies. Get a table outside if you can, and let the rabbits judge your slice choices.

Fifty wines on self-service taps is the organizing idea here, a wine bar inside Chattahoochee Food Works where you load a card and pour your own 1.5-ounce samples until something clicks. A sommelier runs the place, so the selection is serious without being precious. Bottles on tap are available to take home, and a small food menu of charcuterie boards and paninis gives you enough to keep going without turning it into dinner.

The apothecary shelves and absinthe selection set the mood before you order anything. This cocktail bar in Winter Park has been doing serious, seasonally sourced drinks long enough to have inspired a generation of imitators, and the bartenders here still treat the work like a graduate seminar. Patience is part of the deal; a well-built drink takes as long as it takes. Literate regulars seem to mind the wait least of all.