The Best Places to Drink in the United States

The Druid is an Irish pub in Inman Square, the kind where the bartender's accent comes standard and the Guinness gets poured with the patience of someone who has seen impatient people. Live music turns up often, and it sometimes becomes an impromptu session of fiddles and bodhrán drums in which several generations of strangers simply know the same songs. Expect pub prices, wool sweaters, and a table you will not want to leave.

You get in through Crust Pizzeria next door or a utility door out back, which is exactly the kind of entrance a plush Scottsdale speakeasy deserves. Inside, the cocktail list runs from an 1870s Martinez and the hard-to-find Clover Club to moody modern signatures built around bourbon, amaro, and pistachio orgeat. It's part of a small family of animal-named bars, and the Goose is the one that makes you forget you're in a strip mall.

You reach this tiki bar through a freezer door inside another tiki bar, which is a lot of commitment to the bit before anyone has ordered. The room is small and moody, with a vintage hi-fi spinning vinyl and a sugarcane-focused rum menu that includes a cocktail served in a pink elephant. Eater put it on its list of Houston's best new cocktail bars. Dress for a date, or at least a nice shirt.

The Royce is a wine bar and bottle shop near Grand Circus Park, where walnut shelving, globe lights, and library ladders make buying a bottle feel faintly like checking out a book. A 12-seat bar anchors the first floor, with cured meats and cheeses to keep the pours company. Over 300 bottles are for sale, plenty by the glass, and classes are on offer for anyone who'd rather understand the list than guess at it.

Candlelight, tchotchkes everywhere, and a cocktail menu that rotates quarterly and takes no obvious shortcuts, The Sitting Room is a cocktail bar in Queen Anne that commits fully to the bit. The drinks lean elaborate, banana-infused tequila or coconut-washed calvados kind of elaborate, and the low- and no-ABV options get the same treatment. The staff keep things chatty rather than precious, which helps when you're genuinely unsure what horchata foam is doing in your glass.

The Skip is a cocktail bar in the Belt alleyway, where the walls open up in summer and the frozen drinks come out to meet the breeze. Winter closes the patio and swaps in tiki-style cocktails and holiday specials built on nostalgia. Matty Matheson designed the menu, though anyone wanting a proper sit-down meal gets pointed to the bigger sibling, Standby, a few feet away. Expect downtown energy and a festival mood in any season.

Trina's is a pinup-flavored Somerville dive where the corners are dark, the beer runs from local IPAs to buckets of High Life Ponies, and the staff has been pouring so long they're basically load-bearing. Bartenders from other bars turn up for the Monday industry brunch, which is the closest thing to a seal of approval a bar can get. There's mac and cheese with a buttery Ritz crust and a mango margarita with a BBQ-spiced rim.

Disco balls overhead and frozen tiki drinks on the menu: Navy Yard's 40-seat cocktail bar came out of a wine bar conversion and has been making noise ever since. The team behind it includes alumni of Silver Lyan, and the house Sazerac riffs on an everything bagel with sesame aquavit and chive gomme, which sounds like a dare and sells out anyway. A neighborhood crowd fills the small room fast on weeknights.

Underdogs Tres is a casual Mexican spot in the Inner Sunset that moonlights as a sports bar, which explains why the margaritas keep arriving for people hoarse from yelling at a television. The menu sticks to tacos, burritos, and quesadillas, with one standout: a crispy tortilla tucked inside a soft one, buried in guacamole. Come in whatever you wore to work, and maybe bring a throat lozenge.

Uptown Sporting Club is a sports bar with a giant LED wall and a cocktail list that never got the memo about sports bars. The Caprese Martini runs on tomato-infused vodka, and the brûléed pineapple in the Out of Office suggests someone in the back owns a blowtorch for reasons beyond the game. Wagyu smashburgers and Korean fried chicken cover the food, and DJs take over once the final whistle blows.

Valley Tavern is a neighborhood sports bar in Noe Valley with a back patio split into tiers, each with its own picnic table and TV, so every group gets the feel of a private box. When San Francisco fog ends the outdoor plan, the freshly updated interior has U-shaped booths angled toward big screens, which makes watching a game feel a bit like sitting in a very casual theater. It's on the Infatuation's list of sports bars.

The windows project a fake thunderstorm over the Eiffel Tower, which tells you everything about the vibe here. This French-ish cocktail lounge at Paris Las Vegas leans hard into gothic Baroque camp, all purple booths and tiered birdcages of figs and cheese, with lychee martinis keeping the Housewives faithful cheerful through the manufactured lightning. It's Lisa Vanderpump's name on the door, and no one inside is pretending otherwise.

Xolo is a Mexico City-inspired cocktail bar on lower Westheimer where the drinks arrive with a chemistry-class résumé: house infusions, clarified everything, a Negroni built around nixtamalized corn. There's a butter-pecan carajillo, a taco topped with caviar, and speakers custom-built for the room, which is how you know someone cared about the bass. Expect cocktail prices and good shoes.

Yancy's is an Inner Sunset sports bar that looks like an antiques fair and a pool hall had a child, minus the pool table. What you get instead is a row of well-lit dart lanes, a wall of TVs, and stained glass lamps doing their best against the faded carpet and a patina of dust. Chips in the corner are the whole kitchen, and the drinks are cheap and strong enough that the decor starts to look intentional.

The cocktail list pulls from the shelves around you, which tells you exactly what kind of place this is: part upscale liquor store, part proper bar, and committed to being both at once. Depending on which Phoenix-area location you land in, the extras might include a golf simulator, pinball, a pizzeria, or a cigar lounge. The drinks run from spritzes to stirred classics, and the bottles for sale are genuinely worth browsing.

Cactus Music curates the listening experience here, which tells you something about the clientele Hotel Saint Augustine is after. This hotel lounge sits across from the Menil campus and spills across three rooms of haute-design chairs and low couches, feeling more like someone's very tasteful living room than a hotel bar. The cocktail list is concise, the kitchen runs through the Bludorn team, and Montrose neighbors have adopted it accordingly.

Each cocktail on the menu is credited to the specific bartender who created it, which is either a charming act of transparency or a very public performance review. This neighborhood cocktail bar and casual kitchen in the Heights has a wraparound patio that fills with locals who treat it like a living room. The team behind Anvil runs the place, so the drinks are taken seriously even when the vibe stays loose.

Taxidermy, graffitied walls, mannequins, shelves of old shoes, and a trippy dome with bean bag chairs on the second floor: Notsuoh is less a dive bar and more a three-story cabinet of curiosities that also happens to serve drinks. The art is strange, the vibe is stranger, and the whole place reads like a dare Houston issues to anyone who thinks Austin has a monopoly on weird. An old-school Main Street institution that earns every square foot.

Every book on the shelves, and even pressed under the glass bar top, is about wine. The Library is a wine bar tucked into Spring Branch, where the staff knows their Jura from their Savoie and a "Head Librarian's Preferred Drinking List" exists for anyone who needs a nudge toward a bottle. The selection leans toward esoteric and cult producers, so this is less "Cabernet for the table" and more a place where the menu rewards curiosity.

A giant neon sign reading "Death is coming. Eat trash, be free." sets the tone at this raccoon-themed cocktail bar in Houston. The murals and paintings lean fully into the bit, and the drinks follow suit, running to things like a pho-inspired martini built on rye with Thai chile and star anise. The kitchen stays open until 2am, which is exactly when you need churros and birria ramen the most.

The last unmarked door at the end of a long basement corridor, no bell, no sign, just turn the handle. This is a cocktail bar tucked beneath a Nordic restaurant on Great Jones Street, sharing a kitchen with the dining room upstairs. The room reads as intentionally low-key, the kind of place where knowing how to find it is half the point, and the other half is that you actually got in.

Five tiers of spirits line the back bar at Beaker and Grey, a cocktail bar in Wynwood-adjacent Midtown that pulls a crowd comfortable in nice sneakers. Uplighting catches the brickwork and warm bulbs keep everything buzzy without tipping into lounge-bar gloom. The small lounge beyond the bar has floor-to-ceiling windows that feel a touch showroom, but nobody seems to mind once drinks arrive.

The carved oak mantle behind the bar holds more bottles than most people have seen in one place, which tells you what kind of bar Blackbird is before anyone says a word. It's a long, narrow neighborhood drinking spot in the Castro, with wood-planked walls, blood-red banquettes, local art for sale overhead, and a pool table tucked behind wrought iron at the far end. Serious spirits list, no pretense.

You reach Caña by walking through a parking garage in the base of a historic Petroleum Building until a podium appears, which is the kind entrance policy that filters out the uncommitted. Inside, a corridor lined with rum bottles leads to a wood-panelled room with leather banquettes and a ribbed concrete ceiling. It's a rum cocktail bar that takes the spirit seriously, and the dim lamplight makes everyone look like they have good taste.

Redwood paneling climbs to a vaulted ceiling lit by stained glass skylights, and a sign on the wall politely warns guests to watch their language. Huber's is a bar that has been around forever, and it shows in the best possible way, with tableside Flaming Spanish Coffees set ablaze by bartenders who have clearly done this before. Old Portland money and curious newcomers share the room, and nobody seems to check their phone.

You book by text, and they text back; no app, no OpenTable, just your name and a party size to a Seattle number you'd better save correctly. Knee High is a tiny, reservation-only speakeasy-style cocktail bar tucked away on Olive Way, the kind of place where finding the door is already part of the evening. Late-night slots open up if you're bold enough to text after ten.

Corrugated iron ceiling, pressed tin bar front, mustard walls: Little Branch looks like a speakeasy that forgot to close. This Greenwich Village cocktail bar carries the DNA of Milk & Honey, the late Sasha Petraske's legendary first act, which means classically made drinks taken seriously and a room that rewards staying a while. It's discreet enough to feel like a find, but open to anyone who can find the door.

A former antique shop on 33rd Street that now deals in classically built cocktails, organized on the menu by category the way a serious bar should be. This is a two-floor cocktail bar from the late Sasha Petraske's lineage, sibling to Little Branch, with communal high tables downstairs where live jazz pulls in the neighbors, and a looser, loungier room upstairs when you need to actually hear yourself think.

A basement cocktail bar on Rivington, reached by a utilitarian staircase and lit just enough to read the menu, which is worth reading because it's full of jokes. Booth seating, exposed brick, and a short row of spirits on the back bar keep things grounded for a room connected to Death & Co. The drinks are serious; the room refuses to be.

A French spirits lounge on Melrose where the cocktail menu is divided into categories named Parfum and Potion, which tells you immediately what kind of evening they have in mind. The team also runs La Descarga and Harvard & Stone, so the theatrics are deliberate. Low lighting, a Parisian lounge sensibility, and a crowd that dressed for it. The menu leans heavily on calvados, armagnac, and eau de vie, which is either your thing or a prompt to try something new.

The ceiling is woven from the staves of 300 bourbon barrels, which tells you everything about where Rickhouse's priorities lie. This whiskey bar in the Financial District is styled as an old-school saloon, with floor-to-ceiling shelves of bottles behind the counter and a library ladder to reach the top shelf. A back room holds a second bar and a hayloft gallery for looking down, literally, on everyone else.

The cocktail menu runs 32 pages and opens with a table of contents, which tells you everything about how seriously this hotel bar takes its work. Originals are sorted by style; classics are filed by decade. The room holds up in daylight just as well as it does after dark, which isn't something most hotel bars can say without lying. Bring someone who likes to read before they order.

A New Orleans cocktail bar where the inside has been dressed up to look like an outdoor street scene, the way a film studio backlot would imagine the French Quarter. Barrel-aged cocktails are the house move, and the 1920s theme is committed enough that someone looked up the etymology of sassafras before naming the place. The crowd tends toward people who wanted something more atmospheric than a standard Hollywood dive.

A blood bank refrigerator and a roulette wheel anchor the bar at this speakeasy-themed cocktail bar in Capitol Hill, where vested bartenders work in front of shelves stacked with bitters and books. The high ceilings and striped wallpaper lean hard into the 1920s bit, and the room delivers on atmosphere even when the service runs a little transactional. Good for a serious drink in a room that at least committed to the costume.

Leopard-print stage, tartan wallpaper, red leather booths, and a baby grand with a jazz band squeezed in, all on a five-lane highway in Shorecrest. The Anderson is a craft cocktail bar that could not care less about beach-bar minimalism. One room goes full black on black; the other commits to New York kitsch so hard it loops back around to charming. The drinks, not the decor, tend to be the reason people come back.

The ground floor runs dark wood and dim light, with a long bar and clandestine booths; upstairs it's velvet couches and armchairs, like someone's very well-stocked living room. This Lincoln Avenue cocktail bar leans into an old-time saloon feel without making it a costume, pulling sixty-plus classics-leaning drinks organized by spirit and style. The Harry Johnson-style etchings on the menu are either charming or insufferable, depending on your mood.

The scallop-shaped pool behind this Art Deco cocktail bar is what most guests are actually aiming for, which makes the bar itself a pleasantly unhurried place to land. Andre Balazs owns the Raleigh Hotel around it, which explains the crowd that looks like it wandered off a casting call. Order something with gin, find a seat, and let the Collins Avenue faithful do their thing.