The Best Places to Drink in the United States

A strip-mall address in Scottsdale is doing its best to throw you off, but step inside Course and it's a full tasting-menu restaurant, white-tablecloth intentions and all. The kitchen runs a rotating seasonal menu, five courses on weeknights and eight on weekends, with a James Beard semifinalist nomination for the chef and another for pastry. The Pinnacle Guide awarded it one Pin for 2026.

A corn broth that quietly dismantles everything you thought about corn broth is a good sign you're in the right place. Elcielo is a Michelin-starred fine dining tasting menu restaurant near Union Market where the Colombian-born chef turns his home country into a deeply personal, course-by-course argument. The chocotherapy dessert has become a thing people mention unprompted. The room runs warm in a way that doesn't feel managed.

A Taiwanese café and cocktail bar tucked into a Star Metals office lobby, which sounds like it shouldn't work until you're sitting on a green velvet couch at noon eating a scallion pancake stuffed with braised beef shank. The menu shifts as the day does, coffee and pastries giving way to oyster omelets and rice bowls, then cocktails after dark. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Bar, it holds a Michelin Guide selection too.

The smoke hits you before the door does, which is about right for a Southern steakhouse built inside a former church in Plaza Midwood. The wood-fired range dominates the room, and prime meats and fish come off the embers in cuts meant for the table to share. The sides hold their own alongside anything off the fire. A Michelin Selected pick, it also draws a cocktail following serious enough to earn an Esquire nod.

A pre-war cellar beneath the Flatiron that once hosted a gambling den is now a cocktail bar with avant-garde techniques and presentations critics have called sippable art. The room has the bones of a genuine speakeasy, and the drinks menu leans into that drama hard, with smoke, science, and ceremony that would feel overwrought somewhere less atmospheric. A good spot for a first date, assuming you want them slightly impressed.

Deborah VanTrece's modern Southern restaurant in a Westside industrial strip is the kind of place where the bar program is as serious as the kitchen, a James Beard semifinalist on both counts. The menu takes the food your grandmother made and runs it somewhere she probably didn't, with collard dip alongside pimento cheese fondue and fried chicken arriving with a collard green roll. The New York Times put it on their Atlanta list, and the room earns the attention.

Enormous screens cover the top half of a high-ceilinged room, with smaller ones tiling every corner so there is no bad angle on the game. Backyard is a sports bar and casual eats spot in north Phoenix, with a long beer list, wings, burgers, and pizza keeping things low-key. There is also a dog park on the premises, because apparently watching the game while your dog runs laps was a need that went unmet for too long.

Willow is a basement cocktail bar tucked beneath Savannah Blue, where a giant faux willow tree rises from the floor and sends its branches, strung with hundreds of fairy lights, across the ceiling. It's Detroit's first Black-owned speakeasy, with portraits of famous Black Detroiters on the walls and a Southern-leaning drink list. Reservations run through Tock, so plan ahead for the secret.

This Corktown brewery and beer garden pours a dozen drafts, plus hard cider from its sister brand and a housemade prebiotic soda for anyone in the group sworn off the good stuff. A pavilion with open-air seating handles the warm months, while the semi-industrial indoors does communal tables and solo bar stools. Instead of a mug club, you can join something called the United Federation of Eaters and Drinkers, which is a lot of governance for beer.

Concrete Rose is a cocktail bar in the old Purse Building, right across from the ballpark, built around agave spirits. The menu leans on tequila and mezcal, with drinks involving mole and tomatillo that sound like a dare. There are no dress codes or bottle service, but there are vinyl nights, and the bar bites run from beet tacos to fish crudo, so dinner is covered if you commit.

MotorCity Wine is a Corktown wine bar where the night can turn into a live band and a little dancing if you time it right. The patio does most of the heavy lifting in warm weather, and a taco truck parks in the lot throughout the week, so dinner is handled without anyone fussing over a menu. Charcuterie and guest-chef bites cover the rest, and the bottles are easy to share.

Two James is a working distillery in Corktown with a tasting room built around a round concrete bar, which is the right shape for a place where everyone ends up talking to the bartender anyway. Cocktails rotate with the seasons and lean on the house spirits, with alcohol-free versions for the designated driver. You can book a tour, and Supergeil, the döner spot across the street, handles the food.

Bar Diane is a wine bar in Northwest Portland where the hand-painted walls look like the rings left behind by a thousand glasses of rosé on a tablecloth. You can perch at the marble bar and get into the weeds on Oregon pinot, or grab a bistro table for a cocktail and a lobster roll. Pours run from affordable table wine to splurgy champagne, so nobody has to pretend to be a sommelier or a billionaire.

Collins is the lobby bar at Fontainebleau, where deep blue furniture and gold trim set the tone and a live piano does the rest. The cocktail list pairs house originals with throwback drinks from the 1930s, so the bartenders can make a proper old-fashioned or a Viva Villa without a lecture. Come in before a show or after a long flight, when you want one decent drink and no sprint through a casino floor.

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.

Dots Cafe is a neighborhood dive on Clinton Street where the vinyl booths, flocked wallpaper, and velvet portraits seem to have been told it's still around 2010, and nobody's corrected them. You order at the bar, which leaves time to study a menu of cheesy fries and vegan burgers. Cocktails are on offer, but a shot and a local beer fits the room. The patio has slushies and cheap rosé, and Portland Monthly lists it among the city's best bars.

A five-foot resin Pomeranian sets the tone for this dark, moody cocktail lounge inside the Vanderpump Hotel on the Strip. Lisa Vanderpump's Las Vegas footprint runs to black-and-red decor, a martini for two arriving on a skewer of a dozen-odd olives, and a cocktail that comes with caviar. The house gimmick of sealing a secret into a tiny envelope and locking it in a vault is either charming or deeply on-brand, depending on your relationship with reality television.

Globe pendant lights, brass accents, and two misters-in-summer courtyards make this woman-owned taproom on Roosevelt Row feel like the anti-brewery brewery. The flagship pale ale is called Herstory, which tells you everything about the vibe. Rotating experimental brews sit alongside core taps, and if you get hungry, a QR code on the table summons food from nearby spots. Trivia nights and live music fill the calendar, and Phoenix New Times named it one of the city's top 100 bars.

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.

This is an English-style pub on Belmont, low-ceilinged and wood-beamed, with decades of cigarette smoke apparently still living in the walls. The beer comes in proper 20-ounce pints, there are real metal-tipped darts, and the Scotch eggs and fish and chips have outlasted every menu update. Regulars fill it by evening, and the vintage posters, flags, and brass plaques suggest nobody has felt the need to redecorate since the Reagan administration.

Lux Central is a coffee shop, bakery, and bar that can't commit to one job, and the schedule makes that a feature. Pastries hold down the morning, the bar wakes up soon after, and the egg plates and hashes drift into diner-leaning fare as the day goes on. Plenty of people arrive for a quick latte and are still at the table when the cocktails show up, laptops open, no one embarrassed.

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 mahogany L-shaped bar gives away what Paul Bar/Food is before you've ordered anything: a serious cocktail bar that happens to feed you well. It sits next to a strip-mall dispensary, which keeps the tourists guessing and the locals comfortable. Classic drinks get quiet tweaks, a frozen Sidecar here, a black Manhattan there, alongside a short food menu of wings, burgers, and steak frites that nobody's complaining about.

Sandy Hut is a neighborhood dive on a traffic island on NE Sandy, now dwarfed by the apartment buildings that sprouted around it. It has been cleaned up a bit, so the food is better and the drinks cost more, like everywhere. Parents stop in after soccer practice for a pint and a shot, punks work the pool table and video poker, and the late-night crowd returns for hangover brunch. Portland's Best Bars list includes it.

A dark, stylish room next to the Twist PS hotel that takes itself a little more seriously than most of what Palm Springs has to offer, and earns it. Tailor Shop is a cocktail bar with a short, well-considered menu, the kind of place where a Ward 8 or a Sazerac arrives looking like someone thought about it. The crowd tends toward dressed, not sunburned.

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 red leather booths survived the renovation intact, and the 1970s diner vibe is so well-preserved you half-expect a harvest-gold appliance somewhere in the back. The Heyday is a casual burger shop on North Palm Canyon serving smash burgers, fried chicken sandwiches, and wings alongside strong classic cocktails and a retro playlist that earns its keep. The kind of place that makes Palm Springs feel less like a wellness retreat and more like a road trip stop.

The smartest move Accomplice ever made was opening next to Taiwanese restaurant Little Fatty, so when the cocktails do their work, crab rangoon and shrimp chips are one door away. It's a moody cocktail bar in Mar Vista where the drinks lean into unexpected flavors, Japanese whiskey and oolong sharing space with goji berry and ginger. The 50 Discovery named it among their finds, which tracks.

A cocktail lounge called Ok Yeah tucked into the back tells you everything about the vibe here. Hey Kiddo is a playful, Asian-inflected restaurant and bar on the third floor of a Tennyson Street building, with a rooftop deck most people don't find on the first visit. The menu runs on shareable plates, and the team behind it earned a James Beard Outstanding Restaurateur semifinalist nod. The room skews young and loud in the best way.

Mahogany double doors shipped from Puerto Rico anchor the entrance to this Puerto Rican cocktail bar in the Old Port, where salsa and merengue fill the room and the tiled bar is the obvious place to sit. The drinks lean inventive, the food is serious enough to linger over, and the whole thing has a regional Spirited Award to its name. Portland has seafood shacks covered; this is doing something else entirely.

1111 is a Montrose cocktail bar and restaurant that takes its cues from Mexico City, which explains the cave-like room and the oval bar at its center. It's pronounced "eleven eleven," a favor to anyone who'd otherwise say it four ways. The margarita comes crystal clear under a cloud of salty lime air, and it sits next door to a jazz club, so the evening practically plans itself. Expect cocktail-hour prices and a good outfit.

The beer names tell you everything: a cream ale called Dome Foam, a porter called Mission Control, a red ale called Cougar Paw. This Houston brewery wears its civic pride the way other places wear sports jerseys. The taproom pours a full lineup of house beers alongside THC seltzers for the sober-curious crowd and cocktails for anyone who wandered in expecting a bar and found one anyway.

A cocktail bar inside Bryant Street Market's food hall in Edgewood, Alegria spun out of a beloved 14th Street agave spot and kept the Latin spirits focus while widening the net. Hibiscus, cacao, and fresh fruit make their way into the drinks alongside a beer list that moves from Pacifico to a Hyattsville local. Canned cocktails go out the door for those who can't be contained to 26 seats.

Sichuan cooking and serious cocktails share equal billing at this Dupont Circle spot, which holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and lands on Eater's list of D.C.'s top cocktail bars. The menu runs funky and affordable, with cumin lamb that arrives tender and vivid with spice. No reservations needed if you're happy at the bar, which always has room and is probably where the better conversations are happening anyway.

Menu painted on the front windows, high tables, espresso foaming in the morning and a cocktail shaker going by afternoon: Babas is a small all-day European-style cafe and bar that operates on a pleasantly loose schedule. The kitchen moves from overnight oats and baked goods at breakfast through deviled eggs and a caviar sandwich later on, which is a pretty wide range for a room you could cross in six steps.

A brewery on Fulton Street that leans hard into the Space City thing, with a hazy IPA called Fake Landing for hop heads who enjoy a conspiracy theory alongside their pint. The beer program covers lagers, IPAs, and hard seltzers, and there's wine by the glass for anyone who wandered in for the foosball. The foosball table, it should be noted, is not a metaphor.

The bones of the building are original 1950s auto-service center, which gives this neighborhood brewpub a satisfying reason to look up at the ceiling. IPAs anchor the tap list, with other ales rotating by season, so regulars tend to have a new reason to stop in. A nice wrinkle: if someone in your group isn't feeling beer, the wine bar next door will send them over with a glass, no drama.