The Best Places in the United States

The menu is divided into Acte I, Acte II, and Acte III, which tells you everything about the neighborhood this French brasserie has anchored for decades. Hayes Valley locals and pre-curtain opera crowds fill the room most nights, and the kitchen leans into French classics with a fondness for deconstruction. The beverage program keeps pace, with seasonal cocktails and a French 75 built on a French single malt that somehow feels obvious in retrospect.

Tiger-striped wood, tile-topped bars, and hanging light tubes give this Capitol Hill cocktail bar a look that's somehow both designed-within-an-inch-of-its-life and still easy to be in. It shares a back door with the pasta restaurant Spinasse but runs on its own logic, with small plates and a drinks list to match. Date-night couples fill the tables while bartenders occasionally step out to take orders, keeping the whole thing warmer than the room suggests.

The bar at Au Cheval is the part of the diner you can sit at without a two-hour wait, assuming the wait stays tolerable, and the whole place runs on dim lighting, a cocktail list, and the knowledge that a griddled burger with a fried egg is coming either way. It's a moody, no-frills diner-bar, and the cocktails do real work while you stare at the people who got the table. Difford's Guide gives it four stars.

The bartender here is a fourth-generation New Orleanian who will mix your Ramos Gin Fizz while narrating its entire biography. Bar Uncommon is a cocktail bar tucked into the Renaissance Pere Marquette, with the spare, hotel-adjacent look you'd expect, but Chris McMillian, one of the founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail, is the reason regulars overlook the lobby entrance. Classics, made the old way, with a history lecture included at no extra charge.

A red light above an unmarked door in a Chelsea coffee shop is the only signal that there's a cocktail bar behind it. Once through, the room opens into flocked wallpaper, fringed lampshades, and an antique copper bathtub sitting squarely in the middle of things, which everyone photographs and then pretends they weren't going to. The seven-seat copper bar is the calmer alternative. Dressed-up but not stiff, and a long way from the espresso machine out front.

A wood-stone oven dominates the back of this cocktail bar on Valencia, turning out pizza while the bartenders run a tight menu of drinks built on a few well-chosen flavors rather than a paragraph of modifiers. The room hits that sweet spot between lively and unpretentious, with filament bulbs over the bar and a crowd that looks like they found the place before it was a thing, even though everyone has found it by now.

A black and white marble floor runs from the front door all the way back through the bar, past the restaurant, and out into a quiet courtyard, putting a lot of physical distance between you and Bourbon Street without much effort. The cocktail bar leans into New Orleans classics like the Vieux Carré and Ramos gin fizz alongside bottled punches and house recipes built on acid phosphate and champagne vinegar, which is not a sentence you read every day.

Rum drinks without a single plastic volcano or flaming garnish in sight. Cane & Table is a cocktail bar that calls itself "Proto Tiki," rooting its menu in the centuries of trade between rum-producing islands before the tiki craze gave everything a grass skirt. The room on Decatur Street feels genuinely New Orleans, which helps. Pisco Punch and signature coladas share the menu, and the whole thing moves like a history lesson you'd actually stay for.

Bare cement walls, a rope-strung ceiling, and Edison bulbs doing almost nothing to warm the place up: Churchill is a neighborhood cocktail bar that leans into its chill rather than fighting it. Early-90s hip hop keeps things honest, the cocktails are carefully made, and the bourbon-spiced nuts are the kind of detail that earns loyalty. Car headlights sweep through the windows as drivers take the Market Street turn, which adds a bit of unplanned theater.

The name comes from Aristophanes: "Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine so I may wet my mind and say something clever." An intimate neighborhood wine bar connected by a knocked-through wall to the Cork & Bottle shop next door, Clever leans into its origins without being precious about them. The list is serious, the cocktails are well made, and the beers are worth a look too, which is either scope creep or just good sense.

Frenchmen Street runs on live music, but D.B.A. is there for the beer, the spirits, and the wine, with bands as a bonus rather than the point. Two redwood-lined rooms share a central bar, one leaning lounge, one leaning jazz club, both dim and ceiling-fan slow. The New York sister bar genes show a little, which gives this New Orleans dive a slightly unlikely polish that the regulars seem happy to ignore.

The building is roughly the size and shape of a railway car, wedged next to a gas station on Saint Charles with fairy lights strung through the overhanging trees. Delachaise is a wine and beer bar where the front terrace somehow becomes exactly where you want to be, watching the street roll by. Over 40 wines by the glass keep the options interesting without the prices getting precious about it.

A basement cocktail bar in the Financial District with dark red walls, a chandelier, and macramé screens that somehow land between 1980s lounge and faint tiki, all packed into semicircular banquettes that seat over a hundred. The inventive menu carries the fingerprints of the Death & Co. team. On quieter weeknights they may seat you at the bar only, which is worth knowing before you bring a crowd.

The bar curves like the stern of a Spanish galleon, which should tell you what kind of night to expect. This candlelit cocktail lounge off the TriBeCa steakhouse of the same name leans into the drama: heavy drapes, tapestry walls, shaded pendant lights, and booths deep enough to disappear into. The back bar is loaded with premium spirits, and the Key Lime Pie cocktail was invented here, for better or worse.

Red Hook sits off every subway line, which keeps Fort Defiance comfortably local. This all-day neighborhood bar fits eight tables and a bar counter that seats twelve if everyone breathes in. The name nods to a nearby Revolutionary War fort that once blocked the British from the East River, which gives the place more historical gravitas than most spots this relaxed have any business claiming.

The glowing floor stayed when the Hudson Hotel's Library Bar got its makeover, but the furniture got considerably more fashionable. This cocktail bar swings between loud dance music and live jazz depending on the night, with exposed brick, low tables, and lighting that flatters everyone equally. It's the kind of flirty hotel bar where the room does most of the work, and nobody seems to mind.

The horseshoe bar juts into the middle of the room like it owns the place, which, given the brown panelled walls and tasselled awning overhead, it kind of does. This St Marks dive bar closed for a few years and came back with its 1970s bones intact, including a mural salvaged from its earlier life as a burlesque lounge. A snack-food mogul bought the building, which is a sentence that belongs here and nowhere else.

A self-described "continental tavern" that reads more like an oversized gastropub once you're inside, Hubbard Inn is a big, convivial bar in River North with a serious beer program: around twenty draught handles and nearly as many cans and bottles, skewing craft. If you came for Miller Lite, it's on the menu too, quietly listed at the bottom of the beer page, which is a very polite way to handle the situation.

The 65-foot marble bar is the first thing you clock, backed by a wall of taps that looks like it was built for a congregation. Jackknife is a high-volume neighborhood bar attached to the Sentinel Hotel, heavy rock on the speakers and a toasted-oak floor that leans more saloon than cocktail lounge. The short cocktail list skews toward house drinks. Come for draft beer and a loud night out, not a quiet first-date conversation.

From the street it reads like a shop, and inside it's barely bigger than one, with around thirty seats tucked under warm light and a hefty oak bar. Kask is a cocktail bar with a leather-bound list organized by spirit, leaning hard on amaro, sherry, and vermouth. The drinks skew classical without being stiff about it. Small rooms either feel intimate or claustrophobic, and this one lands on the right side.

The bar seating glows aquatic blue, ceiling windows let the light pour in, and the outdoor terrace looks straight out at the bay traffic. This Peruvian seafood restaurant on the Embarcadero is the rare Embarcadero spot that earns its view. Ceviche is the main event, and the tasting lets you work through several styles at once. A pisco sour while watching boats maneuver past is a reasonable way to spend an afternoon.

Every bottle behind the bar at Las Perlas comes from south of the border, which means no vodka, no whiskey, and no gin to tempt you off the path. It's a cantina-style mezcal and tequila bar on Sixth Street, candlelit and maximalist, with Del Maguey mezcals and rare 100% agave pours listed by region and paired for the curious. The kind of place that makes an argument without ever saying a word.

Those barrel-aged cocktails sitting in vintage crystal decanters along the back bar are Liberty's calling card, sharing shelf space with 70-plus whiskies, a coffee station, and a sushi setup that nobody questions. It's a casual Capitol Hill cocktail bar with couches by the front windows and bench seating opposite the bar, the kind of room built for lingering. Industry folks and neighborhood regulars tend to find each other here without much effort.

The chandeliers alone explain why every studio executive who ever needed to feel important has passed through here. Library Bar sits inside the Hollywood Roosevelt, a hotel so soaked in old Hollywood mythology it practically seeps into the drinks. It's a cocktail bar where the Spanish Colonial bones do most of the heavy lifting, and the clientele tends to dress accordingly. Order something classic and let the room do the rest.

The lounge bar inside the Mandarin Oriental sits beneath a triple-height lobby ceiling with water views and a front-row look at the bridge tying Brickell Key to the mainland. The clientele arrives with generous expense accounts and matching expectations, and the room meets them precisely there. Everything is exactly so, which is another way of saying the drinks are polished and the energy is not.

Bare brick walls, worn-down bar, and a chalkboard listing three or four cocktail specials that change daily, because a printed menu would be too much of a commitment. This Spring Street cocktail bar reads like a neighborhood dive that happens to employ people who could be working somewhere far fancier. Industry folk fill the stools by night, talking shop with bartenders who clearly know what they're doing. Bring cash, skip the attitude, and just ask what's good.

The chalkboard menu at this corner tapas bar looks like it's been there forever, which is kind of the point. Patatas bravas, garlicky shrimp, octopus, and chorizo rotate through in the Spanish tradition the team fell in love with while backpacking through Madrid. The room is small, retro without trying, and built-in banquettes give it the settled-in feel of a neighborhood place that has nothing left to prove.

Concrete floors that look like the previous tenant's linoleum was ripped up last Tuesday set the tone at this spacious Southern-leaning cocktail bar in west Chelsea. Danny Meyer's first standalone bar leans on the spirit of Blue Smoke, which means Sazeracs and bar food with a drawl. The games room in the back suggests the intention is for you to stay a while, and the raw brick walls give you no reason to hurry.

The dining room is styled after a yacht interior, which could read as a gimmick but lands as a mood. Providence is a three-Michelin-star seafood tasting menu restaurant on Melrose, where Michael Cimarusti builds multi-course meals around wild-caught American fish and whatever the farmers market offers that morning. The James Beard Award for Outstanding Hospitality is on the wall, and the front-of-house earns it. North America's 50 Best lists it at number 32.

Todd Thrasher makes his own tonic water, his own bitters, and his own roasted pineapple juice, which tells you almost everything about PX before you've touched the door. It's a cocktail bar in Old Town Alexandria running on a serious DIY ethic, the kind where the drink in front of you contains something nobody else thought to make from scratch. The room is small and unhurried, well ahead of the speakeasy moment before that moment existed.

The cocktail menu at this hotel bar is organized by room, Sitting Room, Living Room, Guest Room, and Garden, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe. Tucked off the Albion's soaring lobby, Repour goes deliberately the other way: low ceilings, homey furniture, the feel of someone's well-curated apartment. The bartender behind it built the interior himself with family and friends, and it shows in the best way.

Four oversized bronze chairs whose frames spell out an "R" set the tone before you've ordered a thing. This is the bar side of a sleek Latin-themed restaurant, where the drinks program leans into tequila and mezcal with the same design seriousness the room applies to everything else. It's a long way from neon cantina signage, both in looks and in the glass.

Concrete floors, steel girders, and a smoking area the size of a small parking lot set the tone at this Tenderloin cocktail bar. The utilitarian look is clearly intentional, the sort of space that can survive a rowdy Saturday without complaint. A chalkboard cocktail of the month keeps things moving, and the menu spans pisco punch to rum-and-port builds with house-made Swedish punsch. Not where you go to catch up quietly, but volume was never the point.

The long pearl bar counter is the first thing that registers, backlit against dark wood and warm gold light, with loose rosebuds packed into displays that somehow don't look like a wedding. This is a cocktail bar inside one of Miami Beach's sleeker luxury hotels, all Asian-modernist design and reclaimed Shanghai brick underfoot. Outside, Martinis get sipped poolside under palms by people who have clearly packed better than you did.

Three antique pool tables on tartan carpet greet you at the top of the stairs, which sets the tone for this whiskey bar doing a convincing impression of a Scottish gentleman's club in downtown L.A. The black walnut bar runs nearly the full length of the room, with shelves so tall the bartenders use a rolling ladder to reach the rarer Scotch, Japanese, Irish, and bourbon bottles, several hundred in all, including single-cask and collectible pours.

The Circle Bar sits on the top floor of this famously members-only Meatpacking District club, its zinc-topped bar jutting into a room of herringbone parquet and enormous Chesterfield sofas. The glass-walled wine cellar is purely decorative, but it sets the mood. Cocktails arrive at low tables where people who definitely knew the right person to get in are trying to look like they didn't have to.

The entrance reads "Lower East Side Toy Company" on an iron gate, which is not a toy company. Beyond it, a semi-subterranean passage runs between buildings toward an unmarked door with a brass peephole, and yes, the rats are part of the atmosphere. One of the few surviving Prohibition-era speakeasies in the city, this bar on the Lower East Side commits hard to the bit, and the whole approach feels like a dare before you've ordered anything.

A gilded rat guards the door, which is the first sign you're in the right place. This cocktail bar sits beneath the Andaz 5th Avenue, easy to miss from the street if you're not looking for the discreet sign. Once down the stairs, the room opens into banquettes and long walnut communal tables where a bartender works one side while drinkers take the other three, which collapses the usual bar geography in a quietly clever way.

Three blocks from Bourbon Street and operating at a different frequency entirely, The Black Penny is a low-key craft beer bar with more than 70 canned options and the kind of room that actually makes you want to stay. One side runs plush leather banquettes against distressed plaster walls; the other is all dark wood and salvaged barge boards behind the bar. The crowd tends to know exactly why they came, and it isn't the tourists.

The name is literal: a neighborhood cocktail bar tucked into a quiet stretch of Washington Boulevard in Culver City, the part of LA better known for art galleries than drinking. Inside, it's casual and intimate, the kind of room that fills up with locals and after-work regulars who seem to have quietly agreed not to tell anyone else about it. The bartenders lean toward inventive riffs on classics.

The cocktail menu changes daily and gets announced on a letter board covering the back wall, which is either charming or anxiety-inducing depending on how decisive you are. This small cocktail bar shares an entrance with restaurant Public and the same drinks program, a compact room made to feel larger by a floor-to-ceiling mirror above leather booths. Regulars arrive knowing roughly what they want; everyone else reads the board.

A cocktail bar tucked into the back of the Iroquois Hotel lobby, the Lantern's Keep still reads like the private dining room it once was: dark paneling, marble-topped tables, and five seats at the bar. The menu organizes its drinks by technique rather than spirit, and the staff actively prefer you skip it entirely and just describe what you're after. For 44th Street, that level of calm feels almost conspiratorial.

The lobby bar you pass through on your way to somewhere else, bright and airy in that hotel-lounge way that somehow makes you stop anyway. Cocktails lean playful and a little precious, the kind with long ingredient lists and names that make you read them twice. A good spot to settle in before or after dinner upstairs, or to skip the reservation altogether and just drink somewhere that doesn't feel like it's trying too hard.

A cocktail bar tucked behind a psychic shop on La Cienega, marked by a red neon hand in the window and, somewhat defeating the mystique, valet attendants and a sign on the pavement. Inside, it's all dark wood paneling, picture frames, antique stained glass, and a vintage mirror above the bar that promises "the best of everything and nothing but the best." Booths line one wall, low tables fill the back, and the lighting is dim enough to feel like a secret even when it isn't.