The Best Places in the United States

Sotol on the menu is a flex few New York bars can match. This Hell's Kitchen tequila and mezcal bar leans deep into Mexican spirits, with a list that runs well past the usual suspects. Sotol, distilled from the Desert Spoon plant and sometimes called tequila's northern cousin, is a rarity here, and finding it alongside a serious mezcal selection gives the drinks menu a reason to linger over it.

Apotheke sits on Doyers Street, the crooked Chinatown alley once nicknamed Bloody Angle for the tong wars fought there, behind a red awning that still reads "Gold Flower Restaurant." Inside, the former opium den has gone full Victorian apothecary, all candlelight and curios, with a five-ton marble bar where the bartenders play doctor. The cocktails lean medicinal and elaborate, which suits the room perfectly.

An unmarked door across from the Tribeca Grand opens onto a staircase that leads down to a dimly lit basement cocktail bar, all booth seating and bar stools, with smooth jazz doing most of the decorating. The cocktail list is named after jazz standards, which sounds gimmicky until you're two drinks in. Classics are handled with care, and the room has the kind of quiet self-confidence that doesn't need a sign out front.

Leather-bound journals line the shelves of this hushed, clubby cocktail bar near the UN, where wooden monkey sculptures hold the lamps and cigar smoke hangs in the air like a gentleman's agreement. The crescent booths and soft lighting give it the feel of a classic hotel sitting room that decided to serve drinks instead. Jazz plays just loud enough to cover the conversation of the business crowd unwinding after whatever it is they do.

The log-cabin feel is no accident: red wood ceiling, timber-clad walls, and a long solid bar give this neighborhood pub on Magazine Street the warmth of somewhere that's been broken in properly. It draws locals and Tulane students rather than tourists, with around fifty taps pouring everything from Abita Andygator to Belgian ales and American microbrews. A good place to disappear into a beer and feel like a regular by the second round.

A cocktail bar tucked into what used to be a private office inside Grand Central, designed to look like a 13th-century Florentine palace because its original occupant simply wanted the biggest room in New York. The vaulted ceiling and dark wood do most of the heavy lifting, so the drinks don't need to be extraordinary to make the visit feel like one. Come dressed for it; the room sets a standard and most people read the memo.

The California poppy, "copa de oro" in Spanish, cup of gold, lends its name to this Santa Monica cocktail bar a couple of blocks from the beach. Terracotta tile, dark wood, and a resident artist's work on the walls give it a warm Hispanic character that tips, even on a Wednesday, toward a genuine party. The kind of place that starts feeling festive before you've finished your first drink.

A Mid City corner bar in an otherwise residential stretch, Crescent Sausage and Pie is the kind of neighborhood spot that keeps the lights a little too bright and doesn't apologize for it. Fragments of the original building, lost to Katrina, are worked into the walls, which gives the place a quiet history lesson you weren't expecting. The cocktail list is short; come for the atmosphere, not the mixology.

You ride a repurposed service elevator to reach this speakeasy-inspired rooftop cocktail bar perched atop the Rafaello Hotel. Dim lighting, dark wood, bronze fixtures, and mushroom-toned walls set a moody, upscale tone, and a resident DJ keeps the energy pointed firmly toward party. The crowd skews young and loud, so if you're after a quiet drink and a view, the elevator goes both ways.

The mahogany back bar has been here since the Wild West era, and Elixir wears that history without trying too hard. It's a proper neighborhood dive on the Mission-Castro border, the kind where dog walkers fill the stools by late afternoon and nobody opens a cocktail menu. A dartboard in the corner, sports on the TVs, and regulars who clearly consider this their living room, just one with a liquor license.

Frozen Irish Coffees come out of a slushie machine here, and locals have been treating that as a perfectly reasonable life choice for a long time. Erin Rose is a small, dark Irish bar just off Bourbon Street, walls thick with photos, neon, and memorabilia that nobody has bothered to organize and nobody wants removed. Guinness and Harp on tap, conversation guaranteed from both sides of the bar, and a crowd that skews more neighborhood than tourist strip.

Cold Amber beer, live jazz, and a room that looks like nothing has been touched since the Nixon administration. Fritzel's is a no-frills jazz pub on Bourbon Street that skips cocktails, skips mood lighting, and skips any pretense of being a bar that cares about its wine list. What it has instead is the music, which is the whole point, and an atmosphere that feels less performed than almost anything else on the block.

Ivy trellises climb the walls of the rooftop bar on the 15th floor, which is the one worth engineering your evening around. Ian Schrager, who gave the world Studio 54 and the Delano, put his stamp on this Gramercy landmark, and the result is three bars across the hotel, each with a crowd dressed like they had somewhere better to be and came here anyway.

A top-floor hotel cocktail lounge perched above Powell Street, the Starlight Room is essentially a finishing school that graduated half the notable bartenders in San Francisco, Tony Abou-Ganim and Jacques Bezuidenhout among them. The room got a significant makeover not long ago, all plush red furniture and gold accents, which makes it feel like old-school glamour with a fresh coat of ambition.

The narrow passage to the left of the bar does not lead to a secret larger room; that's just the toilet. Hazlewood is a tiny cocktail bar in Ballard, once a coffee shop, where the counter is a few strides from the door and the upstairs lounge has the square footage of a treehouse. Come on a quiet weeknight and you'll spend a moment genuinely confused about where everyone is supposed to sit. The answer, apparently, is close together.

The floor tilts so sharply that the table legs have been sawn down just to keep your drink from sliding off. This ancient saloon, built from whaling ship timbers and barely changed since forever, sits in the middle of a modern plaza like it missed the memo. Jack London drank and wrote here, then name-dropped the place seventeen times in "John Barleycorn." Order something simple and let the lean do the work.

Pressed tin walls funnel you into a room that keeps opening up, Tardis-style, past antique mirrors and grandma lampshades, through a long bar, out to a yard. This Williamsburg neighborhood bar shape-shifts through the week: beer and shots early on, wine mid-week, cocktails by the weekend, and DJs after 10pm Thursday through Sunday when the volume climbs and the whole thing quietly becomes a nightclub without ever making a formal announcement.

Tucked below Pike Place Market where the street tilts toward the water, this Italian restaurant bar is easy to miss, which is half the point. The bar area is compact and carefully stocked, with grappa, cognac, and malt whisky sitting alongside cocktails that get proper attention. The bistro setting around it is relaxed enough that nobody is checking how long you've been nursing your drink.

A steel gallery runs high around the room, stacked with antique bric-a-brac as if the trading company never quite unpacked. This atmospheric Tribeca bar leans heavily on the Portuguese Macau fantasy, all dark wood and red lantern atmosphere, and skews more restaurant than dive. Come for a cocktail and a reason to explain to your date that Macau predates Hong Kong by several centuries as a European foothold in East Asia.

Named after the Aztec goddess of the maguey plant, Mayahuel is a two-floor mezcal and tequila bar on the East Village's reliably lively 6th Street. Rustic booths, bare brick, hand-painted tiles, dark wood, iron, and candlelight do the decorating, leaving the agave spirits to do the talking. The cocktail list is the whole point here, built around a serious collection of both spirits for a crowd that knows the difference between the two.

A wall lined with metal cafeteria trays and merit badges sets the tone at this sprawling Los Feliz bar, where the summer camp theme is played completely straight. The cocktail menu splits neatly into Citrus/Refreshing and Aromatic/Boozy, which is honestly a more useful taxonomy than most bars manage. The glassed-in fire pits on the patio do a convincing impression of a campfire, without the s'mores obligation.

The bar where the Absinthe Frappé was invented, back when this corner of Bourbon Street was still a serious place to drink. The original bar counter survived Prohibition by getting auctioned off and exiled down the block; it's back now, in a back room, which feels about right. A French Quarter institution that pulls tourists, locals, and everyone in between through the same swinging door, trading on history that most bars would kill for.

A whiskey bar on 10th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, small and sleek and stocked with over 200 bottles, ranging from everyday pours to Pappy Van Winkle at the kind of price that makes you sit up straight. There's no cocktail menu, but the staff know their classics, and the regulars mostly want a single-malt Scotch or an Old-Fashioned anyway. The beer list is longer than you'd expect for a place so clearly devoted to whiskey.

The low-slung 19th-century building gets swallowed by Midtown towers on all sides, which somehow makes it feel more defiant. P.J. Clarke's is an old-school Manhattan pub, dark-paneled and unhurried, with a worn mahogany bar, a zinc oyster counter, and photos of former barkeeps watching over things. Nothing much has changed since the gaslight era, and the crowd at the rail seems to prefer it that way.

The Hurricane, that tall, rum-soaked fruit bomb, is said to have been born here, though New York City has lodged a competing claim. Either way, Pat O'Brien's is where it became a phenomenon, and five bars spread across several rooms and a sprawling courtyard ensure you have ample space to test that theory. The carriageway entrance, lined with crossed muskets, sets the tone before you even order.

The bar is a skinny brick-and-wood-floor sliver off the dining room, one row of tall tables against the wall and barely enough aisle to turn around in. A cocktail bar where the staff in flannel and jeans serves a menu that, despite the name, doesn't lean especially hard on rye whiskey. The attached restaurant runs fine-dining prices, so expect the drinks to match.

A few steps down from the lobby, the bar at Tabard Inn sits between a living-room lounge and a black-and-white checkered dining room, which is exactly the kind of transition space that rewards lingering. The hotel around it leans into DC's version of quirky, mismatched vintage furniture and political art on every wall. The cocktail program holds its own against the eccentric surroundings, which is a quiet achievement in a place this determinedly charming.

Oak paneling, cherrywood bar, velvet seating, heavy curtains: Temple Bar is a cocktail bar that looks like the lounge of a grand hotel, minus the fusty clientele. The crowd skews professional and thirty-something, the lighting is low, and the drinks lean classic with an Italian tilt. A Sgroppino sits alongside a Ward Eight and an Espresso Martini, which is a menu that knows its history without being smug about it.

The entry corridor sets the tone: a wall-sized photo of the old Famous Department Store, vintage neighborhood shots lining the walls, and classic films rolling on the screens inside this cocktail lounge tucked into Glendale's historic Huntley-Evans building. Live bands and DJs take over on weekends. Most of the crowd is passing through before or after the Americana at Brand across the street, which makes the retro-local atmosphere feel like a quiet act of mild resistance.

The original redwood paneling dates back forever, but Philippe Starck's redesign layered in an illuminated Venetian bar top, a floor-to-ceiling light-box back bar, and plasma screens set in classical frames that slowly animate the portraits hanging in them. A Martini in hand when a painted subject blinks at you is a specific kind of San Francisco evening. It's a cocktail bar that reads as a grand room first, a drinks destination second.

A cocktail bar off the lobby of the Loews Hotel, run by the Brennan family, the Commander's Palace dynasty that makes hospitality feel like a genetic condition. The signature Adelaide Swizzle comes with a "secret ingredient" the bartender will strongly imply is Falernum, plus a couple of theatrical pours he'll perform on request if you ask nicely and look like you mean it.

A long marble bar anchors this windowless cocktail bar on La Brea, where the Art Deco bones and Venetian chandeliers give the room the air of a Middle Eastern hotel lobby, in a good way. Gold leather tub chairs and plush booths line the perimeter, which draws a crowd that came dressed for it. The cocktail list keeps things short, leaning on classics and originals, which suits a room this serious about atmosphere.

Tucked into the basement of Chelsea Market, a former Nabisco factory, The Tippler is a cocktail bar with exposed brick, a long marble bar, and Oriental rugs thrown over the floor like someone's eccentric living room. The drink menu runs long and complicated, courtesy of the Tippling Bros. team. Come on a weeknight if you want to actually think; weekends belong to the Meatpacking overflow crowd and their very different priorities.

Willow branches in wall niches and Edison bulbs overhead give this cavernous Bowery gastropub a warmer feel than its scale suggests. The long front bar is the move, with a cocktail program that holds its own alongside a solid beer and spirits list. The bays and high ceilings let beautiful people on dates and shaggy types debating film grain coexist without crowding each other. A good call for the neighborhood.

Leather booths, wood paneling, and casual taxidermy give this cocktail bar the feel of a gentlemen's club that decided to relax a little. It sits inside Tyler Florence's Wayfare Tavern, and the bar downstairs splits the room between cocktails and food. Local lore insists a gangster is buried somewhere in the foundations, which does make the old-fashioned taste slightly more interesting.