The Top 85 Cocktail Bars Near Demo

1. 50 Best #39 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #1 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Winner · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar

The unmarked door on the second floor of a Japanese restaurant looks exactly like where a broom lives, which is precisely the point. Angel's Share is a speakeasy-style cocktail bar with booth banquettes, bare brick, velvet curtains, and lighting set to confession-booth low. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, and the room feels like it has always known that. Come early, come two, and find the door before someone else needs the mop.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #31 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

1. 50 Best #52 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Masa Urushido
3. Time Out #18 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. 50 Best Julie Reiner · Industry Icon Award

1. 50 Best #12 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #9 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Winner · Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service · Ignacio "Nacho" Jimenez

1. 50 Best #59 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #4 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. VinePair Bar Program of the Year · The Next Wave Awards

1. 50 Best #3 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best New Bar

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #41 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. 50 Best #35 · North America's 50 Best Bars

1. 50 Best #75 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #23 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Esquire The Best Bars in America

There's no sign on Eldridge Street, just a faux tailor's shop window with a glowing "A" and a buzzer you'll wait at long enough to second-guess yourself. This is the cocktail bar that opened in the old Milk & Honey space after Sasha Petraske moved on, and it runs on the same no-menu, tell-us-what-you-like philosophy. North America's 50 Best Bars lists it, and the wait outside on any given night suggests people have read that list.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #72 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. 50 Best #37 · North America's 50 Best Bars

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The Sakura Martini, a sake-and-gin affair finished with a salted cherry blossom, is the thing people come back for at this tiny, warmly lit cocktail bar on Eldridge Street. Kenta Goto spent years at Pegu Club before opening this place, and the short menu of original drinks leans on Japanese ingredients, house infusions, and a quieter kind of precision. Small enough that nobody is a stranger for long.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Esquire Sakura Martini · The Best Martinis in America
3. Punch Best New Bartenders · Capucine Prager

1. Esquire Candarin Orange · The Best Martinis in America
2. Punch Best New Bars
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best New Bar

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. 50 Best #15 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Esquire Martini of the Year: Clemente Martini · The Best Martinis in America
3. VinePair Bartender of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Sebastian Tollius

Paul Carmichael grew up in Barbados, and Kabawa is his argument that Caribbean cooking belongs in any room it wants. A prix-fixe fine dining restaurant on Extra Place, it seats you at a horseshoe counter in a dark green room with mosaic tilework and a playlist sourced partly from Carmichael's cousin back home. The New York Times named it the top restaurant in New York City, and the cocktail bar next door is his too, for nights when the goat patty feels like the right move.

1. 50 Best #14 · North America's 50 Best Restaurants
2. Esquire Chef of the Year · Paul Carmichael
3. The New York Times Coconut Turnover · The 14 Best Restaurant Desserts We Ate Across the U.S.

1. Esquire 1884 Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 10 U.S. Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Esquire Cigarette Martini · The Best Martinis in America
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

Bitters are both the obsession and the inventory at this tiny East Village cocktail bar, which also sells an overwhelming wall of the stuff to take home. A dozen seats, a menu split between house originals and riffs on classics, and a bespoke option built around a Negroni, Manhattan, or Old-Fashioned if you'd rather just tell them what you're feeling. House-made vermouth pours on tap. A James Beard semifinalist, and the kind of place that makes you feel smarter for having gone.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Ravi DeRossi - Overthrow Hospitality

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. 50 Best #71 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. Esquire Cartagena · The Best Martinis in America

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. Punch Nashi Highball · Our Favorite Cocktails
2. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. 50 Best #46 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #33 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar

1. Food & Wine The Top 10 Hotel Bars in the US

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with bottles replace the books here, and the ladders are real. This TriBeCa spirits bar has made brandy its organizing principle, stocking vintage Armagnacs, Cognacs, and plum brandies from corners of the world most bars have never considered. Whisky and rum fill the gaps, the cocktail list runs a hundred drinks deep, and the staff who climb those ladders to fetch your bottle know exactly what they're doing.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

The hand-washing station at the entrance stocks Loewe soap, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Korean fried chicken restaurant. Club music bounces off vaulted ceilings while you work through a bucket of gluten-free fried chicken with consommé, banchan, and frozen yogurt soft serve to finish. Champagne is the obvious pairing, and caviar-topped nuggets are available for anyone who finds the baseline insufficiently absurd. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Condé Nast Traveler The best new restaurants in the world
2. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
3. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. East

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

You get in by picking up the phone inside a wooden booth at a hot dog joint on St. Marks. If whoever's watching the camera approves, the door buzzes open. PDT is a cocktail bar that takes the speakeasy conceit completely seriously, which is either charming or exhausting depending on your mood, and the line outside suggests most people land on charming. The drinks are the kind of careful, considered pours that made the whole city start doing this.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar in the Financial District built around the legend of John Morrissey, a bare-knuckle Irish immigrant who ran one of the city's rougher gangs in the 1800s. The menu reads like a graphic novel, each volume dropping the Rabbit into a new era of New York's murkier chapters. The drinks are theatrical without being silly, and the Irish pub downstairs keeps things grounded for anyone who just wants a pint.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. Esquire Steakhouse Martini #2 · The Best Martinis in America

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. East

A four-tap absinthe drip at the center of the bar is a replica of the one at the Absinthe House in New Orleans, and that tells you most of what you need to know. Maison Premiere is a cocktail and oyster bar in Williamsburg that commits fully to the bit: dim golden light, mock antique everything, marble bar top, the faint sense that you've wandered into another city and century. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #40 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Time Out #7 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. 50 Best #36 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Time Out #20 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. VinePair Industry Icon of the Year · The Next Wave Awards
2. Time Out #11 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

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.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. VinePair Bartender of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Garret Richard
2. Time Out #2 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Punch Tomate o Tomaté · Our Favorite Cocktails

1. Vogue The 25 Best Restaurants in Brooklyn, According to Vogue Staff
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar

The $12 daily daiquiri sets the tone at this Williamsburg rum bar, where the menu runs from a lager-and-rum shot combo to oysters with tepache mignonette. The couple behind it know their way around spirits, one having run the editorial side of Punch, the other having shaped Chicago's beloved tropical bar scene. A basement rum bar called Undercurrent adds another layer for anyone who shows up and doesn't want to leave.

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Food & Wine Pancake Soufflé · Best Dishes Our Editors Ate This Year
2. Punch Rosie Martini · Our Favorite Cocktails
3. Punch Best New Bartenders · Ben Hopkins

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. East
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

A Greek Salad martini built with Tomato Crop vodka and piparra brine should probably not work, and yet here we are. Kinda Nice is a Williamsburg cocktail bar from two Grand Army veterans who describe the vibe as late-night diner meets dive bar, which mostly means the drinks lean savory and strange in satisfying ways. A downstairs dive called Shenanigans is coming, if you need somewhere to spiral afterward.

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide