The Top 17 Cocktail Bars Near Vasco

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

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

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

Red velvet curtains and Victorian mahogany panelling inside what was once a Greek restaurant: LOW 302 is a Darlinghurst neighbourhood bar that layers its charm on thick without feeling like it's trying. Local bands play a few nights a week, craft beers and a short cocktail list cover the classics, and the scavenged furniture gives the whole room the feeling of a very well-curated skip.

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

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

Velvet in every direction and a semi-covered terrace that lets you smoke while pretending you're in Manhattan: Hemmesphere is a cocktail bar that has been setting the Sydney standard since before most of its regulars knew what a coupe glass was. It started as a members-only room, dropped the velvet rope without dropping the velvet, and now just lets anyone in to enjoy well-made drinks and the kind of room that makes you order a second.

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

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Hotel Bar – APAC
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar in Darlinghurst where the drinks arrive with a bit of performance baked in, not just poured. The menu moves between classics and quietly tweaked versions of classics, the kind of place where the bartender knows why a recipe changed in 1947 and will tell you if you ask. A devoted local crowd has kept it busy for years, which is its own kind of argument.

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

A mezcal cocktail bar wedged into a Council Place garage so small it might have previously housed a single hatchback. Cantina OK is the opposite of Sydney's big-shoulder waterfront bars, the ones that eye your footwear suspiciously. Sandals, cowboy hats, and ball gowns all get waved through here, and the agave list runs deep enough that you'll stop pretending you know what you want and just ask.

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

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

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New International Cocktail Bar – APAC

A basement at the end of an alley off Clarence Street, the kind of door you'd walk past twice before finding. Inside, 456 bottles of mostly single malts climb a seven-tier back-bar that basically functions as wallpaper. It's a whisky-forward cocktail bar, serious without being solemn, and the queue outside on any given night suggests the city has quietly figured out where the door is.

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

A cocktail bar in Potts Point where the menu leans on classic riffs and the room leans on black leather, cabinets of cocktail ephemera, and a rock 'n' roll soundtrack. Liquid nitrogen turns up in a few of the drinks, including a martini shaken with the cold stuff. The nitrogen trolley that once made tableside rounds now sits marooned in the middle of the room, a victim of local legislation, which is perhaps the most interesting piece of bar furniture in Sydney.

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

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

A spiral staircase drops you into a basement rum bar done up with faded wallpaper, plantation chairs, and tropical plants, all of it named for Julio Lobo, the sugar king of Havana who lost everything to Castro. The CBD address is quietly absurd, tucked next to an unassuming Chinese restaurant on Clarence Street, but downstairs the Caribbean fantasy holds. The list leans deep into rum, and the room rewards lingering.

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

A 4am license is already reason enough, but Palmer and Co earns it. Tucked into an arched brick basement down a back alley, this Prohibition-era cocktail bar from the Merivale group goes all-in on the speakeasy concept: floor mosaics, period glassware, aged mirrors, and enough taxidermy to make the late Mr. Palmer feel at home. The kind of place where staying until closing time is less a decision than a natural consequence.

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

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