The Top 100 Places to Drink Near Apollo Bagels

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. 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

Calvin Eng's Cantonese restaurant and bar sits on a nondescript east Williamsburg corner, close enough to the BQE that you'll feel the trucks. Inside, it reads like a retro Hong Kong diner, but the kitchen runs modern interpretations of regional Cantonese food, and the MSG Martini earned a spot on Esquire's national list. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, and the James Beard Foundation named Eng an Emerging Chef nominee.

1. Esquire MSG Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Emerging Chef · Calvin Eng
3. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Time Out #23 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
2. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

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. 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. 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. Time Out #13 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

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

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

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

1. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

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. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

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. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

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

1. Punch Tomate o Tomaté · Our Favorite Cocktails

1. Time Out #21 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

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

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. 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

A plate-glass window in the exposed-brick wall looks straight into a working still, which tells you everything about what kind of cocktail bar this is. The Shanty is the front room of New York Distilling Company, so the gin in your glass traveled about twenty feet to get there. It sits on a quiet warehouse block in Greenpoint, easy to miss, which seems to suit the regulars just fine.

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

1. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Missy Robbins
3. The New York Times #36 · The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City

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

A subterranean New England seafood joint in the East Village where the menu runs heavily toward the ocean and the wine list follows suit, mostly whites chosen to keep pace with it. The New York Times named it among the city's best new restaurants, and the sommelier took a Next Wave Award. The celery root float has become something of a minor cult object, which tells you something about the kitchen's sense of humor.

1. VinePair Sommelier of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Nikita Malhotra
2. The Infatuation #7 · The Top-Rated New Restaurants
3. Punch Best New Bartenders · Logan Rodriguez

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

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

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. 50 Best #46 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #33 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar

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 natural wine list here won a James Beard Award, and the Michelin star belongs to the kitchen, which tells you this Williamsburg bar is doing two things at once and doing neither halfway. The room is famously small and the wait is famously brutal, but Nick Curtola's seasonal menu follows its own logic, landing somewhere between a great wine bar snack and something you'll think about for weeks. James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem is a co-owner, which explains the playlist.

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Winner · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program
3. Michelin Guide 1 Star

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

1. VinePair Bar Program of the Year · The Next Wave Awards
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. 50 Best #77 · North America's 50 Best Bars

1. Time Out The Turkey Leg Sandwich · The 18 best sandwiches in the world right now
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

1. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

1. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

A small "Cocktails" neon sign is the only clue visible through the net-curtained windows of this Williamsburg cocktail bar, which occupies a former auto-parts store near McCarren Park. Inside, ornamental plates crowd the walls, tasseled fittings hang overhead, and ceramic tiles fool the eye into reading as rugs. It feels like a great-aunt's drawing room, if your great-aunt had excellent taste and kept unusual hours.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

The line out the door on South 2nd is the most honest review you'll find. This Williamsburg slice shop has a counter, a few standing ledges, and pizza makers working in plain sight from dough to oven. The crust is thin, crisp, and taken seriously. 50 Top Pizza ranked it the top slice shop in the country, and the New York Times put it on their short list too. Order, pay, wait for your name, eat standing up. That's the whole deal.

1. 50 Top Pizza #74 · 50 Top Pizza World
2. 50 Top Pizza #1 · 50 Top Pizza Slice USA
3. The Infatuation #19 · The 25 Best Restaurants In NYC

1. Roadbook The Best Restaurants and Bars in Williamsburg

1. Esquire Za'atar Martini · The Best Martinis in America

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint

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

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint

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

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint

1. Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. Esquire King Tusk · The Best Martinis in America

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #58 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Esquire Dante Mini Martini · The Best Martinis in America

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. 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

The long wooden bar came out of a Pennsylvania mining-town dance hall and has been anchoring this Smith Street cocktail bar ever since. Victorian paneling, a tin ceiling, and a curtained parlor with a fireplace in the back make the whole room feel like someone's very well-stocked study. The cocktails are precise and the eponymous Clover Club is on the menu, naturally. The kind of place that makes Brooklyn feel older than it is.

1. VinePair Industry Icon of the Year · The Next Wave Awards
2. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. Time Out #8 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

Marble bar, leather chairs, thick linens, and windows looking straight down Fifth Avenue: Ai Fiori is a formal Italian restaurant on the second floor of the Langham Hotel that telegraphs expense account before you've ordered drinks. The kitchen leans Italian with enough invention to keep it interesting, and the room is polished enough that nobody's rushing you. Gracious service throughout lunch and dinner.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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

1. Esquire Wet Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. The New York Times Potato Salad With Trout Roe · Here Are Our Top New York Dishes
3. Eater The Best Lower East Side Restaurants

A fortune-teller in the window is not a gimmick so much as a promise about the evening ahead. Past the red velvet curtains, this art deco cocktail bar on Hudson Street runs to carved wood, marble floors, a tin ceiling, and an onyx fireplace, all of it suggesting you should order something serious and stay a while. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which the regulars probably already knew.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #95 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. 50 Best #45 · North America's 50 Best Bars

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

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 Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint

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. Punch Best New Bars

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

1. 50 Best #66 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

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. Esquire The Best Bars in America

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

1. VinePair Drinks Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Meaghan Dorman
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
3. Time Out #26 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint

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

Wood smoke hangs in the air the moment you walk into this Fort Greene seafood restaurant, which should tell you something about how the kitchen operates. Chef Tomer Blechman anchors the menu around dry-aged fish and open-fire cooking, pulling from a Mediterranean pantry that keeps things interesting without announcing itself. The bar draws a crowd that clearly has opinions about natural wine, and the pita alone justifies showing up early.

1. VinePair Food & Beverage Program of the Year · The Next Wave Awards
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Time Out The 45 best restaurants in NYC right now

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America
2. Time Out #28 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. Esquire Ultimate Vodka Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Time Out The 45 best restaurants in NYC right now
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Greenpoint

A Flatiron bar tricked out like a 1970s Bangkok shophouse, with vintage televisions and family photos on the walls and Thai cocktails on the menu. The jasmine martini landed on Esquire's list of the best martinis in America, which gives you a sense of how seriously the drinks program is taken. The kitchen keeps pace with late-night Thai food that pairs naturally with the cocktails. Open late, which the neighborhood needed.

1. Esquire Jasmine Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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

1. Esquire Chihuahuan Martini · The Best Martinis in America

1. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe

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 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

Low ceilings with thick wood beams, amber light, and banquettes that make every table feel like a booth in the back of someone's private club. Bartolo is a Spanish restaurant in the West Village, the kind where you order oxtail braised in red wine and suckling pig and let the table fill up. The martini list has its own following, and the servers are sharp enough to keep a long night moving without making it feel rushed.

1. Esquire Martini de Bartolo · The Best Martinis in America
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Esquire Dante Mini Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar

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

1. Esquire Pearl Martini · The Best Martinis in America

1. Esquire Eartha · The Best Martinis in America
2. Time Out #5 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The ceiling is covered in thousands of clay churchwarden pipes, each one claimed by a regular who never came back to collect it. Keens is an old-school Manhattan steakhouse in Midtown, all dark wood and white tablecloths, and the mutton chop alone has landed on the New York Times list of the city's defining dishes. The porterhouse is USDA Prime, dry-aged in-house, and broiled without apology. It sits at number 68 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

1. World's 101 Best #68 · World's Best Steak Restaurants
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Winner · Timeless U.S. Award
3. Eater The Best Classic Restaurants in NYC

1. The Infatuation The 21 Best New Restaurants In NYC
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Soho
3. 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 five-course prix fixe of modern Korean cooking in a sleek Flatiron room where the staff outnumbers the guests by a comfortable margin. The chef takes a restrained approach to bold flavors, which sounds like a contradiction until you're eating it. The cocktail program is sharp enough to earn its own following. Michelin awarded it a star, and the James Beard Foundation named the chef a 2025 semifinalist for Best Chef: New York State.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Esquire Martini Royale · The Best Martinis in America
3. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America

Vintage mirrors, cherry wood, and brass gas chandeliers give this Downtown Brooklyn steakhouse an amber glow that makes every Tuesday feel like an occasion. The kitchen draws on the legacy of Edna Lewis, who ran it in the late eighties, so fried chicken and crab cakes share the menu with dry-aged prime beef. Dessert gets taken seriously, which a baked Alaska deserves. It has a spot on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

1. World's 101 Best #84 · World's Best Steak Restaurants
2. Esquire Turf Club · The Best Martinis in America
3. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Outstanding Pastry Chef · Caroline Schiff

1. VinePair Bartender of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Patty Dennison
2. Time Out #15 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Time Out #9 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

Sapphire velvet banquettes and jacketed servers signal exactly what this is: a fine dining room where Angie Mar fuses classic French technique with her Chinese heritage in a Greenwich Village townhouse that glitters like a jewel box. The cooking leans rich and saucy, the way haute French is supposed to, and a tasting menu is available for those who want the full ceremony. James Beard semifinalist, 2026.

1. Esquire Bemelman at the Ritz · The Best Martinis in America
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: New York State · Angie Mar