The Best Places to Drink Near Dragonfly, by the Record
-
Rank 1. Dragonfly
Cocktail Bar
Herb bundles and infusion jars in the window give Dragonfly away before you even open the door. This cocktail bar on Gouraud Street occupies a former bakery, and the barrel-vaulted ceilings of the old building make it feel like somewhere worth lingering. The menu follows through on what the bar setup promises, and the music policy skips the standard Beiruti dance-pop entirely, running late enough that Umm Kulthum might come on.
-
-
-
Rank 4. Centrale
French
A cylindrical room custom-built and set on top of a converted Saifi house, reached by a lift with sofas in it, which is already a lot before you've ordered a drink. This cocktail bar takes wine seriously enough to offer five pages of it, Pomerol and St-Emilion alongside fourteen Lebanese bottles. In summer, one side of the cylinder opens to the air, turning the whole thing into a rooftop terrace with architectural ambitions.
-
Rank 5. Pacifico
Tex-Mex Mexican
-
-
-
A rooftop cocktail bar on the sixth floor of Le Gray hotel, with a pool on the terrace that runs right up to the indoor bar's windows. The room curves in white with cherry prints on the walls, and the views take in most of Beirut and a sliver of sea beyond. DJs most evenings keep things from getting too contemplative. The cocktail list leans toward crowd-pleasers but slips in a few inventive options for anyone who bothers to look past the obvious.
-