The Top 48 Places to Drink Near La Bastide by Andrea Calstier
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Rank 1. La Bastide by Andrea Calstier
Modern French
A converted farmhouse in North Salem with sweeping views of actual countryside, which somehow makes the tasting menu feel earned rather than theatrical. This is a Michelin-starred modern French fine dining room with very few tables, run by a husband-and-wife team whose roots are in the south of France. The cooking is precise and quietly confident, and dessert gets its own moment to shine. Esquire named the Vesper martini among the finest in America, which is a strange fact about a farmhouse, and a good one.
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Rank 3. The Lantern Inn
Pizza
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- 50 Best #71 · North America's 50 Best Bars
- Esquire Cartagena · The Best Martinis in America
- Esquire The Best Bars in America
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Rank 5. Ai Fiori
Italian
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.
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- Esquire King Tusk · The Best Martinis in America
- Esquire The Best Bars in America
- Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
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- VinePair Drinks Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Meaghan Dorman
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
- Time Out #26 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
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Rank 8. Sugar Monk
Cocktail Bar
- The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
- The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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- Esquire Eartha · The Best Martinis in America
- Time Out #5 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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- James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar
- Time Out #30 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
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Rank 13. Caviar Kaspia At The Mark
Russian French
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Rank 14. Keens Steakhouse
Steakhouse
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.
- World's 101 Best #68 · World's Best Steak Restaurants
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Winner · Timeless U.S. Award
- Eater The Best Classic Restaurants in NYC
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Rank 15. NARO
Korean
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- Time Out #12 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
- Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East
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- Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East
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Rank 18. Analogue (West Village, NYC)
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 19. P.J. Clarke's
American
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.
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A Maxfield Parrish mural of Old King Cole anchors this small, high-ceilinged hotel cocktail bar inside the St. Regis, and it's been staring down the room since the Golden Age of illustration. The bar's other claim to history is the Bloody Mary, which Fernand Petiot is said to have perfected here. The menu still leans into that, which is either heritage or a hint. Either way, the room is beautiful and the drinks are stiff.
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Rank 22. Apotheke
Cocktail Bar
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.
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Rank 25. Little Ned
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 26. Stone & Soil
Japanese
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Rank 27. NoMad
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 32. Flatiron Room
Cocktail Bar
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A former antique shop on 33rd Street that now deals in classically built cocktails, organized on the menu by category the way a serious bar should be. This is a two-floor cocktail bar from the late Sasha Petraske's lineage, sibling to Little Branch, with communal high tables downstairs where live jazz pulls in the neighbors, and a looser, loungier room upstairs when you need to actually hear yourself think.
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Rank 35. Borgo
Italian
Andrew Tarlow, the restaurateur who more or less invented the Brooklyn communal-table aesthetic, runs his only Manhattan outpost here on East 27th. The neighborhood trattoria seats you at long tables with a daily menu scrawled on butcher paper, and the food leans into the gamy, the bitter, and the slow-cooked, the things that take patience to understand. The New York Times placed it sixth on its 100 Best Restaurants list.
- James Beard Awards 2026 · Winner · Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service · Lee Campbell
- Esquire Wine Director of the Year · Lee Campbell
- VinePair Wine Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Lee Campbell
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The glowing floor stayed when the Hudson Hotel's Library Bar got its makeover, but the furniture got considerably more fashionable. This cocktail bar swings between loud dance music and live jazz depending on the night, with exposed brick, low tables, and lighting that flatters everyone equally. It's the kind of flirty hotel bar where the room does most of the work, and nobody seems to mind.
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A gilded rat guards the door, which is the first sign you're in the right place. This cocktail bar sits beneath the Andaz 5th Avenue, easy to miss from the street if you're not looking for the discreet sign. Once down the stairs, the room opens into banquettes and long walnut communal tables where a bartender works one side while drinkers take the other three, which collapses the usual bar geography in a quietly clever way.
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Rank 39. Porchlight
Southern
Concrete floors that look like the previous tenant's linoleum was ripped up last Tuesday set the tone at this spacious Southern-leaning cocktail bar in west Chelsea. Danny Meyer's first standalone bar leans on the spirit of Blue Smoke, which means Sazeracs and bar food with a drawl. The games room in the back suggests the intention is for you to stay a while, and the raw brick walls give you no reason to hurry.
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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.
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Rank 44. On the Rocks
Beer Bar
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.
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Rank 45. Añejo
Mexican
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.
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Rank 46. Forty Four
Cocktail Bar
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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.
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