The Top 100 Places to Drink Near Manhatta

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

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. Esquire Pearl Martini · The Best Martinis in America

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

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 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

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. 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. Esquire The Best Bars in America

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

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

1. Time Out #17 · 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

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

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

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. 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

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

A basement cocktail bar in the Financial District with dark red walls, a chandelier, and macramé screens that somehow land between 1980s lounge and faint tiki, all packed into semicircular banquettes that seat over a hundred. The inventive menu carries the fingerprints of the Death & Co. team. On quieter weeknights they may seat you at the bar only, which is worth knowing before you bring a crowd.

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

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

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

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

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. The Infatuation The 21 Best New Restaurants In NYC
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Soho
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

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

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

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

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

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. 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

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

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

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

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

At this Korean wine bar on Division Street, banchan is the main event, not the preamble. The chef builds a daily set of small plates that sit somewhere between Seoul, Lyon, and Palermo, leeks vinaigrette with Chinese hot mustard, eggplant crushed into something caponata-adjacent. The kitchen is tiny, the room tinier, and the menu stubbornly its own thing. The New York Times placed it among the city's 100 best restaurants.

1. Food & Wine Sunn’s Salad · Best Dishes Our Editors Ate This Year
2. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
3. Time Out #19 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

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. 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. 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

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. 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

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

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

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

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

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

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

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. 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. 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. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

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

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

An unmarked door across from the Tribeca Grand opens onto a staircase that leads down to a dimly lit basement cocktail bar, all booth seating and bar stools, with smooth jazz doing most of the decorating. The cocktail list is named after jazz standards, which sounds gimmicky until you're two drinks in. Classics are handled with care, and the room has the kind of quiet self-confidence that doesn't need a sign out front.

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

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

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

A steel gallery runs high around the room, stacked with antique bric-a-brac as if the trading company never quite unpacked. This atmospheric Tribeca bar leans heavily on the Portuguese Macau fantasy, all dark wood and red lantern atmosphere, and skews more restaurant than dive. Come for a cocktail and a reason to explain to your date that Macau predates Hong Kong by several centuries as a European foothold in East Asia.

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

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

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

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. 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

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

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You ring an unmarked bell on an unmarked door below street level, and that's the whole game announced before you've ordered a drink. Inside, this cocktail bar in Chelsea is all deep armchairs, shaded lamps, a fireplace, and curtained alcoves fitted with a buzzer to summon your server when you're ready. It's a speakeasy setup done without irony, and the room is quiet enough that people actually talk to each other.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar

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

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

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

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The entrance reads "Lower East Side Toy Company" on an iron gate, which is not a toy company. Beyond it, a semi-subterranean passage runs between buildings toward an unmarked door with a brass peephole, and yes, the rats are part of the atmosphere. One of the few surviving Prohibition-era speakeasies in the city, this bar on the Lower East Side commits hard to the bit, and the whole approach feels like a dare before you've ordered anything.

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

1. Esquire Dongji Martini · The Best Martinis in America

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service · Ivy Mix

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

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 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

The last unmarked door at the end of a long basement corridor, no bell, no sign, just turn the handle. This is a cocktail bar tucked beneath a Nordic restaurant on Great Jones Street, sharing a kitchen with the dining room upstairs. The room reads as intentionally low-key, the kind of place where knowing how to find it is half the point, and the other half is that you actually got in.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 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. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide