The Top 35 Places to Drink Near Starla's Tavern

Backlit anatomical illustrations and a menu titled "Prescriptions and Antidotes" set the tone at this Chinatown cocktail bar, where traditional Chinese medicine drives the drink program. Bamboo liqueur, motherwort, and tofu turn up alongside baijiu and rum in combinations that shouldn't work but do. The ice is carved in-house, the DJs are good, and North America's 50 Best Bars has it at number seven.

1. 50 Best #7 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. Golden Owl Awards Nominee · Best Cocktail Experience

The room arrives before the menu does: red-tinged lighting, curves everywhere, the kind of design that makes a Tuesday feel like an occasion. June is a French bistro and serious cocktail bar on Cambie that landed at number 17 on North America's 50 Best Bars and fourth on Canada's 100 Best new restaurants in the same year, which is a neat trick. The food runs to butter-heavy, comforting bistro standards; the drinks list is the other reason to come.

1. 50 Best #17 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Canada's 100 Best #4 · Best New Restaurants
3. Air Canada 2025 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

The entrance is a horse-race bookie front, and you have to place a bet on King Louie to get through the door. Inside, this Indian-inspired cocktail bar has a barrel-shaped ceiling studded with horseshoes and palm-tree wallpaper that lands somewhere between Victorian colonial club and Jungle Book fever dream. The cocktails lean into the conceit, with spiced spirits, pistachio orgeat, and coconut ginger tea doing most of the convincing. North America's 50 Best Bars has it at 59.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. 50 Best #59 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Golden Owl Awards Nominee · Best Cocktail Experience

A small, romantically lit cocktail bar built around a single obsession: Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century naturalist whose travels shape every drink on the menu. The cocktails trace his expeditions through flavor, from bright and citrusy to smoky and feral, one of them made with a spirit flavored by raw venison suspended in the still. The corner banquette is exactly as good as it sounds.

1. 50 Best #53 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Bar Team – Canada
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New International Cocktail Bar – Canada

Burnt-orange carpets, vintage TV sets, and retro beer signs set the scene at this cocktail bar on Mount Pleasant's quieter side, where the decor reads like your grandparents' basement but the drinks are anything but. The bar landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, and the cocktail program earns it, with clarified Greek yogurt turning up in tequila drinks and mezcal slushies arriving alongside tater tots in tin lunch boxes.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. 50 Best #91 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Restaurant Bar – Canada

Pull back the velvet curtain and you're inside the world of nhậu, the Vietnamese tradition of drinking and eating with friends until things get blurry. Good Thief is a cocktail bar and restaurant on Main Street, the self-described rebellious younger sibling to Anh and Chi next door. The drinks lean boldly Vietnamese, the food runs from binchotan skewers to Dungeness crab garlic noodles, and the whole menu is designed to share. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Canada's 100 Best #44 · Best Bars
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
3. Vancouver Magazine 2026 · Silver Medal · Restaurant Awards: Best Informal Contemporary

1. 50 Best #87 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Cocktail Bar – Canada
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Cocktail Bar – Canada

The entry is a freezer door inside a Chinatown dumpling shop, and it only opens if you order dumpling No. 7. What's behind it is a speakeasy done up in teal and gold, channeling 1920s Shanghai with enough sincerity to pull it off. The bar carries over fifty baijiu bottlings, the largest selection in Canada, and the cocktails are built around the spirit rather than just gesturing at it. North America's 50 Best Bars has it at number 72.

1. 50 Best #72 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Bar Team – Canada
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Cocktail Bar – Canada

You reach Lala by walking through the brasserie upstairs and following the crowd toward the back, which is either mysterious or a fire-hazard joke depending on your mood. In the basement, a cocktail bar waits with velvet curves, a golden glow, and retro speakers that actually earn the decor. Vinyl DJs spin nightly, and the bar team turns out drinks with real invention, bottled cocktails and mezcal-spiked riffs among them. Ranked 19th on Canada's 100 Best Bars list.

1. Canada's 100 Best #19 · Best Bars

1. 50 Best #64 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Vancouver Magazine 2025 · Bronze Medal · Restaurant Awards: Best New
3. Golden Owl Awards Nominee · New Venue of the Year

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Golden Owl Awards Runner Up · Best Cocktail Experience
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New International Cocktail Bar – Canada

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Hotel Bar – Canada
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Hotel Bar – Canada

The tartare here arrives bright with herbs and anchovy salt, which tells you most of what you need to know about Chez Céline's register. It's a French bistro and bar on Fraser Street, the kind of neighbourhood spot that somehow also reads as subtly refined, in the Quebec casse-croûte tradition. J-C Poirier and Margaux Herder's room is cozy without being sleepy, and the cocktail program is serious enough to earn a Spirited Awards regional nod.

1. Canada's 100 Best #10 · Best New Restaurants
2. Canada's 100 Best #60 · Best Restaurants
3. Vancouver Magazine 2026 · Bronze Medal · Restaurant Awards: Best New Restaurant

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

Preservation jars line the shelves as decor, which tells you something: this Michelin-starred fine dining room on Main Street ferments, forages, and pickles its way through the seasons before a single plate reaches the table. Chef Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson weaves Manitoba roots and Nordic technique into a deeply West Coast menu, and the bar crowd ordering à la carte gets the same serious treatment as the tasting menu pilgrims. North America's 50 Best lists it at number seventeen.

1. 50 Best #17 · North America's 50 Best Restaurants
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. Canada's 100 Best #20 · Best Restaurants

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. Vancouver Magazine 2026 · Editors’ Choice · Restaurant Awards: Best Wine Bars

Marble floors, a signature Indian jasmine scent piped through the air, and live music three times a day set the tone for this hotel lobby bar inside one of Vancouver's glossier addresses. It's the kind of place where the city's famously casual dressing meets conspicuous chandeliers and nobody seems bothered by the contradiction. On weekend nights after ten, the potted plants reportedly double as a dance floor, so plan accordingly if you came to drink seriously.

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

Ten stools, two bartenders, and a wine wall that takes itself seriously without making you feel like you should too. West is a wine bar on Granville that embodies what Vancouver does well: high-touch without the starch. The bartenders have been here long enough to know what you want before you do, and afternoons are unhurried, though weekend evenings pack the room two deep with the pre-dinner crowd treating it as a destination in itself.

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

House margaritas come in mugs here, which tells you most of what you need to know about El Caminos. This Mexican cocktail bar on Main Street does the Pacific Northwest version of a dive, all shabby-chic surfaces and pan-Latin classics poured without ceremony. Locals pack it out on weekends and Margarita Mondays draw a crowd that tends to spill onto the sidewalk, so come early or come patient.

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

A semi-circular tiki bar tucked inside the Waldorf Hotel's entertainment complex on East Hastings. The room is built around a big, curved bar with a red top and a mirror wall behind it that bounces the whole scene back at you. Tiered tables ring the outer edge, leaving floor space for when things get crowded. It shares the building with restaurants and live music venues, so some nights come with a cover; earlier in the week it runs as its own thing, free to wander into.

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

1. Golden Owl Awards Nominee · Best Pub Experience

1. Golden Owl Awards Nominee · Nightclub of the Year

The dry-aged fish program is the detail that separates this buzzy Fraser Street seafood spot from every other neighborhood bar doing a raw bar. The menu is small and shifts often, but the cooking stays bold and punchy, from hiramasa with aguachile to squid tagliolini that goes places pasta doesn't usually go. Vancouver Magazine gave it gold for both informal dining and seafood, and the Michelin Guide has taken notice too. Service is friendly without being precious.

1. Air Canada 2024 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants
2. Vancouver Magazine 2025 · Gold Medal · Restaurant Awards: Best Informal Contemporary
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Sunchoke with salal berry and burnt onion isn't a dish you'd find yourself ordering on instinct, which is part of the point at this creative vegetarian fine-dining room in Mount Pleasant. The kitchen names its organic BC suppliers on the menu and takes texture as seriously as flavor. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and first-timers tend to do well surrendering to the tasting menu rather than pretending they know what salal berry tastes like.

1. Air Canada 2013 · Top 10 · Best New Restaurants
2. Vancouver Magazine 2026 · Restaurant Awards: Sustainability Award
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Golden Owl Awards Runner Up · Best Craft Brewery Experience

1. Golden Owl Awards Nominee · Best Craft Brewery Experience

1. Golden Owl Awards Winner · Best Craft Brewery Experience

1. Golden Owl Awards Nominee · Best Craft Brewery Experience
2. Golden Owl Awards Nominee · Best Patio Experience

1. Golden Owl Awards Winner · Best Pub Experience

1. Golden Owl Awards Nominee · Best Pub Experience

Upstairs in a Chinatown walkup, rose banquettes and antique Japanese panels recreate the jazz cafés of 1960s Tokyo, which is a strange and perfect setting for a Michelin-starred restaurant fusing Japanese and Italian cooking. The kitchen plays it straight: hand-cut pasta with miso-cured egg yolk and parmesan, tiramisu made with plum wine-soaked tofu. Cult Japanese whiskies share the drinks list with Italian amari, and the cocktails split the difference. Dress up a little.

1. Air Canada 2016 · #1 · Best New Restaurants
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. Canada's 100 Best #15 · Best Restaurants

1. Golden Owl Awards Winner · Nightclub of the Year

The savory éclair filled with duck liver mousse has become something of a calling card here, and it explains a lot about the place. St. Lawrence is an elegant Québécois French tasting restaurant with a convivial front bar, a semi-open kitchen, and a Michelin star. The fixed menu rotates by season, sometimes leaning into sugar shack classics, sometimes into French bourgeois cooking, always with sauces that deserve more attention than they get.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Air Canada 2018 · Top 10 · Best New Restaurants
3. World Culinary Awards 2025 · Nominee · North America's Best French Cuisine Restaurant

1. Golden Owl Awards Runner Up · Best Hotel Lounge Experience
2. Golden Owl Awards Nominee · Nightclub of the Year
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Elizabeth Blau - Blau + Associates