The Top 100 Places to Drink Near The Circle
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Rank 1. Sip & Guzzle
Innovative Japanese Cocktail Bar
- 50 Best #39 · The World's 50 Best Bars
- 50 Best #1 · North America's 50 Best Bars
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Winner · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar
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Rank 3. Martiny’s
Japanese Cocktail Bar
- 50 Best #75 · The World's 50 Best Bars
- 50 Best #23 · North America's 50 Best Bars
- Esquire The Best Bars in America
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- 50 Best #46 · The World's 50 Best Bars
- 50 Best #33 · North America's 50 Best Bars
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar
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Rank 5. Clemente Bar
Vegan Cocktail Bar
- 50 Best #15 · North America's 50 Best Bars
- Esquire Martini of the Year: Clemente Martini · The Best Martinis in America
- VinePair Bartender of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Sebastian Tollius
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Rank 6. Shinji’s
Japanese Cocktail Bar
- VinePair Bar Program of the Year · The Next Wave Awards
- The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
- 50 Best #77 · North America's 50 Best Bars
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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 8. Katana Kitten
Japanese Cocktail Bar
- 50 Best #52 · North America's 50 Best Bars
- Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Masa Urushido
- Time Out #18 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
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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.
- Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
- 50 Best #95 · The World's 50 Best Bars
- 50 Best #45 · North America's 50 Best Bars
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Rank 10. Dante
Italian Cocktail Bar
- Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
- 50 Best #58 · North America's 50 Best Bars
- Esquire Dante Mini Martini · The Best Martinis in America
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Rank 11. 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
- Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
- Esquire The Best Bars in America
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Rank 13. The Dead Rabbit
Irish 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.
- Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
- The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
- Esquire Steakhouse Martini #2 · The Best Martinis 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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- Esquire The Best Bars in America
- Esquire 1884 Martini · The Best Martinis in America
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 10 U.S. Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
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Rank 16. Milady’s
Cocktail Bar
- The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
- Esquire The Best Bars in America
- 50 Best Julie Reiner · Industry Icon Award
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Rank 17. Angel’s Share
Japanese Cocktail Bar
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.
- Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
- 50 Best #31 · North America's 50 Best Bars
- The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC
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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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Rank 21. Dante
Italian Cocktail Bar
- Esquire Dante Mini Martini · The Best Martinis in America
- Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
- James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar
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Rank 22. Bartolo
Spanish
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.
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Rank 24. LenLen
Thai
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.
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Rank 25. Hawksmoor
British Steakhouse
- Esquire Ultimate Vodka Martini · The Best Martinis in America
- Time Out The 45 best restaurants in NYC right now
- James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program
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- The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
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Rank 27. Caviar Kaspia At The Mark
Russian French
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Rank 29. 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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Rank 30. 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 31. Midnight Blue
Japanese Cocktail Bar
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe
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Rank 32. L’Americana
Italian Coffee Shop
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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Rank 33. Dean's
British Dive Bar
- The Infatuation The 21 Best New Restaurants In NYC
- Eater The Best Restaurants in Soho
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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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.
- Esquire Bemelman at the Ritz · The Best Martinis in America
- Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
- James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: New York State · Angie Mar
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Rank 35. Oiji Mi
Modern Korean
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.
- Michelin Guide 1 Star
- Esquire Martini Royale · The Best Martinis in America
- Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
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Rank 36. NARO
Korean
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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.
- Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
- Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 10 U.S. Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
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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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- 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 41. COQODAQ
Korean
The hand-washing station at the entrance stocks Loewe soap, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Korean fried chicken restaurant. Club music bounces off vaulted ceilings while you work through a bucket of gluten-free fried chicken with consommé, banchan, and frozen yogurt soft serve to finish. Champagne is the obvious pairing, and caviar-topped nuggets are available for anyone who finds the baseline insufficiently absurd. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.
- Condé Nast Traveler The best new restaurants in the world
- Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
- Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
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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 43. Kiko
Mexican
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Rank 44. Titsou Bar
Parisian Cocktail Bar
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Rank 46. Dandelion
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 48. Seirēn
Spanish-Portuguese Cocktail Bar
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Rank 50. Kees
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 51. Brandy Library
Cocktail Bar
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.
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Rank 52. NoMad
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 53. Thyme
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 54. Little Ned
Cocktail Bar
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The cocktail bar on the second floor of the landmark Metropolitan Life building, where the ceilings are tall enough to make you feel like you should order something serious. The drinks program travels with the restaurant group globally, which keeps the bar from feeling like an afterthought to the dining room below. A polished crowd in no hurry fills the seats most evenings, and the room does most of the work before the first drink arrives.
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Rank 57. Stone & Soil
Japanese
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- Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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Rank 59. El Quijote
Spanish
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- Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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Rank 64. Flatiron Room
Cocktail Bar
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- Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
- Time Out #14 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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Rank 68. Whitehall
Modern British
Edison bulbs over factory-tiled walls and a ceiling that looks like it never quite finished being renovated: Whitehall calls itself a "gastro bar" rather than a gastropub, and the distinction holds. It's a neighborhood cocktail bar on Greenwich Avenue with a modern British menu running alongside, but people mostly come for the warm room and the staff who seem to mean it. Think London train station, interpreted loosely and affectionately.
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Rank 70. Little Branch
Cocktail Bar
Corrugated iron ceiling, pressed tin bar front, mustard walls: Little Branch looks like a speakeasy that forgot to close. This Greenwich Village cocktail bar carries the DNA of Milk & Honey, the late Sasha Petraske's legendary first act, which means classically made drinks taken seriously and a room that rewards staying a while. It's discreet enough to feel like a find, but open to anyone who can find the door.
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Rank 72. 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 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.
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Rank 74. Soho House New York
Cocktail Bar
The Circle Bar sits on the top floor of this famously members-only Meatpacking District club, its zinc-topped bar jutting into a room of herringbone parquet and enormous Chesterfield sofas. The glass-walled wine cellar is purely decorative, but it sets the mood. Cocktails arrive at low tables where people who definitely knew the right person to get in are trying to look like they didn't have to.
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A red light above an unmarked door in a Chelsea coffee shop is the only signal that there's a cocktail bar behind it. Once through, the room opens into flocked wallpaper, fringed lampshades, and an antique copper bathtub sitting squarely in the middle of things, which everyone photographs and then pretends they weren't going to. The seven-seat copper bar is the calmer alternative. Dressed-up but not stiff, and a long way from the espresso machine out front.
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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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Rank 78. Dylan Prime Lounge
Cocktail Bar
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.
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The lobby bar you pass through on your way to somewhere else, bright and airy in that hotel-lounge way that somehow makes you stop anyway. Cocktails lean playful and a little precious, the kind with long ingredient lists and names that make you read them twice. A good spot to settle in before or after dinner upstairs, or to skip the reservation altogether and just drink somewhere that doesn't feel like it's trying too hard.
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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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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.
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Rank 83. Experimental Cocktail Club (ECC LES)
French Cocktail Bar
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Rank 84. 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 85. 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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Tucked into the basement of Chelsea Market, a former Nabisco factory, The Tippler is a cocktail bar with exposed brick, a long marble bar, and Oriental rugs thrown over the floor like someone's eccentric living room. The drink menu runs long and complicated, courtesy of the Tippling Bros. team. Come on a weeknight if you want to actually think; weekends belong to the Meatpacking overflow crowd and their very different priorities.
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Rank 87. 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 88. Forty Four
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 89. Rye House
Cocktail Bar
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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.
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Rank 92. Macao Trading Co.
Portuguese
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.
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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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Rank 94. Sweetwater Social
Cocktail Bar
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Ivy trellises climb the walls of the rooftop bar on the 15th floor, which is the one worth engineering your evening around. Ian Schrager, who gave the world Studio 54 and the Delano, put his stamp on this Gramercy landmark, and the result is three bars across the hotel, each with a crowd dressed like they had somewhere better to be and came here anyway.
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Rank 96. Temple Bar
Italian Cocktail Bar
Oak paneling, cherrywood bar, velvet seating, heavy curtains: Temple Bar is a cocktail bar that looks like the lounge of a grand hotel, minus the fusty clientele. The crowd skews professional and thirty-something, the lighting is low, and the drinks lean classic with an Italian tilt. A Sgroppino sits alongside a Ward Eight and an Espresso Martini, which is a menu that knows its history without being smug about it.
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