The Top 100 Places to Drink Near Whitehall

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. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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. Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. Esquire King Tusk · The Best Martinis in America

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

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 The Best Bars in America

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. 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

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

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

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

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 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 10 U.S. Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar

1. 50 Best #66 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

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

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

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

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. 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. 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. Esquire Chihuahuan Martini · The Best Martinis in America

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

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.

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

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

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America
2. Time Out #28 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

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

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

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.

1. Condé Nast Traveler The best new restaurants in the world
2. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
3. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

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. 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

1. Time Out #29 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

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.

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

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

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. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

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.

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

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.

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

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

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. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

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

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

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

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

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

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Time Out #14 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

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

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

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. Punch Bay Leaf Daiquiri · Our Favorite Cocktails

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

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

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

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4 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. 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 Za'atar Martini · The Best Martinis in America

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. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

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

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

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.

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Winner · Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service · Lee Campbell
2. Esquire Wine Director of the Year · Lee Campbell
3. VinePair Wine Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Lee Campbell

1. Esquire Dongji Martini · The Best Martinis in America

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

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 Eartha · The Best Martinis in America
2. Time Out #5 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

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. Esquire Pearl Martini · The Best Martinis in America

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

1. Esquire Dirty Eliá · The Best Martinis in America

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

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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