The 31 Best Places to Drink in Dubai

An old-school institution in DIFC where regulars rattle off their order without glancing at the menu, which tells you most of what you need to know. LPM is a French-Mediterranean restaurant and bar with white walls, bright art, and a Mediterranean breeziness that somehow survives the Dubai setting. The bar sits at No. 60 on The World's 50 Best Bars list, and the cocktail program draws on Jean Cocteau's life, which is a more interesting premise than it sounds.

1. The 50 #60 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. The 50 #27 · MENA's 50 Best Restaurants

The bar program here landed at No. 36 on the World's 50 Best Bars list, which is a lot for a restaurant inside a Four Seasons to live up to, and yet the kitchen keeps pace. Mimi Kakushi is a contemporary Japanese dining room and cocktail bar where sushi, wagyu, and donabe rice pots share the evening with drinks that have made the global circuit. The crowd arrives dressed for it, and the room obliges.

1. The 50 #36 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #35 · MENA's 50 Best Restaurants
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Restaurant Bar – Middle East & Africa

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Bar Team – Middle East & Africa
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Cocktail Bar – Middle East & Africa

A Damien Hirst octopus greets you on the ground floor before a glass lift delivers you to a dimly lit, seabed-themed dining room and bar where every surface seems to be doing something. The Japanese and pan-Asian sharing plates hold their own against the décor, which is saying something. The balcony terrace has sweeping DIFC skyline views, and the bathroom has its own fan base on Instagram, independently.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Bar Team – Middle East & Africa

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Three floors of tropical greenery in the middle of DIFC, where the Amazon rainforest aesthetic gets taken very seriously and the bar keeps pace with the dining room. The Latin American menu wanders from sushi to grilled meats, which sounds chaotic but tracks with the Amazon basin's many communities. First-floor tables face the open kitchen; the panoramic terrace is the move for a cocktail before or after.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Bar Team – Middle East & Africa

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Hotel Bar – Middle East & Africa

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The pisco bar alone draws a crowd before anyone touches the ceviche menu. This Peruvian restaurant and bar sits inside the Four Seasons' outdoor Restaurant Village, where the room runs loud and candlelit and nobody seems to be eating alone. The kitchen works the Nikkei angle hard, with ceviches in several directions and a sweetcorn meringue pavlova that sounds odd until it doesn't. Cocktail credentials are no afterthought; the bar team placed among the regional top ten in the Spirited Awards.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Bar Team – Middle East & Africa

The glass-brick DJ booth is the first clue that this is not your average hotel bar. Electric Pawn Shop is a neon-lit, music-forward cocktail bar on the ground floor of the H Dubai, dressed up in stainless steel, exposed brick, and a vague dystopian fog. The menu leans Asian-Mediterranean, but the real reason to come is the sound system, which takes itself very seriously, as it should.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Hotel Bar – Middle East & Africa

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Cocktail Bar – Middle East & Africa

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New International Cocktail Bar – Middle East & Africa

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Hotel Bar – Middle East & Africa

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New International Cocktail Bar – Middle East & Africa

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Hotel Bar – Middle East & Africa

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New International Cocktail Bar – Middle East & Africa

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New International Cocktail Bar – Middle East & Africa

The Barcelona original put cocktails inside a fridge; this ninth-floor outpost swapped the fridge for a circus. A cocktail bar inside the Five Luxe JBR, Paradiso Dubai goes big on spectacle: candy stripes, circus motifs, and drinks that arrive as set pieces, one served inside a miniature steam engine under sesame foam, another glowing green thanks to riboflavin and something billed as an electric liqueur. A named spot on The 50 Discovery list.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Fifty-one floors above the Palm, this bar pulls from Japan, Brazil, and Peru simultaneously, which sounds like a fever dream until you're holding a passionfruit-spiked cocktail with disco balls spinning overhead. The crowd dresses up and the DJs show up ready; on Thursdays, samba dancers take over entirely. It's a lot, in the way Dubai tends to be a lot, and the view gives everyone permission to lean into it.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The circular bar on the 44th floor of Grosvenor House earns the name, with views over the marina that make it easy to forgive the champagne-bar origins and the flashier crowd that came with them. This is a cocktail bar now, properly, with lounge rooms off to the sides for anyone who wants to sit somewhere quieter and pretend they planned ahead. The jetset still shows up, but so does everyone else.

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

The bar at this Japanese restaurant-bar in the Monarch Hotel runs impossibly narrow, which somehow makes it feel more like a scene than an inconvenience. Regulars wedged in shoulder-to-shoulder are usually debating which large-format bottle to order next, but the bartenders behind the counter are quietly serious about what they're doing. A high-energy cocktail bar with a mezzanine-level address and prices to match the postcode.

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

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide