The Best Places to Drink and Stay in Dubai

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