The 27 Best Cocktail Bars in Los Angeles

Money-green walls and brown leather set the tone at this approachable cocktail bar where Filipinotown, Echo Park, and Downtown all bleed together. The crowd reflects the neighborhood mix, and the bar leans into that, keeping menus short and descriptive so nobody feels lost. Seasonal cocktails share space with a Frozen of the Month, which is exactly the kind of menu that means everyone leaves happy. A James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist and on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins
2. The 50 #92 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 Sustainable Bar Award

1. The 50 #44 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Punch Best New Bars
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best New Bar

The newspaper-themed menu doubles as a history lesson on the Sunset Strip, which fits, given the leather booths and vintage vinyl setup of this dimly lit neighborhood cocktail bar. Signature drinks are named for local landmarks, the Viper Room, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the like, and priced like someone actually wants you to have a second one. Named to Wildsam's 50 Most Essential Bars in America, it trades the Strip's usual gloss for something considerably more worn-in.

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
3. Esquire Olive Drive · The Best Martinis in America

1. The 50 #68 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. West
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. West

1. Punch Real Charmer Daiquiri · Our Favorite Cocktails
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. West
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. West

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A French-Japanese bistro in an Arts District warehouse, where the croque-madame arrives on house-made shokupan with ham katsu standing in for the ham. The team behind sake-focused Japanese spots has gone full Paris here, or almost full Paris, because the ponzu jelly scattered over the burrata keeps reminding you exactly where you are. Come for an aperitif and stay until the kitchen stops feeding you.

1. Punch Best New Bartenders · Kevin Nguyen
2. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
3. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America

A tiki bar so small it was once a violin-repair shop, which tells you everything about the square footage and nothing about the ambition. Three generations of the same family have been pouring Mai Tais under the thatched canopy on Sunset since the sixties, and they do not serve beer or wine, so don't ask. Modern tiki bars tend to look like this place photoshopped. The original is still doing it straight.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Linda Douglas
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. West
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. West

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. West
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. West
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. West

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

The Standing Room, a subterranean lounge tucked under the Arts District, is the reason to come to this Los Angeles outpost of the New York cocktail institution. Death & Co keeps its speakeasy bones, dark and deliberately moody, while the menu organizes its 25 cocktails by personality rather than spirit, which is either very LA or very useful depending on your mood. Californian wines and global beers round things out for anyone who finds the taxonomy exhausting.

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

1. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. West

Inside the Hauser & Wirth arts complex in the Arts District, Manuela is a restaurant and bar where conceptual art hangs on the walls and the cooking tilts Southern with a serious commitment to local ingredients, some grown in their own garden. Cocktails use house-made bitters and tonics, and the food is the kind that makes a gallery crowd linger well past closing time.

1. Punch Archie · Our Favorite Cocktails
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The smartest move Accomplice ever made was opening next to Taiwanese restaurant Little Fatty, so when the cocktails do their work, crab rangoon and shrimp chips are one door away. It's a moody cocktail bar in Mar Vista where the drinks lean into unexpected flavors, Japanese whiskey and oolong sharing space with goji berry and ginger. The 50 Discovery named it among their finds, which tracks.

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. West

You reach Caña by walking through a parking garage in the base of a historic Petroleum Building until a podium appears, which is the kind entrance policy that filters out the uncommitted. Inside, a corridor lined with rum bottles leads to a wood-panelled room with leather banquettes and a ribbed concrete ceiling. It's a rum cocktail bar that takes the spirit seriously, and the dim lamplight makes everyone look like they have good taste.

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

A French spirits lounge on Melrose where the cocktail menu is divided into categories named Parfum and Potion, which tells you immediately what kind of evening they have in mind. The team also runs La Descarga and Harvard & Stone, so the theatrics are deliberate. Low lighting, a Parisian lounge sensibility, and a crowd that dressed for it. The menu leans heavily on calvados, armagnac, and eau de vie, which is either your thing or a prompt to try something new.

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

A New Orleans cocktail bar where the inside has been dressed up to look like an outdoor street scene, the way a film studio backlot would imagine the French Quarter. Barrel-aged cocktails are the house move, and the 1920s theme is committed enough that someone looked up the etymology of sassafras before naming the place. The crowd tends toward people who wanted something more atmospheric than a standard Hollywood dive.

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

An unmarked door at the back of Cole's opens into a dimly lit cocktail bar where jazz plays low and Victorian oil lamps glow against wood-panelled walls. The late Sasha Petraske was a part owner, and the room feels exactly like something he'd have built: serious about its classic cocktails, quiet enough to hear the ice hit the glass, and a little too good at making you lose track of the hour.

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

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

The chandeliers alone explain why every studio executive who ever needed to feel important has passed through here. Library Bar sits inside the Hollywood Roosevelt, a hotel so soaked in old Hollywood mythology it practically seeps into the drinks. It's a cocktail bar where the Spanish Colonial bones do most of the heavy lifting, and the clientele tends to dress accordingly. Order something classic and let the room do the rest.

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

The name is literal: a neighborhood cocktail bar tucked into a quiet stretch of Washington Boulevard in Culver City, the part of LA better known for art galleries than drinking. Inside, it's casual and intimate, the kind of room that fills up with locals and after-work regulars who seem to have quietly agreed not to tell anyone else about it. The bartenders lean toward inventive riffs on classics.

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

A cocktail bar tucked behind a psychic shop on La Cienega, marked by a red neon hand in the window and, somewhat defeating the mystique, valet attendants and a sign on the pavement. Inside, it's all dark wood paneling, picture frames, antique stained glass, and a vintage mirror above the bar that promises "the best of everything and nothing but the best." Booths line one wall, low tables fill the back, and the lighting is dim enough to feel like a secret even when it isn't.

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

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

The entry corridor sets the tone: a wall-sized photo of the old Famous Department Store, vintage neighborhood shots lining the walls, and classic films rolling on the screens inside this cocktail lounge tucked into Glendale's historic Huntley-Evans building. Live bands and DJs take over on weekends. Most of the crowd is passing through before or after the Americana at Brand across the street, which makes the retro-local atmosphere feel like a quiet act of mild resistance.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide