The Best Bars in East Village

Crimson walls, floor cushions, and sculptures that look borrowed from a warehouse no one was using anyway: Schmuck is a cocktail bar on 1st Avenue that landed at number four on North America's 50 Best Bars in its first year open. The Barcelona sibling to Two Schmucks, it splits into a lounge side and a communal kitchen table side, so you can either settle in or make friends faster than planned.

1. The 50 #59 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #4 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. VinePair Bar Program of the Year · The Next Wave Awards

1. The 50 #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

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

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 New York Times 2025 · 3 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
3. The Infatuation #7 · The Top-Rated New Restaurants

You get in by picking up the phone inside a wooden booth at a hot dog joint on St. Marks. If whoever's watching the camera approves, the door buzzes open. PDT is a cocktail bar that takes the speakeasy conceit completely seriously, which is either charming or exhausting depending on your mood, and the line outside suggests most people land on charming. The drinks are the kind of careful, considered pours that made the whole city start doing this.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

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

The menu lists a spicy margarita riff called The Party Lobster, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe. Mister Paradise is a cocktail bar in the East Village where the drinks are built with serious technique, clarification, sous-vide, the works, but presented with enough wit and noise that you'd never call it stuffy. Locals land here and stop leaving, which is either a warning or a recommendation depending on your Thursday.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. East
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best 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

The name is a nod to a Prohibition-era collective that disguised speakeasy maps as temperance posters, which tells you exactly the kind of commitment to the bit you're walking into. Death & Co is a proper cocktail bar on a quiet East Village block, dark and close and serious about what's in your glass. The crowd leans dressed-up without being showy, and the bartenders talk about spirits the way sommeliers talk about Burgundy.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Time Out #9 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

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

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

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

The horseshoe bar juts into the middle of the room like it owns the place, which, given the brown panelled walls and tasselled awning overhead, it kind of does. This St Marks dive bar closed for a few years and came back with its 1970s bones intact, including a mural salvaged from its earlier life as a burlesque lounge. A snack-food mogul bought the building, which is a sentence that belongs here and nowhere else.

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

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

Named after the Aztec goddess of the maguey plant, Mayahuel is a two-floor mezcal and tequila bar on the East Village's reliably lively 6th Street. Rustic booths, bare brick, hand-painted tiles, dark wood, iron, and candlelight do the decorating, leaving the agave spirits to do the talking. The cocktail list is the whole point here, built around a serious collection of both spirits for a crowd that knows the difference between the two.

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

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide