The Best Places to Drink and Stay in Little India & around

Every room is a suite, and every suite comes with a dedicated butler, which sets the tone before you've even spotted the liveried Sikh doormen at the door. This storied Singapore hotel holds a Forbes Five Star and sits at number five on the World's 50 Best Hotels list. The white neo-Renaissance building, lush gardens, rooftop pool, and Long Bar, where the Singapore Sling was invented, give guests plenty of reasons to never actually leave.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. The 50 #5 · The World's 50 Best Hotels

The fan-shaped atrium lobby climbs all the way to the rooftop, a vertical reveal that most Marina Bay hotels don't bother with. This is a Forbes Four Star hotel where the guest rooms layer silk, lacquer, and city-bay views, and the pool terrace feels like a private respite from Singapore's relentless pace. Two restaurants, one Cantonese and one Italian, mean you rarely need a reason to leave. Service here is warm rather than stiff.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A Forbes Five Star hotel-within-a-hotel occupying the upper floors of Marina Bay Sands, where butler service and residential-scale suites come with their own reserved nest beds at the Infinity Pool. The concept loosely borrows from the golden paiza that granted Marco Polo his imperial access, which is either a stretch or a perfect metaphor depending on how you feel about infinity pools with a priority queue.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star

The glass-brick exterior glows like a relic from a different decade, and the inside keeps up, with terrazzo floors, mid-century wood, and light fittings that look lifted from a 1970s sci-fi set. Offtrack is a bar born from two local music collectives, so the DJ sets are the point, not the backdrop. It landed on Asia's 50 Best Bars, which makes sense for a room where no one ever lets the music slip into wallpaper.

1. The 50 #23 · Asia’s 50 Best Bars
2. The Infatuation The Best Restaurants & Bars To Eat And Drink At When You're Visiting Singapore
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A waterfront hotel on Marina Bay where floor-to-ceiling windows make the view feel less like a perk and more like the whole point. Rooms run sleek and marble-heavy, with a bedside panel that controls just about everything, including a privacy screen that frosts the glass between the bathroom and bedroom at the touch of a button. A Forbes Four Star property that takes its tech seriously without feeling like a showroom.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The pool, ringed by palms and private cabanas, looks straight out at the Singapore Flyer, which makes a convincing argument for not doing anything productive. This is a full-service business hotel with 512 rooms, marble baths, and an executive lounge that handles the details road warriors actually care about. It holds a Forbes Four Star. The financial district and Suntec Convention Centre are both a short walk away.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

Three 57-story towers capped by a three-acre rooftop deck that looks, especially at night, like a spaceship that forgot to leave. Marina Bay Sands is a colossal integrated resort and hotel on the waterfront, the kind of place that rewrites a city's skyline and knows it. Rooms are polished and large-scale to match the architecture. Forbes Four Star. If you're going to do Singapore in style, the building alone makes the argument.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The octagonal windows punched into its white rectangular facade were the signature of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kevin Roche, and the hotel leans into that art-world identity hard, with a serious collection on the walls and chic lounges named for celebrated artists. It holds a Forbes Four Star rating. Marina Bay, the Esplanade, and the Singapore Flyer are all walkable, and the 24-hour gym is genuinely large enough to get lost in.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The 120-foot atrium lobby alone justifies pausing before you check in. This grand heritage hotel occupies a former civic building right on the Singapore River, close enough to the F1 night circuit that you can almost hear the engines from the courtyard. Afternoon tea and cocktail meetings fill the atrium daily, and the doormen maintain a certain theatrical gravity that the building has clearly always expected of everyone inside.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

A cocktail bar tucked on a quiet street, 28 HongKong Street took its cues from early-2000s New York and spent years building its reputation entirely through word of mouth. The room runs to dim lighting, secluded booths, and hip-hop on the speakers. Drinks are named for rap lyrics, bar food leans hard into American comfort, and the whole thing carries the easy confidence of a place that never needed a sign out front.

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

The atrium lobby climbs several stories before you've even found the check-in desk, which sets the tone for this large luxury hotel on Marina Bay. Rooms look out over the water or the downtown skyline, and the Singapore Flyer, the Asian Civilisations Museum, and the Boat Quay nightlife strip are all walkable. A 24-hour fitness center, two tennis courts, and the St. Gregory spa are on hand for anyone who overdid the room service.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

The wraparound windows frame Marina Bay well enough to make you feel like the city is performing for you. MO Bar is a hotel cocktail bar inside the Mandarin Oriental that takes its cues from Asia's ports and the Pacific, with drinks named for the stories that built Singapore. The Miss Samsui, a tribute to the immigrant women who helped construct the city, arrives with Lapsang tea and shochu, which is a more interesting history lesson than most.

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

A cocktail bar inside the Ritz-Carlton that commits to a 1960s aesthetic without apology, all velvet and low light and the general suggestion that someone nearby is plotting a merger. The drinks lean into the theme with more discipline than you'd expect, pulling from art, cinema, and music for their references. Glitter shows up in at least one glass, which is either a dealbreaker or the whole point.

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

Vaulted ceilings and arched ironwork give this waterfront Italian cocktail bar the mood of a golden-age European train station, which feels about right for a spot gazing straight at Marina Bay Sands. The team behind Jigger and Pony runs an all-day operation, so the aperitivo hour bleeds comfortably into however long you planned to stay. The open-air tables out front make daytime drinking feel almost virtuous.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · International Bartender of the Year · Uno Jang
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best International Restaurant Bar

Fifty-seven floors above Singapore, the SkyBar canopy flaps gently while the city sprawls out beneath your drink. Ce La Vi is a rooftop cocktail bar perched atop Marina Bay Sands, with al fresco and indoor spaces that each frame the skyline differently. The cocktail list leans inventive, truffle oil showing up alongside single malt and Campari without anyone treating that as unusual. A Discovery listing from The 50 keeps it on the circuit.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Kotuwa is a casual Sri Lankan restaurant in New Bahru's old school block, and it's the first on the island to cook only the food of Sri Lanka, curries mostly. Seventies records play while servers set your spice level, so nobody leaves with steam coming out of their ears. Hoppers, the thin fermented rice pancakes, handle the gravy better than rice does. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which keeps the bill friendly.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The Infatuation The Best Restaurants & Bars To Eat And Drink At When You're Visiting Singapore

A cereal box arrives at the table and turns out to be dessert, which tells you most of what you need to know about Labyrinth. This Michelin-starred fine dining room takes hawker-stall nostalgia, bak kut teh and all, and rebuilds it into a theatrical set menu where the props are part of the point. The room runs dark and spare, warmed by wood and Singaporean art. It holds a spot on both Asia's and the World's 50 Best lists.

1. The 50 #97 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. The 50 #40 · Asia's 50 Best Restaurants

A horseshoe bar in a whitewashed room with brushed concrete and a single lightbox letter board on the wall is either a bold design statement or a very confident shrug. At Fancy, a cocktail bar on North Canal Road, it's both. In a city that tends toward the ornate, the spare interior puts all the weight on what's in the glass, which suits the competition-pedigreed bar team just fine.

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

A rooftop pool bar perched atop The Fullerton Bay Hotel, with Marina Bay spread out below and enough greenery to make you forget you're on a concrete tower. Angular umbrellas and banquette seating keep things comfortable well into the evening, and a live band turns up often enough to feel like a bonus rather than a given. The cocktail list balances vintage classics and contemporary pours, which covers a lot of ground without overpromising.

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

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

A pool bar on the fifth floor of the Mandarin Oriental that somehow frames a cleaner view of Marina Bay Sands and the Singapore Flyer than most rooftops twice the height. The stepped layout catches a breeze even when the city is at its most suffocating, and the cabanas, daybeds, and angular umbrellas lean closer to Miami than Singapore, which the crowd seems not to have fully noticed yet.

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

The in-house microbrewery sitting in the corner is the whole point here. Brewerkz is a sprawling beer bar and hall in the Clarke Quay chaos, with pool tables inside and fan-cooled riverside seating out front. Around forty international bottles share the menu with a weekly rotating cask ale, which is not something you stumble across often in Singapore. Food and cocktails exist, but nobody's pretending that's why you came.

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

The back bar at this cocktail bar runs deep enough that "what are you having?" becomes a genuine philosophical question. Coffee Bar K has been around forever by Singapore standards, and the spirits list, Pétrus included, would cause serious distress to anyone on a budget. The cocktail menu is vast without feeling unfocused, and the head bartender handles every persuasion with the calm of someone who has seen it all.

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

A portrait of Brad Pitt watches over the bar at this Wolfgang Puck sibling, and nobody can quite explain why. The cocktail bar sits inside the Marina Bay Sands shopping complex, which means fluorescent retail chaos just beyond the open frontage, and smoked glass, dark wood, and candlelight within. The contrast shouldn't work as well as it does. A serious beer list and careful glassware signal that someone is paying attention.

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

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

Wall-mounted fridges packed with sake stretch the length of the room at this tiny stand-up bar, Singapore's sole Japanese-style sake joint. It's a sibling to a Tokyo original, which shows: the range runs deep into plum wines and shochus, and the snack menu leans into proper otsumami, the kind of thing you'd actually eat alongside a pour. Staff know the list cold, which helps when you're choosing between fifty-odd plum wines.

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

A tequila bar at Riverside Point leaning hard into the theme, with mariachi on the speakers, agave-themed memorabilia covering the walls, and a menu listing over a hundred 100-percent agave tequilas alongside thirteen mezcals. The Margaritas come from a machine, except the premium ones, which arrive by hand (a meaningful distinction). Burritos and tequila prawns keep things grounded in Tex-Mex territory if you need something to eat.

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

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

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

A cocktail bar on the 57th floor of Marina Bay Sands, Kudeta earns its reputation on the view alone: the infinity pool stretches out at eye level, Singapore sprawls below, and the elevator ride up leaves your ears ringing before you've ordered anything. The interior is a maze of angular spaces that don't quite flow, which gives it an oddly furtive feel for somewhere so high up. Come for a drink at sunset, then let someone else figure out the poolside situation.

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

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

A classic British post box, lacquered red, sits dead center in the bar as a nod to the General Post Office that once occupied this colonial waterfront building. Post Bar is the main hotel bar of the Fullerton, all marble, gilding, tall flowers, and long drapes, with a champagne bar tucked to one side. The crowd has largely migrated to the flashier sister property next door, which leaves this one feeling pleasantly unhurried.

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

The smell of leather and Cuban tobacco announces this whisky and cigar bar before you're fully through the door. The Pacific Cigar Company, the sole formal distributor of Cuban cigars across Asia Pacific, runs the place, so the humidors are serious and the back bar holds around a hundred bottles, nearly all single malt Scotch. Members keep their bottles in dedicated lockers, which tells you the kind of crowd it draws.

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

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide