The Best Places in New York

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The New York Times 2015 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review

No televisions anywhere, which tells you everything about the clientele. Swift is an Irish pub in NoHo named for the author of Gulliver's Travels, and the room looks like it's been quietly absorbing conversation since forever: long winding bar, exposed brick, reclaimed church pews, barstools worn in just right. Creative types fill it looking for somewhere to talk without shouting over a game. Civilised is the word.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A plate-glass window in the exposed-brick wall looks straight into a working still, which tells you everything about what kind of cocktail bar this is. The Shanty is the front room of New York Distilling Company, so the gin in your glass traveled about twenty feet to get there. It sits on a quiet warehouse block in Greenpoint, easy to miss, which seems to suit the regulars just fine.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The New York Times 2012 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

The low-slung 19th-century building gets swallowed by Midtown towers on all sides, which somehow makes it feel more defiant. P.J. Clarke's is an old-school Manhattan pub, dark-paneled and unhurried, with a worn mahogany bar, a zinc oyster counter, and photos of former barkeeps watching over things. Nothing much has changed since the gaslight era, and the crowd at the rail seems to prefer it that way.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Midtown

A boutique hotel in Montclair that feels more like a very well-appointed Greenwich Village townhouse than anything you'd expect twelve miles into New Jersey. Bobbi Brown, who traded her cosmetics empire for a second act in hospitality, serves as creative director, and the rooms carry that same instinct for color and texture. The kind of place that makes a weekend in the suburbs feel like an actual idea.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. East
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

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

1. AAA Approved

A Maxfield Parrish mural of Old King Cole anchors this small, high-ceilinged hotel cocktail bar inside the St. Regis, and it's been staring down the room since the Golden Age of illustration. The bar's other claim to history is the Bloody Mary, which Fernand Petiot is said to have perfected here. The menu still leans into that, which is either heritage or a hint. Either way, the room is beautiful and the drinks are stiff.

1. Food & Wine #1 · The Top 10 Hotel Bars in the US
2. Difford's Guide 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. VinePair Distiller of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Leslie Merinoff Kwasnieski

The restaurant sits on the 42nd and 43rd floors, which tells you something about this hotel's ambitions. The Opus Westchester is a sleek, modernist tower in White Plains that reads more Midtown Manhattan than Hudson Valley commuter town, which is presumably the point. Views stretch across Long Island Sound and back toward the New York skyline. The spa has an indoor pool and a lounge deck for when the views stop being enough.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Ten rooms on the Bridgehampton stretch of the Montauk Highway, styled as a luxury motel in the way that phrase is meant to make you pause. The team behind it describes themselves as "a team of dedicated maniacs," which tracks: this is the classic motel-with-potential takeover, done with the kind of attention that turns a roadside stay into a detour worth planning around. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

A working fireplace in most of the eight rooms sets the tone at this small luxury inn in Westchester County, where rustic and polished coexist without apologizing to each other. Guests choose from five room configurations, some with terraces looking out over lawns and woods. The Bedford Post Tavern hums along on-site, and there's even a yoga studio that somehow doesn't feel tacked on.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The red-brick Beaux-Arts facade on Ocean Avenue is a reminder that the Jersey Shore once attracted people who traveled with steamer trunks. This hotel carries that old-money beach-town energy into rooms with plush linens and coastal textiles that manage to feel modern rather than nautical-themed. An outdoor pool with cabanas and a tiki bar gives you a reason to avoid the boardwalk, at least until early afternoon.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The canal-side waterfront residences sit across the water from the historic inn rooms and hillside garden cottages, which tells you this place has a lot going on. An old-school Hampton Bays inn that's been brought back with modern amenities and genuine East End polish, it suits quiet escapes and big group weekends equally. Good Ground Tavern, the first Hamptons outpost from Union Square Events, runs a Cherrywood grill and easy happy hours on-site.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Punch Tomate o Tomaté · Our Favorite Cocktails

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A rooftop lounge with craft beer and a Tesla charging station is a pretty clear statement of intent for a Hudson Valley hotel. Hotel Nyack leans hard into the urban-getaway-that-doesn't-pretend-to-be-a-farmhouse lane: loft-style rooms, a steakhouse downstairs, and enough city comfort to make you forget you crossed the Tappan Zee. For New Yorkers who want the river without the apple-picking energy.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Punch Nashi Highball · Our Favorite Cocktails
2. The New York Times 2026 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
3. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Five acres in Amagansett, which sits just past East Hampton for those who find East Hampton a little much. The Reform Club is a small luxury inn where the smallest room in the main house is a suite, cottages offer more seclusion, and a four-bedroom residence handles groups wanting to pretend they live here. Bvlgari amenities, owners' artwork on the walls, Pilates on the schedule. The Meeting House feeds guests and locals alike, which keeps it from feeling sealed off.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A barn and a cluster of 17th and 18th century cottages, beautifully preserved outside and quietly gutted into something minimalist and linen-forward within. This small hotel sits a mile inland from the beach on two pastoral acres, which makes it the anti-Hamptons Hamptons option, no oceanfront scene to perform for. Frette sheets, Matouk towels, Nespresso on the counter, old bones with a very considered interior. The Michelin Guide lists it among its selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Sagaponack is the Hamptons village that people in the know prefer precisely because it isn't a scene. This freshly renovated resort spreads across seven acres with 30 rooms ranging from detached bungalows with kitchenettes to suites, all done in white, navy, and sage. Beach passes, stocked lockers, and a pantry stocked with morning pastries to ice cream handle the logistics so you don't have to. Long Island's best beaches are close enough to walk.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Food & Wine The Top 10 Hotel Bars in the US

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The New York Times 2026 · 1 star, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
3. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with bottles replace the books here, and the ladders are real. This TriBeCa spirits bar has made brandy its organizing principle, stocking vintage Armagnacs, Cognacs, and plum brandies from corners of the world most bars have never considered. Whisky and rum fill the gaps, the cocktail list runs a hundred drinks deep, and the staff who climb those ladders to fetch your bottle know exactly what they're doing.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

Shiplap walls, tapestries over the beds, and a vibe that reads surf hippie without trying too hard. This Montauk motel has been in the Daunt family for generations, and it wears that history lightly, skewing more beach-cottage cool than anything the word "motel" usually promises. Sandy feet are the dress code, the on-site restaurant The Bird has been here forever, and the Michelin Guide has taken notice of the whole operation.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The original Dear Irving on Irving Place is a cocktail bar that commits hard to the speakeasy aesthetic, complete with dim lighting, velvet, and the sense that someone might ask for a password. The menu roams across classics, seasonal builds, and aperitivo riffs, so there's always a reason to linger past the first round. A Spirited Awards Regional Honoree, it draws a dressed-up crowd that takes its evening seriously without taking itself too seriously.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
3. Spirited Awards 2023 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. Punch Best New Bartenders · Benjamin Zapien

The $12 daily daiquiri sets the tone at this Williamsburg rum bar, where the menu runs from a lager-and-rum shot combo to oysters with tepache mignonette. The couple behind it know their way around spirits, one having run the editorial side of Punch, the other having shaped Chicago's beloved tropical bar scene. A basement rum bar called Undercurrent adds another layer for anyone who shows up and doesn't want to leave.

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

The cocktail bar on the second floor of the landmark Metropolitan Life building, where the ceilings are tall enough to make you feel like you should order something serious. The drinks program travels with the restaurant group globally, which keeps the bar from feeling like an afterthought to the dining room below. A polished crowd in no hurry fills the seats most evenings, and the room does most of the work before the first drink arrives.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

Montauk sits at the farthest tip of Long Island, far enough out that locals just call it The End, and Gurney's has been holding down this stretch of Atlantic coastline longer than most of its guests have been alive. It's a full resort, with ocean views, a seawater pool, and the kind of unhurried pace that the rest of the Hamptons keeps promising but rarely delivers. The crowd leans casual and sand-tolerant, which is exactly right.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. Punch Best New Bartenders · Ricardo Rodriguez
2. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
3. NJ.com #26 · New Jersey’s 99 greatest restaurants, ranked

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

Sand between your toes is apparently a design philosophy here, not just an oversight. Marram is a 96-room resort in Montauk built around the idea that "barefoot luxury" is a complete sentence, leaning into the town's old surfer looseness rather than polishing it away. Yoga, craft workshops, and weathered-cool décor all pull in the same direction. The in-house restaurant from a Uruguayan chef does seafood and is worth your attention.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · 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. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. East

Old money meets boutique hotel money at this Lake Montauk resort, where whitewashed timber rooms and two pools sit on a marina that Gilded Age dynasties once claimed as their own. The setting feels genuinely private in a way that most of the Hamptons stopped being long ago. A beach club, tennis, fitness classes, a wood-fired pizzeria, and a seafood fine-dining room round things out. Pack light, but bring something for dinner.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

A second-floor cocktail bar on Avenue B where the team came up through Death & Company and it shows. The bartenders here are the kind who can build a Jack Rose, hold a real conversation, and remember what you ordered last time, all without breaking stride. Classic cocktails done with the focus of people who treat the work seriously but aren't precious about it.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

1. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Crescent Beach sits right outside the door here, with Peconic Bay stretching out beyond it, and the Pridwin has been around forever. It reads more like an Adirondack lodge than a beach resort, which is either confusing or exactly right depending on your mood. The 49 rooms and scattered cottages have been renovated to keep the old bones while adding a cleaner, more considered feel. Shelter Island itself requires a ferry, which keeps the crowds honest.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A pre-war cellar beneath the Flatiron that once hosted a gambling den is now a cocktail bar with avant-garde techniques and presentations critics have called sippable art. The room has the bones of a genuine speakeasy, and the drinks menu leans into that drama hard, with smoke, science, and ceremony that would feel overwrought somewhere less atmospheric. A good spot for a first date, assuming you want them slightly impressed.

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

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

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. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. Time Out #13 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. The New York Times 2026 · 1 star · Restaurant Review
2. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

1. Time Out #29 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

A Greek Salad martini built with Tomato Crop vodka and piparra brine should probably not work, and yet here we are. Kinda Nice is a Williamsburg cocktail bar from two Grand Army veterans who describe the vibe as late-night diner meets dive bar, which mostly means the drinks lean savory and strange in satisfying ways. A downstairs dive called Shenanigans is coming, if you need somewhere to spiral afterward.

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Time Out #14 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Time Out #16 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

At this Korean wine bar on Division Street, banchan is the main event, not the preamble. The chef builds a daily set of small plates that sit somewhere between Seoul, Lyon, and Palermo, leeks vinaigrette with Chinese hot mustard, eggplant crushed into something caponata-adjacent. The kitchen is tiny, the room tinier, and the menu stubbornly its own thing. The New York Times placed it among the city's 100 best restaurants.

1. Food & Wine Sunn’s Salad · Best Dishes Our Editors Ate This Year
2. The New York Times 2025 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
3. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America

1. Time Out #25 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. Time Out #21 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. Time Out #17 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

The last unmarked door at the end of a long basement corridor, no bell, no sign, just turn the handle. This is a cocktail bar tucked beneath a Nordic restaurant on Great Jones Street, sharing a kitchen with the dining room upstairs. The room reads as intentionally low-key, the kind of place where knowing how to find it is half the point, and the other half is that you actually got in.

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

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

Andrew Tarlow, the restaurateur who more or less invented the Brooklyn communal-table aesthetic, runs his only Manhattan outpost here on East 27th. The neighborhood trattoria seats you at long tables with a daily menu scrawled on butcher paper, and the food leans into the gamy, the bitter, and the slow-cooked, the things that take patience to understand. The New York Times placed it sixth on its 100 Best Restaurants list.

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Winner · Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service · Lee Campbell
2. Esquire Wine Director of the Year · Lee Campbell
3. VinePair Wine Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Lee Campbell

Corrugated iron ceiling, pressed tin bar front, mustard walls: Little Branch looks like a speakeasy that forgot to close. This Greenwich Village cocktail bar carries the DNA of Milk & Honey, the late Sasha Petraske's legendary first act, which means classically made drinks taken seriously and a room that rewards staying a while. It's discreet enough to feel like a find, but open to anyone who can find the door.

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

A former antique shop on 33rd Street that now deals in classically built cocktails, organized on the menu by category the way a serious bar should be. This is a two-floor cocktail bar from the late Sasha Petraske's lineage, sibling to Little Branch, with communal high tables downstairs where live jazz pulls in the neighbors, and a looser, loungier room upstairs when you need to actually hear yourself think.

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

A basement cocktail bar on Rivington, reached by a utilitarian staircase and lit just enough to read the menu, which is worth reading because it's full of jokes. Booth seating, exposed brick, and a short row of spirits on the back bar keep things grounded for a room connected to Death & Co. The drinks are serious; the room refuses to be.

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

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

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

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