The Best Places to Drink in New York, by the Record
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Rank 95. Cocktail Omakase
Japanese Cocktail Bar
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Rank 95. Dandelion
Cocktail Bar
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- Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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Rank 95. Echo Lake
Rum Cocktail Bar
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.
- Eater The Best New Bars in New York City
- Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars in New York City
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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Rank 95. FOLK
Indian Cocktail Bar
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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.
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Rank 95. Kees
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 95. Lita
Spanish
- Punch Best New Bartenders · Ricardo Rodriguez
- Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
- NJ.com #26 · New Jersey’s 99 greatest restaurants, ranked
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Rank 95. Little Ned
Cocktail Bar
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- Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. East
- Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
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Rank 95. NoMad
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 95. PDT
Cocktail Bar
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.
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Rank 95. Peek Inn
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 95. Pouring Ribbons
Cocktail Bar
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.
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Rank 95. Seirēn
Spanish-Portuguese Cocktail Bar
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Rank 95. Stone & Soil
Japanese
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Rank 95. Thyme
Cocktail Bar
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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.
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Rank 123. El Quijote
Spanish
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- Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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Rank 123. Zou Zou's
Mediterranean
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Rank 128. After Eden
Vietnamese Cocktail Bar
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Rank 128. Flatiron Room
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 128. Kinda Nice
Cocktail Bar
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.
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- Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
- Time Out #14 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide
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Rank 128. Sunn’s
Korean Wine Bar
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.
- Food & Wine Sunn’s Salad · Best Dishes Our Editors Ate This Year
- Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
- Time Out #19 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
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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.
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Rank 142. Boilermaker
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 142. Borgo
Italian
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.
- James Beard Awards 2026 · Winner · Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service · Lee Campbell
- Esquire Wine Director of the Year · Lee Campbell
- VinePair Wine Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Lee Campbell
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Rank 142. Little Branch
Cocktail Bar
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.
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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.
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Rank 142. Nitecap
Cocktail Bar
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.
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Rank 142. Saxon + Parole
New American
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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.
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Rank 142. The Wayland
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 142. Whitehall
Modern British
Edison bulbs over factory-tiled walls and a ceiling that looks like it never quite finished being renovated: Whitehall calls itself a "gastro bar" rather than a gastropub, and the distinction holds. It's a neighborhood cocktail bar on Greenwich Avenue with a modern British menu running alongside, but people mostly come for the warm room and the staff who seem to mean it. Think London train station, interpreted loosely and affectionately.
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A red light above an unmarked door in a Chelsea coffee shop is the only signal that there's a cocktail bar behind it. Once through, the room opens into flocked wallpaper, fringed lampshades, and an antique copper bathtub sitting squarely in the middle of things, which everyone photographs and then pretends they weren't going to. The seven-seat copper bar is the calmer alternative. Dressed-up but not stiff, and a long way from the espresso machine out front.
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A basement cocktail bar in the Financial District with dark red walls, a chandelier, and macramé screens that somehow land between 1980s lounge and faint tiki, all packed into semicircular banquettes that seat over a hundred. The inventive menu carries the fingerprints of the Death & Co. team. On quieter weeknights they may seat you at the bar only, which is worth knowing before you bring a crowd.
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Rank 158. Dylan Prime Lounge
Cocktail Bar
The bar curves like the stern of a Spanish galleon, which should tell you what kind of night to expect. This candlelit cocktail lounge off the TriBeCa steakhouse of the same name leans into the drama: heavy drapes, tapestry walls, shaded pendant lights, and booths deep enough to disappear into. The back bar is loaded with premium spirits, and the Key Lime Pie cocktail was invented here, for better or worse.
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Rank 158. Experimental Cocktail Club (ECC LES)
French Cocktail Bar
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Red Hook sits off every subway line, which keeps Fort Defiance comfortably local. This all-day neighborhood bar fits eight tables and a bar counter that seats twelve if everyone breathes in. The name nods to a nearby Revolutionary War fort that once blocked the British from the East River, which gives the place more historical gravitas than most spots this relaxed have any business claiming.
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The glowing floor stayed when the Hudson Hotel's Library Bar got its makeover, but the furniture got considerably more fashionable. This cocktail bar swings between loud dance music and live jazz depending on the night, with exposed brick, low tables, and lighting that flatters everyone equally. It's the kind of flirty hotel bar where the room does most of the work, and nobody seems to mind.
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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.
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Rank 158. Mother's Ruin
Cocktail Bar
Bare brick walls, worn-down bar, and a chalkboard listing three or four cocktail specials that change daily, because a printed menu would be too much of a commitment. This Spring Street cocktail bar reads like a neighborhood dive that happens to employ people who could be working somewhere far fancier. Industry folk fill the stools by night, talking shop with bartenders who clearly know what they're doing. Bring cash, skip the attitude, and just ask what's good.
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Rank 158. Porchlight
Southern
Concrete floors that look like the previous tenant's linoleum was ripped up last Tuesday set the tone at this spacious Southern-leaning cocktail bar in west Chelsea. Danny Meyer's first standalone bar leans on the spirit of Blue Smoke, which means Sazeracs and bar food with a drawl. The games room in the back suggests the intention is for you to stay a while, and the raw brick walls give you no reason to hurry.
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Rank 158. Prime Meats
Artisanal German
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Rank 158. Soho House New York
Cocktail Bar
The Circle Bar sits on the top floor of this famously members-only Meatpacking District club, its zinc-topped bar jutting into a room of herringbone parquet and enormous Chesterfield sofas. The glass-walled wine cellar is purely decorative, but it sets the mood. Cocktails arrive at low tables where people who definitely knew the right person to get in are trying to look like they didn't have to.
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The entrance reads "Lower East Side Toy Company" on an iron gate, which is not a toy company. Beyond it, a semi-subterranean passage runs between buildings toward an unmarked door with a brass peephole, and yes, the rats are part of the atmosphere. One of the few surviving Prohibition-era speakeasies in the city, this bar on the Lower East Side commits hard to the bit, and the whole approach feels like a dare before you've ordered anything.
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A gilded rat guards the door, which is the first sign you're in the right place. This cocktail bar sits beneath the Andaz 5th Avenue, easy to miss from the street if you're not looking for the discreet sign. Once down the stairs, the room opens into banquettes and long walnut communal tables where a bartender works one side while drinkers take the other three, which collapses the usual bar geography in a quietly clever way.
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Rank 158. The Daily
Cocktail Bar
The cocktail menu changes daily and gets announced on a letter board covering the back wall, which is either charming or anxiety-inducing depending on how decisive you are. This small cocktail bar shares an entrance with restaurant Public and the same drinks program, a compact room made to feel larger by a floor-to-ceiling mirror above leather booths. Regulars arrive knowing roughly what they want; everyone else reads the board.
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Rank 158. The Lantern's Keep
Cocktail Bar
A cocktail bar tucked into the back of the Iroquois Hotel lobby, the Lantern's Keep still reads like the private dining room it once was: dark paneling, marble-topped tables, and five seats at the bar. The menu organizes its drinks by technique rather than spirit, and the staff actively prefer you skip it entirely and just describe what you're after. For 44th Street, that level of calm feels almost conspiratorial.
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The lobby bar you pass through on your way to somewhere else, bright and airy in that hotel-lounge way that somehow makes you stop anyway. Cocktails lean playful and a little precious, the kind with long ingredient lists and names that make you read them twice. A good spot to settle in before or after dinner upstairs, or to skip the reservation altogether and just drink somewhere that doesn't feel like it's trying too hard.
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Rank 158. The Third Man
Cocktail Bar
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No website, no phone number, and nothing on the exterior but a small street number and white tiles that read more like a morgue than a cocktail bar. Weather Up in Prospect Heights commits fully to the bit. Inside, those same tiles climb the ceiling over a zinc-topped wooden bar with sculptural stools, turning the whole room into something between a former bathhouse and a very stylish fever dream.
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Rank 180. Brouwerij Lane
Beer Bar
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Rank 180. Eavesdrop
Japanese
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Rank 180. Hotel Delmano
New Orleans-Inspired Cocktail Bar
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Rank 180. L'industrie Pizzeria
New York-style Pizza
The line out the door on South 2nd is the most honest review you'll find. This Williamsburg slice shop has a counter, a few standing ledges, and pizza makers working in plain sight from dough to oven. The crust is thin, crisp, and taken seriously. 50 Top Pizza ranked it the top slice shop in the country, and the New York Times put it on their short list too. Order, pay, wait for your name, eat standing up. That's the whole deal.
- 50 Top Pizza #74 · 50 Top Pizza World
- 50 Top Pizza #1 · 50 Top Pizza Slice USA
- The Infatuation #19 · The 25 Best Restaurants In NYC
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Rank 180. La Superior
Mexico City-Style
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Rank 180. Le Crocodile
French
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Rank 180. Lilia Ristorante
Italian
- AAA Four Diamonds
- James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Missy Robbins
- Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in New York City
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Rank 180. Lise & Vito
Natural Wine Bar
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A small "Cocktails" neon sign is the only clue visible through the net-curtained windows of this Williamsburg cocktail bar, which occupies a former auto-parts store near McCarren Park. Inside, ornamental plates crowd the walls, tasseled fittings hang overhead, and ceramic tiles fool the eye into reading as rugs. It feels like a great-aunt's drawing room, if your great-aunt had excellent taste and kept unusual hours.
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