The Top 100 Places to Drink in Manhattan

1. 50 Best #12 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #9 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Winner · Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service · Ignacio "Nacho" Jimenez

1. 50 Best #39 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #1 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Winner · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #41 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. 50 Best #35 · North America's 50 Best Bars

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

1. 50 Best #75 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #23 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Esquire The Best Bars in America

1. 50 Best #46 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #33 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar

1. 50 Best #15 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Esquire Martini of the Year: Clemente Martini · The Best Martinis in America
3. VinePair Bartender of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Sebastian Tollius

There's no sign on Eldridge Street, just a faux tailor's shop window with a glowing "A" and a buzzer you'll wait at long enough to second-guess yourself. This is the cocktail bar that opened in the old Milk & Honey space after Sasha Petraske moved on, and it runs on the same no-menu, tell-us-what-you-like philosophy. North America's 50 Best Bars lists it, and the wait outside on any given night suggests people have read that list.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #72 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. 50 Best #37 · North America's 50 Best Bars

1. 50 Best #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

1. VinePair Bar Program of the Year · The Next Wave Awards
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. 50 Best #77 · North America's 50 Best Bars

1. 50 Best #71 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. Esquire Cartagena · The Best Martinis in America

1. Esquire Candarin Orange · The Best Martinis in America
2. Punch Best New Bars
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best New Bar

1. 50 Best #52 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Masa Urushido
3. Time Out #18 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

Marble bar, leather chairs, thick linens, and windows looking straight down Fifth Avenue: Ai Fiori is a formal Italian restaurant on the second floor of the Langham Hotel that telegraphs expense account before you've ordered drinks. The kitchen leans Italian with enough invention to keep it interesting, and the room is polished enough that nobody's rushing you. Gracious service throughout lunch and dinner.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. AAA Four Diamonds
3. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #58 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Esquire Dante Mini Martini · The Best Martinis in America

A fortune-teller in the window is not a gimmick so much as a promise about the evening ahead. Past the red velvet curtains, this art deco cocktail bar on Hudson Street runs to carved wood, marble floors, a tin ceiling, and an onyx fireplace, all of it suggesting you should order something serious and stay a while. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which the regulars probably already knew.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #95 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. 50 Best #45 · North America's 50 Best Bars

A cocktail bar in the Financial District built around the legend of John Morrissey, a bare-knuckle Irish immigrant who ran one of the city's rougher gangs in the 1800s. The menu reads like a graphic novel, each volume dropping the Rabbit into a new era of New York's murkier chapters. The drinks are theatrical without being silly, and the Irish pub downstairs keeps things grounded for anyone who just wants a pint.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. Esquire Steakhouse Martini #2 · The Best Martinis in America

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

1. VinePair Drinks Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Meaghan Dorman
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
3. Time Out #26 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. Esquire 1884 Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 10 U.S. Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. 50 Best Julie Reiner · Industry Icon Award

The unmarked door on the second floor of a Japanese restaurant looks exactly like where a broom lives, which is precisely the point. Angel's Share is a speakeasy-style cocktail bar with booth banquettes, bare brick, velvet curtains, and lighting set to confession-booth low. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, and the room feels like it has always known that. Come early, come two, and find the door before someone else needs the mop.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #31 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

The Sakura Martini, a sake-and-gin affair finished with a salted cherry blossom, is the thing people come back for at this tiny, warmly lit cocktail bar on Eldridge Street. Kenta Goto spent years at Pegu Club before opening this place, and the short menu of original drinks leans on Japanese ingredients, house infusions, and a quieter kind of precision. Small enough that nobody is a stranger for long.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Esquire Sakura Martini · The Best Martinis in America
3. Punch Best New Bartenders · Capucine Prager

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. 50 Best #66 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Esquire Cigarette Martini · The Best Martinis in America
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

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

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America
2. Time Out #28 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. Esquire Eartha · The Best Martinis in America
2. Time Out #5 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

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 Infatuation #7 · The Top-Rated New Restaurants
3. Punch Best New Bartenders · Logan Rodriguez

Paul Carmichael grew up in Barbados, and Kabawa is his argument that Caribbean cooking belongs in any room it wants. A prix-fixe fine dining restaurant on Extra Place, it seats you at a horseshoe counter in a dark green room with mosaic tilework and a playlist sourced partly from Carmichael's cousin back home. The New York Times named it the top restaurant in New York City, and the cocktail bar next door is his too, for nights when the goat patty feels like the right move.

1. 50 Best #14 · North America's 50 Best Restaurants
2. Esquire Chef of the Year · Paul Carmichael
3. The New York Times Coconut Turnover · The 14 Best Restaurant Desserts We Ate Across the U.S.

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

1. Esquire Za'atar Martini · The Best Martinis in America

Low ceilings with thick wood beams, amber light, and banquettes that make every table feel like a booth in the back of someone's private club. Bartolo is a Spanish restaurant in the West Village, the kind where you order oxtail braised in red wine and suckling pig and let the table fill up. The martini list has its own following, and the servers are sharp enough to keep a long night moving without making it feel rushed.

1. Esquire Martini de Bartolo · The Best Martinis in America
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Esquire Dante Mini Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar

1. Esquire Ultimate Vodka Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Time Out The 45 best restaurants in NYC right now
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

A Flatiron bar tricked out like a 1970s Bangkok shophouse, with vintage televisions and family photos on the walls and Thai cocktails on the menu. The jasmine martini landed on Esquire's list of the best martinis in America, which gives you a sense of how seriously the drinks program is taken. The kitchen keeps pace with late-night Thai food that pairs naturally with the cocktails. Open late, which the neighborhood needed.

1. Esquire Jasmine Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

1. Esquire Chihuahuan Martini · The Best Martinis in America

1. Esquire Dirty Eliá · The Best Martinis in America

1. Esquire Wet Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. The New York Times Potato Salad With Trout Roe · Here Are Our Top New York Dishes
3. Eater The Best Lower East Side Restaurants

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. Esquire Pearl Martini · The Best Martinis in America

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

The ceiling is covered in thousands of clay churchwarden pipes, each one claimed by a regular who never came back to collect it. Keens is an old-school Manhattan steakhouse in Midtown, all dark wood and white tablecloths, and the mutton chop alone has landed on the New York Times list of the city's defining dishes. The porterhouse is USDA Prime, dry-aged in-house, and broiled without apology. It sits at number 68 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

1. World's 101 Best #68 · World's Best Steak Restaurants
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Winner · Timeless U.S. Award
3. Eater The Best Classic Restaurants in NYC

1. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Takuma Watanabe

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. The Infatuation The 21 Best New Restaurants In NYC
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Soho
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Sapphire velvet banquettes and jacketed servers signal exactly what this is: a fine dining room where Angie Mar fuses classic French technique with her Chinese heritage in a Greenwich Village townhouse that glitters like a jewel box. The cooking leans rich and saucy, the way haute French is supposed to, and a tasting menu is available for those who want the full ceremony. James Beard semifinalist, 2026.

1. Esquire Bemelman at the Ritz · The Best Martinis in America
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: New York State · Angie Mar

1. Esquire Dongji Martini · The Best Martinis in America

A five-course prix fixe of modern Korean cooking in a sleek Flatiron room where the staff outnumbers the guests by a comfortable margin. The chef takes a restrained approach to bold flavors, which sounds like a contradiction until you're eating it. The cocktail program is sharp enough to earn its own following. Michelin awarded it a star, and the James Beard Foundation named the chef a 2025 semifinalist for Best Chef: New York State.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Esquire Martini Royale · The Best Martinis in America
3. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar
2. Time Out #30 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

You ring an unmarked bell on an unmarked door below street level, and that's the whole game announced before you've ordered a drink. Inside, this cocktail bar in Chelsea is all deep armchairs, shaded lamps, a fireplace, and curtained alcoves fitted with a buzzer to summon your server when you're ready. It's a speakeasy setup done without irony, and the room is quiet enough that people actually talk to each other.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

The hand-washing station at the entrance stocks Loewe soap, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Korean fried chicken restaurant. Club music bounces off vaulted ceilings while you work through a bucket of gluten-free fried chicken with consommé, banchan, and frozen yogurt soft serve to finish. Champagne is the obvious pairing, and caviar-topped nuggets are available for anyone who finds the baseline insufficiently absurd. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Condé Nast Traveler The best new restaurants in the world
2. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
3. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

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

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. East

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

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. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar

1. Punch Nashi Highball · Our Favorite Cocktails
2. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America

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

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

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

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

1. Punch Best New Bartenders · Benjamin Zapien

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

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. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

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

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

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

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

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

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Eater The Best New Cocktail Bars 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. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Time Out #14 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

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. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
3. Time Out #19 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now