The 97 Best Cocktail Bars in Manhattan

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

1. The 50 #39 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #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. The 50 #41 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 #35 · North America's 50 Best Bars

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

The building was once a carriage house, then a sculptor's studio, and now a three-level Japanese cocktail bar in Gramercy where the drinks are as considered as the history. The team behind it spent years at Angel's Share before going solo here, and it shows in every measured pour. Nikka whisky and yuzu turn up alongside immaculate riffs on classics. Named among North America's 50 Best Bars, and the room earns the quiet confidence.

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

1. The 50 #46 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #33 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar

Perched above Eleven Madison Park and co-conceived by Daniel Humm and painter Francesco Clemente, this cocktail lounge wears its inspirations visibly, with Clemente's murals covering the walls in the spirit of Zurich's Kronenhalle Bar. Every cocktail on the menu is vegan and built with serious technical ambition, fermented ingredients and infused oils included. It landed at number fifteen on North America's 50 Best Bars in 2026.

1. The 50 #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. The 50 #72 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 #37 · North America's 50 Best Bars

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

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

1. The 50 #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

Highballs and boilermakers anchor the menu at this jovial Japanese cocktail bar tucked into a Greenwich Village basement, where the drinks list stays refreshingly short and Japanese spirits do most of the talking. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which feels about right for a room that punches well above its unpretentious footprint. Go for the sake selection if you're curious; stay for the cocktails once you are.

1. The 50 #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

A full page of negronis is either a menu or a dare, and Dante in Greenwich Village has been inviting people to find out for longer than anyone cares to count. This Italian cocktail cafe and all-day aperitivo spot leans into its old-school bones without getting musty about it, pairing the drinks with burrata and charcuterie. Named a James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist and ranked on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

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

The name comes from Milton, and the bar takes the premise seriously: this is a tropical hellscape, not a luau. Paradise Lost is a tiki bar in the East Village that keeps the piña coladas and mai tais but drops the cheerful kitsch for something a little more Beelzebub. The décor leans sinister in ways that reward a second look. Esquire named it one of the best bars in America in 2024, and the Spirited Awards shortlisted it for Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar.

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Esquire Cigarette Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Esquire The Best Bars 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

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. The 50 #14 · North America's 50 Best Restaurants
2. Esquire Chef of the Year · Paul Carmichael
3. The New York Times 2025 · 3 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review

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

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. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Simon Kim - Gracious Hospitality
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

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

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

A Harlem cocktail bar run by artists, which explains why the drinks feel less like menu items and more like installation pieces. The house forager supplies wild edible plants that become bitters, liqueurs, and amari made in-house, so what ends up in your glass has a provenance most bars can't claim. The room is cozy and unhurried, and the crowd tends to treat the cocktail list the way other people treat gallery notes.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Oak paneling, cherrywood bar, velvet seating, heavy curtains: Temple Bar is a cocktail bar that looks like the lounge of a grand hotel, minus the fusty clientele. The crowd skews professional and thirty-something, the lighting is low, and the drinks lean classic with an Italian tilt. A Sgroppino sits alongside a Ward Eight and an Espresso Martini, which is a menu that knows its history without being smug about it.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Fifty floors up in the Ritz-Carlton NoMad, this cocktail bar from the José Andrés group takes its name from the Spanish words for cloud and light, which is either poetic or on the nose depending on how far into the menu you are. The views run 270 degrees over the city, and the drinks lean into reimagined classics, from an adonis to a tom collins. Dress accordingly; the room expects it.

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

1. The New York Times 2025 · 2 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
2. 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

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

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. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Spirited Awards 2023 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. East

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

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

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. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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. The 50 The 50 Discovery

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

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. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Apotheke sits on Doyers Street, the crooked Chinatown alley once nicknamed Bloody Angle for the tong wars fought there, behind a red awning that still reads "Gold Flower Restaurant." Inside, the former opium den has gone full Victorian apothecary, all candlelight and curios, with a five-ton marble bar where the bartenders play doctor. The cocktails lean medicinal and elaborate, which suits the room perfectly.

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

An unmarked door across from the Tribeca Grand opens onto a staircase that leads down to a dimly lit basement cocktail bar, all booth seating and bar stools, with smooth jazz doing most of the decorating. The cocktail list is named after jazz standards, which sounds gimmicky until you're two drinks in. Classics are handled with care, and the room has the kind of quiet self-confidence that doesn't need a sign out front.

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

Leather-bound journals line the shelves of this hushed, clubby cocktail bar near the UN, where wooden monkey sculptures hold the lamps and cigar smoke hangs in the air like a gentleman's agreement. The crescent booths and soft lighting give it the feel of a classic hotel sitting room that decided to serve drinks instead. Jazz plays just loud enough to cover the conversation of the business crowd unwinding after whatever it is they do.

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

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

Ivy trellises climb the walls of the rooftop bar on the 15th floor, which is the one worth engineering your evening around. Ian Schrager, who gave the world Studio 54 and the Delano, put his stamp on this Gramercy landmark, and the result is three bars across the hotel, each with a crowd dressed like they had somewhere better to be and came here anyway.

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

Pressed tin walls funnel you into a room that keeps opening up, Tardis-style, past antique mirrors and grandma lampshades, through a long bar, out to a yard. This Williamsburg neighborhood bar shape-shifts through the week: beer and shots early on, wine mid-week, cocktails by the weekend, and DJs after 10pm Thursday through Sunday when the volume climbs and the whole thing quietly becomes a nightclub without ever making a formal announcement.

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

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

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

Tucked into the basement of Chelsea Market, a former Nabisco factory, The Tippler is a cocktail bar with exposed brick, a long marble bar, and Oriental rugs thrown over the floor like someone's eccentric living room. The drink menu runs long and complicated, courtesy of the Tippling Bros. team. Come on a weeknight if you want to actually think; weekends belong to the Meatpacking overflow crowd and their very different priorities.

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

Willow branches in wall niches and Edison bulbs overhead give this cavernous Bowery gastropub a warmer feel than its scale suggests. The long front bar is the move, with a cocktail program that holds its own alongside a solid beer and spirits list. The bays and high ceilings let beautiful people on dates and shaggy types debating film grain coexist without crowding each other. A good call for the neighborhood.

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

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide