The Best Places to Drink and Do in Sacramento
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The best places to drink and do in Sacramento, according to the experts: Forbes Travel Guide, Esquire, and The 50 have all weighed in, and their honors are what rank this list. The Ritz-Carlton Spa, Lake Tahoe comes out on top.
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The Butterscotch Den and The Snug hold the next two places. Spirited Awards shows up on more of this list than any other guide, with Difford's Guide next.
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Sixteen treatment rooms keep this Forbes Four Star mountain spa feeling more like a private retreat than a hotel amenity. Organic facials and massages lean on seasonal ingredients, and the treatment rooms look straight out at towering pines, which does most of the interior decorator's work for free. The fireplace lounge afterward is the kind of place where people lose track of entire afternoons.
The awards
- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Four Star
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Rank 2. The Butterscotch Den
Cocktail Bar
The hook here is a tabletop grill: you cook your own steak, then order a freezer martini cold enough to make your teeth ache. The Butterscotch Den calls itself a "fine dive bar," and the label does the work, precision cocktails and live jazz alongside hot dogs and fondue. Esquire named its freezer martini among the top in America, and the crowd seems to know it, treating the whole room like a very good secret they've stopped keeping.
The awards
- Esquire Esquire: Freezer Martini · The Best Martinis in America
- The 50 The 50: The 50 Discovery
- Spirited Awards Spirited Awards: 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. West
- Esquire Freezer Martini · The Best Martinis in America
- The 50 The 50 Discovery
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. West
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The awards
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. West
- Spirited Awards 2023 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. West
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The awards
- Difford's Guide Difford's Guide: Difford's Guide