Caffe Dante poured espresso on MacDougal Street from 1915; when Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson relaunched it in 2015, they kept the name, the bones and the neighbourhood — and by 2019 the World's 50 Best had ranked it the best bar on earth.
Who would love it: anyone who believes drinking starts at four in the afternoon. Dante made the negroni a session format — a full variations menu treats the drink the way a great trattoria treats pasta — and the Garibaldi, fresh orange whipped to 'fluffy' and cut with Campari, became the most imitated simple drink of its decade. Who would hate it: seekers of dark-room mystique; this is a bright, chattering corner caffè.
The room is white marble, café chairs and Village light through the windows — closer to Milan than to the speakeasy district, which is exactly the point. Tables are small, the corner seats go first, and brunch hours make it the rare world-ranked bar that works at noon.
Order the negroni sessione or the Garibaldi, then let the aperitivo menu and the kitchen's pastas argue you into staying for dinner. Pricing sits below the headline cocktail dens, which is part of why the locals never surrendered it to the tourists.
See where it ranks in our best cocktail bars in New York — and why aperitivo hour is its own category of New York date night.
