Highball sits on the second floor of a historic building on 7th Avenue, a copper-topped room that has spent five years quietly becoming the most decorated cocktail address in Phoenix. The bar earned a 2026 James Beard Foundation nomination for Outstanding Bar Program, the rare Arizona room to reach that list.
Who would love it: anyone who wants a serious, housemade cocktail without the velvet-rope theatre. Who would skip it: groups after a loud night out, since the room rewards people who came to taste rather than shout.
The space reads like a study in restraint. A copper bar anchors the floor, with deep leather seating, exposed brick, and accents of velvet and vintage wrought iron. Founders Libby Lingua and Mitch Lyons opened the room in October 2020, and the design has aged into something that feels older and more settled than its years.
Order from the top of the menu down. Highball arranges its list from light to full-bodied, so the Land of Mountains, built on Haitian clairin, French melon, and lemongrass shochu, makes a clean opener. From the Grove pairs avocado-oil-washed vodka with smoked jalapeno and a cap of brut cava, while the Heart Stone leans into Oaxacan mole for anyone ending on something darker. Many drinks carry housemade ingredients, which is where the kitchen-grade prep shows.
The crowd skews local and knowing, heavier on weeknights with the hospitality set and busier after 9pm on Fridays. For the calmest read of the menu, arrive when the doors open at six. Highball ranked on the North America 50 Best Discovery list in 2025, a signal that its reputation now travels well beyond the Phoenix bar scene.
Reviewers and regulars converge on the same praise: drinks that arrive exactly as written, and a bar team that walks guests through the list without attitude. The pattern holds across a deep bank of Google and Yelp reviews, where the housemade ingredients and the low-lit upstairs calm come up again and again. BARTENDER.com made it a featured bar in February 2026, crediting the depth of a menu that still reads cleanly from light to full-bodied.
The room is small by design, which is the trade for the quiet. Best time to go is a weeknight at six, when the upstairs is calm enough to work the menu top to bottom before the after-dinner crowd arrives. It suits a first date that needs to land, an industry nightcap, or a visiting drinker who tracks the 50 Best lists. Anyone after bottle service or a dance floor is in the wrong room.
It belongs near the top of any best cocktail bars in Phoenix shortlist, and it sits comfortably among the country's better rooms on our cocktail bars pillar. Come for the drinks, stay for a bar program that treats every glass as a finished idea.
Sources: Highball official site, highballphx.com (2026); North America's 50 Best Discovery; BARTENDER.com featured bar, February 2026; Phoenix New Times; Google Maps reviews. Profile by James Harlow, barsforKings.
