El

· Counter El Coctel is the longest-running Spanish-influenced cocktail counter in Shanghai and the room that quietly trained a generation of bartenders before they moved into the city's higher-profile addresses. The bar leans into vermouth and sherry as primary modifiers rather than novelties, the back-bar's fino and amontillado depth is unusually serious for an Asian city, and the cocktail list is built to be eaten with as much as drunk through — small Spanish plates arrive on bar trays and the team treats food pairing as part of the programme.

The room's tempo is gentler than the Gokan rooms above, the price tier is friendlier, and the after-hours back room remains one of the more pleasant places in the French Concession to land at midnight. It ranks fourth because the programme is narrower than the leaders but deeply, consistently executed inside that narrower band.

For the full ranking, see our editorial round-up of the 10 best cocktail bars in Shanghai, the broader Shanghai cocktail bars guide, and our category index of cocktail bars worldwide.