The Bars With the Most Character in the World

A former tram depot converted into a bar that has been operating in some form since the early 1990s and has refused every gentrification pressure that Prenzlauer Berg has thrown at it. The original industrial ceiling joists are intact, the bar is built from salvaged tram parts, and the crowd on any given Thursday night is a cross-section of the neighbourhood that no amount of concept development could curate. The beer is cheap and correct.

Order: Berliner Pilsner on draught — this is not the place for a cocktail

A cava bar in El Born that has been in the same family since 1929 and has changed almost nothing since. The walls are tiled floor to ceiling, the anchovies come from the family's supplier in L'Escala, and the house cava is poured from unlabelled bottles that are noticeably better than the price suggests. We have sent many people here and none of them have come back disappointed. Go before 8pm to get a spot at the bar.

Order: House cava and a plate of anchovies — the full El Xampanyet experience

Open since 1782 and the most uncompromising pub in a city full of uncompromising pubs. Mulligan's does not do food, does not do cocktails, and does not have WiFi. What it does is pour the most consistently excellent pint of Guinness in Dublin and provide a room of extraordinary atmospheric density — dark wood, low ceilings, the smell of two centuries of serious drinking. The journalists from the nearby Irish Times have been coming here for generations.

Order: Guinness — pulled slowly, waited for properly, drunk without rushing

The psychic in the window — a genuine fortune-teller who has been reading cards at the front of the room since the bar opened in 2004 — tells you everything you need to know about Employees Only's approach to character. The bar takes its atmosphere seriously but not solemnly. The cocktails are outstanding, the staff have been there for years, and the late-night kitchen that runs until 3:30am has saved many a bad decision from becoming a worse one.

Order: Mata Hari — brandy, apricot liqueur, blood orange, cardamom bitters

The Broken Shaker occupies the pool deck of the Freehand Miami and has developed a character so specific to that location — the tiles, the tropical plants, the mismatched vintage furniture, the fact that you can swim between cocktails — that none of its other locations has quite replicated it. The menu changes seasonally and tracks Miami's produce calendar with genuine rigour. The combination of pool access and serious drinks at this price point is genuinely unusual.

Order: The seasonal frozen drink — whatever the kitchen is running that week, it is always worth ordering

Yes, it is a tourist destination. Yes, the terrace tables fill with people photographing their hot chocolate. But inside, at the bar, on a grey Tuesday afternoon with Le Monde and an Aperol Spritz, Deux Magots is exactly what it has always been: a room where Paris feels permanent and the rest of the world feels provisional. Sartre wrote here. De Beauvoir wrote here. The point is not to replicate that — the point is to sit in the room where it happened and feel the weight of it.

Order: Kir Royale or Aperol Spritz — at the inside bar, not the terrace

The owner of The Malt Bar has been collecting single malt Scotch for thirty years and the bar's shelves hold over four hundred bottles, many of them discontinued expressions that no longer exist at retail anywhere in the world. The room seats twelve, the owner is almost always behind the bar, and the conversations that happen here between serious whisky drinkers from Japan and visiting collectors from Scotland are some of the most interesting drinking conversations we have encountered anywhere.

Order: Ask for a pour of something discontinued — the owner's selections in this category are consistently extraordinary

28 HongKong Street opened in 2011 and is widely credited with establishing Singapore's modern cocktail bar scene. The character it has accumulated over fifteen years of operation is now irreducible — the bar's identity is inseparable from the Singaporean cocktail narrative it helped create. The current menu is still one of the best in the city, and the back room remains one of the most comfortable places to spend three hours in Singapore.

Order: Their current signature — the bar's flagship cocktail changes annually and is always worth ordering

The definitive mezcal bar in New York, with forty agave spirits on the back bar and a programme that has been educating the East Village about the category since 2009. The room is dim, the music is at conversation-friendly volume, and the staff's knowledge of agave production — the different maguey varieties, the regional variations, the difference between a tahona-milled and a mechanically-milled expression — is the deepest of any bar in the city.

Order: The mezcal tasting flight — three pours across different maguey varieties with the bartender's commentary