Bars Worth Flying To

Most bars are fine. You walk in, you order something, you leave. But a small number of venues worldwide are the reason you book the trip. They are the places people reference in conversations for years afterward. The ones that make you wonder whether a city has earned its reputation or whether the bar made the city.

We compiled this list after 14 months of editorial travel across 12 cities. Our criteria was simple: would we book a flight specifically to drink here? Every bar on this list answered yes. Some because of the drinks programme. Some because the room is unlike anything else on earth. Some because the experience of being there cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world.

These are not the bars with the most Instagram followers. Some of them actively resist that. They are the bars that change how you think about what a bar can be. We recommend you follow our newsletter if you want to know when new venues of this calibre emerge.

North America

01 New York

Death and Company

The bar that arguably launched the modern cocktail revival from a basement on East 6th Street. The menu changes seasonally and every drink tells you something about where cocktails are going next. The room is dim, the service is attentive without being theatrical, and the depth of the spirits list is extraordinary. Plan for at least three drinks if you want to understand why this address matters.

$$$$ · East Village, New York

02 Chicago

The Aviary

Grant Achatz's cocktail bar operates like a three-star kitchen. Drinks arrive in custom vessels, some involving smoke, some requiring assembly at the table. It sounds gimmicky until you experience how seamlessly the theatre serves the flavour. The Aviary is not trying to be a bar people visit twice a week. It is trying to be a bar people remember for the rest of their drinking lives.

$$$$ · West Loop, Chicago

03 New Orleans

Cure

New Orleans has more bars per capita than any other American city, and Cure is the one that elevated the entire conversation. Set in a converted firehouse in Freret, the programme here is rooted in local spirits and seasonal Louisiana ingredients. The bar team has produced more talented bartenders who went on to open their own celebrated bars than almost anywhere in the US.

$$$ · Freret, New Orleans

The New York cocktail bar scene alone could justify a transatlantic flight for any serious enthusiast. But the bars on this North American section represent something more specific: venues that shaped the direction of the craft globally, not just locally.

Europe

04 London

The Connaught Bar

Named the world's best bar multiple times and still earning it. The martini trolley is famous for a reason: it is a performance that makes the martini taste better. The room is Edwardian and immaculate, the service is without peer, and every drink is executed with a precision that most bars can only approximate. If you are visiting London and care about bars, this visit is non-negotiable.

$$$$ · Mayfair, London

05 Paris

Little Red Door

Paris has shifted from a wine city to one of Europe's most exciting cocktail destinations, and Little Red Door is a large reason why. The annual conceptual menus are the most discussed in the industry. Recent editions have built entire programmes around a single sensory concept, with each drink acting as a chapter. The room on Rue Charlot is small and intimate, and impossible to walk out of disappointed.

$$$ · Le Marais, Paris

06 Berlin

Stagger Lee

Berlin does not do cocktail theatre. It does atmosphere, and Stagger Lee does atmosphere better than almost anywhere in Europe. The western-dark interior, the vinyl soundtrack, and the utterly unfussy approach to a world-class spirits list create a bar that feels like it belongs in a different era. Bourbon is the anchor, but the programme is wider than you expect and everything arrives quickly with minimal ceremony.

$$ · Schoneberg, Berlin

The London cocktail bar scene and the Paris programme have been competing for European supremacy for a decade. Berlin offers something entirely different: bars where the ego of the venue does not compete with your ability to enjoy the evening. All three cities reward proper exploration across multiple nights.

Asia and Middle East

07 Tokyo

Bar Benfiddich

Hiroyasu Kayama grows herbs and botanicals on a farm he tends himself and uses them to create spirits that exist nowhere else on earth. The bar is tiny. You drink alone or in small groups, mostly in silence, watching the ritual of preparation. It is the closest thing to a private ceremony that the bar world has produced. Reserve 6 weeks ahead and accept that your perspective on what a bar can be will shift permanently.

$$$$ · Shinjuku, Tokyo

08 Singapore

Manhattan at Regent Singapore

A hotel bar that routinely defeats standalone bars in global rankings. The American whiskey programme is the largest in Asia, with over 200 expressions available. The cocktail list is built around pre-Prohibition classics executed with modern precision. The room channels Art Deco New York convincingly enough that you forget you are in Singapore until you step outside into 32-degree heat.

$$$$ · Orchard Road, Singapore

09 Dubai

Gold on 27

The 27th floor of the Burj Al Arab is an address that sounds like excess theatre, and to some degree it is. But the view of the Gulf, the deliberately restrained cocktail programme, and the Japanese-accented menu make this more than a trophy destination. At roughly $40 per drink, nothing here is cheap. But no other bar in the world offers exactly this combination of setting and craft in one visit.

$$$$ · Burj Al Arab, Dubai

The Asian bar scene has matured dramatically over the past decade. Singapore's cocktail programme now competes with London and New York on every serious metric. Tokyo's bar culture operates by different rules entirely and rewards patience and deference to the bartender in ways Western bars rarely do.

What Makes a Bar Worth a Flight

The question we ask ourselves when evaluating a bar for this list is not whether it has won awards. Awards follow the same bars in cycles and they lag the actual moment of greatness by two to four years. We ask whether the visit produces a memory that outlasts the hangover by at least five years.

Three factors matter more than any others. The first is irreplicability: can you get a version of this experience anywhere else, or does it require this room, this bartender, and this specific context? The second is intention: does every element of the bar reflect deliberate thought, or are there gaps where generic decisions were made? The third is the drink itself, which has to be the best possible version of whatever the bar is claiming to do.

The bars on this list pass all three tests. Several of them pass a fourth, which is that they make you re-evaluate the bars you thought were already excellent. After visiting The Aviary in Chicago, a very good cocktail bar starts to look different. That capacity to recalibrate your standards is the ultimate marker of a truly exceptional venue.

We update this list annually. If you want to be the first to know when it changes, the barsforkings newsletter is the right place for that. For city-specific deep dives, the world's most expensive bars list offers a different but overlapping perspective on venues at the extreme end of what bars can be.