The Best After Work Bars in San Francisco

Pagan Idol is a tiki bar done with genuine commitment, which makes it a welcome jolt of colour in the Financial District's grey-suited landscape. The rum list is serious, the house punches are served in vessels that require documentation, and the lighting is dark enough to forget the outside world. After 6pm it fills with people who discovered it and then kept coming back. The best tiki programme in the city by some distance.

Order: The Harbour Light shared punch or a single-rum Daiquiri from the well-sourced list

A cocktail bar that takes its brief seriously without being precious about it. Benjamin Cooper has a rotating seasonal menu and a permanent list of well-executed classics. The bar team knows the material cold and doesn't rush orders — which, in a city where everyone is on a schedule, is a deliberate statement about pace. It fills up around 6:30pm on weekdays; arrive before that for a proper seat.

Order: The seasonal house creation, or a Negroni variation if they have one running

Comstock Saloon is one of the most atmospheric bars in San Francisco — a genuine Victorian saloon with a restored bar, pressed tin ceiling, and a cocktail list that uses the building's age as an excuse to excavate forgotten drinks. The Martinez (the city's cocktail invention) is made properly here. The piano some evenings completes the picture. One stop on the 30 Stockton from Montgomery Street BART.

Order: The Martinez or the house Sazerac — both are textbook examples

Trick Dog changes its entire cocktail menu four or five times a year, and each version is built around a different concept — a local sports team roster, a Chinese restaurant menu, a field guide to Bay Area birds. The execution is always consistent: original cocktails, fair prices, efficient service. It has won more awards than its modest interior would suggest, and the Thursday after-work crowd is excellent company.

Order: Whatever looks most unexpected on the current concept menu

ABV works as a bar, a restaurant, and an after-work destination simultaneously, which few places manage without compromising one of those functions. The cocktail list is short and carefully chosen; the food is better than bar food has any right to be. The back patio gets warm on evenings when the fog hasn't come in yet, which is between June and August approximately two evenings a week.

Order: The house Mezcal Negroni or whatever seasonal cocktail they're running

Elixir has been on 16th and Guerrero since 1858, which makes it San Francisco's oldest saloon still operating in its original location. The whisky selection is genuinely impressive for a neighbourhood bar and the prices reflect none of that pretension. The weekday after-work crowd is the neighbourhood itself — teachers, carpenters, software engineers, all getting a beer or a pour of rye without ceremony. We like it here.

Order: A pour of something from the American whisky shelf, neat

Smuggler's Cove is, without qualification, one of the best rum bars in the world. The list runs past 500 expressions and the cocktail programme uses them intelligently — tiki classics, their own originals, and deep cuts from maritime drinking traditions around the Pacific. The three-deck space has ship-salvage decor that somehow avoids being kitsch. Go on a Wednesday when the bar staff have time to talk you through what's worth drinking.

Order: Ask for a guided rum flight, or the house Dead Reckoning cocktail

The Interval is the bar and café inside the Long Now Foundation's space at Fort Mason — a nonprofit that thinks about civilisation on a 10,000-year timescale. The cocktail list is organised by historical era. The library behind the bar is one of the most interesting rooms in San Francisco. The view of the bay from the terrace at golden hour is something people come back for repeatedly.

Order: Any cocktail from the historical section — they explain the provenance if asked

Jones on Geary is the Tenderloin bar that nobody who drinks well in San Francisco keeps to themselves for long. The cocktail list is short, classic, and executed without fuss. The bar itself is the kind of dark, narrow room that rewards settling in for two hours rather than moving on. It is not trying to be anything other than a good neighbourhood bar, which is the highest aspiration in the city.

Order: An Old Fashioned or whatever the bartender is enthusiastic about

Bar agricole's cocktail programme is built around sourcing — local produce, house-made ingredients, drinks that connect the glass to the California that surrounds it. The room is airy and modern with a patio that catches the late afternoon light before the fog arrives. The vermouths are house-made and worth ordering on their own. One of the most thoughtful drinking experiences in the city.

Order: The house Americano with house vermouth, or ask what's made in-house this season