Editorial
Ten high-end bars where location, service, and design do the heavy lifting. When you need a room that works as hard as you do.
The best bars for client entertainment share something intangible. They have the kind of physical presence that makes conversation feel important. The lighting doesn't interrogate you. The noise floor sits at a level where you can still hear across the table. The staff knows when to vanish and when to reappear.
These are not party bars. They are not loud or anonymous. Instead, they are rooms built on the assumption that money and attention have always coexisted, and that this coexistence requires a particular kind of spatial restraint. We have selected ten bars where the room does most of the work, allowing you to focus on the client in front of you. For lunchtime specifically, our guide to the best power lunch bars in New York covers the twelve rooms where deals are done over a proper midday meal — from The Grill's Pool Room to Fraunces Tavern in the Financial District.
The room where the Bloody Mary was invented and where midtown power brokers still conduct unwritten business. The service is unhurried in a way that signals permanence.
Regularly ranked the world's best bar. The Martini trolley service is a performance your client will describe afterwards. The level of attention here is not replicable anywhere else in London.
A dark, dramatic bar inside one of New York's few genuinely high-end Chinese restaurants. The cocktail list borrows from Asian ingredients intelligently. Impressive without being obvious.
Our global cocktail bar guide. Every city's best programmes, categorised by style and ambition.
A small-batch punch bar inside Ian Schrager's Fitzrovia hotel. Maximum 40 covers, beautifully lit, staff who treat every guest as if they're the reason the room exists. Book in advance.
The high-ceilinged former hotel bar still sets the standard for mid-century cocktail room design in New York. The food programme reinforces the impression of effort.
Designed by David Collins, this boutique hotel bar holds only 40 people and operates with the quiet confidence of somewhere that doesn't need to try hard. The wine list is exceptional.
The painted murals by Ludwig Bemelmans cover every wall and the bar has been serving the same classic cocktails since 1947. No place in New York signals old-world hospitality more clearly.
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An American-themed bar inside a Mayfair hotel that manages to be neither theme-park nor boring. The cocktail list is honest, the service is quick, and the room suits any client nationality.
The bar attached to Danny Meyer's restaurant inside MoMA. The room overlooks the sculpture garden. The wine list is edited and precise. A bar you go to when you want the meeting to feel like it already went well.
Formerly the world's best bar (four times), the Artesian remains one of London's most technically accomplished cocktail programmes. The room is large enough for a table of six.
The New York cocktail bars our editors return to for every important occasion. All Manhattan, some Brooklyn.
Client entertainment is not about the bartender's technique or the rarity of the spirit. It is about being in a room where the client feels like the most important person in it, without anyone explicitly saying so. These ten bars achieve that through different means—some through history, some through smallness, some through sheer architectural authority. The common thread is that all of them understand that a great bar is a place where business happens almost by accident, because the environment makes good conversation inevitable.
For when the client wants drinks rather than dinner. Our after-work guides cover 72 cities.
James has been writing about New York bar culture since 2011 and spent three years as a hospitality consultant before returning to journalism. He has a particular interest in bars where the experience of the room does some of the work.
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