The worst bar experience you can have in a foreign city is sitting in a bar designed for people like you. The familiar international beer brands, the translated menus with pictures, the staff trained to translate tourist uncertainty into the least challenging drink possible. You came 5,000 miles for this. You are paying local prices for a version of home that is slightly worse than what you left.
The best bar experience in a foreign city involves a counter covered in wet rings, a bartender who does not speak your language but understands exactly what you need, and a drink you have never heard of that turns out to be better than anything you have been ordering for years. Getting from the first scenario to the second requires some preparation, some willingness to look slightly confused, and a working knowledge of what locals actually do in the places you are visiting.
We have been visiting bars in every city on our list for years. What follows is a city-by-city guide to drinking the way the residents do, covering the rules you need to know, the drinks you should order, and the bars you should actually be in rather than the ones that appear first on tourist lists.
The Universal Rules First
Before the city-specific advice, there are universal principles that apply regardless of where you are. The first is that the bars locals frequent are almost never on the main street. The economic pressure of tourist traffic drives up rents on main streets and pushes local institutions into side streets, courtyard entrances, and basement locations. Walk one block off the main drag in any city and you are already in more promising territory.
The second rule is to order what the bartender or the person next to you is drinking rather than what you recognize. This does not mean ordering carelessly — it means paying attention to what is moving across the bar and taking that as a guide. A glass of something golden and still on a warm evening in Spain is almost certainly vermouth. A short dark glass in Dublin is almost certainly Guinness. Follow the pattern.
The third rule is about timing. Locals in most cities do not go to bars at 6pm. In Spain, the evening starts at 9pm at the earliest. In Japan, serious whisky bars fill up between 9pm and 11pm. In New York, the bars worth going to hit their rhythm between 10pm and midnight. Arriving at the tourist hour means sharing the bar with other tourists.
City by City: What to Order and Where to Be
London's pub culture is the most accessible local drinking tradition of any major city. A well-kept pint of cask ale at a neighbourhood pub — not a craft beer bar, not a gastro pub, a proper local — is one of the great drinks experiences in the world. The challenge is finding one that has not been redesigned for brunch service. Look for pubs on residential streets, not near tube stations. Order whatever is on cask. Read our detailed London craft beer guide for the best neighbourhood cask ale pubs by district.
Parisian drinking culture is fundamentally about wine, and the locals drink it standing at zinc bar counters in neighbourhood wine bars called caves a vins. These are not the romantic bistros of tourist imagination — they are usually small, crowded, noisy, and serve their wine from the tap or in carafes for under 6 euros a glass. The Paris hidden gems guide has 8 of the best. Order whatever the chalk board says the patron recommends. Do not ask for a cocktail in these places.
Amsterdam's tourist bar scene is concentrated around two squares that locals avoid entirely. The authentic Amsterdam drinking tradition is jenever — Dutch gin — drunk in a small tulip glass at a proeflokaal, or tasting house. These old-fashioned establishments, several of which date from the seventeenth century, serve jenever by the glass in an environment where conversation is the only entertainment. Order ouwe (old) jenever, which is mellower and more complex than the jonge style. The Amsterdam hidden gems guide lists the best proeflokalen in the city.
Barcelona's vermouth tradition is one of the most distinctive drinking rituals in Europe. The vermut hour — Sunday lunchtime in particular — sees locals occupying bar stools and terrace tables with a glass of house vermouth over ice, a slice of orange, and a small plate of olives or chips. This is not a formal occasion; it is a casual pre-lunch ritual with deep social importance. Order the house vermouth, never a brand you recognize. Explore the Poble Sec neighbourhood, which we cover in our Barcelona hidden gems guide, for the city's best vermut bars.
Dublin's pub culture is the most welcoming of any city we visit, and it is almost impossible to have a bad time if you go to the right places. The right place is any pub that is not in Temple Bar, which exists entirely for tourists and charges 30 percent more for worse Guinness. A pint of Guinness in a genuine Dublin local pub — Kehoe's, Mulligan's, The Long Hall — costs less, tastes better, and comes with conversation you did not ask for but will appreciate. Our Dublin bar guide lists 20 pubs by neighbourhood.
The Japanese highball — premium whisky diluted with cold sparkling water and served over ice — is one of the world's most underrated drinks when done correctly, and Tokyo is the only city where it is done correctly everywhere. The key is carbonation: Japanese bars serve highballs with the kind of lively carbonation that makes the drink feel alive. Order Suntory Toki or Nikka From The Barrel if available; the house blend otherwise. The Tokyo bar guide covers the Golden Gai area specifically, which is where the best local experience in the city is concentrated.
The Harder Cases: Cities Where Tourist Bars Dominate
Some cities have tourist bar problems that require more active navigation. Las Vegas is the extreme case: the Strip's bar landscape is designed entirely for visitors, and finding a bar that locals actually use requires going off-Strip to neighbourhoods like Arts District and Downtown. Our Las Vegas hidden gems guide covers this terrain specifically.
Miami's South Beach has a similar problem, with a beach bar landscape optimised for tourists on expense accounts. The local bar culture exists in Wynwood, Brickell, and Little Havana, where Cubano coffee culture slides into evening drinking culture in ways that South Beach never manages. The Miami hidden gems guide provides the specific neighbourhood breakdown.
Lisbon's drinking culture sits at the intersection of several traditions: the Portuguese ginjinha ritual, the evening wine culture of the Bairro Alto neighbourhood, and the late-night bar crawl culture of Cais do Sodre, which now runs until 4am on weekends. Start at a ginjinha bar — a small shot of cherry brandy served from a tiny kiosk — then move to the Bairro Alto for wine at a cave. The transition to cocktails happens around midnight in Cais do Sodre. Our Lisbon cocktail bars guide covers the late-night options.
New York's bar culture is too diverse for a single drink recommendation, but the universal local principle is to drink what the bar specialises in rather than defaulting to a familiar order. A dive bar in the East Village is where you order a shot and a beer. A cocktail bar in the West Village is where you order whatever is on the specials board. A whiskey bar in the Flatiron district is where you ask the bartender what they are excited about. Let the room guide you. The New York hidden gems guide covers the neighbourhood-specific landscape.
Know a bar where the locals still outnumber the tourists? Tell us about it.
Submit a BarThe Etiquette That Makes You Invisible
Drinking like a local is as much about behaviour as about what you order. The universal etiquette failure of tourist drinkers is photographing everything before drinking anything. Locals pick up their glass and drink. The second failure is ordering in a group by committee — in most European bar cultures, one person orders for the group with confidence, even if that confidence is borrowed. The third failure is tipping in a culture where tipping is not practised, which marks you as someone who does not know where they are.
Our tipping culture guide covers the country-by-country variation in detail. And our bar etiquette guide addresses the universal rules that separate experienced drinkers from tourists in any bar in the world.
The best version of drinking in a foreign city is not trying to blend in perfectly. It is arriving with enough knowledge to be genuinely curious rather than defensively confused. The locals will notice the difference, and the bars that open up as a result are worth every bit of preparation.
