Editorial
Finding a great bar in an unfamiliar city is one of the most satisfying things you can do as a traveller — and one of the most reliably messed up. Most people follow the hotel concierge recommendations or the top Google result and end up in a place designed for people who did exactly that. We have developed a consistent method for finding genuinely good bars in cities we have never visited before, and it works every time.
Start with neighbourhood, not venue. Every great bar city has a neighbourhood or two where the locals actually drink — and it is almost never the tourist district. In New York it is the East Village and Williamsburg, not Times Square. In London it is Shoreditch or Peckham, not Covent Garden. In Tokyo it is Golden Gai in Shinjuku or the back streets of Shimokitazawa. Identify that neighbourhood first, then walk it. A bar that is full of locals at 9pm on a Tuesday is a good bar. A bar that is empty until the tourists arrive after dinner is not.
The following bars are all examples of places that reward the traveller who does their research. None of them are on the main tourist drag. All of them are full of locals on a regular night. They demonstrate the principle: go to the neighbourhood where the city actually drinks, walk until you find something that looks right, and trust the bar that is already busy before midnight.
The formula for finding a great bar in any city you do not know is consistent: identify the neighbourhood where locals drink, not where tourists eat. Walk it. Look for bars that are busy before midnight on weekdays. Read the menu at the door — a bar that has written its drinks list with care has usually given the same attention to everything else. Then commit to your choice. The worst bar discovery stories come from spending 40 minutes trying to find the theoretically perfect bar rather than walking into the one that looks right in front of you.
Priya has been finding great bars in cities she has never visited before for fifteen years. She believes the best bar discovery is always the accidental one — which requires doing enough research to make the accident possible.