Editorial
Knowing how to get the best seat at a bar is a skill that takes roughly ten minutes to learn and improves every evening you spend in one. The best seat is not always the one with the best view or the most comfortable cushion. It is the seat that gives you access to the best service, the best conversation, and the right amount of control over your own evening. At every bar we have visited across 72 cities, the best seat follows the same basic logic.
The first principle of getting the best seat at a bar is to sit at the bar counter rather than at a table. When you sit at the counter, you are directly in the bartender's line of sight and social radius. You get served faster, you get recommendations more readily, and you become a participant in the room rather than an observer of it. At tables, you are a customer. At the bar counter, you are a regular in progress. This is the most important seat upgrade you can make at any bar, regardless of the city or the occasion.
Once you have committed to the bar counter, the second decision is where along the counter to sit. The conventional wisdom is to avoid the centre because it is the busiest section and the bartenders are always moving past it. The better positions are the corner seats nearest the service well (where drinks are assembled) and the far end away from the main entrance. The service well position puts you closest to where the bartenders spend most of their time. The far end away from the door is quieter and receives more individual attention because fewer guests choose it.
The single most reliable method for getting the best seat at a bar is to arrive before peak service. At cocktail bars, peak service is 8pm to 10pm Friday and Saturday. Before 7pm, the room is half-empty and every counter seat is available. On weeknights, peak service is shorter and less intense, which means the same seats are available for longer. Our rule: if the bar is worth sitting at the counter for, arrive 30 minutes before you originally planned. The counter seats will always be there. Your preferred position will be there at 6:30pm and gone by 8pm.
If the counter is full, the next best seat in most bars is the table nearest the bar counter on the side closest to the service station. You are close enough to catch the bartender's eye when you need a refill, and the ambient energy of the bar counter reaches you without the full intensity of being in it. Do not take the table nearest the entrance: it has the most foot traffic, the most noise, and the least privacy. The table deepest in the room and nearest the bar is consistently the best alternative to counter seating.
The formula for getting the best seat at a bar is not complicated. Sit at the counter. Arrive before 7pm. Position yourself near the service well or at the far end away from the door. If the counter is full, take the table nearest the bar on the deepest side of the room. Apply this framework at any of the eight bars in this guide and the experience will be materially better than whatever seat you would have defaulted to on arrival.
James has spent 13 years sitting at bar counters and has a near-photographic memory for which position at which bar produces the best evening. He never sits at a table if a counter seat is available.