This is the cocktail-bar list for New York — narrower than our overall city ranking and more demanding. Every room below is one where the bartender is making the drink the centre of the experience. Death & Co set the modern reference. Existing Conditions pushed the technique into the laboratory. Bar Goto introduced Tokyo-style precision. The 10 below are where serious drinkers go.
Part of our 50 Best Cocktail Bars in the World listThis article is one chapter in our larger global guide. See the full pillar with every featured city.
Read the world list
The 10 best cocktail bars in New York
01 · New York
East Village
$$$
Reference cocktail bar
Still the reference point for the modern American cocktail bar. The pedigree out of this room reshaped global drinking culture.
Order: Oaxaca Old Fashioned
02 · New York
West Village
$$$
Lab cocktails · Counter
Don Lee and Dave Arnold's tech-forward cocktail bar. Clarified milk punches, rotovap-distilled spirits, force-carbonated drinks.
Order: Tropicál (clarified piña colada, frozen)
03 · New York
West Village
$$
Japanese highball bar
Masahiro Urushido's room. Won World's Best Bar 2020. Tokyo-style highballs, exceptional snack menu.
Order: Toki Highball
04 · New York
Lower East Side
$$$
Speakeasy · No menu
Sasha Petraske's last room. No menu — bartenders build to your taste. Knock the metal door at 134 Eldridge.
Order: Penicillin
05 · New York
Lower East Side
$$$
Japanese minimalist
Kenta Goto's intimate Japanese-inflected bar. The Sakura Martini is the calling card.
Order: Sakura Martini
Weekly editorial
The bars worth going to, weekly.
One email per week. The bars our editors are recommending right now, across 60 cities worldwide.
Free. Unsubscribe anytime.
06 · New York
Greenwich Village
$$
All-day café-bar
World's Best Bar 2019. The negroni programme alone earns the visit. Outdoor seating in summer.
Order: Garibaldi
07 · New York
Cobble Hill
$$
Belle Époque · Classics
Julie Reiner's flagship and Brooklyn's longest-running serious cocktail bar. Dark wood, brass, classics-driven.
Order: Clover Club
08 · New York
West Village
$$
Basement · Live jazz
Below street level on Seventh South, with live jazz most nights. Sasha Petraske's other room. Order off the cocktail style.
Order: Bartender's choice — gin, stirred
09 · New York
East Village
$$$
Phone-booth entry
You enter through a phone booth inside Crif Dogs. The trick is famous; the drinks are still excellent.
Order: Benton's Old Fashioned
10 · New York
East Village
$$
Bitters bar · Tiny
Bitters-focused bar. Tiny — twelve seats. Every drink built around a bitter or amaro spec.
Order: A negroni made with their reserve amari
More NYC cocktail barsThe full New York cocktail-bar index, by neighbourhood.
See the full list
How NYC cocktailing keeps evolving
New York's cocktail scene reinvents itself every five years. The 2010s gave us Death & Co's pedigree-export model. The late 2010s gave us Existing Conditions's lab-driven approach. The 2020s have produced Katana Kitten's Tokyo-influenced highball culture and a new cohort of intimate counter bars. The 10 above represent where the form is now.
