The 50 Best Hidden Gem Bars in the World 2026

Sasha Petraske's last room. There's no menu — they build a drink to your taste. Knock the metal door at 134 Eldridge.

Order: A Penicillin

You enter through a phone booth inside a hot dog shop. The trick is famous; the drinks are still excellent. Reservations recommended.

Order: Benton's Old Fashioned

You need a referral to get in. Behind a butcher shop. Six tables, Japanese omakase-paired drinks.

Order: Whatever the chef pairs

Genuine Prohibition speakeasy that survived as one. Cocktails served in tea cups, beer in paper bags. Through a back alley.

Order: A Sazerac in a teacup

Below the actual Discount Suit Company tailor on Wentworth Street. Forty seats, no reservations, no fuss. The London hidden gem locals defend.

Order: Whatever the bartender suggests stirred

Phileas Fogg-themed Victorian drawing-room bar. Antique-stuffed, gas lamps, hot air balloon overhead. Theatrical and surprisingly serious.

Order: A Tipperary

The black door is unmarked. The room behind is consistently top-five in Europe. Each year the menu rebuilds around a different theme.

Order: Any signature from this year's menu

The exterior is covered in stickers and looks abandoned. The interior celebrates only French spirits — no foreign liquor at all. Excellent.

Order: A Calvados-led spec

Twelve seats, reservations only, dress code enforced. Berlin's most controlled drinking experience.

Order: Buck and Breck (cognac, sugar, absinthe, champagne)

Through an unmarked door with Samuel Beckett's portrait above. Strict no-photography policy. The bar locals send only people they trust.

Order: Bartender's choice

You enter through the fridge at the back of Pastrami Bar. Won every award. The illustrated menu is its own artwork.

Order: Supercool Martini

You walk past a doner kebab shop and through an unmarked door. The room behind is a serious classics-driven cocktail bar.

Order: An Old Fashioned, made properly

Below a tapas bar in Malasaña. Dedicated to pre-Prohibition American cocktails. Quiet on Mondays, crowded by Friday.

Order: A Manhattan with their reserve rye

Reservation-only. Through an unmarked black door. The room that introduced Amsterdam to modern speakeasy bartending.

Order: Whatever's seasonal

Tej Sehgal's intimate cocktail laboratory. Tasting-format only. The menu is built around obscure Dutch genever traditions.

Order: The full tasting

Press the brass 'Press For Cocktails' bell next to a nondescript door. The room behind has redefined Lisbon's bar scene since 2015.

Order: What the bartender's pouring most often

Email in advance to get the password. An unmarked door near Campo de' Fiori. The classics geeks' Rome.

Order: A Sazerac, made the long way

Down a side street, dim, absinthe-heavy. Prague's most consistent serious cocktail bar.

Order: Death in the Afternoon (champagne, absinthe)

Below ground level near the Danube. Hungary's first serious cocktail bar and still the country's best.

Order: Tokaji-led seasonal

Behind a cabinet door inside another bar. Tiny, eight-seat, deeply Austrian.

Order: A Schubert Spritz

Inside a 18th-century townhouse on Nybrogade. Multiple drinking rooms, fireplace, no signage. Copenhagen's cocktail bar standard.

Order: Whatever's pouring stirred this season

Through the corner door of an unmarked building in Södermalm. One room jazz, one room cocktails.

Order: A Last Word

In-house distillery and three different drinking rooms. Hyper-local Norwegian ingredients across the menu.

Order: Their distilled aquavit, served straight

You ride a service elevator to a corridor; you find the unmarked door. Eight seats. The bartender narrates each drink.

Order: A Yamazaki 12, neat

Run by a Bar Benfiddich alum. Listening-bar format with cocktails. One of the most interesting new Tokyo rooms.

Order: A specialist Japanese-spirit cocktail

Through a noodle shop's kitchen. Five-seat counter. The Thailand-meets-Japan cocktail program is rigorous.

Order: Pandan-leaf old fashioned

Tiki-and-tropical reimagining inside an old Charoenkrung shophouse. Killer rum list. No reservations.

Order: Original tiki spec, rum-led

At the Conrad Centennial. Each part of the room represents a Manhattan borough. Won World's Best Bar in 2017.

Order: A Manhattan, off the Manhattan menu

Down an unmarked staircase. Hemingway-novel themed cocktail bar, won World's Best 2019.

Order: A drink from the For Whom the Bell Tolls section

You enter through a flower shop and a hidden door at the back. Top of the Asia 50 list almost annually.

Order: The Wonderland menu's signature

All cocktails on tap, pre-batched. The execution is so consistent that the format is the point.

Order: Whatever's most popular this month

Three different drinking rooms, each more hidden than the last. You climb up through stairs that get progressively narrower.

Order: A spec made with their house-made shochu

Long blue curtain at the entrance. House rules taken seriously. Toby Maloney's Chicago landmark.

Order: The Violet Fizz

From outside it looks like a dive; inside it's serious cocktailing. The hidden-in-plain-sight Chicago bar.

Order: Bartender's choice — you'll be surprised

You enter through the front door of The Walker hotel and head left. The Normandie's own back bar (Walker Inn) is the deeper hidden room.

Order: Anything off the seasonal menu

Through Cole's restaurant in DTLA. The room that taught LA how to drink seriously again.

Order: A Sazerac

You text for the password. Five secret rooms behind the main bar — the most hidden is the Library, accessed through a bookcase.

Order: Bourbon-led; that's the brief

Locals' Miami bar — far from the South Beach tourist circuit even though geographically within it. Daiquiris are exceptional.

Order: Daiquiri No. 3

Tucked away in an off-the-Bourbon stretch of the French Quarter. The cocktail program is one of NOLA's most sophisticated; the room is calm.

Order: A Sazerac, made the New Orleans way

You enter through a taquería and a curtain. Mexico City's most theatrical entry; consistently top of the Latin America 50.

Order: Bartender's choice — tell them your favourite spirit

Sixteen seats. Cocktails built around Mexican spirits and seasonal local produce. Reservations essential.

Order: A signature mezcal-led drink

Through a working flower shop and down a staircase. Argentine immigration history as menu structure.

Order: Negroni Balestrini

You enter a phone booth, dial the right number, the wall opens. Old-school speakeasy theatre still works.

Order: A French 75

Down a staircase from Bar Astor. The classical cocktail bar of São Paulo. No gimmicks, just craft.

Order: A perfect Manhattan

Tucked into Provenza. The salsa-dancing speakeasy locals send people to. The drinks are simple; the room is the show.

Order: An aguardiente shot

At the back of an alley off York Street. Australia's most encyclopaedic whisky list — over 800 expressions.

Order: A Japanese whisky neat

The bar that taught Australia how to drink seriously. The Attic upstairs is bookable for tasting-menu format; downstairs is no-bookings.

Order: Bartender's choice if it's busy; the Attic if you want intent

Inside the Gevora Hotel. Dubai locals' bar — far from the Dubai Marina tourist scene. The cocktail program is unfussy.

Order: An Arabian-spirit-led cocktail

Genuinely strange — motorcycles being repaired in one half, cocktails in the other. Cape Town's most distinctive room.

Order: A boilermaker

Rooftop above a fabric shop. The Atlas Mountains visible from the back terrace. Most tourists never find it.

Order: A spiced tea-and-rum spec