Everything you love about New York City's best bars can be found at Time Out Market: Terrific cocktails, skyline views and happy hours to end your day and start your evening. Just like our restaurant curation, we've taken great care in building our bars. Some of the city's finest beverage professionals were with us on day one creating delicious, Instagrammable libations, and the creativity keeps flowing today. And don't miss our Love Local Brews Bar, focused on suds made here in NYC.
Every drink seems ideal when you're at the perfect bar. Your dive’s beer is frosty, rooftops send you soaring toward the clouds and cocktail destinations shake and stir myriad ingredients into ideally calibrated glassware—leaps above what you try to craft at home. The options are unending, the ice is nicer and you aren’t just drinking, you’re at the spot.
Whether you're dabbling in low-ABV libations, making your way through dedicated martini menus or collecting passwords for pseudo speakeasies, there is an ideal location for every taste, tolerance and occasion. Find them among the 50 best bars in NYC right now.
Best NYC bars at a glance:
- For a taste of old New York - The Dead Rabbit - One of New York's best cocktail bars continues to serve up the smoothest pours of Guinness and one of the best Irish Coffees, period. (Financial District)
- For a boozin' and a bite: Bar Snack - Excellently fun cocktails with snacks like pickled dusted cheese curds and spice bags (Chelsea)
- For a late-night croon and swoon: Saint Tuesday - A well-hidden bar found several flights underneath the Walker Hotel Tribeca (Tribeca)
- For Korean snacks, sips n' such: Sunn's – Sunny Lee's banchan-based bar is a welcome find in Chinatown for natty wines and close quarters. (Chinatown)
- For tiki anytime of year: Sunken Harbor Club - The speakeasy above Gage & Tollner didn't stay secret for long. And how could it? Their range of tiki cocktails makes for some seriously boozy nights. (Downtown Brooklyn)
Updated March 2026: Last month, we got a little busy in bars. In February alone, we updated our best sports bars for your viewing pleasure, the best Irish pubs for a certain lucky holiday on the horizon and our best rooftops because rooftop season is eternal here. But as for this list, we visited some of the latest and greatest cocktail lounges to grace our city, adding Golden Ratio and Seed Library to the mix.
If you think that we are missing your favorite cocktail bar or drinking haunt, give me a shout. For more on our editorial policies and ethics, feel free to check out how we review at Time Out.
RECOMMENDED:
👀 The best speakeasy-inspired bars in NYC
🍸 The coolest underground bars in NYC
🔥 NYC's best fireplace bars





































































