Pat Nourse

Sydney's CBD possesses one of the best bar scenes in the country, from underground hideaways to cool-as-hell speakeasies to lofty cocktail lounges with mixology maestros at the helm. You can drink life-changing wines, the freshest ales, and fruity elixirs made from seasonal harvests – and sometimes you can do it all in the same place. When you're out and about in the CBD and feeling thirsty, these are the very best places to take an elbow and indulge in a few drinks in the heart of Sydney, curated by Time Out Sydney's critics, including Food & Drink Editor Avril Treasure. So, who's getting the first round? Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out Sydney newsletter for more news, travel inspo and activity ideas, straight to your inbox.  RECOMMENDED READS: Want more? Check out the best rooftop bars here. Plus, these are Sydney's best beer gardens.

Autumn 2024 update: The cooler weather may be on its way but that doesn’t mean we’re keen to stay home. Whether you’re heading out on a date, want an after-work tipple, or in for a long session, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to rocking bars in Sydney. Below, you’ll find the very best ones. This list represents our picks of the best bars in Sydney right now, from fresh faces to tried-and-tested temples of great drinks, ranked by our local editors, critics and fellow booze hounds including Time Out Sydney's Food & Drink Editor Avril Treasure. We’re looking for quality above all, with fun, flavour, atmosphere, creativity and options at every price point. Currently, we're obsessed with Sydney's hot new spot, The Caterpillar Club, debauchery den Pleasure Club, killer sake bar Ante, Darlinghurst's newest bar tinged with nostalgia The Waratah, and PS40 for excellent cocktails. Cheers to you, Sydney. After a watering hole that's a bit more casual? See our list of the best pubs in Sydney, here. After a meal? Check out our best restaurants here.

We're all about a secret underground dive bar or two – but in a city as beautiful as Sydney, it seems like a damn shame to retreat into the depths for every tipple. From a sundowner by the harbour to a sunny rooftop in the Inner West, our town is awash with sky-high watering holes. So we've rounded up the best spots in the city to sip a cold one under a gorgeous open sky. But drinkers beware: Sydney's rooftop bars play host to some of the most contested seats in the city, so get in early for a spot in the sun.  For more al fresco drinking try one of Sydney's best beer gardens. Looking for another top-notch watering hole? Check out the best bars in Sydney.

There’s always time for a tipple when you’re travelling around Australia. Our thirsty country is swimming in stellar watering holes that are loved by locals and tourists alike. We’ve even got a handful of contenders on the World’s 50 Best Bars list to back us up. Whether you’re looking for the best spot for cleverly crafted cocktails or a natural wine bar with superb snacks, drink your way through our selection of the best bars in Australia. After a meal? Check out the best restaurants in Australia here.

Update: As of May 15, 2020, Love Tilly Devine has reopened and is slinging a $50 set menu. Walk-ins are welcome for a drink and a snack, but they highly recommend you book in advance online. Michael West gives good toast. Briny clams on crisp fingers of garlic bread, say. Or shiny fillets of sardine garnished with curry leaves. Or mussels, plump and slathered with spicy rouille. And then there’s the parmesan toasts with Japanese Vegemite – little rounds of bread freighting a blizzard of Reggiano cheese on top of a dark, umami-rich goo that West concocts from tamari and shio kombu. All this needs, you think to yourself, is a bloody good glass of wine. And this being Love, Tilly Devine, one the country’s original and best purveyors of wines from off the beaten track, that is not a problem. You might say half the battle is won just having Iggy’s bread on hand. But West treats the Iggy's (the best bread in Australia) as the precious resource that it is. Fresh, the bread is offered simply sliced with good olive oil. Beyond that it becomes one of his magical toast products, each of which pass the can-I-eat-this-with-a-glass-in-my-other-hand? test with flying colours. And if there’s any bread left over after that, he finds more inventive uses for it still. One of the tastiest upcycles is his fiori or fusilli (West loves a corkscrew shape, it seems, or else just likes the aesthetic fit with a room full of bottles and corks), the pasta tossed with buttery leeks, a decent hit of chilli

One hundred and two steps. Rooftop bars are not for the faint of quad. But all that thigh-burning just primes you for the reveal: swing open the door at the top and there you are, in a lushly planted oasis in the Sydney skyline. A smiling bartender hands you a VB throwdown while you flip through the menu. A bowtie is slung around their neck unknotted, Rat Pack-style. It might only be a quarter past six down on street level, but up here, it’s always time to take it easy.  Flip through the list: there’s smarts enough behind the smiles to handle whatever classics you might fancy. And where bars on rooftops in other parts of the world might call to mind sun-bleached bottles of Bombora and lychee liqueur, the back bar at Old Mate’s is quite a different matter – the arrangement of malts, Caribbean rums and fine tequilas is nearly as luxuriant as what’s in the planter boxes. Don’t let the VB palate-cleanser fool you: while this is a place where a person can drink a beer in peace (or indeed a glass of wine), Old Mate is all about the cocktails.  Dre Walters (an alumnus of Kittyhawk and Lobo Plantation) and Daniel “Noble” Noble (a friendly face to anyone who has clocked flying hours at Ramblin’ Rascal) have put together a list that marches to the beat of its own drummer, throwing curveballs of toasted poppyseed (the Predecessor), pistachio (the Pistacia) and dehydrated basil (the Retox). They roast peaches to enliven the gin Sour they call Corky’s Lady Killer #2, and do a Strawberry B

“Excuse me sir, is this where the psychic is? “Nah mate, this is a bar called Employees Only.” So much for speakeasy subterfuge. Back in New York in 2004, when Employees Only opened, the neo-Prohibition aesthetic was getting a head of steam. Drinks were strong, waistcoats were big, moustaches were waxed. Opening behind a clairvoyant shopfront on Hudson Street, it was an essential part of the craft cocktail revolution, and joined the dots between the spareness of Milk & Honey (set behind a blank door on a residential block) and the richer production values to come with the likes of PDT (accessed via a phone booth in a hotdog shop). Fourteen years later and even without the help of an indiscreet bouncer it’s safe to say the secret is out. The bar has outposts in Singapore, Miami, Hong Kong and Los Angeles. Walk down the stairs off Barrack Street in the Sydney CBD into the first Australian branch, and chances are you’ll find the place pumping, the bar thronged, the larger dining area packed and the tarot-reader by the door plenty busy. Fortune teller there may be, but in many ways EO is less about looking into the future and more a love-letter to the heyday of mid-oughts bartending. The stock on the back-bar isn’t wildly extensive or deep (at least not by the standards set by near neighbours the Baxter Inn and Lobo Plantation), and the drinks under the EO Classics section of the list read fresh and fruity: the vodka, elderflower liqueur and blackberry purée of the Amelia, say, o