The best cocktail bars in Sydney

Maybe it's the tangerine-orange room with at least 15 glittering disco balls. Or the two-person karaoke booth with its own button for tequila. Or perhaps it's the banging cocktails, including the Gimlet El Maiz, which uses a cordial made from toasted leftover tortillas (yes, really). Regardless, the latest colourful venture from the Maybe Group, El Primo Sanchez, slaps. We just can’t wait to go back.

There’s no denying we live in a really ridiculously good looking city. Sydney possesses a truly indulgent amount of water frontage, plus iconic architecture, world-class green spaces and carefully preserved industrial landmarks as a reminder of times past – all this and we haven’t even left the harbour yet. And you can see it all from the two-tiered cocktail bar at the top of the Hotel Palisade. If you've got mates or parents in town visiting – or just feel like a fancy cocktail at a fancy place – Henry Deane is one of Sydney's best spots for a tipple with a view.

At the end of a service alley, a step back from the CBD bustle, gold light spills out onto the asphalt. There’s a scent of lime in the air, the sound of Boston shakers, and somewhere behind it, just a hint of danger. This is Cantina OK, the standing-room-only bar that since February of 2019 has plied Sydney with good, clean, sort-of illicit fun fuelled by mezcal and backed up by one of the sharpest bar teams in the city.

From the industry legends that brought us Sydney institutions Tio’s, Cantina OK and the Cliff Dive comes the next great nocturnal adventure: Bar Planet, a psychedelic Inner West dive-bar re-imagining the world's most divisive cocktail, the Martini.

If you were going to spend the rest of your life at one bar and restaurant you’d need it to be the complete package. We’re talking amazing drinks, great service and cheese enough to kill a man. An ace steak wouldn’t hurt and if they could also have an impressive canned goods store that would last you through an apocalypse, that’d cap it off. In short, at Continental you’re looking at your future life partner, in venue form. It’s an offshoot of the Porteño family, and now that Gardel’s has shut up shop in Redfern you’ve got Michael Nicolian running the bar here in Newtown, which means there are only delicious things going into the glasses. Or cans.

At Charlie Parker’s, the cocktail bar underneath French country restaurant Fred’s, they’re very proud of their rotary vacuum distillation machinery. They use it to strip the colour and a lot of the flavour out of whisky so that they can mix the muted version with powdered stone, a little moss infusion and some red wood bark to make a drink that tastes like a bushwalk after heavy rain. 

The first impressions come hard and fast at the latest outing from the team behind Maybe Frank, tucked away on the fringe of the Rocks. It’s a polished affair bathed in Golden Age glamour — blond wood, white marble, grey-green leather stools, plush rosy banquettes — but there’s plenty of substance to back up the style. Creative director Andrea Gualdi has assembled one of Sydney’s most pedigreed squads of shakers and stirrers, and their commitment to quality is apparent in almost every glass.

For a Sydney bar to be considered as having a great view, it's usually mandatory to have the Harbour Bridge and Opera House in the line of sight. Or at the very least, an unobstructed glimpse of some water. But at Dean and Nancy on 22, its seemingly duff location, surrounded on all sides by CBD skyscrapers, is very much part of the appeal. Summoning the spirit of a 1960s New York cocktail lounge, you could very well mistake Sydney’s city blocks for those of Downtown Manhattan (if you don't look too closely). Sure, it may not be quite Madison Avenue, but George Street will still do.

In high-rise cities like Tokyo, many of the best things are not on the ground floor. You have to head up the stairs of commercial towers, tuck around laneways and use your best sleuthing skills to find great hidden bars, like PS40, a cocktail bar and soda operation hiding just above eye level in the heart of the CBD. 

Even the most jaded Sydney booze hound enjoys the thrill of a concealed entrance, even more so when it involves a lift, a rooftop bar, and a Southern Gothic style cocktail bar with some of the city's best shakers and makers behind the speed rack.

Toasting goodbye to its wilder days of foot-stomping shenanigans, whisky-centric speakeasy the Wild Rover is now full-grown and pretty darn sexy, reflecting the maturing drinking and dining scene of our town. Summoning the bustling charm of yesteryear and the sophistication of a dapper New York cocktail bar, the Rover has retained its former good-time Irish heritage with an added lick of polish and a chic wine bar feel. The signature welcoming chorus of "Ayeeeeeee!" from the bar staff has stayed (a great touch we would have missed), but the new offering is so much more than the whisky-soaked dive behind a dry cleaners shopfront we used to know.

In the basement of a heritage warehouse in Sydney’s CBD you’ll find a Sicilian-inspired cocktail bar named for the ill-fated wife of Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 mobster masterpiece, The Godfather. But don’t let that put you off. For those of us who have been lying about having seen The Godfather their whole lives, good news. Every page of the drinks menu will run you through the storyline (spoilers lie within, but it’s literally been 50 years) so you can impress your date with cinematic knowledge while sipping on a Letter Never Sent, a standout concoction of wheat vodka, honey liquor, pineapple, clove, housemade almond syrup and fresh nutmeg, shaken and served over ice.

Dimly lit and dramatic as the movie itself, Apollonia is, by sheer geography alone, a triumph. Carved into the sandstone bedrock of Customs House, the hand-chipped, 150-year-old walls have been ambitiously transported to the 21st century, with accents of marble bars, deeply stained wooden finishes, mismatched tiles and red leather banquette seating.

The vibe is sophisticated and plush, a naturally cosy cave with dark carpeted flooring that we suspect this will be a top after-work date bar for years to come. With gold and velvet finishings and abundant in (oh, so flattering) candlelight, Apollonia is a little bit fancy with an effortlessly cool and approachable atmosphere that makes you feel like you’ve been let in on a secret. From the friendly hostess greeting you behind velvet curtains at the bottom of a blackened staircase, to the prime people-watching seating on the raised platform, this could well be a contender for Sydney’s coolest bar. And with 23 cocktails on the list, including a signature Pineapple Negroni on tap, you’ll have plenty to keep you busy.

Apollonia is part of a four-level acquisition by Singapore-based bar group House Made Hospitality, and is part of the company’s first Australian venture, Hinchcliff House. The four-level, multi-faceted venue has a 200-person function space on the roof; an art deco bar and restaurant, Lana, with a blushing pink marble bar; and a bright and airy café and restaurant on the ground level called Grana, where flour for bread, pasta and pastries are milled on-site and coffee is served from 6am. Then there's the star of the show: basement bar, Apollonia. 

If cocktails ain’t your thing, a comprehensive wine list of local and Italian drops will keep you going until 3am, after the midnight toasting ritual, of course. A tidy but considered snack list can soak up all those vinos. Start with a garlic crostino or two, a super light and fluffy yet still crunchy crouton with pickles and prosciutto, or perhaps a shared board of local cheeses and charcuterie with pickles and sourdough. A pasta dish of cappelini, broccoli, lemon, chilli and pangrattato is possibly best avoided, with the flavour of the ingredients showing up on paper but not on the plate. A pinch of salt, a squeeze of lemon and even the slightest heat of the so-called chilli is sorely needed, but it’s nothing a bowl of Sicilian spiced waffle fries can’t make up for.

Bartending is in many ways the study of party alchemy – mixing drinks to lift you up, cool you out and caress your soul if it’s in need of a little TLC. A well made Singapore Sling can send your tongue on a exotic getaway, even if the rest of you has to stay right here and pay the bills; a daiquiri has the power to convince your hips you’ve got the rhythm in you; and an Old Pal can be your best friend after a long day in the salt mines. 

Sydneysiders first got a taste of Whiley’s regenerative school of thinking at Scout, the Surry Hills outpost of his groundbreaking London bar, which he opened with Icebergs restaurateur Maurice Terzini on top of the Dolphin Hotel. Re finds the duo partnering once more and pretty much picking up where things left off when Scout shut up shop at the end of 2019, reexamining fermentation, distillation and flavour combinations in ways that defy expectations.

A cocktail joint named after a dive bar in a cult Patrick Swayze flick with a ’70s aesthetic inspired by the Golden Age of Porn. It sounds like a cockeyed concept that, in most hands, would go terribly, painfully, catastrophically awry. But “Cosmo” Soto, Dardan Shervashidze and Charlie Lehmann are not most hands – they’re Baxter Inn alumni, the rabble-rousers who glorified “shit tins” and shirtless overalls at the Ramblin’ Rascal Tavern and two-time winners of the Time Out Bar Award for Best Bar Team. These are the right guys for the job.

The first Western Sydney enterprise from the Speakeasy Group (Eau De Vie, Mjolner) is a stunner. You need to seek it out on the 26th floor of the shiny new V by Crown building. Here bartenders mix a mean Martini, especially the Asta, a sharp, savoury uptown mix with jalapeno, in a liquid nitrogen-cooled Nick and Nora glass (naturally).

The second of four box-fresh establishments to open at restaurateur Brett Robinson's new CBD hospo hub Shell House, the Sky Bar is an Art Deco dream in earthy hues – a palette of burnt umbers, rich terracottas and creamy tones. From the second you cross the street-level threshold, tucked inconspicuously just off Margaret Street on Wynyard Lane (like us, you’ll likely end up asking for directions at the ground floor restaurant Menzies), you’re transported to the Roaring ‘20s, courtesy of a compact elevator lobby decorated with Bauhaus-esque murals.

Come here for a drink, and you’ll find yourself faced with a cocktail list devoted exclusively to Brix’s trio of spirits. There’s plenty more rum behind the bar, of course – about 120 bottles from all over the world – with an emphasis on other Australian craft producers. Taps, tinnies and wines on offer all maintain a local focus, too, while the open kitchen looks to Latin America for inspiration – think kingfish ceviche, oxtail croquettes, and corn tamales with black beans and chocolate mole.

It’s easy to go amber blind in here and forget that you are sitting in front of some of the best bartenders in the city. They’ve mastered the classics for people who know what they like (Old Pals and Trinidad Sours all round!), but they also have a knack for finding the right match for an indecisive palate. 

A swift antidote to every serious wine bar and tonic water menu is delivered in the form of Jacoby’s, an Inner West Tiki bar decked out in glowing fishing floats, dried puffer fish, and flocked banana palm wallpaper. They’re also sporting some of the city’s most ridiculous cocktails, and a whole lot of Twin Peaks references for die-hard fans. 

A drink in this subterranean rum bar is as good as a holiday. All that’s ever needed to reset a shitty day or keep a good one rolling is rum cocktails, some jangly tunes and good chat, and you can get it all at Lobo Plantation. They’ve brought their A-Game to the competitive sport that is inner city drinking, and you, thirsty worker bee, are the real winners.