To rephrase Nicole Kidman: We go to bars for magic. For hushed conversation and the flicker of candlelight against the curve of a coupe glass. The low thrum of a crowd as the playlist slides from early ’90s R&B to a warm wave of Afrobeats. For that moment when the sun drops, the lights dim, and bartenders start shaking and stirring, pouring shimmering ribbons of something cold and strong into frosted Nick & Noras.
This year’s 9 Best New Bars list is a toast to the spots that make a night out feel electric. Spanning cocktail capitals like New York and San Francisco to cities like Madison, Wisconsin, each bar is a destination in their own right. Some are rethinking what a bar can be—with witchy cocktails or Japanese-inspired programs that steal the spotlight—while others are doubling down on high-octane creativity, stripping down and redefining the classic cocktail canon and even designing what’s-old-is-new-again wine lists. All of them understand that a great bar is more than its drink list. It’s about mood and memory, about hospitality that feels effortless, and that sweet suspension of time between dusk and last call. These places remind us why we go out in the first place: not just to drink, but to drink in community, creativity, and craft. —edited by Joseph Hernandez, associate director, drinks & lifestyle
Tucked above Ogawa Sushi & Kappo in Philly’s Old City, this hushed jewel box of a cocktail lounge is one part laboratory, one part love letter to Japan’s boundary-pushing cocktail scene. Led by Danny Childs (James Beard Award winner for his book dedicated to foraging, Slow Drinks) and head bartender Rob Scott, Almanac delivers precise, elegant drinks celebrating the hyperseasonal ethos of Japan, which counts 24 solar seasons instead of our paltry American four. In fact, by the time you read this, the menu will already be entirely different, but humor us. Drinks like the Kasugai Sour—a daiquiri of barley shochu, Midori, yuzu, and Calpico—feels simultaneously familiar and new, while the visually stunning Sadotini, a fluffy, verdant matcha martini of sweet potato shochu, Japanese gin and vodka, egg white, and amazake, a fermented rice beverage, strikes a balance between luxurious and grounded. Almanac’s creative ambition is most evident in its omakase cocktail experience, in which guests are surveyed about their preferences and the team develops a custom drink from foraged and market ingredients. A sharp, limited food menu features bar snacks like spiral-sliced pickled cucumber salad and stylish Wagyu hot dogs topped with tonkatsu sauce, bonito flakes, and nori ribbons. Visiting is the next best thing to traveling to Japan. —J.H.
310 Market St., Second Floor, Philadelphia; instagram.com/almanacphilly
Almanac is an ambitious Japanese-style speakeasy that’s a love letter to all things local and seasonal.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the menu at Gus’ Sip & Dip is a snooze. Classic cocktails are a dime a dozen and here’s yet another place with 30 of ’em…. But look closer: That gimlet is kissed with absinthe and a house-made lime cordial, which propels the drink beyond its gin-and-citrus reputation. Or peep their version of that Midwestern supper club favorite, the grasshopper, boosted here with green Chartreuse and a cloud of shaved ice and chocolate; it ignites a visceral sense memory of creamy, minty shakes of childhood summers.
Walking into Gus’ Sip & Dip, you can’t miss the Japanese-made Swan SI-150CBK Pro Block Ice Shavers, a central feature in the handsome modern tavern. As you wait for your drink, take in a bit of cocktail theater, watching giant Clinebell ice blocks transform into impossibly fluffy clouds or fresh fallen snow. Bartenders here don’t dilute their cocktails prior to pouring, dry shaking instead to incorporate cocktails before pouring into frozen glassware and topping with soft, pillowy ice mounds. Dilution is an exact science, deceptively important to the balance of each drink. Snow cones have never felt so sophisticated.
Did we mention that all the cocktails here are an easy-to-swallow twelve bucks? Gus’ is the latest project from Chicago’s prolific Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises hospitality group, helmed by beverage director Kevin Beary and bar manager Scott Kitsmiller. (Both are also alums of LEYE’s tiki powerhouses, Three Dots and a Dash, and the Bamboo Room.) On this go, they’re trading meticulously designed tropical drinks for more austere cocktails that are no less thoughtful and crafted. In fact, the team’s skill in dialing in the essential elements of each offering is as crystalline as the house martini.
Be prepared: Gus’ does not take reservations, and wait times can number in the hours. With luck, you’ll snag a seat at the oval bar, which gives big theater-in-the-round vibes. Exec chef Bob Broskey’s menu of sandwiches, like a Wagyu beef dip and the Platonic ideal of a bar burger, are well worth the wait. —J.H.
51 W. Hubbard St.; instagram.com/gus_sipanddip
The long-anticipated arrival of Madeira Park marks a significant moment in Atlanta’s journey of embracing wine culture as a city. And the Poncey-Highland bar’s heralded founders—Miller Union’s Steven Satterfield and Neal McCarthy, and wine pop-up guru Tim Willard—have created an experience that meets the moment by balancing historical appreciation and casual magnificence. The free-flowing main room is an elegant mix of moody, muted blues and whites, as in the large wallpapered map of Poncey-Highland’s historic neighborhoods. The bar’s namesake, Madeira Park, was the centerpiece of a former Atlanta community called Copenhill Park, only the second suburb connected to the city’s 1800s streetcar. It’s all a reflection of “new” and “old” Atlanta, from the choice to open in the fancy-funky former home of the Highland Inn to wines representing oft-overlooked classic styles, like sparkling Chenin Blanc from France’s Saumur or vintage Madeira from Portugal, available by glass, bottle, and 2.5-ounce reserve pours, all matching Satterfield’s culinary savvy and McCarthy’s knack for curating an easygoing sense of Southern hospitality. —Mike Jordan
640 North Highland Ave. NE, Atlanta; instagram.com/madeiraparkatl
It’s one thing to open up a world-renowned bar. It’s quite another to follow it up with a buzzy spot with its own robust point of view. Somehow, Moe Aljaff and Juliette Larrouy have pulled it off, as Schmuck feels like the house party everyone wants an invite to. After leaving his much-lauded Barcelona bar, Two Schmucks, Aljaff opened this iteration in New York’s East Village with former bar manager Larrouy in partnership with industry vet Dan Binkiewicz. The team has a Willy Wonka–esque ability to mix drinks that are equal parts whimsy and craft. Think Kraft ranch–infused Patrón, an apple-and-mustard vinaigrette number that looks suspiciously like green juice, and a cocktail inspired by larb gai, made with cognac, peanuts, rice, and chili oil.
There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to the menu design, but that’s part of the fun: The experience is unexpected and uncomplicated. Meanwhile, the front area, dubbed the Living Room, feels like a ’70s European bachelor pad, decorated with modular Dieter Rams love seats, terrazzo-topped tables, and a myriad of lights—like sleek but mismatched pendants and mushroom-shaped lamps built into the bar—that cast a soft golden hour glow that flatters literally everyone. The rear Kitchen Table space boasts a clubbier vibe, which is likely why this bar draws long lines and impossibly stylish crowds upon opening and well into the night. —Sam Stone
97 1st Ave., New York; instagram.com/schmuck.ny
Prelude debuted in San Francisco’s retro-chic The Jay hotel in August 2024, a highly lauded revelation from chef Celtin Hendrickson-Jones. Pillowy smoked catfish dumplings in crawfish étouffée gravy and pimento cheese scooped up with fish skin chicharrones wow. And so does the sexy bar; it’s romantic, velvety, and intimate. Quality hotel bars are having a resurgence in San Francisco and beyond. But instead of sweeping views in a huge space, Prelude is a chill, alluring respite. It seductively whispers “date night,” a friends’ tête-à-tête, or a solo drinker’s restorative pampering.
But don’t assume Prelude isn’t playful. Bar director Franco Bilbaeno mirrors the restaurant’s Southern inspiration over 11 cocktails and four zero-proof options, which induce salivation just reading the menu. None more so than the fried-chicken-inspired P.F.C. Martini of buttermilk-washed vodka, allium-infused vermouth, pickle brine, and killer dry spice rub, also found on the dirty-rice-stuffed chicken wings. Cali-Southern delights ensue with the pommeau-and-scotch-touched Country Pie; the evocative Shortstack, made with pecans, brown butter, rye, and absinthe; or a roasted banana Magnolia Fizz. —Virginia Miller
333 Battery St., San Francisco; instagram.com/prelude_sf
After finding your spot at Providencia’s snug 15-seat bar, take time to truly read the menu. Sweet anecdotes printed under each cocktail’s name capture the memories inspiring them in touching detail. The childlike joy of lapping up ice cream rolled in peanuts and cilantro during a scorching Taipei summer is channeled into a bracing milk punch named Run Bing With Nai Nai, blending smoky-sweet rhubarb liqueur with oolong tea and Mexican peanut candies. Close your eyes and take a sip. For a split second, melting ice cream is dribbling down your own chin—and this is just one drink of many that evoke a specific experience. Providencia pulls you into a world shaped by fond memories, a collaboration between Erik Bruner-Yang, who owns the Taiwanese-Cambodian restaurant Maketto around the corner, and Pedro Tobar and Daniel Gonzalez, two of the restaurant’s longtime bartenders, who both grew up in El Salvador. A short food menu steered by Bruner-Yang and the celebrated pastry chef Paola Velez, another co-owner, is as personal and far-reaching as the drinks, with fabulously tender eggplant-stuffed pupusas and hojicha tiramisu layered with plantain jam, a reflection of the quartet’s effort to seamlessly honor and remix shared and disparate influences. —Elazar Sontag
1321 Linden Ct. NE, Washington, DC; instagram.com/barprovidenciadc
“That’s the drink that comes in the butt glass” may be an unexpected response from a bartender when you order from a recent Great British Bake Off–themed menu, but that’s probably because you take yourself too seriously. Madison’s Public Parking does not. Though a certain type of mixology devotee may avoid uttering the cocktail names out loud, like Mary Berry’s Soggy Bottom, drinks here are the result of intense thought and care. Led by JR Mocanu, who first showed the city his cocktail bona fides at Merchant 15 years ago, the folks behind the bar bring a heavy hand of helpful Midwest nice to complement their sophisticated creations. The house martini, made with saline solution and served with a nori chaser, highlights a menu of dressed up classics. And in a world of one-note draft cocktails, Public Parking batches out the woefully underutilized La Louisiane, a New Orleans classic composed of spicy rye, herbal Benedictine, and sweet vermouth that can sometimes skew saccharine but here is balanced and delightful. Public Parking is, at heart, a neighborhood bar. Walk in for a drink after work and you can easily end up in your seat until 10 p.m. —Noah Kaufman
711 E. Johnson St., Madison, Wisconsin; instagram.com/publicparking.bar
The cocktails at Lee’s spark some interesting questions: Does an old-fashioned have to be brown? What if a black Manhattan was actually black? Could we shrink an appletini down to a two-ounce appetizer-size cocktail and serve it in a miniature martini glass? You’ll find the answers in the form of colorful cocktails that are equally delicious and delightful. The old-fashioned (electric blue, for the record) called the Pale Blue Eyes is made with a clarified blue corn syrup and blue corn whiskey, giving the familiar drink a sweet, earthy punch—like the smell of corn charring over a bonfire. The Goddess Green sees basil, tarragon, and chervil combined with citrus and gin for a zingy, herbaceous sipper that arrives a vibrant kelly green. Máté Hartai, Local Food Group’s director of bars, doesn’t shy away from big flavors in putting together the menu at Lee’s, which is located on the second floor of a building operated by LFG for more than 25 years. Much of the inspiration at Lee’s is understated, from drink names that reference the Velvet Underground to complex mixology. —S.S.
2424 Dunstan Rd., #125, Houston; instagram.com/leeshtx
These bars are betting big on small cocktails.
Protection of the spiritual variety? A divine energy awakening? Cristina Quackenbush has a cocktail for that. At Tatlo, tucked behind the historic Old Absinthe House at the center of touristy Bourbon Street, the longtime chef offers a bit of serenity. At this witchy, emerald-hued bar (more vibey than spooky), rafters are decked out in Spanish moss as a cloud of palo santo smoke rises from the corner table where a tarot reader offers counsel. Quackenbush carries this magical energy into her menu, imbuing each dish and cocktail with positive affirmations, spellwork, and Filipino flavors. Take the Zodiaquiri, a house cocktail that changes according to the astrological season, with ingredients like ginger, rose water, and turmeric, often associated with healing properties. The jury is still out on whether pork ribs lacquered in lemongrass barbecue sauce provide spiritual enlightenment, but the tender meat is a master class in balancing sweet and savory. Tatlo also puts absinthe in the driver’s seat, pouring the licorice-scented spirit from antique fountains over a sugar cube into crystal-cut rocks glasses, inviting guests to savor the history of this magic potion. —E.S.
240 Bourbon St., New Orleans; instagram.com/tatlonola
At this Bourbon Street bar, chef Cristina Quakenbush marries her Filipino cooking with her spiritual practice, manifesting divine results.
