BEST BARS IN AMERICA

Good Luck, New York

Feel like a good drink?
Herein, a highly select list of exceptional watering holes culled from a decade’s worth of cross-country investigations, hangovers, and aspirin.

Ten years ago, my editors at Esquire came up with the idea of putting together a list of America’s best bars—not the best new cocktail bars or sports bars or brunch bars or whatever, but the best bars irrespective of type. As the magazine’s Drinks Correspondent, I was to be the pointman on the project. What I didn’t know was that I’d be reporting from the front lines of a revolution in how and where Americans drink.

Back then, in 2006, if you knew where to go in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and a few other towns, you could find a place where the young man or woman behind the bar would carefully crack the ice for your Manhattan or El Presidente, precisely measure the ingredients and give them an elegant stir, strain the cocktail into a beautiful glass, and then charge you ten dollars. That ten dollars would not get you bar snacks, a well-stocked jukebox, TV, Big Buck Hunter, darts, a greasy egg sandwich, or a basket of fries. There weren’t many of these places, but there were just enough to satisfy the rare cocktail enthusiast.

Today, this kind of bar numbers in the thousands, and you can find them in just about every town in the country. Boise. Knoxville. Indianapolis. Springfield—all of the Springfields. Everywhere. In New York and San Francisco and other places where real estate is expensive, the venerable, homey, and very human old dives are closing and these are opening instead. But here’s the thing: This may be a case of the blood of heroes watering the tree of revolution. Because there’s something going on in these new bars, particularly in the best of them, that needs more attention.

For one thing, these places are full. People are paying double to drink in them, and they’re not outraged. They’re coming back, over and over. They’re putting their phones away (well, mostly), forgetting about the game, doing their best to act sober. (In my ten years of visiting these joints, I’ve rarely seen anybody visibly intoxicated—tipsy, sure; drunk, uncool.) The bartenders, their mustachioed, inked hipsterdom aside, are generally studious and hardworking (if perhaps too devoted to making things by hand that really don’t need to be). All of this while the media and the political class are hyperventilating about the irreparable decline of America. But when you’re seated on a barstool, whether it’s in Seattle or Sarasota, Salem or San Ysidro, that’s not what it looks like. From there, it looks like these bars are the anti-Internet, bringing (young) people together and rebuilding a society, one martini or beer back at a time, that has kind of come apart at the seams. 'Viva la revolución'.

THE LIST 2016

1. Good Luck
(50, Anderson Avenue,Rochester, New York)

Why you’re here:
Even though Good Luck bills itself primarily as a restaurant, its bartenders have been making craft cocktails since 2008 at the big square bar right in the center of the room. It’s loud, boisterous, busy. It’s also excellent, even down to the (okay, now cliché) on-tap Moscow Mule, which they liven up, unconventionally, with a splash of Scotch ale.

What you’re having:
In a shaker, muddle 3 Demerara sugar cubes and ¾ oz fresh lemon juice. Add ice along with 2 oz bourbon and shake some more. Strain the cocktail, discard the ice, add an egg white, shake, and then strain again into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass. Using the back of a spoon, float a thin layer of dry red wine (malbec is good) on top of the drink.

2. Dullboy
(364, Grove Street, Jersey City)

Why you’re here:
Real cocktails, good food, regulars who know the art of conversation: Believe it or not, this is Jersey City, a short tunnel and a thousand miles away from Lower Manhattan. Extra points for the Dullboy’s literary theme and witty atmosphere—the back wall of loosely hung books is particularly amusing.

What you’re having:
A Gibson.

3. Turf Supper Club
(1116, Twenty-fifth Street, San Diego)

Why you’re here:
It’s been around since 1950 and kinda looks like it, a hard-ridden reminder of when California represented The Good Life—As Seen on TV. There’s a gas grill, right in the middle of the bar, for cooking your own steaks; a piano and a jukebox; and a menu filled with stiff cocktails.

What you’re having:
An Esquire martini (gin, please, up)

4. Whitey’s (aka Croke Park)
(268, West Broadway, Boston)

Why you’re here:
I do my best to exercise good—okay, goodish—judgment when I’m touring bar-rooms, but every once in a while, a gear slips a tooth and dosages get miscalculated. Whitey’s is a slipped tooth, a place I was introduced to by some Boston bartenders. I have dim memories of having an excellent time—doing big shots of Irish whiskey, writing on the walls, rolling dice, joking around with the regulars.

What you’re having:
Nothing fancy.

5. Teardrop Lounge
(1015, NW Everett Street, Portland, Oregon)

Why you’re here: With its low-key elegance and intelligent focus on the fundamentals, Teardrop Lounge is a linchpin in America’s craft-cocktail bar scene and one of the pioneers that spurred a revolution.

What you’re having:
A Hell or High Water.
Recipe by Sean Hoard and Daniel Shoemaker of Teardrop Lounge Combine in a shaker:
• 1 ½ oz Irish whiskey
• ½ oz dry vermouth
• ½ oz fresh lemon juice
• ½ oz egg white
• ¼ oz Bénédictine
• ¼ oz peach liqueur (preferably Combier crème de pêche de vigne)
• ¼ oz honey mix
(2 parts honey to 1 part water)
Shake well without ice. Add ice, shake again, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Extract the oils from an orange rind and discard.

6. Japp’s Since 1879
(1134, Main Street, Cincinnati)

Why you’re here:
Japp’s opened in 1879 as a wig shop and in time became a fancy one: all carved wood and stained glass. Then its brick-and-stone neighborhood fell on hard times until 2011, when Molly Wellmann, the  Queen of Cincinnati, discovered the place, restored it, and introduced it as this civilized cocktail bar.

What you’re having:
A Cool Jules, a gin-and-port  (Unless it’s Tiki night—in which case, pick something rummy from the chalkboard.)

When you’re going:
Tuesday or Wednesday, when there’s live music.

7. Occidental 
(1950, West Thirty-second Avenue, Denver)

Why you’re here:
It’s a modern, thrilling dive that happens to be owned by Sean Kenyon, one of America’s top mixologists.

What you’re having:
A shorty of Genesee cream ale and a caballito of Los Monjos mezcal.

Where you’re sitting:
Out on the deck, with its fine view of the Denver skyline.

8. Swan Market
(231, Parsells Avenue, Rochester, New York)

Why you’re here:
This old German market and smokehouse has good German lagers on tap, fresh kegs, and  lines. A liter stein costs all of eight dollars, and the crowd is friendly and lively. If it ain’t technically a bar, it’s as good as one but with better food. (If you like German food, this is as good as it gets; if you don’t, it’s still good.)

What you’re having:
Spaten.

What you’re eating:
Jägerschnitzel.

When you’re going:
11:00 a.m. (the lines get long), Wednesday through Saturday.

9. Cane & Table
(1113, Decatur Street, New Orleans)

Why you’re here:
Because this new New Orleans favorite gives a word like distressed a good name. A few years back, when the owners of Cure, the city’s seminal craft-cocktail bar (Best Bars, 2011), took over a vodka-and-absinthe bar a block from the old French Market, they had the good sense to rip out the features and expose the old bones lying beneath. They continued to exploit that good sense by stocking the place with rum, as if to remind us that should you sail southeast from New Orleans, the first place you’ll hit is Havana. Add in Caribbean-inspired bar food and  who enjoy  work, and you have  bar that’s far easier to walk into than out of.

What you’re having:
A Cane Street Swizzle.
Recipe by Colin Decarufel of Cane & Table
In a hollowed-out pineapple, combine:
• 1 ½ oz rum
• ¾ oz fresh lime juice
• ½ oz cane syrup
• ¼ oz falernum
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
Swizzle with a swizzle stick and garnish with a generous bouquet of mint.

10. Seamstress
(339, East Seventy-fifth Street, New York City)

Why you’re here:
Manhattan’s Upper East Side has nothing but museums and cultural institutions—the sort of places you go to and, upon exiting, say quietly to yourself, “You know what would be nice right now?” The answer, invariably, is a cocktail. At Seamstress, you’ll get an excellent one and enjoy a rollicking atmosphere, and if the bar’s original creations don’t appeal, choose from the list of fifty all-time classics.

What you’re having:
A Last Man Standing (a rye-and-amaro delicacy).

11. Porchlight
(271, Eleventh Avenue, New York City)

Why you’re here:
Though top restaurateurs have opened bars before, none have succeeded quite as brilliantly as Danny Meyer of Union Square Cafe and, of course, Shake Shack fame. Meyer’s joints have always gone easy on the chefy shenanigans and hardcore on service and hospitality. At Meyer’s Porchlight, that means personable, clever bartenders mixing balanced, straightforward drinks. It also means superior bar food. Plus, there’s great music and a well-stocked game room.

What you’re having:
A Gun Metal Blue.
Recipe by Nicholas Bennett of Porchlight
Shake and strain into a chilled coupe:
• 1 ½ oz mezcal
• ½ oz blue curaçao
• ¼ oz peach brandy
• ¾ oz fresh lime juice
• ¼ oz bitter cinnamon syrup.
Garnish with flamed orange peel.

12. Founding Fathers Pub
(75, Edward Street,Buffalo)

Why you’re here:
It’s the only dive bar in America obsessively devoted to presidential history—and it’s got great drinks, too. Occupying an 1870s brick livery stable in a handsome old-house part of town, it’s draped in flags, paneled in plaques and prints, and strewn with presidential kickshaws. Plus, it offers a deep bench of local brews.

What you’re having:
A pint of whatever is local.

13. Showtime Lounge
(113, Rhode Island Avenue NW, Washington, D. C.)

Why you’re here:
There’s nothing fancy about the bar itself—draft beer, cheap whiskey, highballs. But the jukebox! Put it this way: A book accompanies it, listing the contents of each of the home-burned CDs. Soul, R&B, funk, jazz: If those words don’t appeal to you and the thought of drinking five-dollar shot-and-beer specials in the company of soul fanatics exerts no magnetic pull on you, go elsewhere.

What you’re having:
A five-dollar combo: a shot of whiskey and a can of beer.

What you’re playing on the jukebox:
Anything by Nathaniel Mayer.

14. Whitechapel
(600, Polk Street, San Francisco)

Why you’re here:
Have you ever wanted to drink in an 1890s London Tube station converted into an illicit gin distillery, with a classic Victorian “gin palace” in the back? Here’s your chance.

What you’re having:
Gin—Whitechapel has almost four hundred of ’em—perhaps in the form of a Dutch Nemesis or kopstootjes: little shots of chilled genever (Dutch gin) sipped sans hands from the bar with a short beer back.

Where you’re sitting:
The front bar has the best decor, with real Tube tiles and custom faux-Victorian wallpaper with—what else!—a gin theme.
Dutch Nemesis
Recipe by Alex Smith of Whitechapel
Combine in a shaker:
• 1 oz genever
• ¾ oz kümmel (a sweet Baltic liqueur)
• ½ oz pineapple gum syrup
• ¾ oz fresh lime juice
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• ice
Shake and strain into a deep chilled coupe and top with 2 oz chilled sparkling wine.

15. Mt. Royal Tavern
(1204, West Mount Royal Avenue, Baltimore)

Why you’re here:
It’s a great dive bar, and great dive bars always have something epic about them, some surprising something that makes you shake your head as you drink your drink. At this substantial redbrick row house turned bar, it’s the replica Sistine Chapel on the spacious ceiling—there’s God and Adam and their fingers; there’s Y-W-H creating this and that; there’s Adam and the Mrs. getting the bum’s rush; there’s ol’ Noah, drunk

What you’re having:
A Natty Boh, a shot of Pikesville, and religious thoughts.

Why you want to leave:
You don’t.

16. Shelby’s Bar & Grill
(519, Eighteenth Street, Denver)

Why you’re here:
Because you’ll stand in the little smokers’ corral in front of Shelby’s and you’ll look around—all the way around—and you’ll remember that Denver used to be an ornery frontier town, full of crust and character. And then you’ll step back inside and  for another round, and the bartender will tell you to shut up and wait your damn turn like a human being.

What you’re having:
Jameson.

17. Quarter Bar
(676, Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn)

Why you’re here:
Before it was BrooklynTM, this borough was an unmoored chunk of the Rust Belt right on the East River, and Quarter Bar has all the Rust Belt virtues. Founded in 2007, it’s homey and unpretentious and feels like it’s connected to the neighborhood. But they can twist you up a fancy New York–style cocktail without blinking an eye or looking at you funny.

What you’re having:
A daiquiri, because they do them right.

Whom to ask for:
David Moo, and tell him we said hello.


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THE HALL OF FAME

By all rights, first place  on any list of the best bars of the twenty-first century should go to Milk & Honey, founded in New York in 1999 by the late and much-lamented Sasha Petraske, who did more than anybody else to establish the parameters for the modern cocktail bar. Unfortunately, it closed a couple years ago, and there’s no point in us listing a place you can’t visit. That sends us—and, we hope, you—to Pegu Club. In our first Best Bars feature in 2006, we singled out this modern New York classic for proving that a bar today could do everything the legendary bars of the past could do. Ten years later, it’s still doing that. Meanwhile, Pegu Club’s bartenders have gone to every corner of America and opened their own bar, establishing the same thing over and over: Pegu was timeless when it opened, and it hasn’t changed a bit. To sit there in the cool evening shadows sipping a Pegu Club Cocktail is to be drinking in 2006 or 1936 or 1916.

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THINGS SHE CAN TELL JUST BY DRINKING WITH YOU
(By Julia Reed)

Once , there was a man whom I tried mightily to fall in love with. He was so right in so many ways, but then one night, as I stood beside him at a bar, he ordered a gin and tonic “with two wedges of lime, just like Tennessee drank them.” And that was the end of that. We’re still friends, but trying to earn literary cred by dropping the name of one of America’s greatest playwrights in relation to bar fruit is a deal breaker. He may as well have asked for an appletini. There’s also the fact that emulating any aspect of the drinking habits of Tennessee Williams is not all that smart in the first place.

Fussing about fruit, mixing and muddling, poring over multipage bourbon lists (get the Old Charter already)—all hallmarks of the nation’s  mania—get in the way of what drinking in bars with men is all about for a girl: conversation. Conversation that might lead to something else, or conversation that simply makes you forget whatever troubles exist outside the comfort and safety of the bar.

In my thirties, I drank a lot of Scotch with a man whom I was crazy in love with. Once, when we were having a particularly dazzling tête-à-tête at an ancient dive, I watched (via the closed-circuit TV) a couple kids smash one of my car windows and make off with my cell phone. I dared not break the spell of the conversation, and besides, there was nothing to be done: The window was broken, the phone gone. My companion and I ordered another drink and kept talking. It was one of the great afternoons.

And then there was one of the great nights: in the Dunes Saloon in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where Jim Harrison for years kept a cabin. On my first visit, we drank white Burgundy during a fine meal Harrison made, and then he announced it was time for a nightcap at the saloon. There was no shortage of booze at his place, but after a couple hours lingering over our plates, it was time for the noise, the camaraderie, the electricity created by a bar full of like-minded souls. We ordered a couple VOs and settled in. Harrison’s way of talking was like his writing—it made arcs and loop-de-loops that seemed visible in the smoke-filled air between us. It took my breath away. "Drinking in the right bar with the right man can do that to a girl".

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NEW TWISTS ON OLD WORLD BEER BARS

You hear the words  beer bar and your mind conjures a certain image: randomly assembled fragments from German hunting lodges, Czech monasteries, half-timbered Yorkshire pubs, Valhalla. Although we’ve got a good deal of affection for such places, it’s nice to see some new bars giving us the beer without the Game of Thrones decor. Despite its name and its genuine Scandinavian roots (Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø, one of the owners, is from Denmark), Brooklyn’s Tørst has no Valhalla in it. If the backbar were rows of bottle-filled shelves rather than a simple marble slab, you would mistake the place for a sleek new cocktail lounge. But that slab has twenty-one taps, and the cleverly chosen glasses on the bar are full of excellent, stylistically diverse beers, either brewed by Jarnit-Bjergsø under the Evil Twin moniker or sourced from cult breweries worldwide. Kitsch is also avoided at San Francisco’s Mikkeller Bar, a branch of the Copenhagen beer bar owned by brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergsø (the identical twin, incidentally, f the owner of Tørst; the two are famously estranged). Here you’ll find good, friendly service and fine beers spanning a broad range of sources (forty-two on tap, including many of Mikkel’s own). That same clean, spare aesthetic is shared by Edmund’s Oast, in Charleston, South Carolina. Even though it bills itself as a brew pub, it’s got a serious interest in charcuterie, as the hams hanging from the ceiling attest. But there are forty-eight beers on tap (including many of its own and a couple Evil Twins), a few draft ciders, and even draft cocktails. A tap for every desire, and for every desire a tap.

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CHAMPAGNE: THE MANLIEST ORDER
(By Jay  Mc Inerney)

Much as I like a good Martini, my first drink of the day these days, more often than not, is a glass of Champagne. It is inherently festive and celebratory—a statement of optimism. A Champagne buzz has always seemed to me more stimulative than depressive, and unlike the case with cocktails, a second or third glass of bubbly will leave you exhilarated and nowhere near as debilitated when you venture forth to dinner or to some other adventure. (Moreover, if you are planning on drinking wine with your dinner, a Champagne aperitif freshens your palate and makes it receptive, whereas gin and whiskey tend to ravage the taste buds.) There are other sparkling wines, of course, but why bother? Don’t even think about prosecco: The bubbly from the Champagne region of France is reliably dry and well-made and an international signifier of the good life. And although your male friends may be impressed with the latest cask-strength smallbatch bourbon, in my experience you are more likely to intrigue and engage members of the opposite sex by ordering a glass of Épernay’s finest.

That goes for rosé Champagne, too; it’s usually a little fuller and richer than blanc de blancs Champagne, and you’re likely to elicit a favorable reaction from your date or potential mates in the vicinity. (Real men aren’t afraid of pink wine.) If you want to get geeky, order a grower Champagne (such as the Larmandier-Bernier Longitude Premier Cru Extra Brut, André Clouet Grand Cru Brut Rosé, or Marie-Noëlle Ledru Grand Cru Brut). Increasingly available on these shores, grower Champagnes are produced by small, independent domains, as opposed to those from grandes marques such as Moët and Veuve Clicquot; they tend to have a little more personality and to lend themselves to discussions about terroir and winemaking techniques. (It’s like ordering a craft beer instead of a Bud.) Far too many people still think of Champagne as a drink for special occasions; I think of it as an essential start to the evening.

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THE FIVE GREATEST THINGS

INTRODUCED TO BAR CULTURE IN THE PAST DECADE

1. Cocktail bars are everywhere. If you order right, you can get a well-made martini, manhattan, daiquiri, or other classic pretty much anywhere in the country.

2. Hospitality is in. Being nice to your customers—what a concept!

3. The coupe has replaced the martini glass. The V-shaped martini glass, of neon-bar-sign fame, is among the most spillprone of glasses. The coupe is spill-resistant and sexier—it’s shaped like a woman’s breast, according to legend.

4. Rye whiskey. Rescued from the grave and out to get the bastards who left it for dead.

5. Craft spirits. Some of these new distillers are truly talented, and right now they’re laying the foundation for a spirits revolution.

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THE FIVE WORST THINGS

INTRODUCED TO BAR CULTURE IN THE PAST DECADE

1. Cocktail bars are everywhere. If you don’t order right, you’ll end up with more or less the same overly bitter, inharmonious, and just plain weird-tasting twelve dollar cocktail pretty much anywhere in the country.

2. The Internet jukebox. Who thought giving drunks no-holds-barred access to every song ever recorded was a good idea?

3. Bartenders’ little bottles. Dozens of them, full of syrups and infusions and what not, taking up the bar, a space that rightly belongs to you, the customer, not the house.

4. “Our house made.... . .”

5. Craft spirits. It’s not only prime time that many micro-distilled spirits aren’t ready for; many aren’t even ready for YouTube—at forty-eight dollars a bottle.

By David Wondrich in "Esquire", USA, June/July 2016, volume 165, n. 5 & 6, excerpts pp. 71-87. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.