The Best Bars in America, 2013

The Woodsman Tavern

Portland, Oregon

You're having: a pint of cask ale, a half dozen raw

The Woodsman Tavern is like a rich man's hunting lodge: rustic but not too rustic and conspicuously well stocked with the good things in life: numerous Belgian beers on tap, cask ales, well-made cocktails, raw oysters and clams, a selection of country hams, carefully chosen wines and spirits. It would almost make you tired—if it weren't all so damn good.

4537 Southeast Division Street; 971-373-8264

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Jennifer Yin/Eater SF
Smuggler's Cove

San Francisco

You're having: an Expedition

(in the take-home mug)

On the outside, there's nothing—a bland, unmarked storefront on a quiet side street. Inside, there's a wooden pirate ship contorted in such a way that it fits into a concrete cube, with a bar as cockpit, another belowdecks, and a little seating area aloft. The bartender is flailing about like a heavy-metal drummer, desperately beating eight, ten, fourteen ingredients into towering, elaborately garnished concoctions. Strange words fly about—hogo, agricole, solera,orgeat—and the heady perfume of distilled sugarcane fills the air. Tiki. But, of course, you can't wander into Smuggler's Cove by accident. As San Francisco's and perhaps the nation's reigning Tiki bar, it draws a crowd almost every night, and you've got to wait outside until there's space. It's worth the wait. (Tip: If the drinks are too sweet—even the best Tiki drinks, and these are the best, tend to lay on the sugar—it's got one of the world's great sipping-rum collections.)

650 Gough Street; 415-869-1900

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Noble Experiment

San Diego

You're having: a Fashionably Late


777 G Street; 619-888-4713 (Text for a reservation.)

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Ship Tavern


You're having: a Johnny Walker Black manhattan. (Order it thus.)

Ship Tavern, tucked away in the historic heap of bricks that is the Brown Palace Hotel, is at that peculiar stage in a fancy joint's life when it wants to be a dive. It's not decrepit per se, but you can feel the gravitational pull of decrepitude. Somehow that's alluring. Maybe it's because that same black hole is pulling on us every single day. In any case, it is very pleasant to drink your (large) cocktails here (stick to the basics) amid the head-scratching, comprehensive nautical decor (in Denver?), which dates back at least to the 1930s.

321 Seventeenth Street; 303-297-3111

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Williams & Graham


You're having: an Unrefined Ruffian

Sure, you enter through the bookcase in the little stage-set bookstore out front. That's bound to give the serious drinker pause. But nothing else at this very dark, clubby bar is even remotely whimsical. Williams & Graham is a love letter to the old saloon, but one conceived by a third-generation bartender who knows the difference between playing bartender and really tending bar. Once past the bookcase, there is no pretension here. Just serious cocktails and a way of making time slip away. In other words, a bar.

3160 Tejon Street; 303-997-8886 (Call for a reservation.)

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The Esquire Tavern

San Antonio

You're having: a tequila old-fashioned

It's the same sad old story: An ancient local dive goes along for decades, a place for us drinking, talking, eating, dancing, cursing, hooking, brawling, spitting, kicking, and suffering humans to forget our old troubles and sometimes get into new ones. It ain't fancy—it ain't even clean. But it's cheap, and it's always, always there. Then some sharpshooter comes along, buys the building, scrubs the place within an inch of its life—"restoring" it—and puts in a chef and a squad of sleeve-gartered mixologists in place of the tamale lady and the crusty old shot-pourers and beer-slingers, and then everything costs double what it did before and the place is full of douchebags. Well, not quite. When Chris Hill, the sharpshooter in question, bought the Esquire Tavern in 2008, it had been shuttered for two years, dragged down by time. Rather than gut it, he restored it, giving it a second shot. There's still the little terrace out on the River Walk, the funky wallpaper (it had to be re-created), the dark wooden booths (mostly rebuilt), and the 100-foot stand-up bar. You can still get a bottle of beer for four dollars, a pint for five, and an impeccably made classic cocktail for nine: more than anything cost at the old Esquire but hardly extortionate. What's more, despite the scrubbing and the painting and the modernization, the Esquire still feels old—still feels like a place where life has been lived. And while I'll concede that everyone's perception of douchebaggery is different, I didn't find many examples at the Esquire.

155 East Commerce Street; 210-222-2521

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The Cloak Room


You're having: a dry martini

In politics, the cloakroom is the back room congressmen retire to when they want to pick their teeth, put their feet up, check their e-mail, occasionally cut a deal, and sometimes take the edge off. Austin's Cloak Room, a dark, determinedly unfancy cellar full of booze across the street from the Texas Capitol, is mostly about the last one.

1300 Colorado Street; 512-472-9808

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Windmill Lounge


You're having: a cheap

Cuba Libre or three

Punk on the jukebox. All-day three-dollar highball specials. Crusty regulars. A "patio" that's basically some picnic tables in a parking lot. Bar snacks. But those snacks—try the chili—are way better than they have to be, as are the drinks. And if a comfortable, friendly dive with a jukebox and serious cocktails doesn't appeal to you, then you have our profoundest sympathies.

5320 Maple Avenue; 214-443-7818

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Harry's Country Club

Kansas City, Missouri

You're having: a Thomas H. Handy rye on the rocks


112 East Missouri Avenue; 816-421-3505

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Kansas City, Missouri

You're having: a Jackson Co. Democratic Club Cocktail


1924 Main Street; 816-536-1325

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New Orleans

You're having: a sherry cobbler

If you go by the bar that bears his name, E. J. Bellocq, the turn-of-the-last-century New Orleans whorehouse photographer, spent his days as a gentleman of elegant leisure, sipping well-iced sherry cobblers while focusing his camera on lithe, dark-eyed young beauties posed in surroundings as tasteful as they were luxurious. The reality of Mr. Bellocq's existence—well, let's stick with the fantasy. Bellocq the bar makes it all too easy.

936 St. Charles Avenue; 504-962-0911

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The Aviary


You're having: an In the Rocks

First of all, the Aviary—the bar attached to Next, one of the restaurants of superchef Grant Achatz—isn't a bar per se. There's a bar here of sorts, but a steel cage falls between you and it, and the people working behind the bar have other things to do besides talk to you. Like inject bourbon, sugar, and bitters inside hollow balls of ice or percolate gin through various fresh-picked botanicals. Of course, many of the joys of a normal bar are the lunch-counter pleasures of camaraderie, repartee, and familiarity; for some people, Achatz's bar will have sacrificed too much. But if you're willing to put aside your "This ain't a bar" instincts, an evening at the Aviary can be a blast. The drinks are fascinating and delicious. At the end of the evening, you feel as if you've had a fun night at a top restaurant, only to get this buzzed at one of them would cost you ten times more.

955 West Fulton Market; 312-226-0868

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The Barrelhouse Flat


You're having: a Boothby Cocktail

Tucked into the no-man's-land between Lincoln Park and Lake View in the vast brick prairie of Chicago's North Side, the Barrelhouse Flat is a new bar that tries very hard to look old, or at least like what a new bar would have looked like in the old days. In that, the bar's not unique, although it does it quite well. Unlike most such places, however, this one specializes not in new drinks with a farm-to-table ethos or in updates on the classics wherein the update consists mostly of replacing tried-and-true ingredients with hit-or-miss ones made in the basement, but in simply making the many classic drinks on its enticing list as good as possible, with minimal ego. As you sip your Holland's Pride (William Schmidt, New York, 1891), Hotel Nacional (Wil P. Taylor, Havana, 1933), or pisco sour (Victor Morris, Lima, 1915), you will thank them for that.

2624 North Lincoln Avenue; 773-857-0421

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The Libertine


You're having: an Odd Deuteronomy, trotter cakes

Downtown Indianapolis is a strange place: It's clean and safe, and it's got all the things that draw people into a city: stadia, monuments, parks, convention centers, river walks, museums. What it doesn't have is much of anything dark. Or weird. Or off-putting. For that, there's the Libertine, a cocktail bar/restaurant. Whiskey, amari, oysters, rabbit, bone marrow—the bitter, the dark, the strong, the funky.

38 East Washington Street; 317-631-3333

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You're having: a pint of Arnold's 1861 Porter

If Arnold's were in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, or Boston—somewhere, in short, that people actually visit—it would be world famous. Founded, as it claims, by Simon Arnold in 1861, it's one of the flat-out oldest bars in America (even if, as a session with old Cincinnati city directories suggests, that story might not be 100 percent accurate, the bar is still more than 130 years old). It's also beautiful, with unique woodwork and lots of historical stuff on the walls. But it's in Cincinnati, which means that despite its history and tradition of intelligent, respectful ownership, Arnold's is still primarily a no-bullshit local bar. It's got regulars, traditions, and customs, but at the same time the bartenders are friendly and the regulars are—well, they're not hostile. In other words, thank God it's in Cincinnati.

210 East Eighth Street; 513-421-6234

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Drinking Fountain


You're having: some kind of highball. Rum and Coke? Whatever.

Occasionally you'll find yourself tuning out the conversation. Your legs will start to twitch. For whatever reason, you need to get up, walk out of the perfectly pleasant bar you're in, and go to some other bar.

Should this strike you when you're drinking at Doyle's in Jamaica Plain, as one does when one is in Boston (we named Doyle's one of our Best Bars back in 2006, an opinion we continue to hold), there is fortunately a safe haven at hand. Exit Doyle's, as painful as that might be, make a left on Washington, and walk one block to Drinking Fountain. Besides a hall-of-fame dive-bar name, this classic New England corner tap boasts a raffish, mixed—by any definition of the term—and very gregarious crowd (so perhaps not a place to drag your more delicate friends); strong-ass, cheap-ass drinks; and a jukebox, pool tables, and an aquarium. When you're feeling antsy, head back to Doyle's.

3520 Washington Street; 617-522-7335

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Brick & Mortar

Cambridge, Massachusetts

You're having: an In Vida Veritas

I suppose Brick & Mortar could be classified as a speakeasy in the modern sense: There's no name on the door, and you can't see in. And yes, there are cocktails with mezcal and sherry and something called Nux Alpina. But you can't see in only because it's on the second floor. (Go through the door to the left of the one for Central Kitchen.) The cocktails are straightforward and tasty, and I don't know a lot of speakeasies that have a menu of amusingly named six-dollar shots—and by shots I mean, like, shooters. Moreover, it doesn't have the hushed-to-the-point-of-enervation atmosphere typical of such establishments.

567 Massachusetts Avenue; 617-491-0016

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5 From New York:
Pouring Ribbons

You're having: depends on where you fall on the cocktail grid


225 Avenue B; 917-656-6788

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Booker and Dax

You're having: a Chartruth


207 Second Avenue; 212-254-3500

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The Beagle

You're having: a Haitian Divorce


162 Avenue A; 212-228-6900

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Tooker Alley

You're having: a Hobo Julep


793 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn; 347-955-4743

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The Dead Rabbit Grocery and Grog

You're having: a Tween Deck Cup


30 Water Street; 646-422-7906

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6 From D.C.:
Raven Grill

It was sleeting when I got to D.C., but rather than holing up at the hotel bar, I set out to scout the territory. After a mile-long slog through the nondescript residential/commercial area north of Dupont Circle, I found myself at Raven Grill, in the low-key area of Mount Pleasant, a couple miles due north of the White House. The Raven Grill serves no food and in fact is not a grill at all. It is a dive. Within five minutes, I was working on a hooker of Old Overholt and a can of Natty Boh ($7), deep in conversation with the bartender and one of the regulars about snow chains, old-school methods of child rearing, the late dustup in the Philippines between Generals MacArthur and Yamashita. There's a poster of Marlene Dietrich between the ones of Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. Prominent among the men's-room graffiti is the phrase "Fuck Brooklyn." I don't know of a sounder bar in America.

3125 Mt Pleasant St NW

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Closer to the center of town, Jack Rose Dining Saloon is a big new barn of a place, a half mile nearer the White House and a hell of a lot tidier. The walls of this large room are lined with shelves packed with 1,500 whiskey bottles. The place makes a fine Jack Rose cocktail, too. But it is simply too spacious, too public, for the kind of wheeling and dealing Washington bars used to be known for.

2007 18th St NW

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Tabard Inn

Tabard Inn, on the other hand, is a place to conspire. Whether you sit at the tiny bar of this discreet old hotel or in the attached lounge, the sophisticated (and large) cocktails, the soft lighting, the muted colors, and the comfortable seating create a mood of cooperation. Maybe too much, though — looking around, if there are politicians there, they're there to screw Americans individually, not in the aggregate. Okay. Time to get serious.

1739 N St NW

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The Round Robin

People have been cutting deals over mint juleps at the bar of the Willard hotel for a century and a half; indeed, the Civil War was more or less administered from there. Sure, the place was rebuilt once, closed for a while, and renovated Lord knows how often, but Round Robin Bar, as the dispensary would come to be called, still keeps the fixings for a julep right on top of the bar and still makes a pretty decent one. But while the bar is a pleasant place to drink, it's a little too brightly lit, a little too generically appointed to pull in a clientele with true local character.

1401 Pennsylvania Ave NW

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Off the Record

The real belly, or at least hip pocket, of the beast is Off the Record, the bar in the basement of the Hay-Adams hotel, across the street from the White House. The barroom is painted a lurid Babylonian red, relieved only by framed political caricatures. There are alcoves holding tables full of men and women in business undress (jackets doffed, ties still on) drinking martinis and clearly indulging in some chicanery or other. The bar is manned by a gruff Lee Marvin–esque veteran who makes me a fine Negroni, regarding me suspiciously as he stirs. After a few minutes of grudging conversation, though, he becomes downright pleasant. I can't figure out if it's because he's determined that I'm not one of the usual crowd or that I could be.

800 16th St NW

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The Columbia Room

While Off the Record is pretty discreet, for true OPSEC you have to go to the Columbia Room. The second-fanciest cocktail bar in town, it can be found behind an unmarked door in the back of the Passenger, a normal bar-type bar. You have to reserve a seat in advance, but there are only ten of them, so you're guaranteed to get personal attention from the bartenders, who will figure out exactly what you like to drink and make it for you. In the Columbia Room's intimate precincts, given a couple rounds of its strong cocktails, any amount of free and open discussion and even deal-making is possible. In fact, for the month of June, I will personally buy the first round any time two senators or congresspersons of opposite parties drink together here. My credit card is on file.

1021 7th St NW

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