Closed:
(Was #8/16 - Wa-Shu, Taipei)
Wa-Shu was a Japanese Cocktail Bar in the heart of Taipei that I went to twice. The bartenders were quick to tell me that they were Taiwanese, but the cocktails featured Japanese-based alcohol mostly. I had multiple Japanese Whiskey based cocktails, including my favorite being a weird one that used peanut butter seeped through a coffee filter to create a peanut butter old fashioned. It was one of the places with no supposed menu, where we tell them a certain flavor, or fruit or type of food, and they'll whip up something that makes sense based on that. It worked every time. The Wa-Shu guys knew very much what they were doing.
18.) The Gin House (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - 2019, 2022)
This place may have closed down, it is hard to tell, but The Gin House was a great place in Ho Chi Minh City. My only real complaint is they get a bit too crowded, largely because they had live music Wednesday through Sunday - granted the music was generally good. The cocktails were great. Yes, most were gin based, and I was lucky enough to come when they had a resident mixologist from New Zealand of all places visiting, but they were smooth, refreshing and a great starter for a night out in Ho Chi Minh City - the place I would go to after is coming up in the next category.
17.) Whisper Sister (Tallinn, Estonia - 2024)
They get pretty limited points for a super half-hearted attempt at "speakeasy-ness" as all you need to do is call them and they'll open up the apartment building front door where they reside in teh basement. But get into the place, you're met with a wall of liquors adn concoctions. They have a fairly brief menu of about 12 options (though you can order off menu, of course) but all are fairly whimsical and good. The only real knock I have is they are super exacting with their pours so they aren't the largest drinks, but man they are excellent.
16.) Cobbler (Seoul, Korea - 2022)
15.) Flekk (Istanbul, Turkey - 2024)
Flekk is too cool and popular for its own good almost - just a palce that people come every day to hang out and chill but just happens to have amazing cocktails, all pretty novel inventions, by the staff in the small bar at the back. As a solo traveler, was able to generally score myself a seat at the bar which made the service a bit faster. But this isn't a place to rush through life, but sit back and enjoy. They were quite liberal with their pours, but exacting in their bitters and syrups and the like. Flekk was a true surprise in how great it was in the middle of the urban maw of Istanbul.
14.) Liz Cocktail & Co (Rio de Janeiro - 2025)
I'm mixed on the value and efficacy of theme-y cocktail bars. Liz isn't pure theme, but they have a nice menu design where they have 3 drinks representing each decade from the 1930s to the 2020s - one of which is based on a famous artist from that decade. It's a bit kitschy, but what's honestly weird is if they stripped that whole conceit away, and just served the same drinks without the decade / artist tie-in, I honestly think it might be further up. The drinks are neat, easy to drink, playful, strong. All good things, in the posh Leblon part of Rio.
13.) The Bellwoods (Tokyo, Japan - 2023)
You enter into The Bellwoods, see the old timey dress worn by the fun bartenders, and the ragtime era music playing, and you get immediately what they're after. There's no weird entrance or hideaway that pushes into that aspect of a speakeasy - jsut a decor, vibe and sense that you are back in the old days. The Cocktails are excellent, with cool glasses and great presentation, if a bit on the lighter, sweeter side. Still, with a core list of about 20 options, you can go a while without running out of things to try, and ragtime era environment to soak up.
12.) Meteor (Minneapolis, USA - 2022)
It is hard to judge a place like Meteor, which has zero of the acceptable levels of pretension that come with all five above it. If anything it is set-up like a dive bar, with low lights, mostly bar seating and gourmet hot dogs rolling, but has an inventive, playful cocktail list of about 15 regulars. Their use of strange ingredients, like Sesame in a bourbon-based cocktail, or coconut milk in a gin-based one, was excellent. It isn't too expensive coming in at $12 a pop. They even have a decent draft beer list if you want to mix it up - granted that has no real impact on the ranking here.
11.) Bar Prep (Gyeongju, Korea - 2024)
Gyeongju shouldn't have a place this nice. Like in a small, fairly sleepy, tourist town is just a gem of a conctail bar, behind a heavy oak door. You're presented with Korean perfection, from the exactness of the drinks, to the little plate of treats they give you. Smoke, crazy flavors (a lot of Korean berries), and so much more. Bar Prep is just better than it should be for a tertiary city in South Korea. And yes, this is me saying that a place this good should exist in a Hoboken. Anyway, the best part is their coffee-based cocktails (expressly not Espresso Martini), which are just amazing.
10.) Summer Experiment (HCMC, Vietnam - 2023)
Ho Chi Minh City is a city on the rise, and much as it has in every area of life, it is setting it sights higher and higher on top cocktail spots. Summer Experiment is like almost everything in HCMC, up two stories in a dark alley, but enter through its doors and you walk into a sleek, dark bar with some outside seating, and a long bar with weird ingredients, hundreds of bottles and young bartenders looking to develop some crazy stuff. Not all of it is perfect, but their good concoctions, like the best frozen cocktail I've ever had, to a great play on a Manhattan, knock it out of the park. Summer Experiment is relatively new, so I foresee it rising in promenance.
9.) Tres Monos (Buenos Aires, Argentina - 2023)
This place just hit all the notes really well. It is very well reputed, but not too crowded (a bit plus in the bustling late-night mecca that is Buenos Aires). The drinks are excellent - inventive without being pretentious (granted, a few places higher on my list could be accused of being such). In the end, this place consistently served great cocktails and had a great Ho - a mix of bar-front seating to watch the mixologists do their thing, to a lot of couch and chilling space, which of course like any top Buenos Aires space, spilled out into the streets.
8.) Backroom Bar (Santiago, Chile - 2025)
My preferred Santiago spot, Siete Negronis, closed (it probably sat just outside prior lists), but instead I discovered a place that was frankly better. Chile's best offering is its insanely good weather. Well, at Backroom you got to combine that with their amazing cocktails. The place in the back("room") was enclosed walls, but no ceiling, with being able to see the stars and the beauty of night in the gem of South America. The drinks were strong, with their own concoctions of various martinis, various martinis, and so much more. Backroom is a great place, even if the unique selling point is mostly the atmosphere.
7.) Hotsy Totsy (Budapest, Hungary - 2024)
How do you like 52 drink options? Hotsy Totsy gives you that with teh conceit of them all being grouped into four types and put on playing cards. You sit down in their underground bunker type bar, and you are given a deck to cycle through. A bit gimmicky, sure, but the drinks then prove themselves anyway. The crispest, the coldest, the best cocktails I've had in Europe, with the added bonus of a really cool scene and fun bartenders to talk to. Hotsy Totsy was in the heart of the Budapest nightlife scene, but more understated, classy and coolly dark than the vividness of the Jewish Quarter outside.
6.) Alice (Seoul, Korean - 2022)
Alice was quasi-gimmicky, in that it was Alice in Wonderland theme - but they didn't hit you over the head with the theme, but instead hit you over the head with great cocktails. There were interesting ingredients, from utilizing soy bean paste, to beer foam and flowers, to so much more. Even the names were whimsical - like "Hippity, Hoppity" and similar things. The best part I appreciated is that none of the drinks were overly strong or bitter, just perfectly balanced, perfectly inventive.
5.) Bar Trench (Tokyo, Japan - 2023)
Small but incredibly strong, Bar Trench was the favorite place I went to on my recent trip to Japan, with a wealth of cocktail options, all liquor-forward to not make you feel cheated, with also incredibly knowledgeable, entertaining bartenders that will play around with different styles and make stuff on request without going too far down the pretension rabbit hole. Bar Trench just makes super good, strong, solid, inventive drinks - plus has a really great vibe aided by teh smaller size and great decor with a giant library-style wall of bottles and fermentations, all to make your head spin for all the right reasons.
4.) Carnaval (Lima, Peru - 2022)
Carnaval shows up the Worlds Best 50 Bars list, and after going there I have to say it earns that spot. It gets crowded, but is in a posh area of Lima, doesn't let in more people than they have seats for, and had a great energy aroudn it. The drinks were wild, in both preparation and design - things like alcoholic cotton candy as part of a play on an old fashioned, to a frozen watermelon cocktail that is melted when you tip your glass to combine it with a mint cocktail. It was all a scene, and it was just great.
4.) #FindTheLockerRoom (Bangkok, Thailand - 2022)
Sometimes speakeasies can take the concept of just how hidden their entrance can be a bit too far. FindTheLockerRoom, down a wet and damp alley, and a row of lockers, toed the line. But the second you're greeted with an almost farcical second set of lockers, you enter a beautiful dark, roomy, bar with some incredible cocktails. The cocktails themselves are all reinventions of old classics, and were all uniformly great. The only real complain is the bar was a bit small, but I take it in a sense that fits with the speakeasy theme. Great concept, made a lot better by peerless execution.
2.) Cause Effect (Cape Town, South Africa - 2020, 2022)
Cause Effect shouldn't be this good. It is placed right in the heart of the most touristy place in Cape Town. Basically this is like if a bar in Times Square was an amazing place. But somehow it is. They are easily the most inventive cocktail makers. Nearly all of their 20+ standard cocktail offerigns are a production, with props and set-ups and incredible staging. My favorite was one where you are given a plate with a depressed area in the middle, which is covered by an image of a bird and you're told you need to puncture the image which then combines with the cocktail below it to create something magical. The place has to be visited to truly understand it, but it is just incredible, and I can't overstate enough how brilliantly weird it is that this place exists in the V&A Waterfront.
1.) Licorecia Limantour (Mexico City, Mexico - 2018)
I went to Licorecia Limantour without even knowing it was seen as a world renowned cocktail bar. It is high up the Worlds Top 50 bars. Granted, they have multiple locations - I went to both the main one and one in Polanco. Both have the same menu. Unsurprisingly a lot of cocktails were tequila or mezcal based but they were all crafted brilliantly. None were to too strong, all were super smooth to put down. The place had a great vibe in the heart of the city's more trendier areas, with an open layout letting you basically step inside from teh street. Licorecia Limantour was a marvelous part of my trip to Mexico City, and has only increased its reputation since 2018.
