30.) 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.
29.) 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.
28.) Cobbler (Seoul, Korea - 2022)
27.) 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.
26.) Demon's Murmur (Chiang Mai, Thailand - 2026)
There are two bars in Chiang Mai that make my list - and I probably can have gone further. Chiang Mai has a shocking amount of great, high rated cocktail spots, and Demon's Murmur is one that is just class. I think they get the award for the most chemistry - you walk in and it feels like you've entered a science lab. Strange ingredients, brews, concoctions, making normal cocktails like Vesper Martini's and Negronis all Thailand-esque, from chilies to local fruit bitters. On the whole, the only reason Demon's Murmur is not higher is they're a bit stingy on the portion sizes, but everything else was great.
25.) Death & Taxes (Brisbane, Australia - 2025)
This was my favorite cocktail bar in Brisbane, the favorite of the three owned by the same group. Death & Taxes had a classical setup, with bartenders making quite interesting drinks that were all variations of classic cocktails - but in a good way. My favorite was probably the "Green Man" which added absinthe and mint to a normal whiskey based cocktail, or the "Chester Bennington" which added tea to a negroni (msot of them were named after actors or musicians). They also had a great whiskey selection as well, and a really nice vibe (as most places are in Brisbane). In the end, this is just a very solid spot but maybe lacking the pure verve that many higher up the lsit have.
24.) 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.
23.) Siete Negronis (Santiago, Chile - 2024, 2026)
This noted Santiago spot closed due to a rent dispute, but luckily got resurrected fully for the better, in a more well traveled part of town (Bario Bellavista) and still does what it does best, offer seven variations on negronis - one with coffee, one with floral notes, one barrel-aged, one normal, one bacon-washed with a crisp piece of bacon as a garnish, and a couple that I just don't remember (chocolate I think?). Yes, it is a bit gimmicky, but all the variations are excellent, and they have a full bat otherwise as well. The only thing keeping them from being further up is they're a tad stingy on their pours.
22.) 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.
21.) Backdrop (Singapore - 2026)
One of the more convoluted entrances, but once you get past the staging area and go to the back, you are in a way transported to the 1920s - not so much in terms of prohibition, but the reverly - the bar has curtains on the side - it is very much like you are watching a show. The drinks also are excellent - super strong (I guess that's a similarity with prohibition) and all over the place. Probably ranks higher if you didn't have to pay Singapore Orchard Road prices. The best drinks through were their old style version of negronis or boulvaldiers - this is a cocktail bar that represents the 1920s more than any I've been to that's tried.
20.) 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.
19.) 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.
18.) Talking to Strangers (Cape Town - 2025)
For years, Cape Town needed a place like this - something closer to downtown (where all the real action is) that served amazing cocktails in a cool, relaxed atmosphere. I still bow at the altar of Cause Effect, but with teh rise of places like Talking to Strangers, we see the power of putting a place like this in a better area (for nightlife). Talking to Strangers was great - with some truly inventive cocktails (if nothing as brilliantly zany as Cause Effect at its peak), with a real touch on flavors to pair with strength - nothing overly fruity or light. This is a place where they want you buzzed enough to, well, talk to strangers.
17.) Deadshot (Auckland - 2025)
A cocktail bar in New Zealand modeled after New York dive bars and speakeasies, with a bartender from Oregon? Hard to top that combination, but luckily the drinks in Deadshot were about as good as well. It is one of those places without a menu - you just start describing what type of thing you like, and then they make you something. The Oregon bartender made some really interesting twists on Old Fashioned, Boulvardiers and the like with interesting ingredients like almond, peanut and a few others. The place was dim, grimy (in the best way) but the concoctions were brilliant, strong, smooth and generous.
16.) Blackwolf (Danang, Vietnam - 2026)
I'm always slightly wary of the places that don't have a menu, where you just tell the cocktail concocters a few flavors you like and types of drinks you like, but Blackwolf does one thing really well in that respect - they almost take it as a challenge amongst each of the four bar-men to one up each other. They seemingly all have ideas on what the drink should be, and debate and discuss. It's all a bit of a show, but ends with some wonderful cocktails. Strong, creative, always getting the gist of what you want. There's really no downside here other than the fact I just generally like getting a menu at the end of the day I guess. Still, Blackwolf is a wonderful, wonderful spot.
15.) Codigo 86 (Quito, Ecuador - 2025)
I might have failed miserably in getting the entry word (appartently it's given away on their Instagram...) but luckily the doorwoman took pity on me, let me in after a chuckle, and I was treated to a beautiful little spot in Quito, a city trying hard to break into the upper echelons of South American offerings. Codigy is a strong starting point on that, offering a lineup of basically weird inversions of classics, the drinks are plentiful, inventive and strong. They don't hold back baby. To be honest, in writing this not sure why I don't have them higher up other than the fact there's some special spots to come.
14.) Sabine Sabe (Oaxaca, Mexico - 2025)
There's a lot of good cocktail spots in Oaxaca. So many I'm probably being unfair limiting this list to just Oaxaca place. But truly, Sabine Sabe went above and beyond mainly because it did the most to make most of their menu Mezcal heavy. It is Oaxaca's spiritual drink (one of my favorite spots in Oaxaca was a Mezcal tasting bar Tres Hermanas), and while there were a few options with other liquors, it was mostly Mezcal based and mostly amazing - from fruity, to chilled, to spiced, to strong and tart. Sabine Sabe makes a mean, mean Mezcal cocktail of all types.
13.) Wa-Shu (Taipei, Taiwan - 2019)
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.
12.) 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.
11.) 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.
10.) PS40 (Sydney - 2025)
I don't know if there's a place where I tried a greater set of their cocktail menu than PS40, a great spot in Sydney's CBD. Sydney had a few other nice spots, but none were as strong and convenient as PS40. The menu was inventive, with some really interesting elements, be it their most notable cocktail that combined cold and hot elements, a "banana old fashioned" that tasted way better than you would think, to really nice plays on martinis. PS40 is the type of place I would want to go every month (about the rate they change up some of the menu) if I lived in the city. I'll be thinking about that hold and cold drink for a while, but similarly of their use of aquavit or lychee or apple.
9.) 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.
8.) Bar Not Found (Chiang Mai - 2026)
Colors run the show here - from the decor, from the entrance with the four pastel colored doors where you don't know which one is correct, to their drinks. Each named after a color (chartreuse, gold, melon, sky blue, seaweed, etc.), with a little drawing in the menu, some wild combinations of flavors and ingredients (the carrot dish included various parts of carrots) and always adding interesting food elements to each drink - from a wafer of variois rice grains for a rice wine based cocktail, to a seaweed gele. Maybe the best way to describe it is it combines a brilliant, inventive cocktail bar, with teh style and lack of pretense of a craft brewery. Bar Not Found was to me easily the best of the various great cocktail spots in Chiang Mai, and deservedly well up this list.
7.) 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.
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.
