Bisous

Peter Vestinos—twenty-plus years behind bars at Sepia, NoMI, The Betty, and Sparrow—opened this 1960s Parisian-inspired cocktail lounge in January 2024 and debuted at No. 39 on North America's list within his first year. Fourteen seats at a marble-topped bar, four spacious half-circle booths in rust-coloured velvet and paisley fabric, and a martini programme that cycles through vintage iterations—Alaska, Gibson, Martinez, Vesper—with the same scholarly attention that sommelier culture applies to wine lists. Bisous arrived fully formed. The debut ranking merely confirmed what the room already knew.