The 10 Best Bars in Chicago

Best Intentions

Calvin and Chris Marty reopened this Armitage Avenue bar in 2023 after a three-year hiatus and climbed to No. 25 on North America's 50 Best Bars by refusing to choose between craft and casual. The Wondermint Malted, a modern Grasshopper, headlines a program where cocktails average ten dollars and a smashburger costs six. Wood-panelled walls, quirky Wisconsin-childhood photographs, and a backbar beer fridge with a tongue-in-cheek "fancy cocktail bar" sign set a tone that treats hospitality as generosity rather than performance. Best Intentions is the neo-dive that every neighborhood deserves. It was a Top 4 finalist for Best U.S. Cocktail Bar at the 2026 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards.

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 50 Best Bars within his first year. Fourteen seats at a marble-topped bar, four spacious half-circle booths in rust-colored velvet and paisley fabric, and a martini program 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. The latest lists place it at No. 30 on North America's 50 Best Bars 2026.

Gus' Sip & Dip

Kitty's Cosmopolitan Club

The team behind Three Dots and a Dash and Gus' Sip & Dip opened this David Collins Studio-designed cocktail lounge in March 2026 with Chicago's first dedicated minus-sixteen-degree-Fahrenheit walk-in freezer cocktail station, producing impeccably cold, perfectly balanced drinks that arrive at a temperature most bars cannot achieve. Tableside stirred martinis and an opulent interior channel the sophistication that Kevin Beary's expanding empire now delivers across three River North addresses. Kitty's is brand new; the pedigree is not. Chicago's bar culture carries the weight of its 2025 sweep into 2026 with a depth that extends far beyond Kumiko's singular dominance. Logan Square innovates, Fulton Market polishes, River North entertains, and Chinatown finally has the cocktail bar it deserves. The L train stops everywhere worth drinking.

Kumiko

Julia Momosé, chef, creative director, and now executive chef following a December 2024 appointment, runs a Japanese dining bar that collected every major industry award in 2025: Best U.S. Restaurant Bar at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards, the James Beard Outstanding Bar Award, and a third consecutive year as Best Bar in the Midwest at No. 10 on North America's 50 Best Bars. The program centers on shochu, Japanese whisky, and saké alongside spiritfrees, non-alcoholic cocktails built with equal complexity to their spirited counterparts. Kumiko operates at a level where the only meaningful comparison is to itself. It sits at No. 11 on North America's 50 Best Bars 2026.

Lazy Bird

The Hoxton hotel's cellar-level cocktail and music lounge won Hotel Bar of the Year and holds a 2025 Spirited Awards regional honor with fifty-two signature cocktails and a live music program that runs Thursday through Saturday. The Bird Cage, a private section with rope and stanchion, adds exclusivity to a space that already operates below street level in both location and lighting. Lazy Bird treats the hotel-bar format as a canvas for live entertainment rather than a convenience for overnight guests.

Meadowlark

Beverage Director Abe Vucekovich, a Violet Hour alumnus, builds sixteen-cocktail menus around deeply researched themes, and the current iteration, "The Magic City," channels the 1893 Chicago World's Fair through drinks accompanied by vintage watercolor paintings and served with a hardcover booklet. Research conducted at the Newberry Library, Chicago Historical Society, and Smithsonian informs each recipe. The 2024 Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award and No. 38 on North America's 50 Best Bars validate a program that treats every menu cycle as a publishing project. Meadowlark turns drinking into scholarship. The bar holds No. 65 on North America's 50 Best Bars 2026.

Nine Bar

Lily Wang and Joe Briglio opened Chinatown's first speakeasy-style cocktail bar behind Moon Palace restaurant in 2022, and the room, neon-tinged, Blade Runner-inspired, channelling Tokyo cocktail bar energy, reached No. 89 on North America's 50 Best extended list. The drinks weave Chinese influences through balanced, technically assured constructions that treat cultural specificity as a strength rather than a gimmick. Nine Bar fills a gap that Chicago's Chinatown needed: a neighborhood bar that represents its community's drinking culture with the same seriousness that downtown bars apply to their own. The latest lists place it at No. 76 on North America's 50 Best Bars 2026.

Queen Mary Tavern

Dan Smith and Mony Bunni built a maritime-spirits drinking culture inside a Division Street tavern that reached No. 63 on North America's 50 Best Bars by specializing in gin, rum, Scotch, sherry, and Madeira, the spirits that sailed the world's trade routes. The focused beverage program avoids the everything-to-everyone approach that most neighborhood bars default to, and the constraint produces a collection that reads like a curated library rather than a liquor store. Queen Mary Tavern operates on the conviction that a bar with a point of view serves better than a bar with everything. It sits at No. 80 on North America's 50 Best Bars 2026.

Three Dots and a Dash

Beverage Director Kevin Beary runs a River North tiki bar that has sustained Spirited Awards recognition and an Esquire Best Bars in America nod across a decade-plus run. The Bamboo Room, an intimate rum experience within the main venue, earned its own Esquire recognition. Classic tropical drinks reimagined with fresh ingredients, the signature Three Dots and a Dash cocktail with aged Martinique rhum agricole, and a basement location that channels mid-century Polynesian escapism make this the most enduring tiki operation in the Midwest.