26 bars, chosen on the record: one on The World's 50 Best Bars, five on North America's 50 Best.

Ray Buhen, one of the original "Four Boys" at Don the Beachcomber, opened this twelve-seat bar on Sunset Boulevard in April 1961, and his son Mike Sr. and grandson Mike Jr. still pour ninety-plus drinks from the same cramped counter. The 2023 Spirited Awards granted the Timeless U.S. Award to a venue that needs no validation from the present because it never stopped belonging to it. Ray's Mistake, accidentally created in 1968, remains on the menu. Tiki-Ti operates as living proof that a great bar needs nothing more than great drinks, a family that cares, and twelve seats.

Bar Director Max Reis and Chef Alan Sanz earned the Nikka Highest Climber Award after jumping thirty-four places to No. 12 on North America's 50 Best Bars, plus No. 93 globally in 2025, with a program built on ancestral Mexican spirits: mezcals made with pre-Hispanic methods, sotol, raicilla, and bebidas ancestrales that most bars outside Oaxaca cannot source. The force-carbonated Tu Compa paloma and the El Pulquero cocktail channel agave culture through a multi-level open-air Los Feliz space with a dedicated cocktail test kitchen. Mírate translates from Spanish as "look at yourself." The industry is looking. It was a Top 4 finalist for World's Best Spirits Selection at the 2026 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards.

Max Reis and Chef Alan Sanz, the Mírate team, opened this modern cantina on Ventura Boulevard in May 2025, and PUNCH named it among the five best new cocktail bars in America. Named after the Daisy cocktail family that predates the margarita, the program applies Mírate's ancestral-spirit sourcing and test-kitchen technique to a format built for accessibility: ceviches, tacos, and cocktails that deploy techniques unlike anything on the Valley's Ventura corridor. Daisy Margarita Bar brings Los Feliz-calibre ambition to Sherman Oaks without the queue. Los Angeles rewards the curious driver: Historic Filipinotown to Silver Lake to Koreatown to the Valley, each neighborhood pouring with a conviction shaped by the community around it. The city's bar culture mirrors its geography, vast, diverse, and impossible to reduce to a single identity. That is the point. Fill the tank and start drinking. The latest lists place it at No. 44 on North America's 50 Best Bars 2026.

Shawn Lickliter and Vay Su opened on Hillhurst Avenue in December 2025 with thirty cocktails organized into signatures, classics with vintage spirits, zero-proof options, and forgotten recipes, gimlets, Saratogas, built from a backbar stocking vintage 1970s Campari and rare bottles. Lines form nightly down the block. The retro, low-lit room with dimly lit alcoves and a Red Room alcove channels mid-century Los Feliz without the irony. Vandell arrived without rankings but with the kind of instant neighborhood loyalty that rankings eventually follow. The walk-in queue is the price of admission. It was a Top 4 finalist for Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar at the 2026 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards.

Mike Capoferri built a laboratory-adjacent cocktail bar where most drinks require at least forty-eight hours of preparation, centrifuges, high-pressure nitrous, multi-day infusions, and the 2025 Ketel One Sustainable Bar Award confirmed that zero-waste ambition and world-class results coexist at No. 24 on North America's 50 Best Bars. The program leans Southern-inspired with an all-gluten-free food menu, and an extensive Madeira collection on the back bar adds an unexpected depth. Bright, light-pink highlights and dark-green walls frame a breezy SoCal atmosphere that disguises the intensity behind every glass. The latest lists place it at No. 92 on North America's 50 Best Bars 2026.

The Los Angeles outpost of New York's Apothéke, set in Chinatown on North Spring Street. The bar applies the group's apothecary-inspired "medicinal mixology" approach, building botanical craft cocktails in a design-led lounge recognized for its interiors.

The first West Coast outpost of New York's beloved Dante occupies the ninth floor of the Maybourne Beverly Hills with indoor and outdoor seating, a wood-fired pizza oven, and a rolling Negroni cart for tableside customisation. Ten martini variations, including the Upside Down Dirty Gibson and the Tequila Martini with Lo-Fi sweet vermouth and crème de cacao, anchor a program managed by bartender Pride, widely considered among the best in the world. A ten-dollar happy hour martini from 3 to 5 p.m. daily confirms that Beverly Hills pricing is negotiable. Dante translates effortlessly across coasts.

The Los Angeles outpost of the influential cocktail bar group founded in Manhattan in 2006, set in the Arts District of downtown LA. The menu organizes an extensive cocktail list by flavor profile, served alongside a curated food menu of small plates and entrees.

A second-floor whiskey bar at the corner of Seventh Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, part of the Pouring With Heart group with sister locations in San Diego, Austin, and Denver. The program centers on whiskey and classic spirits, with daily happy hour until 8pm.

A cocktail bar styled after an early-1900s Parisian salon, set inside a historic building on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. The room is known for its ornate antique interior, and service runs five nights a week with late hours on weekends.
Best American Hotel Bar at the 2020 Spirited Awards, this Hollywood Roosevelt venue combines a wood-panelled gaming lounge with two vintage bowling alleys from the early 1800s, Art Deco arched windows overlooking Hollywood Boulevard, and a cocktail program anchored by the Salt & Vinegar Martini, potato vodka, Noilly Prat, Colony Bitters, and pickle brine. Punch bowls serve six to twenty. The photo booth is secret. The atmosphere channels a 1940s bowling parlour that never existed but should have. Spare Room treats entertainment and mixology as the same discipline.
Located in the old office of Marilyn Monroe's talent agent on Sunset Boulevard, this dime-sized West Hollywood bar debuted at No. 100 on North America's 50 Best extended list with a program that names drinks after nearby LA icons, a clarified paloma rosé spritz inspired by the Beverly Hills Hotel, a pisco-and-passion-fruit ode to the Viper Room. The intimate space fills with coworkers and solo drinkers at the bar on weeknights and packs to the walls on weekends. Bar Next Door proves that a Sunset Strip address and craft cocktail ambition are no longer contradictions.
Baby Gee is a neighborhood cocktail bar on East 4th Street in Long Beach that describes itself as serving fancy pants cocktails, natural wine and beer in an eclectic but casual room. It opens seven days a week, from two in the afternoon on weekends, and the Spirited Awards have named it a U.S. West honoree for Best U.S. Cocktail Bar in both 2025 and 2026.
Capri Club is an aperitivo bar in Eagle Rock in the space of The Capri, a red-sauce Italian restaurant that opened in 1963 and ran under two families until 2019. Robert Fleming reopened it as a bar built on amari, aperitivo cocktails and frozen negronis, with a wine list and Italian bar food, and it runs walk-in only with a lasagna night on Mondays and a pasta night on Tuesdays.
Damn, I Miss Paris is a cocktail bar in historic West Adams that serves small bites rather than a full menu and seats first come, first served, with booths for parties of four to six. The room is available for private buyouts, and the bar posts closures for those events on Instagram.
Kato is a tasting-menu restaurant at ROW DTLA in the Arts District, and its bar runs as its own track, with bar seats bookable for snacks and drinks, an abbreviated bar tasting menu, and an alcohol-free flight built by the bar team. The bar is 21 and over, and the Spirited Awards have named it a U.S. West honoree for Best U.S. Restaurant Bar in both 2025 and 2026.
Lucia is a modern Afro-Caribbean restaurant and cocktail lounge on Fairfax Avenue, opened in 2025, where dinner runs into DJ sets and the bar stays open to midnight. The cocktails are Caribbean readings of classics, an Okra Martini with pickled okra and escovitch, a Soursop Paloma on bacanora, a Tamarind Collins with Red Stripe, and the room carries an upscale dress code and a 21-and-over door.
Not No Bar is a neighborhood cocktail bar on Main Street in Santa Monica with wood-fired pizza and a disco soundtrack, which it sums up on its own site as cocktails, pizza, disco. Kent Thompson runs the bar and Houston Stock the kitchen, walk-ins are always welcome, and the room is family friendly until ten before turning 21 and over.
Real Charmer is a cocktail bar in Virgil Village that the Spirited Awards named a Regional Top 10 Honoree for Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar in 2025 and for Best U.S. Bar Team in 2026.
Bar Xuntos is the walk-in wine bar inside Xuntos, chef Sandra Cordero's Spanish restaurant in a 1926 Art Deco building on Santa Monica Boulevard; xuntos means together in Galician. The bodega-style bar pours from more than 200 Spanish bottles, with over 30 wines by the glass including natural wines, vermouths and sherries, plus a short cocktail list. Pintxos and tapas come from the kitchen, and the bar opens at 3pm, ahead of dinner service.
Calabra is the rooftop bar and restaurant on the seventh floor of the Santa Monica Proper hotel, reached from 7th Street. A circular bar anchors an indoor lounge and a poolside deck with private alcoves, and the drinks list covers seasonal cocktails, small-batch spirits and biodynamic and natural wines. The kitchen serves Mediterranean and Californian plates cooked without seed oils.
Friendship Bar occupies a ship-shaped building on Channel Road in Santa Monica Canyon that has held a bar since the 1930s, including a long run as a gay bar and, most recently, Shore Bar. The team behind Golden Bull, on the same street, reopened it in 2026 under a version of its original name, with booths lit by ship lanterns, a back deck and an upstairs room for events. The drinks are classic cocktails, wine and beer, with live soul on Thursdays, DJs on weekends and an industry night on Mondays.
Offhand is a natural wine bar on Santa Monica Boulevard from Westside Winos, the wine and music collective of Khalil Kinsey, Teron Stevenson and Justin Leathers, opened with restaurateur Jared Meisler. The team focuses the list on low-intervention wines from North American producers, poured by the glass and bottle alongside craft beer, natural sake and wine-based cocktails. The space also runs a daytime service from Tuesday to Saturday, and DJs play vinyl from Friday to Sunday.
The Chestnut Club is a cocktail bar on 14th Street in Santa Monica, run by Mario Guddemi and Sal Aurora, the hospitality team behind Black Market Liquor Bar, Scopa Italian Roots and Dama. The room has brick walls, leather booths, a back bar of more than 400 bottles and no televisions. The list keeps to spirit-led classics such as the Old Fashioned, Paper Plane, Black Manhattan and Sidecar, with spirit flights and a dealer's choice option. Tuesday is trivia, Wednesday live jazz, and DJs play on Friday and Saturday.
The Daily Pint has been on Pico Boulevard since 1987 and describes itself as a whiskey parlor. Its wall holds more than 400 whiskeys, from Islay malts to Kentucky rye, with 25 rotating draft beers alongside. The room has pool tables, takes walk-ins and admits guests aged 21 and over.
The Georgian Room is the basement bar and dining room of The Georgian, a historic Art Deco hotel on Ocean Avenue. The hotel restored the room, which first opened in 1933, and runs it as a piano bar and Tuscan-style chophouse, with a long bar, leather booths, martinis and a wine program. Live jazz and piano sets play around a vintage Steinway, and entry is by reservation.
These 26 are the starting point. The full BarMagazine directory covers every listed bar in Los Angeles, with a map, filters by bar type, and new openings as we verify them.