Oakland drinking starts with Viridian, Best U.S. Restaurant Bar (Top 10 Nominee) at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards 2026, and the bench behind it runs deep: we list 16 active bars across the city. The 12 below are our pick of them. 2 of them hold verified international recognition, from the 50 Best lists to the Spirited Awards. Every listing below is verified by BarMagazine, with addresses, opening hours and the signature drinks worth ordering.
Tallboy is a martini bar on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland whose menu is headed 'tinis and weenies, martinis and hot dogs, a formula the San Francisco Chronicle summed up as a martini dive bar and named Best Bar in the East Bay in 2025. The Spirited Awards named it a U.S. West honoree in two categories in 2026, Best U.S. Cocktail Bar and Best U.S. Bar Team.
Viridian opened in Uptown Oakland in February 2020 as a cocktail bar serving contemporary Asian-American food and drinks, founded by William Tsui, Raymond Gee, Jeremy Chiu and Alison Kwan. Tsui's program is hyper-seasonal and produce-forward, the room by Soon and Soon Studio draws on the color moods of Chungking Express and nineties R&B record covers, and the bar bottles cocktails like a Tomato Beef and Black Sesame Espresso Martini to take home.
Bar Shiru opened in February 2019 as the Bay Area's first hi-fi vinyl listening bar, inspired by the jazz kissa its founders discovered in Tokyo. Records play mostly in full, drawing on jazz, soul and international grooves, and more than 75 acoustic panels shape a room built for intentional listening and easy conversation. Distinctive craft cocktails sit alongside a curated spirits list heavy on Japanese whisky, plus local beer and wine. Groups are capped at six so the space stays intimate, and the bar is strictly 21 and over. Weekly programming includes the Selector Series, Silent Sundays and a classic jazz night.
Bardo sits in Oakland's historic Grand Lake district, a neighborhood lounge and restaurant modeled on the comfort and camaraderie of a mid century dinner party. The owners borrowed the celebration and elegance of old school home entertaining to build a space for cocktails, conversation and music. Drinks are classics inspired, and a rotating supper menu leans on fresh, seasonal produce with local and sustainably sourced meats and fish. Reservations cover every seat, including the bar and lounge, so guests can pick a dining table, a bar top or a couch depending on the evening. A private mezzanine and full buyouts handle larger gatherings.
Clio's Books is a bookstore and bar on Grand Avenue in Oakland working under the motto real books, real people, real drinks. A collection of more than ten thousand new and used volumes is shelved chronologically rather than by subject, so Sappho lands in the seventh century BCE, Rumi sits beside Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth, and James Baldwin fills the 1960s, turning the shop into a continuous timeline of human thought. Self help, the owners note, is found in bottles behind the bar. Screens are not used in the room. A membership program supports the project, and a near nightly calendar of talks and readings runs until close.
Drexl is a friendly local bar in Oakland's Uptown neighborhood, pouring cocktails alongside beer and wine. Indoor seating and a patio are both open, and the doors stay unlocked from late afternoon until two in the morning, seven days a week. Dealer's choice is the house habit here, so guests name a spirit, a flavor or a mood and the bartenders build the drink from there. The result is a rotating cast of cocktails rather than a fixed list, and the room keeps the unfussy, neighborhood feel of a place people drop into on the way home. Uptown's theaters and restaurants sit a short walk away.
Moonglow is an intimate room in the heart of Uptown Oakland where a high fidelity sound system, fine cocktails and thoughtfully curated music carry the evening. The bar sits behind a door at the back of its sibling venue on Telegraph Avenue, and inside the focus falls on house, deep house, techno, bass music and electronica played by some of the Bay Area's best DJs from Thursday through Saturday. Snacks are served. The house rules are posted plainly: high vibrations only, kindness as clout, no creeps and no requests. Doors open in the early evening Wednesday through Saturday, and the room takes private bookings of fifteen to fifty.
North Light is a small, friendly cocktail bar in Oakland's Temescal district with an airy back patio and a bookstore built from titles curated by writers and artists the owners admire, among them Samin Nosrat, Patti Smith, George Saunders and Michael Chabon. Records play through the room, dinner comes out of the kitchen, and the bar list keeps changing as the team experiments with flavors. Doors open in the early evening most days and earlier on Friday and Saturday, with happy hour running weekday afternoons and industry nights early in the week. The patio seats thirty two and can be booked for events or a full buyout.
Odin is a mezcaleria in Oakland from the team behind Nido and Nido's BackYard, built to share information about agave and to support the responsible farmers and families who grow it. The back bar is drawn strictly from Mexico, and where a spirit or liqueur is not available the team makes its own. Classics get reworked and original ideas sit alongside them. The kitchen, led by chef Jose Ramos, builds a menu meant to complement the rich and diverse flavors of mezcal. Doors open Tuesday through Saturday evenings with happy hour in the first two hours, and an Agaves Raros membership opens access to rarer bottles.
Oeste is a lively bar and kitchen in the heart of Old Oakland, owned and operated by people of color and open to everyone who comes through the doors. The draw is the rooftop deck, where cocktails are poured while local DJs play, with a full room downstairs for anyone who prefers to stay inside. The kitchen works with fresh and organic ingredients, mixing Latin, Southern and Californian flavors, and has been guided by chef Sergio Becerra since 2018. Happy hour runs all night Tuesday and Wednesday and early on Thursday and Friday. Sundays bring brunch, and the main floor and roof deck can both be booked privately.
Snail Bar is a natural wine bar and bottle shop in Oakland's Temescal district, with a small seasonally focused menu that changes from week to week. The room is deliberately tiny. The maximum table size is six, and an indoor counter plus a patio and parklet out front hold space for walk in guests. Reservations open on the full service days from Friday through Monday, with larger groups handled by arrangement. A wine club runs alongside the bar for regulars who want bottles at home. The team also operates a daytime sibling upstairs at the same address and a project in southern France.
Sobre Mesa is an Afro Latin cocktail lounge in downtown Oakland from chef Nelson German, who also runs alaMar. Lush surroundings, up tempo music and a tapas style kitchen frame a bar list that runs deep. Shaken drinks include the eponymous Sobre Mesa, built on a house rum blend with mamajuana, soursop liqueur and amaro, alongside the OG Margarita and a Zombie Reviver. Stirred options cover a mezcal Negroni de la Muerta, a fifty fifty persimmon martini and a Caribbean pineapple old fashioned. The espresso martini can be built on vodka, mezcal, tequila, spiced rum or cognac. Small plates run to oysters, empanadas and plantains.
These 12 are the starting point. The full BarMagazine directory covers every listed bar in Oakland, with a map, filters by bar type, and new openings as we verify them.
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