Los Angeles’s cocktail scene spans the Pacific Rim influence and Hollywood polish that define modern California drinking, and the Top 10 Bars in Los Angeles today showcase the city’s full range, Downtown speakeasies, Hollywood hotel programs, Pacific Rim ingredient research and Westside cocktail rooms. BarMagazine’s Top 10 Bars in Los Angeles 2026 highlights the venues that best represent this momentum, selected through editorial consensus and insights from across the international bar community.
Los Angeles placed four bars on North America’s 50 Best Bars 2026: Mírate at No. 28, Daisy Margarita Bar at No. 44, Vandell at No. 68 and Thunderbolt at No. 92. The city also lost a couple of icons since the last edition went to print (Genever shut its Filipinotown doors in 2023, and Houston Brothers’ Walker Inn closed by 2026). LA’s cocktail scene is rebuilding around agave specialists, neighborhood power-bars in Los Feliz and Echo Park, Beverly Hills hotel grandeur and a DTLA Historic Core revival. This year’s class spans an Art Deco rooftop in Beverly Hills, a 1961 Filipino-American tiki institution on Sunset, and a Chinatown apothecary that’s been pouring since 2018.
1. Mírate (Los Feliz)
Beverage Director Max Reis runs the agave-driven cocktail program at this multi-level, skylit space at 1712 N Vermont Avenue, with food by Chef Alan Sanz. After debuting on the list in 2024, Mírate jumped 34 places to No. 12 in 2025, winning The Best Bar in West USA and the Nikka Highest Climber Award, then held a strong No. 28 for 2026. The list runs deep on pre-Hispanic fermented drinks (tepache, tejuino, pulque) alongside an ethically-sourced backbar of mezcals, raicillas and sotols. Reis’s force-carbonated paloma, the Tu Compa, has become a destination cocktail in its own right.
2. Daisy Margarita Bar (Sherman Oaks)
Max Reis and Matt Egan, founding partner of Mírate, opened Daisy as a Sherman Oaks cantina built around the margarita as a vehicle for serious technique and Mexican spirits research. The bar took No. 44 on North America’s 50 Best Bars 2026 in its debut year and earned an Inside Look feature in Imbibe Magazine. The list runs a dozen renditions of margarita: a guacamole-inspired green slushie, a mangoneada topped with popping boba, and frozen-machine engineering that hides hours of agave deep-diving. Chef Alan Sanz delivers a food menu that pushes past typical bar fare with aguachile and grilled branzino. Proof that Sherman Oaks has the depth to land on the continent’s top 50, even if you have to drive to it.
3. Vandell (Los Feliz)
Michael Francesconi and Matthew Glaser of Park Hospitality (Donna’s, Lowboy) teamed up with Republique cocktail alums Vay Su and Shawn Lickliter on this Hillhurst Avenue cocktail bar, which opened in late 2025 and debuted at No. 68 on North America’s 50 Best Bars 2026. The room is mid-century California dimly-lit; the menu runs about 27 cocktails across vintage-spirit classics, produce-led signatures, a considered zero-proof section and old-timey forgotten classics like a Saratoga and a properly-built gimlet. The Negronis use Campari from the actual 1970s. Largely walk-in: explore the neighborhood while you wait.
4. Thunderbolt (Historic Filipinotown)
Mike Capoferri opened Thunderbolt at 1263 W Temple Street in late 2019, where Historic Filipinotown, Echo Park and DTLA collide. The bar leans hard into technique: centrifuges, high-pressure nitrous and multi-day infusions that turn unusual ingredients into clarified, balanced cocktails alongside a Southern-inspired food program. The Jackfruit Thunderbolt is a julep variation built on Oaxacan and Jamaican rums. The bar has held a spot on North America’s 50 Best Bars across multiple years, sitting at No. 92 on the 2026 list.
5. Death & Co Los Angeles (Arts District)
David Kaplan, Alex Day, Ravi DeRossi and Devon Tarby opened the third Death & Co outpost at 818 E 3rd Street in December 2019, bringing the East Village institution’s discipline and depth of menu to a fully subterranean lounge in the Arts District, with an accompanying ground-floor welcome bar called Standing Room. The cocktail list cycles through Proprietors LLC’s catalog while pulling in California-specific produce and spirits. Reservations are strongly recommended; walk-ins on weekdays are a more reasonable proposition than weekends.
6. Dante Beverly Hills (Beverly Hills)
Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson opened Dante’s first West Coast outpost on the 9th floor of The Maybourne Beverly Hills at 225 N Canon Drive in 2023. The Beverly Hills program extends the brand DNA that won the NYC original World’s Best Bar at the 2019 Spirited Awards: aperitivo-led, Negroni-forward, served from a rolling tableside cart. A wood-fired pizza oven anchors a Mediterranean food menu; indoor and outdoor seating on the rooftop terrace gives it the most ambitious sun-and-cocktail combination in the city.
7. Seven Grand (Downtown)
Cedd Moses, Eric Needleman and Andrew Abrahamson opened Seven Grand in 2007 as part of 213 Hospitality (now Pouring With Heart), helping kick off Downtown LA’s nightlife revival when the neighborhood emptied out after 5pm. The second-floor whiskey institution at 515 W 7th Street has pool tables, taxidermy, and one of the deepest American whiskey lists on the continent. The Bar Jackalope back room offers a more reservation-led omakase whiskey experience for serious enthusiasts. Open daily from 4pm to 2am.
8. Tiki-Ti (Los Feliz)
Filipino immigrant Ray Buhen opened this 12-seat tiki room at 4427 W Sunset Boulevard in 1961 and his family has run it ever since. Buhen was one of the original Four Boys who worked behind the bar at Don the Beachcomber when the global tiki movement was born at the end of Prohibition, carving ice and building the secret syrups that became Zombies and Mai Tais. His son and grandson now run the room; every Wednesday at 8:30pm they ring the bell for a toast to Ray. Open Wednesday to Saturday, no reservations, no menus you can study online. Order a Ray’s Mistake or a Blood and Sand and join the chant when somebody else does.
9. Apothéke (Chinatown)
Christopher Tierney opened the West Coast outpost of NYC’s Apothéke at 1746 N Spring Street in 2018, ten years after the original opened inside a former opium den on Doyers Street in Chinatown New York. The cocktails are organized by therapeutic category (stress relievers, stimulants, pain killers, euphorics, aphrodisiacs) and built around fresh herbs, on-site garden ingredients and the kind of theater that turns a drink order into a small piece of stagecraft. Open Thursday through Sunday.
10. The Wolves (Historic Core)
Inside the 1906 Alexandria Hotel at 519 S Spring Street, The Wolves runs an early-1900s Parisian Salon-style cocktail room with one of the most ambitious culinary cocktail programs in LA. Bar lead Nathan McCullough makes the bitters, vermouths and liqueurs in-house from locally sourced ingredients, with a weekly farm-to-glass special built on a single farmers’ market ingredient. The current menu includes drinks built on asparagus, shiitake mushrooms and salmon skin. A DTLA Historic Core room with the architectural weight to match the program.
Los Angeles cocktail culture has been quietly rebuilding around what makes the city singular: agave deep-dives, technique-forward independents, hotel grandeur in Beverly Hills, and a willingness to import the world (Apothéke from NYC’s Chinatown, Dante from the Maybourne brand, Death & Co from the East Village) without surrendering the city’s own identity. Mírate’s two-time placement near the top of the continent says it loud, but the rest of this list says it just as clearly. Drive carefully, drink generously.
