An Updated Power Ranking Of The Best Cocktails In New York Right Now

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Katana Kitten is the best, least pretentious cocktail bar I know. I recently stopped by for a drink that immediately landed at the top of this list. I was initially going to order a tequila drink until a bartender wearing a Princess Diana shirt told me it’s too sweet, and what I really wanted was the Amaretto Sour. Boy, was he right. The cocktail is made from rye, honey, amaretto, and dusted with salted-plum shrub. It’s perfectly balanced and smooth enough that the whiskey isn’t too strong.

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In case you haven’t heard, there’s an early front-runner for the cocktail of the summer: the Paper Plane. It’s been popping up on menus all over town lately, Saint Theo’s being the latest to adopt the trend with bourbon, Aperol, and amaro. The balanced, smooth flavor is warm but still fresh enough for summer-evening cocktails.

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It's a (slightly) gimmicky drink, so we’re bumping it down from the top spot to three. Corn whiskey (the latest name marketing departments have come up with after the “moonshine” boom of 2014) mixed with tequila, roasted corn, lemon, and guajillo creates a mix of flavors that’s somehow refreshing and savory — like a fish taco. It kind of tastes like lunch in a glass. But I mean that as a good thing. (Plus, it doesn’t hurt that Superbueno was recently named one of the best bars in North America.)

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The martini never goes out of style, just like Bemelmans — that’s why it’s staying put in the fourth spot. As the story goes, after having his heart broken by Vesper Lynd, James Bond ordered a drink that was part-gin, part-vermouth, and part-vodka: something that would have no taste but be strong enough to show him the error in his thinking. At Bemelmans, the swanky bar in the Carlyle Hotel, their revised version balances out those ratios more, using better vodkas and gins for a crisp, smooth martini that will 100% put you under the table by your third. Now, Madeline’s Vesper is the standard-issue martini on the menu. Sip it while talking to someone in a ball gown or tuxedo after they’ve come from an actual ball — that’s still very much a thing the people who frequent Bemelmans do.

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Everyone was gushing over the caprese martini at Jac’s on Bond last summer (and with good reason, I’ll admit). But this year, though, try the Caprese Negroni at Congress Bar in Brooklyn Heights. Botanist gin — a particularly floral botanical base — mixes with a strawberry and basil-infused Campari and Carpano. It’s bitter so you don’t drink it in three big gulps, a problem I noticed with the martini variety.

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While working on this list, the Spaghett is the drink I find myself thinking about the most, so I’m moving it up a spot. I won’t lie to you: PubKey wouldn’t make a list of the top 10 bars in the city. (But I don’t think they care about being on such a list anyway.) They do, however, make one very interesting cocktail I’m obsessed with. It’s a spaghett, or a Miller High Life (certified cool) with a dash of vermouth, and topped with Campari. It’s refreshing, a little bitter, and just Italian enough to order four. I suggest going to PubKey to learn the proper ratios first, but this is also easily duplicated for park-picnic days, too.

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Now, generally speaking, I would not recommend going to Midtown West for obvious reasons. But this bar is on this list for one specific use-case scenario: the late-afternoon, post-work train to the Hamptons, which is either late or an absolute clusterf*ck. Load up on a couple of Pinch Hitters a block away at this bar, and you might even feel good enough to not care that you didn’t get a seat for the two-hour-plus train to Montauk.

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For those who love the summer’s negroni-slinging aesthetics but don’t like gin, the Duluc Detective at Café Chelsea is a good alternative. It’s made with bourbon, peach, suze, and beer eau de vie, which makes for a woody flavor that still feels of-the-season with the peach and bitter notes from the suze.

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Behind most bars, there are those bottles that never really get used. But at The River, the Chinatown bar frequented by the poets, writers, and literary cool kids of the downtown world, one cocktail is dusting off a lot of Chambord. The Violetta is vodka, lemon juice, crème de violetta, and the aforementioned black raspberry liqueur. When I order one, it feels like something from another era: sweet, a little bitter, and just left of center for this sort of crowd. More importantly, four people around me asked what I was drinking, so it starts conversations in a way that a martini won’t. That said, it loses a little of its specialness once you’ve tried it, so I’m bumping it to ninth place — but it’s still worth ordering for anyone looking to shake up their drink choices.

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The last cocktail to round out this list is the Plum Job, a great twist on a classic mezcal cocktail. Even if you’re not looking for a big, silly frozen thing, it’s still the time of year to embrace fruity drinks. This plum, lime, and mezcal concoction is somehow both sour and sweet (but also minty) and has an umami-like flavor from the shiso. It’s complex but works really well.