2024 Best International Bars

An interior view of Maybe Sammy — Photo:
Maybe Sammy

The second annual edition of our Global Tastemakers survey proves that excellent drinkmaking knows no borders. This year’s class of winners crisscrossed five continents, featuring major cities from Singapore to Sydney and Cartagena to Mexico City.

The bars that stood out to our network of food and travel experts embraced the weird and wonderful; Singaporean bar Atlas features a 1,300-bottle-high tower of gin, and Sydney’s Maybe Sammy serves micro-Martinis alongside blasts from a bubble gun.

Other winners make spirits in-house as opposed to relying on traditional brands. Himkok in Oslo makes aquavit and vodka at an on-site distillery, while La Sala de Laura in Bogotá crafts house distillates out of local Colombian plants and flowers. If Bar BenFiddich’s Hiroyasu Kayama can’t find a flavor on store shelves, he’ll infuse it in-house or muddle bespoke spice mixes to order.

As these results make clear, this year’s most exciting drink destinations are well worth the price of a plane ticket.

01 of 11

Winner: Bar BenFiddich (Tokyo, Japan)

An interior view of Bar Benfiddich in Tokyo — Worlds 50 Best Bars

Not much has changed since Kayama opened BenFiddich 10 years ago. There are 17 seats now instead of eight but still no menu — every cocktail starts with a conversation with Kayama about your preferred flavor profiles. Gin? Whisky? Spirit-forward? Sour? Next, he’ll get to work carving ice and pulling down vials of wormwood or jars of fennel grown by his family from the wall of tinctures and elixirs behind the bar. You might get to enjoy custom Campari served in a vintage glass flavored with hand-ground spices. Or, you might be offered some of Kayama’s homemade absinthe. All of the above will be excellent.

02 of 11

Panda & Sons (Edinburgh, Scotland)

An interior view of Panda & Sons in Edinburgh — Panda & Sons

Entry instructions — find the barbershop run by a pair of well-coiffed pandas and slip into the back — at this Edinburgh speakeasy are slightly silly. These more mischievous elements complement a serious triumph of process, as Panda & Sons owner Iain McPherson is one of the world’s leading experts on freezing techniques. He’s responsible for inventing a method of cold infusion called "switching," in which water is removed from a spirit and replaced with something more flavorful. As such, classic cocktails have a technical touch, like an Appletini (olive oil-washed vodka, clarified apple, umeshu, and Calvados) or the creamy colada with cocoa butter-washed rum.

03 of 11

Little Red Door (Paris, France)

An Evergreen Citrus Cocktail from Little Red Door — Little Red Door

Standards are kept sky-high year after year for the collectible menus and signature farm-to-glass approach at this Parisian bar, and it’s hard to ignore the charm of that little red door in the city's Marais neighborhood.

04 of 11

Maybe Sammy (Sydney, Australia)

A stop into Maybe Sammy is pretty much all party — veils of bubbles floating from guns behind the bar are common; bartenders don tailored pink blazers; and avant-garde concoctions are commonplace. Other parts of the bar are less over-the-top, namely a happy hour menu of mini-sized Martinis, Negronis, and Gimlets. The number of locals is a strong sign of a bar’s appeal, and on any given night this bar is made up of almost equal parts neighbors and drinkers from farther afield.

05 of 11

Alquimico (Cartagena, Colombia)

An interior view of Alquimico bar — Alquimico

A farm-to-table bar, Alquimico occupies three floors of a renovated historic mansion and all are usually packed. The first floor’s menu maps out Colombian terroir by zeroing in on local drinking traditions and ingredients grown on the bar’s Antioquia farm. Try the Petronio, a tequila sour made with viche (a sugar cane spirit made by local Afro-Colombian women) and lulo, a tangy Colombian fruit. As you stumble up to the third floor, the music turns up and the drinks focus on fun, spirited serves.

06 of 11

Himkok (Oslo, Norway)

Himkok is an ode to aquavit, right down to the on-site greenhouse and distillery where aquavits (and gins and vodkas) are crafted and either pumped directly to the bar or shepherded into barrels to be matured. The drink menu acts as a liquid dialogue around local culture: Norwegian ingredients like cloudberries and sea buckthorn are swapped into classic cocktails, like the Birch, a dry martini variation with a woodiness from local birch sap.

07 of 11

Handshake Speakeasy (Mexico City, Mexico)

An interior view of Handshake Speakeasy — Handshake Speakeasy

Handshake Speakeasy is characteristically difficult to find, hidden in the Colonia Juarez neighborhood and identifiable only by the number 13 above the door. When you do duck down the hall and through the entrance, you’ll be rewarded with molecular, forward-minded cocktails in a glowing mid-century interior. Try the Mexi-Thai, a crystal-clear savory cocktail inspired by Tom Kha Kai soup and made from coconut oil-washed tequila, housemade makrut lime distillate, and clarified tomato.

08 of 11

Atlas (Singapore)

The first thing that will command your attention when you walk into Atlas is a 26-foot-high tower of over 1,300 brands of gin. That over-the-top energy continues as you soak in the Art Deco murals, vintage Champagne list, and a library of spirits organized by the Dewey Decimal system. You could blow a mortgage on things like 200-year-old Champagnes, but we’d recommend the exploratory (and more affordable) flight of Martinis, which consists of an espresso, orange blossom, and signature Atlas Martini.

09 of 11

Sips (Barcelona, Spain)

A cocktail from Sips in Barcelona — Sips

Nothing is as it seems at this Barcelona bar. Instead of coupes or Nick & Noras, drinks like the Primordial (12-year-old Scotch, Ruby Port, and pera nashi) are served in a metal cast of hands. Even the bar itself isn’t a bar — it’s a counter in the center of the room where Simone Caporale and Marc Álvarez showcase the modern techniques like freeze-drying, foaming, and sealing ice for the house Negroni to ensure it stays cool but doesn’t melt. If you’d like to keep the curiosities coming, book a seat at Sips' bar-within-a-bar Esencia, which offers an all-cocktail tasting menu.

10 of 11

La Sala de Laura (Bogotá, Colombia)

An interior view of La Sala de Laura — La Sala de Laura

Two years ago, one of Bogotá’s buzziest restaurants unveiled a standalone bar as a way of extending its exploration of flavor. The drink menu at La Sala de Laura uses cocktails to revive native and ancestral traditions and introduce visitors to little-known ingredients. When you enter, look for the big clay bottles with hand-painted labels — they hold a range of housemade distillates that highlight Colombia’s terroir through the use of endemic plants and botanicals.

11 of 11

Plus One: Baba Au Rum (Athens, Greece)

An exterior view of Baba au Rum bar in Athens, Greece — ANDREA WYNER/The New York Times/Redux

Fifteen years after opening its doors, Baba au Rum has become an institution, likely for the bar’s ability to serve confident, creative drinks in an endlessly buzzy atmosphere. Owner Thanos Prunarus is an avid design enthusiast, and the menu accordingly, cites Bauhaus, Dada, and modernist movements as inspiration. Case in point: the Pollock’s Highball is a sherry, Scotch, and Jamaican rum highball inspired by abstract expressionism.

Global Tastemakers is a celebration of the best culinary destinations in the U.S. and abroad. We asked more than 180 food and travel journalists to vote on their favorites, including restaurants and bars, cities, hotels, airports, airlines, and cruises. We then entrusted those results to an expert panel of judges to determine each category’s winners. In many categories, we’ve included a Plus One, hand-selected by our expert panel, to shout out more culinary destinations we don’t want our readers to miss. See all the winners at foodandwine.com/globaltastemakers.

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