The world’s best hotel bars
If you’re going to splash out on a cocktail at a hotel, you’d better make it a good one…
01/08/2024
The Connaught in London and its famous martini (@Lateef.photography)
The Connaught Bar, London
Where: The Connaught Hotel
What kind of self-respecting list would this be if we didn’t include The Connaught Bar? Though it faces steely competition from fellow legendary stalwarts (and relative newcomers: Common Decency at the NoMad is a worthy runner-up), there’s a reason The Connaught Bar has made the World’s 50 Best Bars top ten list every year since 2011 (clinching the top spot twice). Called one of the greatest bartenders in the world by the only man who matters – cough, Stanley Tucci – the bar’s director of mixology Agostino Perrone is responsible for any highly scrutinised new menu releases, the current instalment of which currently riffs on the concept of time (and how much of it you could accidentally while away here before remembering there was a world outside). A dry martini – served from the bar’s delightful trolley – is the must-have drink, while a new book, Recipes and Iconic Creations, published by Phaidon, cements its place in hotel history.
Silver Lyan’s Cannibal Old-Fashioned. Opening image: Lovejoy’s Law
Silver Lyan, Washington DC
Where: Riggs Washington DC
Before Ryan Chetiyawardana – who, in a strike of marketing gold, monikered himself Mr Lyan – oversaw the one-of-a-kind martini experience at our Concorde room at London Heathrow, he was addicted to opening bars. Or at least that’s how it looked. Now, we get to enjoy the spoils of Mr Lyan’s serial entrepreneurship at his lauded hotel bars in London, Amsterdam and, most recently, DC, all touting the Lyan signatures: WTF ingredients, sci-fi level sustainability and groovy interiors. You can experience this holy trifecta at Silver Lyan at the Riggs Washington DC, whose new menu is themed, spicily, around cultural taboos. The controversial drinks, designed to add ooh er into your portfolio of pleasing, cocktail-sipping sounds, have been inspired by everything from the ‘Free the Nipple’ movement to ‘Victorian Europe’s embrace of medically prescribed cannibalism’ via pineapple on pizza. Once you’ve found your favourite, you can collapse back into the safe arms of Lyan’s modern classics – Beeswax Old Fashioned, we’re looking at you.
Jigger and Pony and its Perfect Manhattan
Jigger and Pony, Singapore
Where: The Amara Hotel
While it may be number #14 on the World’s 50 Best (and #3 in all of Asia), this OG Lion City icon (which you’ll have to walk between Amara’s two giant Chinese lions to reach) wins top prize for High Life’s coolest cocktail menu award. Known as menu-zines for their magazine-esque quality, six menus have so far been launched – one for every year since the bar moved into its current location at the Amara Hotel. Another small joy of its menus is that solo travellers can – and often do – spend their whole time here reading through its 70-something pages. The latest menu-zine, Smash, operates by a “boring is cancelled” policy and has a whole section dedicated to tropical punch bowls. Though we don’t recommend coming here in a rush, if you happen to be in anything like one, rest assured there’s a quick menu of all your available drinks at a glance on page one.
The warm and welcoming Mimi Kakushi
Mimi Kakushi, Dubai
Where: Four Seasons Jumeirah Beach
Welcome to 1920s Osaka – or at least an incredibly successful tribute to it – in the heart of Dubai’s Four Seasons Resort Restaurant Village. Especially un-Dubai-like are Mimi Kakushi’s Wednesday nights, when, from 8pm, the sound of silky Japanese jazz swells across the mahogany bar as a sax-wielding quartet performs its time-travelling magic. Ranked #1 in the Middle East and Africa by our friends at 50 Best, the bar has a theatrical side that somehow manages to be sensitive to the cool, Osakan energy and equally befitting of UAE-outlandishness, so expect your Sayonara (a sort of Japanese negroni) to be cracked out of a -20°C ice block before serving. This technique – something the bar calls its Kori Kakushi ice ceremony – makes for a deliciously cold martini, too.
Pouring a measure at The Carlton Bar & Lobby
The Carlton Bar, St Moritz
Where: Carlton Hotel, St Moritz
It’s easy to see why alpine life has so many fans. The slopes followed by the spa. The fondues followed by the festivities. It’s the kind of lifestyle you can pretend is permanent at St Moritz’s darling grande dame, the Carlton Hotel. Honouring the town’s invention of winter tourism back in the 1800s, the Carlton is open December through to March, showing guests to 60 strategically lake-facing suites. It’s also home to Switzerland’s hospitality peak, the Carlton Bar, serving cocktail creations inspired by the produce of the surrounding Engadin valley. Last season, a ‘Carlton Instagrammable’ menu harnessed pine-scented dry ice and miniature mountain climbers. Whatever the Winter 2024 season (6 December–23 March 2025) brings, rest assured the crackling fires, comfy leather couches and magical winter scenes beyond the windows are all there to stay.
