You don’t just pop in for a drink after work. You’ll see proof of it in many of the new bars on this year’s list. But we are happy to report, as per our last bar tab, which included a seafood tower and many martinis: The people want to party. “Wasn’t this supposed to happen last year, post-vax?” you might ask. It is time for the Big Night Out.ĭrinking culture over the past two-plus years has morphed from negronis hastily made on your kitchen counter to cocktails on the go to cautiously rediscovering what it’s like to sit at a bar to where we are now-going out with a sense of epicness.

Or, hell, hop on the next flight to New Orleans. It may have been a while since you put on a pair of “nice pants” to go to a bar, but when that very 2022 confluence of joie de vivre and pandemic ennui begins to stir and you hear about a new piano bar with red booths or a semisecret room with Kubrick-level design details or a place that has the best damn Sazerac in the world, you put one leg in after the other and you order yourself a Lyft.