Looking down at the map of The World’s 50 Best Bars 2024, you can see the progress that’s been made globally. The cocktail has left its strongholds and expanded, with bars levelling up around the world. There has never been a wider spread of countries than we have now in the list – as last year, the 50 bars hail from 20 countries around the world.
This wasn’t always the case. At times New York and London alone made up a quarter of members. And while these scenes still attract talent and a good share of the recognition – four bars apiece in this list year’s list – the bar world is now multi-polar.
The winner
And it is really only in this context that we can appreciate the true significance of this year’s World’s Best Bar. Take a bow Eric van Beek and the Handshake Speakeasy team who have projected themselves on to the global stage from a cocktail bar scene that has really only been internationally known for a decade. With its culinary drinks and two distinct spaces, Handshake manages to appeal to local and international audiences.
Mexico City is only the fourth city to be able to lay claim to being home to the No.1 bar. And let’s not forget that, as of 2021, only two cities had done it – London had 10 wins and New York three. It’s as recently as 2022 that Barcelona broke their stranglehold. For the global bar industry, this year feels like a leap even further forward. Mexico City is no longer emerging – it has emerged.
Top 10
The top 10 has never been more international – it is made up of bars from nine cities; Mexico City, Hong Kong, Barcelona, London, Singapore, Athens, Buenos Aires, Cartagena and Seoul. For the first time, New York has not contributed any.
Handshake’s win could perhaps have been predicted, but Hong Kong’s Bar Leone in second place, much less so. It is the highest ever finish from an Asian bar, eclipsing the performance of Singapore’s Manhattan and Tokyo’s High Five, which both finished in third.
In fact, Lorenzo Antinori’s aperitivo bar is the highest new entry ever – from launching in summer 2023 it’s now the second-best bar in the world. That’s fast work. Given its meteoric rise, Bar Leone must now be the favourite to take top spot next year.
In third we have Simone Caporale and Marc Alvarez’s Sips, which drops two places from last year’s summit. Over the years only three bars have ever won 50 Best back to back – Milk & Honey London, Artesian and Connaught Bar – and increasingly it feels as if holding on to the crown gets harder by the year. Only once in the past eight years has a bar retained its title of World’s Best and no venue has dropped off the top spot then reclaimed it down the line. But you’d think the modernist Sips, which has an open kitchen vibe and wows customers with flamboyant serves, could rise again. Certainly it will be no stranger to the top 10 in the coming years.
In fourth is Tayēr + Elementary, which knows no other world than the top 10 of The World’s 50 Best Bars. It’s now its fifth year there, its fourth in the top five. In its culinary approach to ingredients and drinks making and its industrial décor, Monica Berg and Alex Kratena’s London venue seems to have an ever-contemporary quality to it – it also takes the title of London’s highest-ranked bar.
Into fifth and it’s over to Singapore and Indra Kantono’s Jigger & Pony, which is appearing in the list for the sixth time. When The World’s 50 Best Bars ceremony was in Singapore last year, few visitors weren’t impressed with this slick hotel-based operation that has the personality of an indie – its nine-place jump taking it to its highest ever finish feels warranted.
Line – owned by Vasilis Kyritsis, Nikos Bakoulis, and Dimitris Dafopoulos – is another big mover, picking up six spots to go into sixth. The bar chimes with the times – with its homemade ferments and ingredient circularity, it puts the craft into craft bartending.
In seventh, Tres Monos is South America’s highest-placed bar, finding success through a party atmosphere and a social conscience.
Alquímico similarly pairs good-time vibes with a more serious side – it produces much of its ingredients at its in-land farm.
Zest, meanwhile, also picks up on that most modern of trends – cocktail bars that showcase their country. And in 10th, Paradiso may be past its high-point of popularity – its wondrous cocktails and Daliesque décor took it to top spot in 2022 – but 10th place remains an achievement beyond most others.
The movers
Connaught Bar, Double Chicken Please and Licorería Limantour are perhaps the three bars you’d expect to be in the top 10 that aren’t, dropping eight, 12 and 25 places respectively. For Connaught and Limantour you could explain the fall by the departure of a beloved figurehead – Maura Milia left Connaught, and Benjamin Padrón parted ways with Limantour – but DCP is harder to assign cause. It’ll have to console itself with the long queues out of the door – it remains a big hit with the NYC public.
Another mover is Thanos Prunarus’ Baba au Rum which, now up into the top 20 in its ninth appearance, is ageing like a fine Greek wine. But the bar with the longest leap forward within the list (Bar Leone jumped from out to in) is The Cambridge Public House, which moves up 19 places. The bar has undergone big changes to the sustainability of its operations in the past two years – the crowning glory being named the first B Corp bar in the world.
One last thing – this year there were 16 new entries, which is one of the more significant membership churns. Also, no bar from before the previous list (2009-2022) – referred to as re-entries – has come again, which is very unusual. This combined effect lends the feeling of freshness to the list – almost a third of the 50 bars are entirely new. The door to the hallowed 50 is well and truly open.
