The Best Bars In New Orleans

No two visits to Nightbloom, run by the Bacchanal team, are the same. During one night, you might drink an extra dirty olive salad martini while chatting with the bartender about how they curated their Spotify playlist. On another, you might have a smoky pineapple margarita and befriend a cute dog. The one constant is the perfect date night lighting: coral-colored to enhance your beauty and dim enough to keep folks out your business. We like to come for happy hour and stay for one of the many events that are always happening, like dance parties and manicures with custom nail art.

Cure opened in 2009 before the town became overrun with fancy places serving cocktails with lots of ingredients and elaborate garnishes. It’s a must-visit for anyone who wants to enjoy fabulous drinks, outstanding food, and top-notch service. The seasonal menu is a fun way to try spins on classic cocktails, like the tomatillo sour that they call I’m So Green, while the reserve menu gives you the chance to try small batch and limited-release spirits without having to buy the whole bottle. Beyond cocktails, the food is good enough to stand alone—if you won’t take our word for it, somebody thought it was worthwhile to publish a cookbook of Cure’s recipes. Go for the simple yet sensational deviled eggs, pimento cheese, house pickles, and burrata.

Located in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, the Sazerac Bar has barely changed since it opened in the 1930s. No, the namesake drink wasn’t invented here, but they do make great cocktails and it’s a bar that feels like it’s seen a lot. This place is regularly filled with everyone from local politicians to bachelorette parties, and it’s a great spot to start a night if you're planning on taking a walk down Bourbon Street.

It’s impossible to have a bad time at Chandelier Bar. Maybe it’s all the marble, crystal, and gold hardware that makes us feel fancy, or the fact that the bartenders and servers are just extraordinarily nice. It’s really the cognac drinks that keep us coming back, though, like a fortified sazerac. It’s also worth trying their martini, which is served in a glass created with the same crystal used for the enormous chandelier that the bar’s named for. You could make a full meal out of the complimentary housemade potato chips (they’re that good), but all of the food is excellent—try the beignets, spicy cracklins, and warm, salted chocolate and caramel chip cookies.

At the far end of Bywater, you’ll find Bacchanal, a funky little wine shop that evolved into a wine garden utopia and one of the coolest places to spend a night in New Orleans. After you pick out a bottle, head outside to the big backyard where you can drink, order cheese and charcuterie, and catch live music every night of the week. There’s also a semi-secret cocktail and wine bar upstairs, which is the perfect place to take in the scene and survey the backyard for available seats.

Bar Tonique is a cocktail spot just three blocks from Bourbon Street where you can sit at a big U-shaped bar, enjoy a well-made drink, and breathe for a minute. The bartenders here take their cocktails very seriously and, as a result, each drink requires a few minutes to make. And yet, it's not a stuffy place at all. They have a daily $6 cocktail, meaning you can have two mai tais or Moscow Mules before paying the same amount for one frozen daiquiri at your next stop down the street.

Jewel of the South calls itself a classic New Orleans tavern, but really you can just think of it as a place that puts an equal emphasis on the food and cocktails. And both are extremely quality, if not a little bit over the top. There are multiple cocktails that cost over $25, and you’ll find a lot of caviar on the menu, along with plates of wagyu beef tongue. We like it best for a sit-down dinner date in the plant-filled courtyard, but it’s just as good for walking in for some drinks and snacks at the bar. The owner and bartender is somewhat of a local legend, and you can often see him behind the bar mixing up cocktails or shooting the sh*t with regulars and tourists.

Hotel Saint Vincent is somewhere you can snack on shrimp cocktail, sip on cocktails in their lobby Paradise Lounge, which also has an outdoor patio, and dance the night away. There’s always a lot happening here, whether that’s plates of lobster bucatini served up at their Italian restaurant San Lorenzo or visiting indie rock bands mingling with locals and tourists. Come here for a Saint Vincent Spritz, even if you’re not staying at the hotel.

Effervescence is the rare place where everybody’s drinking champagne and eating caviar, but nobody’s actually judging you. It’s a fun and low-key French Quarter bar where the champagne cocktails are the thing to prioritize, whether that’s a kir royale or the absinthe-kissed Death in the Afternoon cocktail. The food is pretty good, too—they have a grilled half wheel of triple cream cow’s milk cheese that’s served with dates and crostini, smoked gulf fish dip, and potato chips with, you guessed it, caviar.

Hot Tin is on the top floor of the Pontchartrain Hotel, and it’s one of our favorite rooftop bars in the city. Beyond just the great views, the drinks are top-notch—order the Rita Hayworth with tequila, chipotle chilies, and apricots or an old fashioned with sugarcane syrup and Montenegro. Before you get in the elevator to reach the Hot Tin, you should probably take a picture with the Lil Wayne painting in the hotel lobby.

The Elysian Bar, located in the Marigny, is one of the coziest and most romantic bars in New Orleans. The 19th-century Creole cottage-style dining parlor has beautiful high ceilings, but the place you want to be is the “jewel box” bar located in the atrium. The room is very yellow and it feels like you’ve stumbled upon somebody’s secret study where an old-timey baron might smoke a pipe and entertain some friends. Come for an early evening cocktail, like the citrusy Hibiscus 75, and snack on small bites like focaccia with honey butter and marinated olives.

Sneaky Pickle has been a restaurant perfect for vegans and vegetarians for years. Now, they turn into Bar Brine at night serving cocktails full of housemade cordials and shrubs. They churn out some pretty delicious drinks like the Sneaky Punch with rum, passion fruit, and absinthe or an espresso martini dupe that’s got the Four C’s: chocolate, coffee, coconut, and cognac. You can also have a full meal here with meat and fish options that are just as good as the plant-based stuff (hello, spear-caught snapper crudo and bavette steak).

The Columns Bar, inside the same-name hotel which used to be a boarding house during World War I, is simply gorgeous. The massive chandeliers and antique furniture even make the house wine feel chic. The cocktail menu includes classics done well like the sazerac and Pimm’s cup, but they also do a fun take on a piña colada that's clarified. Come for a happy hour, split a cheese plate with a friend, and order any of the fish dishes on the food menu. It’s also not a bad place to sit outside and day drink while you watch the Saint Charles streetcar roll by.

Justini's feels like a modern-day, fancier version of two other Black woman-owned bars in New Orleans: Seal's and Bertha's. There’s even a mural in the courtyard honoring them. While both of those spots are classics, Justini’s is more of a see-and-be-seen destination with multiple cozy alcoves and mesmerizing chandeliers. The cocktails are wonderful, and though we plan on making it through the whole menu eventually, we’re pretty stuck on the Hello Barbara berry martini and the purple Doo Ya Thang champagne cocktail. There are also great hot sausage tacos and a burger loaded with jerk BBQ sauce, pepper jack, and charred jalapeños.

Even on the busiest nights, there always seems to be an open seat at Twelve Mile Limit. That’s just one of the reasons we adore this spot in Mid-City, but there are others. Like the fact that they often throw dance parties, trivia nights, BINGO, and other events. Oh, and the cocktails are solid too, like the Humblebrag which mixes up Pimm’s, bourbon, hibiscus syrup, and lemon. The final reason we love Twelve Mile Limit: they give back to the community via donations to nonprofits supporting food security, fair housing, public education, and more.

Pal’s Lounge is a perfect bar. We’re kindly asking you to overlook the fact that you’ll probably have to walk through a small crowd of cigarette smokers, people vaping, and dogs to get in. But the beer-and-shot specials and cocktails are all reasonably priced, and the drinks are actually good—one of our favorites is the year-round floral vodka sipper called the Selfish Lover. Plus, there are always great food pop-ups like Big Boyz BBQ serving chicken thigh sandwiches and Umami Mami doing stir-fried noodles.

Going to a divey bar for some live music and a watery gin and tonic is great and all, but if you’re looking for something a little swankier, try Bar Métier. It’s in The Warehouse District, a mere ten minutes away from Bourbon Street, but the floor-to-ceiling red drapes, creative cocktails, and towering bookshelves feel a world away. It’s a great place to start your night while you plan your next move over a martini or whatever frozen cocktail they have.

One location, four bars, two menus. It’s truly a choose-your-own-adventure at Bayou Beer Garden and Bayou Wine Garden, which is why it’s the perfect place to go when you don’t know where you want to go. Our two favorite spots are the wine garden for some moules frites and sangria on tap, and the beer garden, where we like to post up for a burger and an IPA. It’s the move for an early work happy hour (it starts at 3pm), which might explain why we always run into teachers here. 

Located just west of downtown in the Lower Garden District, Barrel Proof is a spacious whiskey bar that serves lots of cocktails and under-$10 beer and shot combos. Really though, you come here for the 390 varieties of whiskey that they pour. If you get hungry after a few drinks, they serve food until midnight from local pop-ups like Matchbook Kitchen and Lumbre.

If there’s a beer you’re dying to try, you’ll probably find it at Cooter Brown’s in Carrollton. For decades, this has been the place to wrangle up some friends to watch the game, with beer, shots, cocktails, bar food, and raw oysters. And in recent years, it’s gotten a slight facelift with even better food and drink menus. Head to the back bar to drink a local experimental beer, shoot a Shucker’s Sampler at the oyster bar, or drink a dreamsicle-esque Push Pop Disco Lemonade from the front bar while snacking on some boudin balls.