5 Best Cocktails You Need to Try in New York City in 2025

New York City is a playground for cocktail lovers. Home to eight of the 100 World’s Best Bars in 2024, the Big Apple offers a city-wide bar menu stuffed to the brim with pretentious concoctions (think miso foam and gold leaf) right alongside down-to-earth favorites. Travel to the Dead Rabbit for the wildest marzipan Old Fashioned you’ve ever tasted; to the neighborhood dive bar for a Rum & Coke that redefines the recipe.

It’s a lot to choose from. Especially when you’re looking for just the right drink at just the right bar.

Perusing New York’s nightlife scene over the past year, our writers discovered five of the best cocktails that exemplify the beating heart of the city’s wildly imaginative cocktail landscape. None of these drinks falls into a neat category, nor any particular kind of establishment. Were you to taste your way through each and every cocktail, you’d find yourself journeying through hotel bars, speakeasies, ramen shops and more.

The below recommendations are flavorful, up-to-date and totally and utterly subjective.

5. Oolong Peach, ROKC

(Photo: rokcnyc/Instagram)

ROKC has a flair for the inventive, occasionally ridiculous flourish. Some of its drinks are served inside lightbulbs, others are poured into conch shells. Its Parmagiano & Truffle mezcal cocktail is topped with so much cheese that customers practically have to fight their way to the liquor hidden below. The struggle is well worth the effort, especially if you’ve ordered a couple of bowls of ramen and are indulging in the bar’s generous oyster happy hour.

The Oolong Peach, served inside a nimble teacup, is unassuming compared to just about everything else on the menu. But sometimes surprises come in small packages. The clarified drink is made with an herbaceous mix of Japanese barley shochu, oolong tea, lemon and ginger topped with an ample serving of frozen shaved peach. In other words, it’s delicious. The smooth mouthfeel of the milk wash gives the Oolong Peach a surprisingly creamy quality, one that adds to the overall approachability of this decidedly spring-friendly drink. We felt like a bull in a china shop attempting to delicately coax this cocktail from its vessel.

For all things ROKC, check out the restaurant and bar at 3452 Broadway in Harlem.

4. Asada Negroni – Superbueno

(Photo: Superbueno/Facebook)

It’s hard to imagine a faster ascent to the top than Superbueno’s over the past few years. Founded by mixology veteran Ignacio “Nacho” Jimenez, the bar clocked in at No. 2 on North America’s Best Bars List within a matter of months. On the World’s Best, it currently ranks 27th. The trendy downtown crowd is known to favor its signature Green Mango Martini, made with Sauternes, tequila and tajin, as well as its ceviche-topped Doritos.

These recommendations are all well and good, but we’d definitely go for the Asada Negroni. Admittedly, our first impression wasn’t entirely positive — after all, who on Earth serves a Negroni over pebble ice? Skepticism melted away at the first sip. Paying homage to carne asada tacos, the drink consists of grilled pineapple skin-infused blanco tequila spruced up with vermouth, Campari and a dash of spicy poblano liqueur. The end result isn’t reminiscent of a taco, per se, but a sweet and savory agua fresca equal parts crushable and filling. It’s a drink that we’d suggest to anyone regardless of their taste for Negronis or the lack thereof.

If that sounds like your jam, find Superbueno at 13 1st Ave. in the East Village.

3. Virgo – Grand Army Bar

(Photo: Grand Army Bar)

Non-alcoholic cocktails usually fall into one of two categories. On the one hand, there exists the low-effort, “bit of this splashed with a bit of that” drinks like the Shirley Temple and Arnold Palmer — recipes many of us grew up drinking while our parents reached for the martini glass. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are those drinks that toil painfully hard to emulate the flavor of their boozy counterparts. Faux Negronis and fake Mojitos that incorporate a chemistry-like concoction of spices, tinctures and foams intended to mimic the experience of actual, bonafide alcohol.

The Virgo, one of several excellent astrology-themed drinks currently available at the Grand Army Bar, falls into neither camp. Head bartender Patty Dennison imagined a highball that leaned full tilt into celery, a crisp, refreshing ingredient that everyone knows but rarely associates with the mixology world. It’s high time that changed. For her twist on the concept, Dennison combines the leafy vegetable with splashes of white peppercorn, cardamom and non-alc gin that tickle the palate with a medley of spice and greenery. A house-made soda ensures the bubbles stay as light and effervescent as the celery profile. We were hard-pressed not to chug it down in a single sip.

For this and other Zodiac cocktails like the eucalyptus-tinged Libra and peachy Sagittarius, check out the Grand Army Bar at 336 State Street, Brooklyn.

2. Umami Tides – 1 Hotel Brooklyn

(Photo: The Botanist)

The Botanist Gin recently doubled down on its sustainable ethos with a cocktail collection designed by Kelsey Ramage of the Trash Collective. Lending her eye for low-energy ingredients, Ramage dreamed up a quintet of drinks that play ball with repurposed vermouth, cucumber skins and other delectably overlooked favorites. We had a chance to try these offerings at the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge and were left with only one more request — another round of Umami Tides! Scratch that, how about a two?

Aside from the usual martini fixings (gin and dry vermouth), the star of the show is a mouth-smackingly rich dashi broth. Made with a blend of dried shiitake, kombu, mirin, pickling brine and shoyu, it tastes like something ripped straight from the appetizer menu at your local Japanese restaurant. It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s the perfect fit for anyone who appreciates a thoroughly dirty martini. There’s something about how this flavor crept up and lingered on the finish that we’d never experienced in a cocktail before, almost as if salty mushrooms had been placed directly on the back of the throat. It was a meal and beverage wrapped into one, doubly so considering the toothsome pickled mushroom garnish placed on each glass.

Find the drink at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge in DUMBO from now until Feb. 28, 2026.

1. Tao Pie Pie – Yawning Cobra

(Photo: Yawning Cobra)

Much like celebrity tequila brands and AI chatbots, speakeasies have reached a point of exhausting oversaturation. These dimly lit, occasionally well-hidden hideaways are the perfect bait for a media landscape of TikTok vlogs, a scrolling cycle of “off-the-beaten-path” recommendations that seem suspiciously mainstream despite their underground pretensions. Once you’ve passed through one door disguised as a refrigerator, you’ve passed through them all. Don’t even get us started on the ones that require a secret code.

So consider our surprise when Yawning Cobra, a new 42-seat speakeasy tucked underneath a smokeshop on Bowery, became our favorite bar of the year. In between bites of Iberico ham and its signature Cobra Fried Chicken, we tasted a variety of cocktails each wholly unlike the last. Drinks on the menu are sorted into video game-themed sections like “Fighting Big Boss” and “Boost Potion,” playful nods disguising the fact that these recipes favor burly, borderline intimidating ingredients like osmanthus, beets, bacon and scallops.

The Tao Pie Pie — made with Glenlivet 12 Year Old scotch, cinnamon, apple, maple syrup and smoked cream — was to die for. Though it may be cliche to describe a sweet, frothy cocktail as ice cream in a glass, we couldn’t imagine a better descriptor for this autumnal treat. Hints of peated whisky shone through a dense blend of baking spice and none-too-sweet syrup that coated the palate. It’s worth a trip to New York City just to try this cocktail alone.

Check out Yawning Cobra at 356 Bowery, Lower Level.