The 20 Best Cocktail Bars in Phoenix
Phoenix does a lot of things well, but our claim to fame might very well be cocktails. We have a surprising amount of really good ones, and our top-tier is right up there with any top tier in the country. Our real problem is city planning. In a bigger city you can walk, or you might have some sort of public transit to get you from place to place after you’ve had a few, but in our sprawling metropolis—especially if you live in the burbs—you kind of have to plan your day (or possibly a staycation?) around a cocktail adventure. The only question is, which ones are worth it? That’s what I’m here to find out.
And don’t forget to add this list to your maps app of choice. If you’re ever in an unfamiliar spot, you’ll always know where the best cocktail bars are.
20-11
Cocktail Bars / 2 Yumpoints
20. Don Wood’s Say When
Phoenix loves mid-century modern design. Ok fine, everyone likes mid-century modern design, but Phoenix has turned it into the official desert style. Our soul is 60’s escapism—possibly because we spent so many years as a winter resort getaway for people freezing in the Midwest and Canada. Anyways, Don Wood’s Say When is a play on all that. It’s an escapist rooftop bar in the new Rise Hotel, serving up twists on classic cocktails, small bites, and a minimal weekend brunch. And the cocktail menu was made by the team behind Bitter & Twisted, so you know it’ll be good.
Cocktail Bars / 2 Yumpoints
19. The Ostrich
For whatever reason, Crust Pizza’s all around the Valley are starting to be paired with cocktail bars that, in my opinion at least, are way better than their parent restaurants. The Ostrich was their first foray into cocktails (they have three cocktail bars now), and is one of the more interested bars in the East Valley. To get to it, you have to walk down a strange staircase next to the San Marcos Hotel in Downtown Chandler, into a space that was an actual 1920’s speakeasy. It’s a little funky inside, and it can get pretty crowded on weekends, but once you’re situated, the drinks are great and the space is really fun.
Cocktail Bars / 2 Yumpoints
18. Lon’s Last Drop
There was a time not so long ago when Travis Nass—look him up… his mustache is incredible—was at the helm of Last Drop, and they were churning out some of the most inventive, most delicious cocktails in town. He’s since moved on, but the spot itself hasn’t changed all that much. It’s not pioneering the Valley cocktail scene anymore, but there’s still no lovelier place to sit and have a drink when the weather’s nice (the Hermosa Inn is worth a trip even if you aren’t looking for delicious drinks) . And don’t forget to order food—the kitchen here might be better than the bar.
Camelback East - 5532 N Palo Cristi Rd
Cocktail Bars / 2 Yumpoints
17. Tell Your Friends
There’s nothing quite like Tell Your Friends in the Valley. Beneath the Americano in Scottsdale, you’ll find yourself in a high-end, roaring 20’s-esque cocktail bar complete with glitzy lighting, fancy touches everywhere, and nightly live music—mostly of the jazz or lounge variety. The cocktail menu isn’t large, but it’s very well done (and doesn’t skimp on the booze), and it’s complemented by some champagnes and a menu of elevated cocktail bar snacks (think burrata, oysters, and shrimp cocktail). Just know that when you go, you’re part of the experience. So dress like you belong.
Scottsdale - 17797 N Scottsdale Rd
Cocktail Bars / 2 Yumpoints
16. Killer Whale Sex Club
What would a killer whale sex club actually look like? I’m assuming you’d need an extremely large tank, or maybe a sectioned off part in an ocean—like a natural grotto. And it’d serve dolphin meat probably, because I’m assuming dolphins are fairly hard to hunt down. And then there would be David Hasselhoff playing from the waterproof sound-system. Only David would do. The real Killer Whale Sex Club has none of this. Instead, it’s a slightly rowdy, very dark, and quite loud cocktail situation serving up Pour Bastard’s signature craziness, all somehow in a way that doesn’t feel obnoxious when you’re in it. As Phoenix New Times puts it, “it makes most other bars seem boring by comparison.”
Cocktail Bar / 3 Yumpoints
15. Hanny’s
The first time I went to Hanny’s was a little over a decade ago. It was on a lunch break when I was working for an ad agency in Phoenix, and I heard it was a “neat” place in downtown that had a memorable art thing in the basement. Weird. What I didn’t expect was a beautiful, cavernous bar/restaurant (mostly a bar) in a converted 1940’s department store (also called Hanny’s). The drinks were pretty good, but not as ambitious as some of the newer spots, and the food was also pretty good, but also not on the level of some newer spots. But it truly is an impressive setting—maybe the most impressive one town. And then I remembered the art display in the basement. Oh my.
Cocktail Bar / 3 Yumpoints
14. Upstairs at Flint
Turns out, people like a view. Views of pretty things work best—beaches, valleys, etc.—but if you’re located on Camelback Rd. and 24th St., a nice view of Biltmore Fashion Center and Piestewa Peak does just fine. At Upstairs at Flint, this view makes for a somewhat romantic backdrop at a place kind of built for high-end sexy date nights. You’ve got upscale cocktails, great food (it’s attached to Flint by Baltair, one of the better date-night spots around the Biltmore), and cool vibes. Just don’t dress like a schlub.
Camelback East - 2425 E Camelback Rd
Cocktail Bar / 3 Yumpoints
13. FYPM
In the back of Disco Dragon—itself a zany pan-Asian fusion experience—is FYPM, which has been shortened to its acronym for public consumption, but was listed as “Fuck You Pay Me” in Liquor.com’s Best of 2023 Honorable Mentions list. Amazing. If you’ve been around for a bit, it’s from the team behind Killer Whale Sex Club and Pretty Penny, so you should sort of know what you’re getting yourself into: clarified cocktails, lots of personality, and a healthy dose of surrealism. This time the theme (is it a theme?) is pink neon futurism. Extreme pink neon. It’s wild.
Cocktail Bar / 3 Yumpoints
12. Coabana
Tiki drinks are great and all, but sometimes what your really want are island vibes without a gimmick. What you’re looking for is Coabana, a Cuban-inspired cocktail bar serving up impressive rum-based cocktails and cuban food in a modern tropical setting. Ok fine, I guess the Cuban motif is sort of a gimmick itself, but tiki is a gimmick on top of a gimmick. I’m making it sound like I don’t like gimmicks, which is entirely untrue. What I really want is a place that can teleport me to someplace greener, someplace rummier, if only for an hour or two. And Coabana is just that.
Cocktail Bar / 4 Yumpoints
11. The White Rabbit
If you’ve never been to downtown Gilbert, let’s just pretend for a bit that it’s a bit like the Vegas Strip. The new part is where all the growth and action is—you’ve got Clever Koi, Culinary Dropout, Postino, and a bunch of other things, then the old part—the part that’s been there since the beginning of time—essentially closes at 3, aside from the regulars at the American Legion. But if you know, in the basement of the sleepy Heritage Court building is a speakeasy that requires a password to enter (sign up for their emails to get it). Sometimes these things just seem like annoying gimmicks, but this one’s actually fun.
10-1
Cocktail Bar / 5 Yumpoints
10. AZ88
AZ88’s been there forever. Usually when things are there forever, they either feel sad or special. Somehow AZ88 feels like neither—it just feels like a bar that belongs in its space in the Scottsdale Civic Center Park area. It’s not clubby like the rest of Old Town at night, although it’s a little more clubby than other cocktail bars on this list, and it’s not gimmicky at all. It’s just a real cool spot—great for people watching—serving up a wild list of martinis like it’s 1997. But it somehow feels current. Just go see for yourself.
Cocktail Bar / 5 Yumpoints
9. The Brickyard Downtown
If I’m honest with myself, the Brickyard Downtown isn’t that different than Bitter & Twisted. Both menus are expansive, both have really good cocktails, and both are playful in an entertaining way. And truthfully, the food at the Brickyard is better almost across the board. Sure, I’ve been to Bitter & Twisted more in the past year even though I’m about 8x closer to the Brickyard, but I can’t really tell you why. B&T just has some kind of bizarre attraction I can’t quite explain.
Cocktail Bar / 5 Yumpoints
8. Quartz
Don’t get caught thinking of Quartz as a cocktail bar that’s trying too hard to fit into its gem motif. Sure, there are gems, and sure, the menu is pretty gem forward, but the appeal is the truly bizarre cocktail menu. To get the full experience, you’ll want to get a reservation in the Cave, the bar within the bar. There you’ll find drinks that’ll truly challenge even the most seasoned drinker. Think camel fat as an ingredient. Hay… like the stuff cows eat. Fizzy olive? What the heck is a fizzy olive?! I love it so much.
Cocktail Bar / 7 Yumpoints
7. Barcoa Agaveria
I like a bar with focus. Undertow—maybe my favorite bar in town—is laser focused on a theme. It sets the mood. Let’s you know what kind of night your taste buds are in for. Barcoa Agaveria isn’t themed necessarily, but the focus this time is on agave spirits (and spirits in the same conversation)—tequila, mezcal, sotol, and bacanora. And if you go to the downstairs area (the bar is split into two floors), you’ll find the most extravagant agave selection in the Valley, plus a number of mostly tequila and mezcal cocktails that’ll knock your socks off. It’s definitely not as fancy as some of the top bars on this list, but there’s nothing better if tequila is your thing.
Cocktail Bar / 8 Yumpoints
6. Bar 1912
There’s no bar more Phoenix than Bar 1912. It has everything our city has to offer—local ingredients, the strange earnestness you can only find in the AZ creative scene, and a bizarre location around back from a restaurant in an old dry cleaners that shares a space with a mid-century vintage furniture store. It’s not as grand as Century Grand, and it doesn’t have the menu depth or scale of a place like Bitter & Twisted, but what it does have are truly memorable cocktails and a casual desert vibe you’ll only find in Phoenix.
Cocktail Bar / 8 Yumpoints
5. Highball
In a city where the cocktail bars are becoming more and more experiential, Highball bucked the trend and went old-school classy. You walk in, grab yourself a seat in the dimly lit room adorned with pops of fanciness your mother-in-law might not be able to see without using her iPhone flashlight, and order some of the most carefully crafted drinks in town. While still fairly new, it’s getting annual Spirited Award nominations, and it’s only a matter of time until it breaks through to become one of the nation’s best.
Cocktail Bar / 8 Yumpoints
4. UnderTow
The UnderTow in Century Grand is special, but it often gets upstaged by Platform 18, and that’s a shame. In Gilbert though, UnderTow is its own thing, and as a Gilbert resident who lives exactly 1.1 miles away, the fact that it’s here is a miracle. Even though it’s a second location in the burbs, it always more at home here than in Phoenix, perhaps because it fits so well inside Joe Johnston’s Agritopia neighborhood, where it resides. Unlike most of Gilbert, Joe’s vision for living is very quaint. Very Disneyland. Streets are tight, patios are big, and local shops are real community gathering spaces. And then there’s Undertow, which feels to me like the crown jewel. Escapism within a neighborhood modeled after escapism. It all fits so nicely.
Camelback East - 3626 E Indian School Rd
Cocktail Bar / 13 Yumpoints
3. Little Rituals
When you look at lists of the best hotel bars, you’ll find a who’s who of the best hotels in America. The Ritz, the Four Seasons, indie hotels you didn’t even know you knew. Then you’ll see Little Rituals in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Phoenix, which is so very Phoenix. We’re a city that specializes in putting great restaurants in strip malls, so it’s no surprise that we’ve put one of the best bars in America into a hotel chain my dad would frequent because it was easy to get enough points to score a free room. Just maybe grab a room at the Hotel Palomar across the street if you’re looking to stay the night.
Cocktail Bar / 14 Yumpoints
2. Bitter & Twisted
Bitter & Twisted was the first bar of its kind in Phoenix. There had been other cocktail bars (good ones, even), but this one was the first one clearly aiming for national recognition. And it wasn’t pandering to the tourists of Scottsdale/PV, which was the norm for high-end cocktail bars of the day—it was simply created to be an urban drinking mecca. The cocktail world of Phoenix has changed a lot since B&T opened, but it’s still as amazing as ever, pairing incredible technique and precision with the most expansive cocktail menu I’ve ever seen. If you can’t find a drink that’ll blow your mind here, maybe cocktails just aren’t for you.
Cocktail Bar / 19 Yumpoints
1. Platform 18 / Century Grand
Going out for drinks is all about escapism. Escaping the doldrums of everyday life. Your job. Whatever. And once you’ve had enough drinks in your life, and seen enough drinking establishments, it all starts to feel normal. Ho hum. The bars within Century Grand—Platform 18, UnderTow, and Grey Hen RX—are the only ones I’ve been to in town that truly take you someplace else. They’re truly immersive. And you won’t realize how immersive they are until you’re teleported from the nighttime Louisiana scene of Grey Hen/the lobby into the sun-bleached parking lot facing Indian School Rd. It’s a tough transition.
Camelback East - 3626 E Indian School Rd
