The Pinnacle Guide: is it enough to be just a cocktail bar?

The Pinnacle Guide has announced its fourth list of pinned bars, adding 61 venues to its round-up of the world’s best cocktail bars. Eloise Feilden asks co-founder Siobhan Payne what trends are emerging among the best of the best.

The Pinnacle Guide, launched in May 2024, has revealed its biggest set of new pins to date after adding 61 bars to the list this week.

The latest tranche brings the total number of pinned bars to 146 worldwide.

Doing for bars what the Michelin Guide has done for restaurants, The Pinnacle Guide ranks venues against specific criteria to award the best examples with one, two or three pins. Bars are evaluated against six criteria – approach to hospitality, drinks programme, look and feel, staff hiring and welfare, back of house operations and community endeavours, with sustainability efforts considered across all aspects.

Of the 61 new bars on the list, 43 were awarded one pin, while 18 achieved two pins. Lyaness in London remains the only bar in the world awarded three pins, as no additional venues were given the top accolade this week.

Taking a broad view of the list, what do the freshly-pinned bars tell us about today’s hospitality trends?

Experience is king

Experience-led concepts continue to dominate The Pinnacle Guide’s best bars list. Many of the top performers are located in luxury hotels, which integrate high-end bar concepts into their broader hospitality offering. This goes for entries across the world, from Italy (The Lobby Bar in Montalcino), the UK (Dover Yard, London), Hong Kong (The Aubrey), Ireland (The Sidecar, Dublin) and Australia (Dean & Nancy on 22 in Sydney).

Rooftop bars also continue to feature heavily, tapping into the same demand for luxury lifestyle and experience-led occasions by providing impressive views and prime locations.

And then there are the bars weaving culinary experiences into their offerings. A number of the latest entries onto the list blur the line between restaurant and bar, blending cocktails with high-end dining.

Siobhan Payne, co-founder and director of The Pinnacle Guide, says the success of experience-focused venues reflects the shifting demands of today’s drinkers.

“The modern customer is in a position where they would like to demand a little bit more from their free time, and they can – people are giving them that opportunity,” she says.

“As consumers, we’re looking at social media, some of us are still looking at beautiful magazines, and we’ve got big ambitions for ourselves and our free time, and so we want to drink cocktails looking at a beautiful view, or we want to be able to have a taste sensation with cocktails and food pairings, or we want to be surprised and delighted by going through a secret door and a wonderful room awaits us beyond it.”

Bars and venues are also having to adapt to keep up with changes in how much, and how often, customers want to drink. “Times are changing with regards to the way that people are drinking,” Payne explains. “The focus isn’t necessarily on feeling inebriated anymore; where it might have been 20 years ago, it certainly is not like that now. So it’s not just about the cocktails, it’s about the whole experience.”

Alcohol consumption is declining worldwide, so it’s no surprise that the bars and hospitality venues offering a broader range of experiences are benefitting from the shift.

But what does this mean for the bars which want to be exactly that – a bar? Is it enough to be just a cocktail bar these days?

“It is enough if you’re doing it properly,” Payne says when the question is put to her. “There’s certainly a trend towards these experience-led bars within our list,” she notes. “People are demanding these unbelievable experiences, but on the flip side, people are still looking for the comforting embrace of a neighbourhood gem – I don’t think we’re seeing the end of that.”

This is exactly what The Pinnacle Guide was built to highlight, Payne says. “we built our structure in a way that all types of bars could be recognised, because we judge a bar against its own concept.  If a bar comes to us and says ‘We’re a dive bar in central London’, we judge it as the dive bar, and it needs to be the best bar it possibly can as a dive bar.”

The same goes for venues representing their local area: “If people are looking for a neighbourhood bar, they can know that it is the best interpretation of a neighbourhood bar.”

Payne says: “People are looking for excellence, whether that is in the experience as a whole, with regards to an amazing view or an immersive dining experience, or a really, really welcoming, friendly, comfortable bar that does classics really, really fantastically.”

The list of newly-pinned bars from around the world includes:

2 Pin Bars:

Bar 1661, Dublin, Ireland
Bekeb, San Miguel De Allende, Mexico
Caaa By Pietro Catalano, Lucerne, Switzerland
Dover Yard, London, UK
Fo+Ma, Mexico City, Mexico
Gentlemen 1919, Paris, France
Mirate, Los Angeles, USA
Murder Inc., London, UK
N/5 The Bar, St. Moritz, Switzerland
Papercut, Austin, USA
Press Club, Washington, DC, USA
Prophecy, Vancouver, Canada
Realm Of The 52 Remedies, San Diego, USA
Standby, Detroit, USA
The Clumsies, Athens, Greece
The Court, Rome, Italy
The Lobby Bar, Montalcino, Italy
The Manor Bar, Montecito, USA

1 Pin Bars:

1920 Speakeasy, Dubai, UAE
1930 Cocktail Bar, Milan, Italy
Aguardiente, Marina Di Ravenna, Italy
Arts Bar, Venice, Italy
Bagheera, Vancouver, Canada
Bar Am Wasser, Zurich, Switzerland
Bar Dali, Dubai, UAE
Bar Pompette, Toronto, Canada
Castalia, Detroit, USA
Cloakroom Bar, Montreal, Canada
Cortiletto, Marzamemi, Italy
Dean & Nancy On 22, Sydney, Australia
Eve Bar, London, UK
Florattica Rooftop, London, UK
Galaxy Bar, Dubai, UAE
Giacosa 1815, Florence, Italy
La Petite Maison, Dubai, UAE
Library Bar, Toronto, Canada
Mount Pleasant Vintage & Provisions, Vancouver, Canada
Night Hawk, Singapore
Panamericano Bar, Miami, USA
Pig’s Lane, Kerry, Ireland
Purovoku Project, Thessaloniki, Greece
Rayo, Mexico City, Mexico
Red Nose Bar, Volos, Greece
Rumore Bar Americano, Milan, Italy
Salmon Guru, Dubai, UAE
Santa Cocktail Club, Florence, Italy
Scales, London, UK
Sexy Fish, Dubai, UAE
Soma Canary Wharf, London, UK
Soma Soho, London, UK
Sugar Monk, New York, USA
Suite 115, Toronto, Canada
The Aubrey, Hong Kong
The Cocktail Trading Company, London, UK
The Fountain Inn, Washington, DC, USA
The Hideout, Bath, UK
The Pisco Bar At Coya Mayfair, London, UK
The Roosevelt Room, Austin, USA
The Royal Cocktail Exchange, London, UK
The Sidecar, Dublin, Ireland
Tom Thumb Cocktail Bar, Newquay, UK

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