San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
San Francisco’s top cocktail bars
The city’s 20 best destinations for a well-made drink.
San Francisco’s cocktail bars have much in common with the city’s restaurants. They embrace vibrant seasonal produce. They borrow from diverse, global culinary traditions. And even the most ambitious tend to cultivate a relaxing, casual atmosphere. Arguably the birthplace of the craft-cocktail movement, San Francisco is responsible for introducing many drinks into the canon — the martini, the Pisco Punch and the Irish Coffee among them — and even as bars here have struggled to stay in business during the pandemic, today they remain as innovative as ever.
The 20 bars on this list exemplify all that the city has to offer, from upscale mixology dens like the Linden Room and True Laurel to historic landmarks like Elixir and House of Shields. A couple of caveats are in order. First, while there are many restaurants in the city with excellent cocktail programs, we’ve limited this collection to places that are primarily bars, not restaurants (though some do serve food). And as much as we love a good dive bar, this list is not about them. If a dive bar’s what you’re after, check out our Ultimate Guide to Classic S.F. Bars.