Toronto’s Best Bars
Toronto drinks well now. A decade ago, a great cocktail meant a short list of serious bars and a lot of hoping. Today the city turns up on the World’s 50 Best Bars list, runs hidden speakeasies behind art galleries and gift shops, and has bartenders clarifying and carbonating drinks in home-built labs. This is a list of where we actually send people for a drink, across every mood a night out can take.
There are world-class cocktail dens where the technique is dizzying and the martinis are ice cold. There are hotel bars with literary menus and skyline views, and listening bars where the vinyl sets the pace. There are places with no menu at all, where you tell the bartender what you like and trust them completely. There are Barcelona-style pintxos counters and Parisian marble bars, a spot hidden under a laundromat and another behind a wall of votive candles. And there are honest neighbourhood pubs and natural wine nooks for the nights you want something simpler.
We’d send a friend to any of them without a second thought. Prices run from twenty-dollar martinis to cash-only pints, and the neighbourhoods stretch from the Financial District up to the Junction and out east to Riverside. You could spend a whole night working a single strip like Ossington or Dundas West, or make one of these a destination on its own.
Before the list proper, two quick notes. First, the dive bar mainstays we love for staying power rather than cocktail programs. Hole in the Wall is a narrow craft-beer nook in the Junction. Petty Cash is the late-night King West hang. Ted’s Collision is Little Italy’s cash-only rock-and-roll den since 1994. Cherry’s High Dive, also around King West, brings a leopard-print pool table, a photo booth and a mountain of mozzarella sticks. And the Communist’s Daughter is a cash-only Dundas West holdout that hosts live jazz on weekends.
Second, two brand-new bars we’re genuinely excited about but haven’t spent enough time in to fully vouch for yet. Dirty Laundry, in the old Cold Tea space on Queen West, comes from Bar Raval’s Robin Goodfellow and pairs cocktail-nerd drinks with an all-gluten-free Tex-Mex menu of nachos and margaritas. Mickey Limbo’s, in the former Dakota Tavern on Ossington, is a no-cover, cheap-drinks, Top 40 throwback bar that could become a dependable neighbourhood hang. Both have the makings of something good, so ask us again in a few months.
Everything below, though, is a place we’d send you to today. Here’s where Toronto is drinking.
Cocktail Bar
Jen Agg’s tiny Dundas West bar is part of the block she built, alongside Bar Vendetta and Rhum Corner. It started as a place to wait for a table at the old Black Hoof and became one of the city’s essential cocktail spots. Up a short flight of stairs, it’s warm and low-lit, with a dozen stools and a few small tables. Order the Hoof Manhattan, made with aged rye and house bitters, and settle in. Oysters and duck wings keep the night going.
Toronto
Bar Raval
Grant van Gameren and Hailey Burke’s Barcelona-style pintxos bar is wrapped in sinuous, Gaudí-inflected mahogany that makes it one of the most striking interiors in the city. It’s mostly standing, open from morning coffee through late-night vermouth, and the drinks run deep into sherry, amaro and low-intervention wine. Pair a gin and tonic with boquerones over stracciatella, then keep grazing. Back-to-back appearances on the World’s 50 Best Bars list back up the reputation.
Toronto
Canoe
For a drink with the best view in the city, ride the elevator 54 floors up the TD Bank Tower. Canoe is a Canadian fine-dining institution, but the bar alone justifies the trip: floor-to-ceiling windows over the skyline and Lake Ontario, a Honeymoon Old Fashioned in hand. It’s dressed-up and expense-account-adjacent, with the bar open weekdays only, and it’s at its best right at dusk, when the city lights start flicking on below you.
Toronto
LIBRARY BAR
A martini institution inside the Fairmont Royal York, going strong for more than fifty years. The literary-themed menu is laid out like chapters, but the reason to come is the Birdbath Martini, mixed with a house gin or vodka distilled in Niagara and poured tableside from a bespoke glass. Sink into the book-lined lounge for something classic and unhurried, ideally before or after dinner nearby. Dress a notch sharper than usual and take your time.
Toronto
Uh Bar
A basement bar under MSSM Ossington that, in its own words, has no concept: just somewhere to have a drink and a snack. That modesty hides real technique. The menu leans on familiar orders, gin fizz, vodka soda, negroni, rebuilt as clarified or carbonated versions, so a vodka soda arrives crystal clear, purple, and tasting of grape juice. Oak and concrete, bright bar lights up front, dim corners at the edges, good music throughout. Get the olives.
Toronto
Rooms | 915 Dupont
A Japanese-inspired café by day that becomes a hi-fi listening bar by night, vinyl spinning and a disco ball overhead. Owner Nigel Wang’s list runs to Japanese-style highballs and milk-based drinks, alongside a small kitchen doing pressed sushi, gyudon and matcha soft serve. Cozy and low-lit, with a tiki nook and zen-garden corners, it’s a Dupont favourite that keeps landing on Canada’s best-bars lists. Come for a slow, music-led evening rather than a quick round.
Toronto
Bar Pompette
A slice of Paris on College Street: whitewashed brick, a marble bar and leather banquettes, from the family behind the former Pompette bistro. The short cocktail list is built on Ontario farm produce and exacting technique, led by the clarified, carbonated, smoky Paloma Quemada. Walk-in only, with a string-lit back patio and Sunday jazz. It has ranked among the World’s 50 Best Bars, which for a neighbourhood spot this unpretentious says plenty.
Toronto
Cry Baby Gallery
Walk through a bright white art gallery, push past a heavy black curtain, and you land in a long, dark cocktail and oyster bar. The rotating shows up front are real, curated from local artists, and the drinks in back match the mood: house infusions and tinctures, a smoky Golden Sombrero, a huge clear ice cube melting slow. No reservations, open evenings only. Come for a gallery opening or just the theatre of the crossover from bright to dark.
Toronto
Civil Liberties
No menu, just a neon pineapple out front and a wall of 210-plus spirits. Tell the bartender your mood, your spirit, even your preferred glassware, and they’ll build something to match. The result is some of the most personal drinking in the city, from an alcohol-nerd tour through house-made amari to a no-side-eye rum and coke. Penny-inlaid bar, projected silent films, and Vietnamese snacks delivered from sister spot Vit Beo. Affordable, buzzy, and busy by nine.
Toronto
Evangeline
Fourteen floors up at the Ace Hotel, Evangeline is a glamorous rooftop lounge with two fireplaces, a wrap-around terrace and skyline views. Chef Patrick Kriss of Alo consults on the snacks, oysters, tuna tartare and a much-loved cheese-and-chocolate fondue, while the bar turns out sharp drinks like the dangerously smooth Ace Martini. It’s walk-in and cashless, gorgeous in summer with the terrace open, cozy by the fire in winter. Claim a seat early on weekends.
Toronto
Bowie
Down beneath an Ossington laundromat, Bar Bowie is a small, glossy cocktail bar with mirrored ceilings and a black-and-white checkered floor. Martinis are the move, backed by a tight cocktail list and food that runs late. It’s open seven days until 2 a.m., walk-in all night, and packs a lot of energy into a compact footprint. A good first or last stop on an Ossington crawl, when you want polish without a production.
Toronto
MOK - Man of Kent
For a proper pint with no gimmicks, Man of Kent is the English pub the Ossington strip needed: dim and unfussy, football on the TV, above-average pub food, and a side patio for rowdier nights. The same team recently opened Roxton, a straightforward public house in the old Opera Bob’s on Dundas West. Between them, they cover the honest end of the neighbourhood-pub spectrum, the kind of place you can actually hear yourself think.
Toronto
Danny’s Next Door
The walk-in sibling to Danny’s Pizza Tavern, built for the nights you can’t get a table next door. It’s a homey Italian-American snack bar where Seinfeld plays on a loop and tavern-style square slices come out of the kitchen. The cocktails are more serious than the setting lets on, with a Hurricane under a paper umbrella and one of the better Micheladas in town. Little Italy at its most relaxed, seven days a week, walk-ins only.
Toronto
The Comrade
A Riverside fixture for more than two decades, Comrade sits in near-darkness, lit by red lanterns and candles flickering off a tin ceiling. It’s a spot for post-shift cocktails and late-night bites, and the double-stacked prime rib burger has its own devoted following. If you like a bar that feels a little like a scene from Clue, moody, close and conspiratorial, this is your east-end late-night. Come hungry and stay past midnight.
Toronto
Vatican Gift Shop
Push past a faux storefront of crosses and votive candles and you emerge into a spacious, red-lit beer hall, cocktail bar and live-music venue. From the Pinkerton’s and Poor Romeo team, it leans into amaro cocktails, East Toronto draught beer and blistered Neapolitan pizza, all under Sistine Chapel wallpaper. It’s a full theme, and a good one, especially when a band takes the stage. Say a quiet Hail Mary that you turn up on a live-music night.
Toronto
Doc’s Green Door Lounge
A café by day and a classic-cocktail lounge by night, Doc’s is a Junction corner spot with curved windows, leather banquettes and a Bemelmans-meets-dive-bar seventies feel. Owner Jayson Green built it around ice-cold martinis, with a build-your-own list, plus a natural wine bottle shop in back called the Deep End. Icy pilsners and shot specials keep it a neighbourhood bar at heart. Worth the trek west for a martini done properly.
Toronto
Raton Laveur
Named for the city’s unofficial mascot, the raccoon, this shoebox of a natural wine bar hides on a side street south of Ossington. The wood-lined interior feels like the inside of a wine barrel, the list rotates through low-intervention bottles including local Paradise Grapevine, and there are no cocktails and no reservations. Open Thursday to Saturday, it runs like a travelling pop-up, tables pushed aside for dancing under a disco ball as the night goes on.
Toronto
Short Turn
From the 416 Snack Bar team, Short Turn is a narrow, streetcar-inspired cocktail bar and snack spot near Queen and Bathurst, all curved millwork, salvaged TTC fixtures and a stainless bar modelled on a collector’s booth. Start with what they call the coldest martini in the city, add the excellent cheeseburger, and graze a globe-hopping snack list. Happy hour runs noon to 6 p.m. daily, the whole list ten dollars a drink. Cozy enough for a date.
Toronto
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