Earlier this week, the 50 Greatest group introduced its listing of the highest bars around the globe. In the event you’re aware of the 50 Greatest Industrial Advanced (kidding, but additionally, it’s lots: one for every continent, for eating places, for accommodations…), by now, you realize the deal. The group faucets 800 consultants together with bartenders, drinks writers and others within the cocktail trade to anonymously vote on their eight “finest bar experiences of the earlier 18 months.”
Any group that dares to make such a definitive listing can have its detractors. Whereas overlaying the restaurant counterpart, Alan Sytsma wrote in Grub Road: “At first, the listing was supposed to be one thing of an antidote to Michelin’s staid system of stars, however over its twenty years of existence, it’s begun to really feel as predictable and exclusionary because the tire information it was meant to switch.” Others have criticized 50 Greatest for sexism and for treating the accolades like a “reputation contest.”
Is it a reputation contest? With out inflexible standards for nominating a bar, it’s arduous to truly inform what form of contest that is. That’s why we determined to run the numbers to attempt to resolve it. After places, menus, social media followings and extra, right here’s what it apparently takes to be a 50 Greatest bar.
Essentially the most awarded international locations are the U.S. and the U.Ok., with 5 bars every. Albania, China, Slovakia and Sweden—4 international locations not represented in 2024—debuted this 12 months. Essentially the most represented continent is Europe, with 23 bars, and the preferred metropolis is New York Metropolis, with 4 bars, adopted by Paris and Tokyo, with three bars every.
This 12 months’s award ceremony came about in Hong Kong, which can also be dwelling to Bar Leone, No. 1 on the listing. “This recognition not solely highlights our arduous work but additionally affirms that our metropolis belongs on the very coronary heart of the worldwide bar trade, celebrated for its creativity and heat hospitality,” Lorenzo Antinori, the bar’s proprietor, mentioned by way of press launch.
Sixty p.c of bars on this 12 months’s listing had been additionally featured in 2024. 50 Greatest awarded the Milan bar Moebius Milano, No. 7, its “highest climber” award, shifting 31 locations 12 months over 12 months.
Superbueno, No. 12, additionally made a leap, up 15 locations from final 12 months. Requested whether or not the workforce had made important modifications since 2024, proprietor Ignacio “Nacho” Jimenez says a lot of this system has stayed the identical, although the popularity from 50 Greatest and different honors (together with Punch’s personal Greatest New Bars of 2023) has enabled the workforce to “welcome visitors from around the globe for a Superbueno expertise.”
A lot of the bars on the listing are pretty new: Almost half had been opened within the 2020s, and two of these had been opened final 12 months. The oldest bar on the listing is Athens’ Baba Au Rum, No. 27, which opened in 2009. (That’s, in fact, except you rely Locale Firenze, No. 22, which is actually housed in a Florentine palazzo from the 1500s, although the bar opened in 2015.)
Bars on the listing additionally are likely to have massive social media followings. We in contrast the Instagram accounts of each awardee (rounded to the closest thousand), which vary from 6,000 (Nouvelle Imprecise, No. 28) to 202,000 (Cochinchina, No. 26). The common follower rely is round 58,000.
Some critics of the awards say they overprioritize bars with influential PR groups. I seemed again in my inbox to see what number of of those bars had been pitched to me with a press launch or a launch, and, for what it’s value, solely 34 p.c of the listing had. Additionally of word, 44 p.c of the listing has been coated in Punch earlier than.
We seemed on the publicly obtainable menus for awarded bars, representing about 80 p.c of the listing. As a result of that is such a world rating, costs fluctuate extensively, however typically vary from round $10 to $30 (not counting the outlier that’s Connaught Bar’s £2,200 additional flashy Rob Roy).
The drink kinds of the World’s 50 Greatest mirror the trade’s bigger traits: a reverence for speakeasies; Italian, Japanese and Mexican cocktail templates traversing the globe; and a continuing creep towards high-tech bartending. However this 12 months’s No. 1 bar resists the latter. In a panorama that’s riddled with competitors, proprietary recipes and applied sciences, Bar Leone makes all of its recipes obtainable to anybody who subscribes to its e mail listing, and it’s created a stage program to coach the following era of bartending expertise. It’s a tribute to old-school Rome’s populist method to drinks. I, for one, hope that’s the following development.
Disclosure: Some Punch contributors are a part of the voting physique for the 50 Greatest Bar awards.
