Pat Nourse

Summer 2024 update: We’re not saying summer is made for cold beers, thirst-quenching Aperol Spritzes, zesty Margs and natty drops, but we’re also not not saying it. Looking for a sexy bar for a first date? Been a while since your last night out? Or just thirsty? You’ve come to the right place. This list represents our picks of the best bars in Sydney right now, from fresh faces to tried-and-tested temples of great drinks, curated by our local editors, drink writers and fellow booze hounds, including Time Out Sydney's Food & Drink Editor Avril Treasure. We’re looking for quality above all, with fun, flavour, atmosphere, creativity and options at every price point. Cheers to you, Sydney. Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out Sydney newsletter for more news, food & drink inspo and activity ideas, straight to your inbox. After a watering hole that's a bit more casual? See our list of the best pubs in Sydney, here. After a meal? Check out our best restaurants here.

There’s just something superior about sipping an Aperol Spritz high in the sky rather than on solid ground. Maybe it’s the stellar skyline views and the magic of golden hour, or perhaps it’s just the alcohol talking – either way, we can’t resist the temptation of a top-notch rooftop bar. Luckily, Australia is spoiled for choice with spectacular spots to drink and dine in the sky. Our expert local writers have risen (quite literally) to the occasion to bring you this list of the best rooftop bars across the country. From a trendy terrace with an infinity pool to an open-air oasis with 360-degree skyline views, these are the trendiest spots to be seen or not be seen by the revellers down below. 🍹 The best bars in Australia🍺 Australia's greatest pubs for a pint🍷 The best wineries to visit Down Under

We're all about a secret underground dive bar or two – but in a city as beautiful as Sydney, it seems like a damn shame to retreat into the depths for every tipple. From a sundowner by the harbour to a sunny rooftop in the Inner West, our town is awash with sky-high watering holes. So we've rounded up the best spots in the city to sip a cold one under a gorgeous open sky. But drinkers beware: Sydney's rooftop bars play host to some of the most contested seats in the city, so get in early for a spot in the sun.  Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out Sydney newsletter for more news, food & drink inspo and activity ideas, straight to your inbox. For more al fresco drinking try one of Sydney's best beer gardens. Looking for another top-notch watering hole? Check out the best bars in Sydney.

Sydney's CBD possesses one of the best bar scenes in the country, from underground hideaways to cool-as-hell speakeasies to lofty cocktail lounges with mixology maestros at the helm. You can drink life-changing wines, the freshest ales, and fruity elixirs made from seasonal harvests – and sometimes you can do it all in the same place. When you're out and about in the CBD and feeling thirsty, these are the very best places to take an elbow and indulge in a few drinks in the heart of Sydney, curated by Time Out Sydney's critics, including Food & Drink Editor Avril Treasure. So, who's getting the first round? Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out Sydney newsletter for more news, travel inspo and activity ideas, straight to your inbox.  RECOMMENDED READS: Want more? Check out the best rooftop bars here. Plus, these are Sydney's best beer gardens.

There’s always time for a tipple when you’re travelling around Australia. Our thirsty country is swimming in stellar watering holes that are loved by locals and tourists alike. We’ve even got a handful of contenders on the World’s 50 Best Bars list to back us up. Whether you’re looking for the best spot for cleverly crafted cocktails or a natural wine bar with superb snacks, drink your way through our selection of the best bars in Australia. After a meal? Check out the best restaurants in Australia here.

There's a lot of good reasons to head down rather than up to a rooftop bar when you're feeling parched. Underground, it's always party o'clock because, even if it's 2pm, it feels like after dark. Plus, you have no external cues as to the lateness of the hour, so a quick drink can turn into a big night very easily if you're wanting to let your hair down. Drinking below street level is also deliciously climate controlled so on a blazing hot summer's day, or in a torrential downpour, your best bet is posting up in one of Sydney's best booze bunkers, curated by Time Out Sydney's critics and fellow underground sleuths. Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out Sydney newsletter for more news, food & drink inspo and activity ideas, straight to your inbox. RECOMMENDED READS: Need something to line that stomach? Choose from this list of late-night eats in Sydney. Want more booze? Get around our guide to the coolest bars in Sydney.

✍️ Time Out Sydney never writes starred restaurant and bar reviews from hosted experiences – Time Out covers restaurant and bar bills, and anonymously reviews, so that readers can trust our critique. Find out more, here. Update: Choose your fighter at Old Mate’s Place. Do you want to settle in the vintage-style bar with comfy leather booths, dozens of old books, and a twinkling chandelier? Or race to the sky-high rooftop, compete for one of the in-demand tables, and bask in the sunshine and glory? Wherever you go, it’s sure to be a hit. And say ‘hi’ to Old Mate for us, please. – Avril Treasure Read on for our review of Old Mate’s Place from 2019 by Pat Nourse. ***** One hundred and two steps. Rooftop bars are not for the faint of quad. But all that thigh-burning just primes you for the reveal: swing open the door at the top and there you are, in a lushly planted oasis in the Sydney skyline. A smiling bartender hands you a VB throwdown while you flip through the menu. A bowtie is slung around their neck unknotted, Rat Pack-style. It might only be a quarter past six down on street level, but up here, it’s always time to take it easy.  Flip through the list: there’s smarts enough behind the smiles to handle whatever classics you might fancy. And where bars on rooftops in other parts of the world might call to mind sun-bleached bottles of Bombora and lychee liqueur, the back bar at Old Mate’s is quite a different matter – the arrangement of malts, Caribbean rums and fine tequilas

Update: As of May 15, 2020, Love Tilly Devine has reopened and is slinging a $50 set menu. Walk-ins are welcome for a drink and a snack, but they highly recommend you book in advance online. Michael West gives good toast. Briny clams on crisp fingers of garlic bread, say. Or shiny fillets of sardine garnished with curry leaves. Or mussels, plump and slathered with spicy rouille. And then there’s the parmesan toasts with Japanese Vegemite – little rounds of bread freighting a blizzard of Reggiano cheese on top of a dark, umami-rich goo that West concocts from tamari and shio kombu. All this needs, you think to yourself, is a bloody good glass of wine. And this being Love, Tilly Devine, one the country’s original and best purveyors of wines from off the beaten track, that is not a problem. You might say half the battle is won just having Iggy’s bread on hand. But West treats the Iggy's (the best bread in Australia) as the precious resource that it is. Fresh, the bread is offered simply sliced with good olive oil. Beyond that it becomes one of his magical toast products, each of which pass the can-I-eat-this-with-a-glass-in-my-other-hand? test with flying colours. And if there’s any bread left over after that, he finds more inventive uses for it still. One of the tastiest upcycles is his fiori or fusilli (West loves a corkscrew shape, it seems, or else just likes the aesthetic fit with a room full of bottles and corks), the pasta tossed with buttery leeks, a decent hit of chilli

“Excuse me sir, is this where the psychic is? “Nah mate, this is a bar called Employees Only.” So much for speakeasy subterfuge. Back in New York in 2004, when Employees Only opened, the neo-Prohibition aesthetic was getting a head of steam. Drinks were strong, waistcoats were big, moustaches were waxed. Opening behind a clairvoyant shopfront on Hudson Street, it was an essential part of the craft cocktail revolution, and joined the dots between the spareness of Milk & Honey (set behind a blank door on a residential block) and the richer production values to come with the likes of PDT (accessed via a phone booth in a hotdog shop). Fourteen years later and even without the help of an indiscreet bouncer it’s safe to say the secret is out. The bar has outposts in Singapore, Miami, Hong Kong and Los Angeles. Walk down the stairs off Barrack Street in the Sydney CBD into the first Australian branch, and chances are you’ll find the place pumping, the bar thronged, the larger dining area packed and the tarot-reader by the door plenty busy. Fortune teller there may be, but in many ways EO is less about looking into the future and more a love-letter to the heyday of mid-oughts bartending. The stock on the back-bar isn’t wildly extensive or deep (at least not by the standards set by near neighbours the Baxter Inn and Lobo Plantation), and the drinks under the EO Classics section of the list read fresh and fruity: the vodka, elderflower liqueur and blackberry purée of the Amelia, say, o