Barcelona is home to the newly crowned world’s best bar, Paradiso.
For the first time since the creation of the World’s 50 Best Bars list in the last 10 years, a bar outside of New York or London has ranked #1 on the list.
From the owners of Giacomo Giannotti and Margarita Sader, Paradiso is a Mediterranean-style drink entered through the freezing door of a pastrami bar in Barcelona’s trendy El Born district. The bar rose from number 3 in 2021. “Winning is a great honor and a great responsibility. We will work hard to be the best and stick to our principles,” Giannotti told 50 Best on Tuesday evening.
Our cocktails push creativity
“But work is about hard work. The harder you work, the more you explore and the more creative you can be. We’ll celebrate and then we’ll go back to the bar to do what we did.”
The top 50 winners were announced Tuesday evening in Barcelona at a ceremony held outside London for the first time. The bustling city in Catalonia is home to three of the top 10 bars on the 2022 list. Sips is the “highest climber” this year, jumping from 37th in 2021 to 3rd this year. Two Schmucks from number 7.
- Four bars in Spain were in the top 50 — the Salmon Guru in Madrid was 15th. Italy also performed strongly in the Top 50 of 2022, with bars in Rome, Florence, Milan and Naples all making the list. Newcomer L’Antiquario Napoli took 46th place, putting the southern city of Naples in the top 50 for the first time.
Like Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, Florence made the list for the first time.
While London has fallen from the top, the city is still one of the world’s leading cocktail destinations. Five London bars made the list, including The Connaught Bar, which dropped from #1 for the second year in a row to #8 in 2022.
Tayēr + Elementary in London, which host Mark Sansom said is “one of the most original bars on the planet”, took 2nd place from 2021.
Europe has had more top bars than any other region.
The list is the result of votes by 650 bartenders and bar owners, drink writers and cocktail experts.
New York bounced back from a less glamorous show than usual in 2021, making it the city with the highest-rated bars on the 2022 list. New York is home to 50 of the best bars, including No.6 in Double Chicken Please and No.9 in Katana Kitten.
Double Chicken Please won the Highest New Entry award for its strong debut. Sansom, content director for The World’s 50 Best Bars, told CNN Travel that the bar boasts “almost Michelin-rated cuisine,” an example of the increased emphasis on cooking shows at the world’s leading bars.
33 Manhattan also does “serious, seriously elevated bar food” in Singapore, Sansom said.
Mexico City is another North American cocktail capital, with four bars in the top 50, including the No.
Cartagena’s Alquímico Best Bar in South America, No.10. There are three bars on the list in Buenos Aires and one in Lima.
In Asia, Singapore, Bangkok, and Hong Kong all had two bars in the top 50. At number 12, Jigger & Pony in Singapore won Asia’s Best Bar.
Dubai had three bars in the top 50, including Zuma #38, the Best Bar in the Middle East and Africa for the third year in a row.