the_best_BARS in_america
IT MAY HAVE BEEN A WHILE SINCE YOU PUT ON A PAIR of “nice pants” to go to a bar, but when that very 2022 confluence of joie de vivre and pandemic ennui begins to stir and you hear about a new piano bar with red booths or a semisecret room with Kubrick-level design details or a place that has the best damn Sazerac in the world, you put one leg in after the other and you order yourself a Lyft. Or, hell, hop on the next flight to New Orleans. It is time for the Big Night Out.
Drinking culture over the past two-plus years has morphed from negronis hastily made on your kitchen counter to cocktails on the go to cautiously rediscovering what it’s like to sit at a bar to where we are now—going out with a sense of epicness. “Wasn’t this supposed to happen last year, postvax?” you might ask. It didn’t. Things went sideways. But we are happy to report, as per our last bar tab, which included a seafood tower and many martinis: The people want to party.
You’ll see proof of it in many of the new bars on this year’s list. They’re just a little more special. You don’t go there for the ’Gram. You may see someone in a white tux. You don’t just pop in for a drink after work. You go to feel like it’s your birthday even though it’s just a Tuesday.
Can you still simply get a drink in peace after a hard day? Yes. Always. We have bars for that purpose on this list, too. But should you find yourself eyeing those nice pants? Wear them. Text a friend or three. And go.
ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA
Session at Citizen Vinyl
Let the record spin long enough and if you’re lucky, silence leads to a hidden track. So it is at the old Citizen-Times building, the home to Asheville’s biggest newspaper. After the printing operations moved to Greenville, South Carolina, the space was reborn in 2020 as a vinyl pressing plant, a record shop, and a very good bar called Session. You can watch blobs of vinyl smooshed into discs, then trimmed into perfect circles, while listening to the Daily Sides—curated playlists available in printed form on clipboards. On oneJOSHUA DAVID STEIN
