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14 Best Cocktail Bars in Singapore

Explore 14 of the best cocktail bars in Singapore, from hidden speakeasies and heritage-shophouse bars to grand hotel lounges and Singapore-inspired drinks.

Edited by
Amir Wahab
Published
Reading time
6 min read
A bartender crafting a cocktail at a stylish Singapore cocktail barAI image by LocalRank

The best cocktail bars in Singapore reward the curious, from unmarked speakeasies down quiet lanes to grand hotel lounges and heritage shophouses turned drinking dens. This guide gathers fourteen real, currently-operating spots, each checked against its own website or official listing, spanning Art Deco gin palaces, classic-cocktail institutions and bars built on foraged regional ingredients. Treat it as a shortlist to explore by mood and neighbourhood rather than a strict ranking, and check current hours before you go.

1. Atlas

Atlas sits on the ground floor of Parkview Square, the Art Deco tower in Bugis, where a soaring central gin tower anchors a grand, gilded room styled on 1920s European glamour. The venue leans on elegant European cocktails alongside a vast gin, spirits and champagne collection it counts among Asia's finest. It is a dressy, occasion-worthy spot rather than a casual local.

2. Jigger & Pony

Jigger & Pony is a Tanjong Pagar cocktail bar inside Amara Singapore, built around classic and contemporary drinks served from a playful magazine-style menu. It pairs well-made classics such as the Negroni and Penicillin with originals like its Wasabi Highball, backed by warm, attentive service. The mood is polished but convivial, suited to both casual rounds and celebrations.

3. Manhattan

Manhattan occupies a grand second-floor room at Conrad Singapore Orchard, themed on the glamour of early-1900s New York. Its calling card is aged cocktails: the venue says it runs the world's first in-hotel rickhouse, where drinks such as barrel-aged Manhattans and solera-aged Negronis mature in oak before serving. Expect a plush, old-world setting geared to spirit-forward classics.

4. 28 HongKong Street

28 HongKong Street is a pioneering Singapore speakeasy set behind the unmarked facade of a 1960s shophouse near Clarke Quay, with no sign to announce it. It specialises in American-style craft cocktails and artisanal spirits, and its current 'Now & Then' menu sets origin-era classics beside modern reinventions built on core cocktail techniques. The room starts relaxed and grows livelier as the night wears on.

5. Native

Native is a shophouse cocktail bar on Amoy Street that builds its drinks around regional and foraged Southeast Asian ingredients, treating each cocktail as a way to tell a story about the region's produce and makers. Its multi-floor space includes a dedicated fermentation and tasting room upstairs where the team experiments with its own ingredients. The result is an earthy, ingredient-led list far removed from a standard classics menu.

6. Gibson

Gibson sits on the second floor of a 1930s heritage shophouse on Bukit Pasoh Road and takes its name from the classic Gibson martini. Its signature take on that drink blends gin and a sake-based vermouth with pickled pomelo, cucumber and a smoked quail egg, while the wider menu reworks classics through Southeast Asian ingredients. The venue says it stays serious about the craft while keeping the mood light.

7. The Elephant Room

The Elephant Room is a Tanjong Pagar cocktail bar that takes its inspiration from Singapore's Little India, an idea it captures in its own line, 'Built from Little India, Served as cocktails.' The team sources spices and produce from the district's Tekka Market and reworks them into contemporary drinks carrying Indian-subcontinent flavours and stories. The setting is warm and culture-forward rather than clubby.

8. Nutmeg & Clove

Nutmeg & Clove is a restaurant and cocktail bar on Purvis Street that its founder frames as a homage to Singapore's history, pairing modern Singaporean cuisine with a progressive cocktail programme. Its drinks reinterpret local flavours and classic recipes with a distinctly Singaporean inflection. It suits a relaxed evening of heritage-leaning cocktails over dinner or drinks.

9. Sago House

Sago House is a small, independent cocktail bar tucked into a heritage shophouse on Duxton Hill, opened during the pandemic by three bartenders without outside investors. Its menu changes every week around whatever the team finds in local markets, so the drinks are rarely the same twice. The feel is deliberately unpretentious and low-key, and packed on busy nights.

10. Republic

Republic is the cocktail bar and lounge at The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore, themed on the style and optimism of the 1960s. Its menu is organised around that decade's cultural capitals, with drinks and stories drawn from Singapore, the UK, the US and Italy. The room is a plush, retro-glamorous hotel lounge made for unhurried, spirit-forward drinking.

11. Anti:dote

Anti:dote occupies the ground floor of Fairmont Singapore near City Hall, where by evening a chandelier-lit dining room turns into a themed cocktail bar built around the idea of drinks as inventive 'cure-alls' for modern life. Its Cure-All menu is organised into three sections the bar describes as Long Long Time Ago, drawing on ancient remedies from around the world; Grandma Says, built on cures passed down through generations; and Modern Times, its most experimental mixtures. The bar pairs these drinks with elevated tapas and a signature afternoon tea, and says it aims for a personal, conversational connection with every guest. It suits an evening of playful, concept-driven drinking rather than a straight classics list.

12. Live Twice

Live Twice occupies a heritage shophouse on Bukit Pasoh Road, its interior styled on a Ginza-era cocktail bar from 1960s post-war Tokyo, complete with vintage furniture and film-noir lighting that the bar says feels 'enigmatic and dark, yet almost like a homecoming.' Its three-part cocktail menu takes its name and structure from a classic Nancy Sinatra song, pairing seasonal drinks with a Japanese shokunin approach to craft: the bar limits each cocktail to four ingredients or fewer, a discipline it says forces purity and focus, and serves drinks in polished Kimura glassware without elaborate garnish. The mood blends Western and Japanese influences into an intimate, retro-glamorous room built for unhurried drinking.

13. Maison Ikkoku

Maison Ikkoku occupies the second floor of a Kandahar Street shophouse in Kampong Glam, above its own French-Japanese restaurant, in a space its recent 'Maison Ikkoku 2.0' revamp built around a back-bar installation inspired by the love-lock bridges of Paris's Pont des Arts, hung with spirit bottles. The bar's signature is its bespoke, no-fixed-menu approach: guests describe the flavours, spirits or moods they like and dislike, and the bartenders build a cocktail to match rather than pour from a printed list. It also runs its own gin programme, distilling small-batch gins in house — the bar cites a milk-and-honey style and a Norwegian herb infusion among them — offered through hands-on distilling workshops as well as at the bar. The feel is intimate, artful and personal rather than scripted.

14. Southbridge

Southbridge sits on the rooftop of a restored heritage shophouse at Boat Quay, five floors up, where the bar says it delivers some of the best 360-degree views of the Singapore skyline, taking in Parliament House, Raffles Place and Marina Bay Sands. It bills itself as an oyster bar as much as a cocktail one, pairing its crafted drinks list with oysters from several countries alongside sliders and other bar bites on the open-air terrace. The bar describes its own atmosphere as elegant yet unpretentious, drawing on a European bar-dining sensibility rather than a clubby rooftop-lounge one. It suits a relaxed evening of drinks and skyline views, open nightly from five.

How to choose

  • Decide what kind of drinking you want: a classics-focused bar for perfectly made Negronis and Martinis, an ingredient-led or experimental bar for foraged and house-fermented creations, or a themed hotel bar for a dressed-up occasion.
  • Book ahead for the smaller and hidden bars. Many of Singapore's best cocktail rooms are compact and take reservations, and speakeasy-style spots can be easy to walk past, so save the address and check the entrance details before you go.
  • Ask the bartender for guidance rather than only ordering off the menu. Most of these bars pride themselves on bespoke drinks, so tell them the spirit, flavour or strength you like and let them build something to taste.
  • Check opening days and last orders. Several cocktail bars here open only in the evening, close one or two days a week, and stop taking orders before the stated closing time, especially earlier in the week.
  • Factor in the bill. Craft cocktails at these venues sit at the premium end, and most add service charge and GST, so confirm any minimum spend or table policy when you book for a group.
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About the author

Amir Wahab

Founder and Editor

Amir Wahab is the founder and editor of LocalRank, an independent Singapore rankings and local guides publication.

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