7 new favorite places to grab a drink in Los Angeles
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A Tokyo-inspired bar in Long Beach where the cocktails are as ambitious and layered as a multi-course tasting menu. A temple to both classic and wild margaritas in the San Fernando Valley. A coffee shop serving over-the-top lattes alongside competition-level coffee for the pour-over fans. Our list of favorite newer places to drink offers a short but comprehensive guide to both libations and an array of nonalcoholic beverages. Whatever you’re into, we’re confident you’ll find something you’ll love to sip. – Jenn Harris
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Daisy Margarita Bar
Sherman Oaks Mexican $$
(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)
Per the name, the initial draw to Daisy in Sherman Oaks is the full gamut of margaritas conceived by beverage director Max Reis: classic limey margaritas; fruit-centered margaritas sour with green apple, tart with cherry, bright with mango or creamy-sweet with coconut and tangerine; and wild margaritas laced with fish sauce or channeling salsa verde. But the restaurant, from the team behind Mirate in Los Feliz, goes further, playing with genres as a Mexican dive bar of the imagination. Alexa Nafisi-Movaghar of design company Adean Studios helped reconceptualize the space, formerly called the Sherman, into a time-tripping saloon, saturated with striking colors, caramel lighting, fringed fixtures and taxidermy. Bypass cocktails and go straight to sipping tequila or mezcal from a list with small producers, including a short vintage section of spirits produced in the 1990s. Chef Alan Sanz’s menu sees the theme through with reworked staples: crab tostadas sharpened with black lime, a deconstructed fideo seco with meaty shrimp, chile relleno over velvety cashew mole. For weekend day-drinking and chilaquiles rojos, brunch is fantastic.
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Darling
West Hollywood Wood fired $$$
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
In the context of beverage pros, you might consider Jason Lee something of a spiritual counselor. He works with restaurants where the culinary viewpoints are exceptionally strong — Baroo, Pijja Palace and n/soto line his résumé — and creates specific, complex cocktails that further integrate those culture-based flavors into the experience. Lee is currently bar director at Darling in West Hollywood, the California debut of nationally acclaimed chef Sean Brock. Like many superlative talents who move to Los Angeles, Brock desires to know fresh terrain, to respectfully reflect the city back to itself through his style of cuisine. Many of us, meanwhile, are simply hankering for a taste of his generation-defining Southern cooking. Let’s consider all this at Darling over one of Lee’s drinks. “Almond” is a deeply savory keeper fusing tequila, sherry, roasted almonds and doenjang, brightened by the herbal liqueur Génépi and lemon. Most cocktails roll closely with the seasons, such as an autumnal warmer involving bourbon, brandy, gooseberries and winter squash distilled to its essence. Come early for a dry-aged steak burger, with a limited run of 24 per night, which makes for top-notch drinking food
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Good Neighbor Bar
Altadena Bar/Nightclub $$
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
The first new bar to open in Altadena in four decades, Good Neighbor started slinging cocktails a few weeks before the Eaton fire broke out in January. After a brief closure following the fire, the bar became an essential neighborhood gathering spot for people looking to help rebuild the Altadena community. The large patio is a space for all ages and their canine friends, with weekly pop-up food vendors like Tacos Casa and Ferrazzani’s. It’s the latest venture from Randy Clement and April Langford, the couple behind Silverlake Wine, Everson Royce Bar, Highland Park Wine and Triple Beam Pizza restaurants. Inside, the bar takes on a more serious persona, with one of the most extensive cocktail programs in the area. There are nearly three dozen drinks on the menu, a handful of nonalcoholic offerings and an inspired list of primarily natural wine and beer.
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Kettl
Los Feliz Tea
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
If you’ve been hearing about the worldwide matcha shortage of 2025, you won’t feel any sense of scarcity at Kettl, a new Japanese tea cafe and shop in Los Feliz that began steeping and whisking for customers in February. Order a matcha cortado to drink on premises and it arrives in a gorgeously coarse ceramic cup, the tea decorated with the requisite foam art. Choose from three matcha varieties for your latte: nutty and chocolatey, creamy and floral or umami-intense. Grab a cooling matcha splashed with sparking water over ice to go. Or, reserve one of four counter seats for a tasting with schooled staffers who can guide you through wider nuances of matcha — and, even better, to a world of Japanese teas far greater than the current object of focus. Drinking in the shop, I’m most curious about sencha, the broadest category of green teas produced in Japan. Founder Zach Mangan likens the diversity of styles made under the term to the wild differences between all red wines bottled across France or whiskies distilled in Scotland. Kettl receives weekly shipments from Japan, so the possibilities are always changing.
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Ondo Coffee Co.
East Hollywood Coffee $
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Bryan Choi has opened two coffee shops in the last year: The first location of Ondo in East Hollywood mid-2024, and a second in Artesia in September. In these boom times for Los Angeles coffee culture, I most prize a multiroaster cafe approach — distinguishable in established local players like Kumquat, Dayglow and Mandarin — that gratifies different factions of coffee drinkers under one roof without overreaching. Choi nails it. Espresso drinks, usually with a couple bean options, are smooth and consistent. Over-the-top beverage fans can practically make a meal out of the butterscotch or strawberry-matcha lattes. For the pour-over geeks (which is where I raise my hand), Choi’s menu highlights rotating roasters from around the globe, including a limited selection of competition-level coffee using wonderfully high-nerd brewing equipment. He also carries a smartly edited retail collection: Look for the unusually expressive beans roasted by Datura in Paris.
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Only the Wild Ones
Venice Bar/Nightclub Wine Bars Vegetarian $$
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
The Butcher’s Daughter owner Heather Tierney launched Only the Wild Ones as a natural wine and music pop-up during the pandemic. Earlier this summer, she brought it back with a permanent home in a converted bungalow on Abbot Kinney Boulevard. Music is still at the heart of the operation, with a DJ spinning some nights and regulars choosing the records on others. There’s a short, rotating list of natural wines and a cocktail menu with riffs on classics like the Rose Mezcal Negroni made with pineapple-infused mezcal or the Smoked Olive Martini that you can “make wild” with pickle juice. Upstairs, Crudo e Nudo co-owner Leena Culhane partnered with Tierney to open a speakeasy called Force of Nature. The menu is designed with female wine and spirits producers in mind, and includes cocktails, mocktails and more natural wine. Both spaces are routinely filled with a fashion-savvy clientele hip enough to name-check whatever is playing.
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Tokyo Noir
Long Beach Cocktails $$
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Walk down the alley adjacent El Barrio Cantina and look for the glow of a hanging red lantern. Underneath, you’ll find an ambitious new cocktail den with a dimly lighted bar and a robust list of Japanese spirits. The cocktail menu is presented like a zine, with intricate illustrations and tasting notes for each drink. You can make a meal of the cocktails, starting with something light and refreshing like the Okinawa Gimlet, made with shikuwasa, a tart citrus grown in Okinawa. Then move on to one of the more savory tipples. The Dirty Soba includes dashi, while the Spin and Silk incorporates sea urchin foam. The bar also serves a small izakaya menu with handrolls and corn dogs decorated with okonomi sauce and Kewpie mayonnaise. And the bartender puts on a show while you sip, meticulously shaving down blocks of ice shipped from Kanazawa and preparing fresh garnishes, like grated daikon, for the drinks.
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