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You haven't seen the City of Lights until you've seen the city at night. Throngs pour into popular streets, filling the air with the melody of engaged conversation and clinking glasses. This is when locals let down their hair and reveal their true bonhomie, laughing and dancing, flirting and talking. Parisians love to savor life together: they dine out, drink endless espressos, offer innumerable toasts, and are often so reluctant to separate that they party all night.
Parisians go out weekends and weeknights, late and early. They tend to frequent the same places once they've found spots they like: it could be a wine bar, a corner café, a hip music club, or, more and more, a chic cocktail bar in an out-of-the-way neighborhood. A wise way to spend an evening is to pick an area in a neighborhood that interests you, then give yourself time to browse. Parisians also love to bar-hop, and the energy shifts throughout the evening, so be prepared to follow the crowds.
This most opulent of bars offers 15 scintillating cocktails crafted with herbal elixirs, fresh fruits, flower essences, and exotic nectars in honor of Prince Roland Bonaparte, a passionate botanist and the first owner of the mansion that became the Shangri-La Paris Hotel. The cocktail menu changes every two months—all the better to keep ingredients fresh and seasonal.
The three skilled mixologists at this streamlined cocktail bar have earned serious accolades in Paris's cocktail scene for their fresh, original, and artful creations.
This sleek and chic cocktail bar's nautical theme extends to its lustrous wood bar and bright, generous spaces where no one has to fight for elbow room. Imaginative drinks change with the season (with hot choices in cold weather), the atmosphere is friendly, and the service is top-notch.
An updated version of the classic tiki lounge, this stylish option in the hip South Pigalle (SoPi) neighborhood comes complete with lurid lighting, life-size totems, and retro rattan furniture. All the exotic drinks you'd expect at a Polynesian beach hut (or '60s motel lounge) are here—including fruity cocktails, a range of rums, and punch bowls with names like Amazombie.
When Palestinian chef Ruba Khoury (a veteran of several Michelin-starred kitchens) struck out on her own, she surprised everyone by opening a cocktail bar, "made by women for women." But no one's complaining: along with some of the city's most splendid cocktails and mocktails, highlighting fresh fruit and veggie juices, her accompanying menu of scintillating finger food makes settling in for the evening a pleasure.
On a street crammed with hip restaurants and bars, you'll find the area's best craft cocktails here, concocted with unusual house-made ingredients. An excellent dining menu is served around a circular bar or at one of the few tables under an undulating wood ceiling. It's small and popular so it's best to come early or late.
Tucked away beyond a cobbled courtyard and up a winding back stairway, this cozy (only 24 seats) bar achieves an intimate, parloresque ambience thanks to floral chintz wallpaper, plush armchairs and poufs, and Asian rugs. For a hotel bar, it has well-priced Moroccan-inspired cocktails and small plates, making settling in for the evening a tempting option. Considering the Hoxton Hotel's other bustling spaces, this is a nice little getaway. It gets crowded, so arrive early.
This lively cocktail bar is a favorite watering hole among the cocktail cognoscenti and local hipsters. The design is a mix of high-low (think concrete, marble, and velvet), and there's a lovely plant-filled terrace. Visitors come for a taste of the mightily delicious cocktails and silver punch bowls filled with ambrosial concoctions. The menu of shared plates will help keep you on your stool.
Parisian cocktail lovers squeeze into this beautiful, intimate space—the beating heart of the Hôtel des Grands Boulevards—to imbibe some of the city's most ingenious and delicious cocktails concocted by a trailblazing mixologist. But the innovation doesn't end there. The Shell specializes in "mocktails" and lets drinkers watching their intake choose their dosage of alcohol, with commensurate prices, starting at €9. Anyone can get behind The Shell's motto: "No more hangovers."
Art Nouveau adornments, a shapely marble bar, and zinc mirrors in the historic upstairs give way to a moody industrial downstairs. Cognitive dissonance aside, the cocktails concocted here by a trio of Paris’s top mixologists are nothing short of extraordinary and the music is very good, too. Bar aficionados will appreciate the minute attention to details, from barware to presentation, that’s rare to find.
Its swank Mad Men–meets–tiki bar atmosphere and dynamic gin-centric cocktails have earned this dusky cocktail den an avid following.
Untamed revelry isn’t this restrained neighborhood's forte—cocktails are more its speed. At this cozy, unpretentious outpost tucked away on a small street between the Seine and Invalides, you’ll find a menu of 20 well-priced (for this neighborhood) cocktails that check all the boxes for a fine elixir, along with a chic, welcoming atmosphere in which to enjoy them. It’s open early enough for an apéro before dinner and late enough that you can come for an after-dinner digestif (there are also small bites to enjoy with your drinks). The sidewalk seating in warm weather is a bonus.
The popularity of this intimate restaurant–cocktail bar could be due to the upscale neighborhood's distinct lack of nightlife, but there's no denying its dusky allure. At cocktail hour, the bar attracts a mix of businesspeople and chic locals; at night, good music, tasty food, and plentiful drinks animate the crowd.
Tucked among the cafés on the Rue Cler, this all-purpose bistro-cum–cocktail bar's all-day and night hours (it's open until 2 am), welcoming atmosphere, and tasty cocktail concoctions make it an ideal option in a neighborhood decidedly short on late-night watering spots.
A chic cocktail bar steps from the Champ de Mars is a rare find indeed, but this one is steeped in a cosmopolitan speakeasy mystique, with wood paneling and 1920s touches (leather chairs, gramophone, old Underwood typewriter) evoking the New York of its namesake. A covered sidewalk terrace and a dance floor in the cellar add to the clubby fun, along with a small menu of tasty morsels and some very good cocktails.
Conceived by a cocktail aficionado and an avid musician, this popular Franco-Japanese bar spins vinyls while concocting wildly inventive ambrosias like the Aztobizkar milk punch (with aguardiente de caña, rum, absinthe, cold brew, lime, and clarified vinegar with milk). There’s also a fine list of natural wines and pretty stellar food. Dishes served at lunch and dinner are as eclectic as the drinks: Japanese tempura, beef croquettes, hot dogs, a sashimi of the day, and other delights all served to a pulsing beat.
This club is brought to you by the owners of Experimental Cocktail Club in London, New York, and Venice, so rest assured: the atmosphere will be stylish (think upholstered chairs, dim lighting, and vintage touches), the crowd will be hip, and the drinks will be tasty. Located in fashionable St-Germain-des-Prés, it's a good after-shopping apéritif or late-night option.
Any place whose tagline is "cocktails and pajamas" is bound to be a good time, especially when located in the vaulted 17th-century cellar of a town house smack-dab on the Place des Vosges. Surprising cocktails fuel the anything-goes atmosphere that often includes late-night dancing and revelry.
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