New York · Negroni

An edited guide for the curious thirst

New York, in three measures — gin, vermouth, Campari.

Twenty-six addresses across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens — from the MacDougal Street café that turned the Negroni into a movement to a barrel-aged one in Carroll Gardens — where the bittersweet ritual is served with the reverence it deserves.

Find your bar A brief history
A tree-lined street of brownstones in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village — where a 1915 Italian café became the Negroni's modern cathedral.

New York, a city of thirst

The city that turned a Florentine aperitivo into a movement.

New York did not invent the Negroni. Florence did, in 1919. But no city has done more with it since. The drink came over with the Italians — to the espresso cafés of Greenwich Village and Mulberry Street, where Campari sat behind the counter next to the sambuca — and it waited there, patiently, while the city drank Cosmopolitans. Then in 1999 a quiet bar on Eldridge Street called Milk & Honey brought back the stirred classic, hand-cut ice and all, and a generation of bartenders relearned what equal parts means.

The rest followed fast. A century-old café on MacDougal Street was reborn as Dante, put the Negroni on tap and a whole page of variations on the menu, and in 2019 was named the best bar in the world. Campari moved its American headquarters here. Negroni Week, born in 2013, found its loudest city. Today the red drink is poured by the barrel in Carroll Gardens, built tableside from house vermouth in NoMad, and made entirely from Brooklyn bottles in Williamsburg. Twenty-six addresses follow. All verified. None by accident.

The shortlist

Twenty-six addresses worth the subway ride.

Manhattan carries the weight — the Village, the East Village, Midtown, uptown — but Brooklyn now pours some of the most interesting Negronis in the city, and Queens has earned its pin. Each makes a Negroni you will recognize, and most make one you will not forget.

Dante The Negroni cathedral · since 1915

Dante

79–81 MacDougal St, New York, NY 10012

✦ The Negroni Sessions — a whole page of them, from the house Negroni on tap (Bombay Sapphire, Campari, Martini & Rossi) to a Bianco on Brooklyn gin, a Chocolate Negroni, a Mezcalito and a Lavender — plus a bottled four-pack to take home.

Caffè Dante opened on MacDougal Street in 1915 and spent a century as a Village espresso house — Mario Flotta's since 1971 — before two Australians, Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson, bought it in 2015 and did the unthinkable: kept the name, kept the tiles, and built the drinks list around the Negroni. It worked. In 2019 Dante was named the best bar in the world, and the Negroni on tap became the most photographed drink in New York. The Negroni Sessions page is still the point — order across it, from the classic to the Unlikely — and the 3-to-5 happy hour prices them like a Florentine café. There are now siblings on Hudson Street and Bank Street, where the aperitivo bar pours a house Negroni of its own. Start here, as the whole city did.

“The drinks menu features a whole section devoted to negronis and drinks formed around Italian aperitivo classics.”

— The World's 50 Best Bars, 2019
  • HoursDaily from 12:00 (Sat–Sun from 10:00) · kitchen until 23:00 Sun–Wed, 00:00 Thu–Sat · Negroni happy hour 15:00–17:00
  • Phone+1 (212) 982-5275
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Via Carota Seven Negronis on a silver tray · Grove St

Via Carota

51 Grove St, New York, NY 10014

✦ A Negroni section of seven — Classico on house vermouth, Rosa, Bianco, Terra with Cynar, Chinato with Barolo chinato, the 1397, and a zero-proof — every one of them carried to the table on a silver tray.

Jody Williams and Rita Sodi named their Grove Street trattoria for the street of Sodi's family house outside Florence, and the Negroni here is Florentine in the strict sense: made the way the city that invented it makes it, and served by a waiter in a cream jacket who sets it down without a word. It is a restaurant — the 2019 James Beard award for New York's best chefs hangs on the wall — but its published Negroni list is longer than that of almost any bar in Manhattan, seven builds from the Classico to a Barolo-chinato version to a zero-proof for the driver. The wait for a table is famous; the trick is a stool at the bar and a Negroni while you decide. Across Seventh Avenue, their stand-up Bar Pisellino pours the same aperitivo hour on its feet.

“When a server in a cream-colored jacket brings you a Negroni on a silver tray while you scan the room for people who've hosted SNL, you'll feel like you're at the center of the world.”

— The Infatuation, 2025
  • HoursMon–Fri 11:00–23:00 · Sat–Sun 10:00–23:00 · mostly walk-in
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I Sodi Rita Sodi's Florentine Negronis · Bleecker St

I Sodi

314 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10014

✦ A short list of Negroni variations — the classic and its seasonal cousins — meant to be drunk before the lasagna, not instead of it.

Rita Sodi left a career at Calvin Klein to cook the food of her Tuscan childhood, and opened I Sodi on Christopher Street in 2008 with a bar list that began, as every Florentine evening does, with a Negroni. When the lease ended in 2023 she moved the restaurant three blocks to Bleecker Street and the ritual came with it: a handful of Negroni variations, stirred cold and hard, the classic and whatever the season suggests, followed by the lasagna that Pete Wells put on his list of the city's hundred best. It is a small, serious room. Book, arrive early, and take the Negroni at the bar while the table is readied. Then eat like a Florentine.

“Always start with a negroni. I Sodi does a bunch of variations, all of which are perfectly sweet, bitter, boozy, and chuggable.”

— The Infatuation, 2023
  • HoursMon–Thu 16:30–22:30 · Fri–Sun 11:30–14:30 & 17:00–23:00
  • Phone+1 (212) 414-5774
Website Instagram
Keepers A dozen Negronis and a pizza oven · new

Keepers

34 8th Ave, New York, NY 10014

✦ A menu built around a dozen Negronis: The White (chamomile-infused Condesa gin, Lillet Blanc, Suze, sage), a Strawberry Sbagliato on Dolin strawberry vermouth, an Irish-whiskey Negroni, and a Black Forest one that nods to Cherry Garcia.

The newest address on this list opened on Eighth Avenue in July 2026 and describes itself, without irony, as a pizza-and-Negroni tavern. The room is 1970s tavern — a twelve-seat bar in green quartzite, vinyl on the turntable every night — from the Dandelion team with Will Makris of Zero Bond and Eytan Sugarman of the White Horse Tavern behind it, thin-crust pies by Louis Tomczak and a drinks list by Ricky Dolinsky that puts roughly a dozen Negronis at the centre of the page. Some are serious (The White is a proper bianco); some are jokes that land (the Black Forest). Twenty-three dollars each. Walk-ins only, so far; go on a weeknight, sit at the bar, and order across the list with a slice.

“Their commitment to Negronis helps: there are a dozen variations, including one with Irish whiskey and another with strawberry vermouth.”

— The Infatuation, 2026
  • HoursWed–Sun evenings, walk-in only · check the site for the day's hours (opened July 2026)
  • Phone+1 (212) 333-1001
Website
Amor y Amargo The bitters temple · East Village

Amor y Amargo

443 E 6th St (at Avenue A), New York, NY 10009

✦ No juice, no shaking: every drink is a stirred riff on three templates — the Manhattan, the Old Fashioned and the Negroni — with the amaro chosen for you.

America's first bitters-and-amari bar, opened in 2011 by Ravi DeRossi with the founders of Bittermens, and run ever since by Sother Teague — a former research chef who treats a back bar of two hundred amari like a spice rack. There is barely a menu: tell the bartender what you like and you get a bespoke Negroni-shaped drink built on the house sweet vermouth, the bitter swapped for something you have never heard of. The room seats a dozen. The bar left East 6th Street for Avenue A in 2020, then came home in January 2025 — the same tiny corner, the same clear-eyed idea. If the Negroni is a lesson in bitterness, this is the graduate seminar.

“A showcase for bitters and amari of all types at a time when those challenging and often confusing liqueurs and spirits were just starting to win the attention of the greater American drinking public.”

— Robert Simonson, The Mix, 2023
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Attaboy The Milk & Honey room · no menu

Attaboy

134 Eldridge St, New York, NY 10002

✦ No menu — say “Negroni” and it is built to your taste over hand-cut ice; the bar also runs a monthly ticketed class it calls The Negroni Sessions.

This is the room where it all restarted. On New Year's Eve 1999 Sasha Petraske opened Milk & Honey behind this unmarked door and taught New York to stir again. When it moved uptown in 2012, his bartenders Sam Ross and Michael McIlroy kept the address and renamed it Attaboy — and in 2022 it was voted the best bar in North America. There is still no menu. You describe a mood, the bartender stirs, and a Negroni arrives over a hand-cut block that will not dilute before you finish. In late 2025 the bar absorbed the unit next door and doubled in size, so the wait at the door is shorter than legend says. Go anyway, and go early.

“Despite its modest size, it has had an outsized influence on how we drink not only in New York and the USA, but globally as well.”

— Time Out New York, 2022
  • HoursDaily 17:00–03:00 · walk-in, limited reservations
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Temple Bar The Blue Negroni · NoHo, since 1989

Temple Bar

332 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012

✦ The Blue Negroni — Plymouth gin, Dolin Blanc and a blue-dyed bitter, stirred over rocks with an orange twist — has headed the menu since the 2021 reopening.

Temple Bar was downtown's grown-up cocktail room from 1989 — oversized martinis, free popcorn, a Kiki Kogelnik ceramic panel over the oak — until it closed on the last night of 2017. Four years later David Rabin and Maneesh Goyal reopened it with Attaboy's Sam Ross and Michael McIlroy running the drinks, and the first thing they put on the list was a Negroni that is bright blue. It reads like a joke and drinks like a classic: equal parts, blanc vermouth, the bitterness intact, a colour that belongs to the room's Eighties glamour. The velvet is original. The dress code is enforced. Order the blue one first and the red one second.

“The cocktail program feels completely up to date — largely on the strength of a long martini list and a Blue Negroni, a beverage that's equal parts 1990s and 2020s.”

— The Infatuation, 2022
  • HoursMon–Wed 17:00–01:00 · Thu–Sat 17:00–02:00 · Sun 17:00–00:00 · dress code
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Torrisi Bar & Restaurant A Negroni section · Michelin star

Torrisi Bar & Restaurant

275 Mulberry St (Puck Building), New York, NY 10012

✦ A dedicated Negroni section: the House (Campari, London Dry, vermouth), a Sbagliato lengthened with Lambrusco, and the Dagger John — Irish whiskey and bourbon in place of gin.

Rich Torrisi's 2022 return to Mulberry Street, in the landmark Puck Building a few doors from the tiny deli that made his name, is the most expensive Italian dinner in Nolita — and its twelve-seat walk-in bar is the cheapest way to taste why. Beverage director Nathan McCarley-O'Neill, formerly of Claridge's in London, gives the Negroni its own heading on the list: the classic, a Sbagliato that swaps prosecco for Lambrusco, and the Dagger John, a Boulevardier built on Irish whiskey and bourbon and named for the nineteenth-century archbishop who built the cathedral across the street. Twenty-five dollars a glass. Worth it once, at the bar, before dinner somewhere cheaper.

“The drinks program, run by Nathan McCarley-O'Neill of London's famed Claridge's, offers a slight spin on favorites — an entire cocktail Negroni category.”

— The Digital Party, 2023
  • HoursMon 17:00–23:00 · Tue closed · Wed–Sat 11:30–14:00 & 17:00–23:00 · Sun closed · bar walk-in only
  • Phone+1 (212) 254-3000
Website
Bar Bianchi Milanese aperitivo · opposite Katz's

Bar Bianchi

5 Avenue A (at E Houston St), New York, NY 10009

✦ Negronis and spritzes are the stated point of the place — the classic, a white and a mezcal Negroni, served with complimentary spuntini in the Milanese manner.

Opened in May 2025 on the corner where Boulton & Watt stood for a decade, Bar Bianchi is Golden Age Hospitality's attempt to move a 1930s Milanese bar to Houston Street — terrazzo, brass, a curved counter, cocktails by Cody Pruitt of Libertine. The idea is the aperitivo hour done properly: a Negroni or a spritz arrives with a small plate you did not order, because in Milan that is simply how it works. The Negroni comes classic, bianco or with mezcal, and the crowd is an East Village mix of dates, neighbours and people who have just left Katz's across the road. New, but already the district's aperitivo counter.

“If not for the faint aroma of pastrami drifting over from Katz's, you could pretend you just jetted to Milan for an after-work drink.”

— The Infatuation, 2025
  • HoursMon 16:00–23:00 · Tue–Wed 16:00–00:00 · Thu 16:00–01:00 · Fri 14:00–01:00 · Sat 12:00–01:00 · Sun 12:00–23:00
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Pebble Bar Negroni on tap · Rockefeller Center

Pebble Bar

67 W 49th St, New York, NY 10020

✦ The Three Deuces Negroni — Fords gin, Campari, Carpano Antica, orange oil — pours from a tap, one of the tricks that lets the house serve some five hundred cocktails a night.

The four-storey townhouse at 67 West 49th was Hurley's for a century — the dive where Saturday Night Live casts drank after the show and Johnny Carson's writers hid from him. In 2022 the team behind The Smile and Ray's reopened it, with Pete Davidson and Jason Sudeikis among the investors, as a bar that looks like a Midtown club from 1962 and drinks like a downtown one from today. Its Negroni is named for the jazz club that once sat on 52nd Street and runs on tap, which sounds like a shortcut and tastes like discipline: the same proportions, every time, cold and fast, with a twist expressed to order. The second floor takes no reservations. That is the floor you want.

“We want people to become regulars. That's a big part of what makes Pebble Bar unique to this neighborhood.”

— Resy, 2022
  • HoursMon–Tue 16:00–00:00 · Wed–Sat 16:00–01:00 · Sun 16:00–23:00 · 2nd floor walk-in
Website
Bar Torino Espresso by day, Negroni by night · Hudson Yards

Bar Torino

50 Hudson Yards, mezzanine (enter from the west lobby on Hudson Blvd East), New York, NY 10001

✦ A Negroni section of three on the evening list: the Boulevardier (bourbon, Campari, Cocchi Torino), the Bianco (London dry gin, Suze, Lillet) and the Caffè Affumicato — mezcal, Campari and Galliano Ristretto.

Andrew Carmellini's NoHo Hospitality named this bar for Turin, the capital of vermouth, and runs it the way a Torinese bar runs: espresso and cornetti from eight, a proper lunch counter, and at four in the afternoon the machines go quiet and the aperitivo begins. It lives on the mezzanine of an office tower at Hudson Yards, which is exactly why it matters — it is the only serious aperitivo on the far west side between the High Line and the river, and the weekday-only hours are a feature, not a bug. The Negroni section is short and pointed: a Boulevardier, a Bianco, and a smoked-coffee mezcal version that is better than it sounds. Come at five, stand at the counter, and leave before the towers empty.

“Bar Torino operates as an espresso counter by day and an aperitivo bar by evening, with several Negroni riffs on its regular menu year-round.”

— Brooklyn's Lifestyle, 2026
  • HoursMon–Fri 08:00–21:00 · cocktails from 16:00 · aperitivo hour 16:00–18:00 · Sat–Sun closed · no reservations
Website
Park Rose The vermouth cart · NoMad

Park Rose

Hotel Park Ave · 444 Park Ave South, New York, NY 10016

✦ A cart of four house-made vermouths — Rosato, Strawberry Rosso, Pineapple Bianco, Charred Grapefruit — is wheeled to the table and built into a Negroni with gin and amaro in front of you.

The dining room of the reopened Hotel Park Ave, in the stretch of Park Avenue South that has quietly become the city's best hotel-bar block, does one thing no other room in New York does: it makes its own vermouth, four of them, and brings them to you on a cart. You pick the vermouth — the Rosato is the classic choice, the charred-grapefruit the interesting one — and the drink is built tableside as a spritz, a Manhattan or, correctly, a Negroni with gin and a local amaro. It is theatre, but the vermouth is good enough that the theatre is beside the point. The four-to-seven happy hour makes it a serious NoMad stop on the way to somewhere darker.

“A wheeled cart that pours house-made vermouth tableside; you can drink it on the rocks or have it fashioned into a spritz.”

— Time Out New York, 2026
  • HoursDaily 07:00–22:00 (bar from 16:00) · happy hour 16:00–19:00
  • Phone+1 (551) 345-5118
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Fasano · Baretto Balsamic Negroni, bossa nova upstairs · Midtown East

Fasano · Baretto

60 E 49th St (at Park Ave), New York, NY 10017

✦ Two house Negronis, served downstairs and up: the Balsamic Negroni (Sardinian Gillo gin, Giusti balsamic vermouth, Campari) and the Centerbe — mezcal, Faccia Brutto Centerbe, Amaro Majora, Dopo Teatro vermouth, Campari.

Gero Fasano's São Paulo dynasty arrived in New York in 2022 with a Milanese-modern dining room on 49th Street and, upstairs, a version of its famous Baretto: a jazz room where bossa nova plays on Friday and Saturday nights and the drink in most hands is red. The two house Negronis are the most inventive uptown. One uses a vermouth aged with Giusti balsamic from Modena, which sounds like a stunt and tastes like a Negroni that has read a book; the other builds on mezcal and a Brooklyn-made centerbe, the hundred-herb liqueur of the Abruzzo. Both are poured at the ground-floor bar between lunch and dinner, when the room is calm and the price feels almost reasonable. Dress for Park Avenue.

“Cocktails are more reasonably priced than expected, given everything else about Fasano.”

— Time Out New York, 2022
  • HoursRestaurant bar Mon–Fri 11:30–21:45 (continuous) · Sat 17:30–22:00 · Sun closed · Baretto jazz Fri–Sat from 20:30
  • Phone+1 (646) 869-5400
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Ci Siamo Barolo chinato Negroni · Manhattan West

Ci Siamo

440 W 33rd St, Suite 100 (Manhattan West), New York, NY 10001

✦ The house Negroni — Campari, an Occitan gin, a blend of vermouths and a measure of Barolo chinato — is the drink the aperitivo hour was designed around.

Danny Meyer's first opening after the pandemic is a live-fire Italian dining room on the far west side, and its bar keeps an aperitivo hour that most of Manhattan has forgotten how to do: mid-afternoon, weekdays, a Negroni and a plate of pizza bianca hot from the oven. The Negroni itself is worth the trip — the Barolo chinato in place of some of the vermouth gives it a quinine bite and a darker, winier finish than the textbook version, and it is stirred with Union Square Hospitality's usual exactness. Chef Hillary Sterling's kitchen is the reason to stay. The Negroni is the reason to arrive at three.

“Something definitely not to miss is the pizza bianca. That with a Negroni is the perfect way to begin your experience at Ci Siamo.”

— Resy, 2022
  • HoursDaily 11:30–15:00 & 16:30–22:00 · aperitivo Mon–Fri 15:00–16:30 in the bar
  • Phone+1 (212) 219-6559
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Lincoln Ristorante The Negroni Bar · Lincoln Center

Lincoln Ristorante

142 W 65th St (Lincoln Center, by the reflecting pool), New York, NY 10023

✦ The Negroni Bar, running since 2010: a classic on The Botanist and Antica Formula, a Blonde on Citadelle, Cocchi Americano and Nonino aperitivo, a Fiorito on Brooklyn-made Fort Hamilton gin, and a Scotch Negroni on Glenlivet, Strega and Italicus.

The glass pavilion under the grass roof at Lincoln Center opened in 2010 with an idea nobody else in New York had yet: a Negroni Bar, a rotating set of the drink built to be ordered in the forty minutes before an opera. Fifteen years on it is still on the menu and still the right way to use the place. The classic is textbook; the Blonde is a white Negroni that will convert a martini drinker; the Fiorito puts a Brooklyn gin against Cappelletti and Cocchi Rosa; the Scotch Negroni is for people who think they do not like Negronis. Twenty-two dollars, the fountain outside, the Metropolitan Opera lit up across the plaza. Dinner is grand and expensive. The bar, from four, is the secret.

“Dedicated negroni and prosecco bars for the discerning drinker.”

— Time Out New York, 2020
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The Owl's Tail The Royal Negroni · Upper West Side

The Owl's Tail

215 W 75th St, New York, NY 10023

✦ The Royal Negroni — Earl Grey-infused gin, Luxardo Bitter Bianco and blanc vermouth — plus a Boulevardier on Method vermouth and the Bicycle Thief, a Campari-and-gin highball for the afternoon.

The Upper West Side has never been a cocktail neighbourhood, which is what makes this one matter: a husband-and-wife parlour on 75th Street run by Lawrence Bondulich, who built the wine bar Bin 71 a few blocks away, and Stephanie Bondulich, who bakes the desserts and sometimes sings. The bitters and syrups are made in-house, the room feels like somebody's living room, and during the pandemic they bottled Negronis in flasks for the neighbourhood to take home. The Royal Negroni is the house move — the bergamot of Earl Grey in the gin, a white bitter, blanc vermouth — a pale, tea-scented reading of the drink that suits a Sunday afternoon on this side of the park. Order it with the fried chicken, whatever this website says about food.

“Their Negroni plays that note perfectly, bittersweet, nostalgic, with a sweetness that sneaks up on you.”

— Gary Chaplin, 2025
  • HoursMon–Thu 16:30–01:00 · Fri 16:30–02:00 · Sat 11:30–02:00 · Sun 11:30–01:00
  • Phone+1 (646) 609-3906
Website Instagram
Bemelmans Bar The Carlyle · murals, piano, brass

Bemelmans Bar

The Carlyle · 35 E 76th St, New York, NY 10021

✦ Ludwig's Bunny Negroni — mezcal, Mancino chinato vermouth, Rinomato aperitivo and a green-chile liqueur — is the house's one Negroni; the martinis are the headline act.

In 1947 Ludwig Bemelmans, the man who drew Madeline, painted Central Park across every wall of the Carlyle's bar and was paid in eighteen months' lodging for his family. The murals are still there, under a ceiling of 24-karat gold leaf, and so is the piano, played every night of the year. It is not a Negroni bar; it is the last great hotel bar of old New York, and you go for the room, the cover charge and the sense that Bobby Short might walk in. The one Negroni on the list is a mezcal riff named for the artist's rabbit, and it is very good. Arrive before five-thirty to skip the cover, take a banquette, and stay for the trio anyway.

“Bemelmans is an NYC night out that everyone should experience at least once — even if it means toughing out an hour-long line to get in.”

— The Infatuation, 2025
  • HoursSun–Mon 12:00–00:00 · Tue–Thu 12:00–00:30 · Fri–Sat 12:00–01:00 · cover charge from 17:30
  • Phone+1 (212) 570-7120
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Sugar Monk House-made amari · Harlem

Sugar Monk

2292 Frederick Douglass Blvd (at W 123rd St), New York, NY 10027

✦ Every bitter, amaro and liqueur behind the bar is made in-house from foraged plants — which makes the Negroni here a drink you cannot get anywhere else, including its zero-proof Sbagliato.

Around the corner from the Apollo, behind a door with no sign, Ektoras Binikos — a Greek-born painter who became a bartender — and Simon Jutras run the most intellectually serious bar in Harlem. Its homage is to the Renaissance-era speakeasies of the neighbourhood; its method is stranger. An in-house forager brings in wild plants, and Binikos turns them into the amari, bitters and liqueurs that go into every drink, so a Negroni here is built on a red bitter nobody else owns. During the pandemic the bar batched Negronis to go; in 2025 it earned a pin in The Pinnacle Guide. Tuesday is jazz. Ask what the bitter is tonight and let him tell you.

“A lot of cocktail bars pretend to depth, uniqueness and complexity. Sugar Monk in Harlem actually is.”

— Robert Simonson, The Mix, 2022
  • HoursDaily from 17:00, late · Tue live jazz · check the site for the day's closing time
  • Phone+1 (917) 409-0028
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The Long Island Bar The city's Boulevardier · Atlantic Ave

The Long Island Bar

110 Atlantic Ave (at Henry St), Brooklyn, NY 11201

✦ Toby Cecchini's Boulevardier — two ryes, Campari and a house blend of Carpano Antica and Cinzano, served up with a lemon twist — has been on the menu since the 2013 reopening. There is also a White Negroni Sbagliato.

Ramon Montero opened this diner-bar on Atlantic Avenue in 1951; his daughter ran it for sixty years; it sat dark from 2007. In 2013 Toby Cecchini — the man who mixed the first Cosmopolitan at The Odeon in 1988 and then spent decades atoning for it — reopened the room with its neon, its Formica and its curved bar untouched, and put a Boulevardier on the short list. New York's Negroni has a whiskey cousin, and this is its reference pour: Old Overholt and Rittenhouse, Campari, a vermouth blend Cecchini mixes himself, stirred and served up. He once tried to take it off the menu. He tells the story better than we can, so ask.

“I tried to take it off the menu after six months and people screamed bloody murder.”

— Toby Cecchini, Punch, 2019
  • HoursTue–Fri 17:00–00:00 · Sat–Sun 14:00–00:00 · Mon closed
  • Phone+1 (718) 625-8908
Website
Clover Club Julie Reiner's institution · Cobble Hill

Clover Club

210 Smith St, Brooklyn, NY 11201

✦ The Kula Negroni — Fords gin, bianco vermouth, strawberry-infused Aperol and Campari — sits in the spirit-forward section; a zero-proof Finto Negroni keeps the designated driver honest.

Julie Reiner co-founded Pegu Club and Flatiron Lounge in Manhattan, then in 2008 crossed the river and built the bar Brooklyn had been waiting for: a long Victorian room on Smith Street with a fireplace, a back parlour, and a list that treats the Clover Club and the Negroni with equal seriousness. It has been on North America's 50 Best twice and it still feels like a neighbourhood bar on a Sunday afternoon. The Kula Negroni is Reiner's Hawaii showing — strawberry in the Aperol, bianco vermouth to lighten the frame — and it is one of the few fruit-tinted Negronis in the city that a purist will finish. In 2024 the team opened a rougher, spirit-forward saloon next door. Start here.

“Julie Reiner's iconic Smith Street bar is a staple of any New York night out.”

— North America's 50 Best Bars, 2023
  • HoursMon–Thu 16:00–00:00 · Fri 16:00–01:00 · Sat 12:00–01:00 · Sun 12:00–00:00
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Hotel Delmano The all-Brooklyn Negroni · Williamsburg

Hotel Delmano

82 Berry St (at N 9th St), Brooklyn, NY 11211

✦ The delmano negroni — Greenhook gin, Faccia Brutto and Forthave aperitivi, sherry vermouth, on the rocks — is built almost entirely from bottles made in Brooklyn.

Not a hotel. A candlelit corner room of cracked mirrors and marble, opened in 2008 by the owners of Union Pool as the first serious cocktail bar in Williamsburg, and still the one the neighbourhood's bartenders drink in on their night off. The house Negroni is the reason it leads our Variations page: the gin is distilled in Greenpoint, the two red bitters are macerated in Bed-Stuy and Red Hook, and only the sherry vermouth crosses an ocean. It is drier and earthier than a Campari Negroni — gentian and rhubarb rather than orange — and it tastes like a place. There is an oyster list, a natural wine list, and a garden. Come on a weeknight, sit at the bar, and order it twice.

“Though the unchecked growth in popularity of classic cocktails has spurred the opening of countless speakeasy-style bars in recent years, Hotel Delmano remains something special.”

— NYC Tourism + Conventions
  • HoursMon–Thu 16:00–01:00 · Fri 16:00–02:00 · Sat 14:00–02:00 · Sun 14:00–01:00
  • Phone+1 (718) 387-1945
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Travel Bar 102 days in oak · Carroll Gardens

Travel Bar

520 Court St, Brooklyn, NY 11231

✦ The Barrel-Aged Negroni — Listening Rock gin from upstate Ten Mile Distillery, Contratto bitter and Method vermouth, rested 102 days in a fifteen-gallon barrel — plus a Copenhagen, a Smoky and a Boulevardier.

Mike Vacheresse spent twenty years behind the bars of Bar Masa and Gotham Bar and Grill before opening this narrow room on Court Street in 2014 with Joe Sweigart, hanging his own travel photographs on the walls and building a whisky list that passed four hundred bottles. The barrel programme started by accident with a rhubarb Manhattan and, in his words, is how the bar survived the pandemic. Its masterpiece is a Negroni on a New York gin that spends a hundred and two days in oak: the edges sanded off, the Campari's bite turned to something like bitter caramel, the whole thing poured over one large cube. Seventeen dollars. The most generous serious bar in Brooklyn.

“Globetrotters who don't currently have the funds for an overseas trip can indulge their wanderlust at Travel Bar, a neighborhood watering hole in Carroll Gardens.”

— Time Out New York, 2017
  • HoursTue–Thu 17:00–00:00 · Fri–Sat 16:00–01:00 · Sun–Mon private events only
  • Phone+1 (718) 858-2509
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Bar Americano Aperitivo bar · Greenpoint

Bar Americano

180 Franklin St (at Java St), Brooklyn, NY 11222

✦ The house Negroni — gin, Campari and Mulassano Vermouth di Torino infused with orange peel, seasoned with a four-salt mineral saline — is pre-batched and stirred to order. Punch published the recipe.

A corner bar on Franklin Street that four friends — Conor Hynes, David Clarke, Steve Kämmerer and the chef Vicent Iborra — opened in 2022 in the image of the apéritif bars of Spain and northern Italy: fortified wines by the glass, a house vermouth with orange foam, an Americano in classico and bianco, and a Negroni that is quietly the best-engineered in Brooklyn. The vermouth is infused with a hundred grams of orange peel per litre; a saline of four mineral salts sharpens the finish the way sea air sharpens an aperitivo on the Ligurian coast. A basement flood shut the room for most of February 2026; it reopened, unchanged, at the end of the month. Go at four on a weekday and watch the light move across the marble.

“This little Greenpoint spot was inspired by the aperitivo bars of Spain and Northern Italy, but the menu doesn't always stay on theme.”

— The Infatuation, 2022
  • HoursMon–Wed 16:00–00:00 · Thu 16:00–01:00 · Fri 15:00–02:00 · Sat 12:00–02:00 · Sun 12:00–23:00
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Bar Madonna Italian-American, 50 Best · Williamsburg

Bar Madonna

367 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211

✦ Gemma's Sauce — Condesa gin, Salers, Cocchi Americano, strawberry and coconut — is a Negroni in a summer dress; the nine-dollar Negroni di Stagione changes with the season (mezcal and peach as we write).

Eric Madonna and Ray Rando met working the floor at Lupa, went on to The Modern and Carbone respectively, and in April 2024 opened the bar they had been describing to each other for years: the Italian-American living room, redrawn by a KidSuper painting and a soundtrack the record-producer half of the partnership picks himself. Two years later North America's 50 Best put it at number 36. The Negronis are riffs rather than the textbook — Gemma's Sauce, named for Eric's grandmother whose handwriting is the logo, brightens the bitter with strawberry and coconut and somehow stays a grown-up drink — and the aperitivo hour prices them like Rome. The smashed meatball parm is not on this website's beat. Order it anyway.

“This slick little city hangout nods to the intersection of Italian-American hospitality in clever, contemporary ways.”

— North America's 50 Best Bars, 2026
  • HoursMon–Thu 17:00–00:00 · Fri 17:00–02:00 · Sat 15:00–02:00 · Sun 15:00–00:00 · aperitivo hour Sun 15:00–17:00, Mon–Thu 17:00–19:00
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Camillo Ten Negronis, named for the Count · Flatbush

Camillo

1146 Nostrand Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11225

✦ A page of Negronis from $14 — the Classic on a house bitter blend, Artichoke, Plum, Gold, Mezcal, Rum Siciliano — and a "New York Negroni" trio built only from local distilleries: Greenhook gin with St. Agrestis Inferno, a Faccia Brutto fernet Negroni, and The Upstate.

A Roman restaurant in Prospect Lefferts Gardens named after Count Camillo Negroni, and it takes the name as an obligation. Michele Baldacci, a Florentine, opened it in 2017 with his partners from Locanda Vini e Olii in what had been a dive called Maximillian Bells; the pinsa romana is the food, but the menu opens with a manifesto — “The perfect cocktail. Three ingredients.” — and ten readings of it. The Classic uses a house blend of Campari, Fusetti and Contratto. The New York Negroni section is the most interesting page of Negroni writing in the city: three drinks in which every bottle is from the state, from Greenhook gin to a Faccia Brutto fernet. Its Bed-Stuy sibling, Bar Camillo, closed in the summer of 2026. This one is worth the ride on the 2 train.

“As a result of the restaurant's name, Camillo's supporting liquor program is heavy on the negronis.”

— Robert Sietsema, Eater NY, 2018
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Bar Enzo A Negroni section · Long Island City

Bar Enzo

10-15 43rd Ave, 2nd floor (side entrance, above Greats of Craft), Long Island City, NY 11101

✦ The Enzo Negroni — the flagship, on an amaro from the Sicilian city his grandparents left — heads a Negroni section of three, each on a different gin, written with Stephen Lewis of Attaboy.

Up a staircase papered with the pattern from his grandparents' living room, Joe Schinco — an Astoria native who runs the beer bar Greats of Craft downstairs with his wife Stella — opened this Italian-American cocktail room in September 2024 and named it for his grandfather Enzo, who came from Sicily to Queens in the sixties. It is the borough's one true Negroni bar. The list, developed over a year with Attaboy's Stephen Lewis, gives the drink its own section — three Negronis on three gins, the flagship built on an amaro from the family's home town — alongside spritzes, martinis and a Feast of the Seven Fishes every December. Four nights a week, twenty-one and over, a few minutes from Court Square. Queens has earned its pin.

“Need a negroni? You might need Bar Enzo.”

— The Infatuation, 2024
  • HoursThu 18:00–23:00 · Fri–Sat 18:00–00:00 · Sun 16:00–22:00 · Mon–Wed closed · 21+
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A geography of thirst

Where to drink, and why.

Four zones hold most of the city's Negroni weight. Each has its own tempo — and its own train.

Greenwich & West Village 10012 / 10014

The Negroni's heartland. Dante on MacDougal, the Florentine rigour of I Sodi and Bar Pisellino on Grove Street, and the newest arrival, a tavern built entirely around the drink. Walk it; nothing is more than ten minutes from anything.

East Village, LES & Nolita 10002 / 10003 / 10012

Where the craft revival happened. The Milk & Honey lineage on Eldridge Street, the bitter temple of Amor y Amargo on East 6th, and the Bowery's aperitivo counters. Come late; the good stools fill after ten.

Midtown & Uptown 10017 – 10075

The grand hotel bars and the Italian dining rooms: a build-your-own Negroni Bar by Lincoln Center, a tableside vermouth cart in NoMad, a barrel-aged pour behind a Midtown jazz bar, and the old brass of the Carlyle. Dress a little.

Brooklyn & Queens 11201 / 11211 / 11101

Across the river the Negroni gets local: an all-Brooklyn build in Williamsburg, a 102-day barrel in Carroll Gardens, the city's reference Boulevardier on Atlantic Avenue, and in Long Island City a bar with a whole section for it.

A map by subway

Three boroughs, one red thread.

The Manhattan addresses cluster downtown within a long walk of each other; the Brooklyn and Queens pins are one or two stops over the river. Make a night of a neighborhood, not of the map.

Three readings of the same glass

The Negroni, the New York way.

New York did not invent the Negroni, but it gave the drink its American cousin, its most famous modern bar, and now a version built entirely from bottles made in Brooklyn. Three readings of the glass.

The local proposition

The Brooklyn Negroni

Poured as the "delmano negroni" at Hotel Delmano · 82 Berry St, Williamsburg

  • 30 ml Greenhook Ginsmiths gin — distilled in Greenpoint
  • 30 ml Faccia Brutto Aperitivo and Forthave Aperitivo — two Brooklyn-made bitters in place of Campari
  • 30 ml sherry vermouth — in place of sweet vermouth
  • · stirred, served on the rocks

Brooklyn now distils its own gin (Greenhook, New York Distilling), macerates its own red bitters (Faccia Brutto, Forthave, St. Agrestis) and even bottles a ready-made Negroni. Hotel Delmano's house pour is the clearest expression of that: every bottle but the sherry vermouth is made a few subway stops away, and the gentian-and-rhubarb bitterness of the local aperitivi is drier and earthier than Campari's. If a "New York Negroni" exists, it is this one.

The Classic

Any address on this list, asked for politely.

  • 30 ml London Dry gin
  • 30 ml sweet (red) vermouth
  • 30 ml Campari
  • · stirred, big rock, orange peel

Equal parts. Always. The 1:1:1 ratio is the contract; the Milk & Honey school stirs it over hand-cut ice and expresses the peel like a benediction. Dante pours it from a tap; I Sodi pours it the way Florence does. Neither will break the ratio without asking.

The Boulevardier

Toby Cecchini's build · The Long Island Bar, 110 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn

  • 30 ml rye whiskey — half Old Overholt, half Rittenhouse 100
  • 30 ml Campari
  • 30 ml sweet vermouth — a house blend of Carpano Antica and Cinzano Rosso
  • · stirred, served up in a coupe, lemon twist

The Negroni's American cousin — whiskey in place of gin — was born in 1920s Paris for an expatriate New Yorker, and it came home. Cecchini has poured this build since the Long Island Bar reopened in 2013; he tried to take it off the menu once and, in his words, "people screamed bloody murder." Order it up, with the lemon, and understand why.

From Florence to MacDougal Street

A brief, biased history.

1915

Caffè Dante opens on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, one of the Italian cafés where Campari and vermouth first take up residence behind a New York counter. Across the city, Little Italy's espresso bars pour the aperitivo hour the way the old country did. The drink they are waiting for does not exist yet.

1919

Florence, Caffè Casoni. Count Camillo Negroni, back from cowboy adventures in the American West, asks barman Fosco Scarselli to stiffen his Americano — gin in place of soda. The drink takes the count's name. Eight years later in Paris, Harry's New York Bar swaps the gin for bourbon for a New Yorker named Erskine Gwynne, and the Boulevardier is born.

Today

1999: Sasha Petraske opens Milk & Honey and New York relearns the stirred classic. 2013: Negroni Week begins, and the city becomes its capital. 2015: Caffè Dante is reborn as Dante, with Negronis on tap; in 2019 it is named the World's Best Bar. 2018: Campari moves its American headquarters to New York. Brooklyn starts distilling its own gin and macerating its own bitters. The red drink has never had a better city.