Taipei doesn’t shout its nightlife from the rooftops. It murmurs it through nondescript alleys, behind unmarked doors, and under the soft glow of paper lanterns. The city’s bar culture—equal parts cinematic, obsessive, and deeply personal—feels less like a scene and more like a constellation, drawn across rooftops and basements, hotel towers and impossible-to-Google courtyards.
And yet, for all its secrecy, Taipei welcomes the curious. Ask the right questions, take the right wrong turn, and you might find yourself sipping a clarified tomato umami highball while seated on a velvet banquette beneath a chandelier made from a disassembled grand piano. Or maybe it’s a bartender in a three-piece suit pulling you a pint of draft cocktail with the precision of a surgeon.
This list is not a taxonomy. It’s a field guide. A love letter. A challenge, maybe.
Here are the best bars in Taipei—some for cocktails, some for people-watching, all for the memory.
The Best Bars in Taipei
Alchemy Speakeasy Bar
You don’t find Alchemy so much as you solve it. Hidden behind a bookcase inside Marquee, this speakeasy-style haunt offers one of the most cinematic entrances in Taipei. Inside, you’re greeted by wood-paneled intimacy, jazz on vinyl, and bartenders who look like they were pulled from a noir film’s central casting.
The menu leans heavily into classic cocktails—no smoke machines, no edible helium balloons—just perfectly stirred Negronis and deeply meditative Manhattans. It’s a time capsule of pre-Instagram bartending: quiet, precise, and designed for lingering.
Antique Bar 1900
Imagine sipping absinthe while seated in what feels like a Parisian salon from the turn of the century. Antique Bar 1900 isn’t themed—it’s curated. Every lamp, chair, and crystal decanter has a story, and the bartenders are fluent in each one.
The drinks echo the setting: pre-Prohibition classics, absinthe drips, and forgotten French liqueurs made modern. The clientele skews a little older, more literary. It’s a place where conversation has room to stretch out, and time itself seems to get a little tipsy.
Bar Mood
If Taipei’s cocktail scene has a laboratory-meets-lounge flagship, Bar Mood is it. Led by renowned mixologist Nick Wu, this sleek, atmospheric bar emphasizes local ingredients—fermented teas, house-aged soy sauce, Taiwanese herbs—and assembles them with haute cuisine-level focus.
Drinks are plated as much as poured. The Formosa Negroni uses smoked plum and ma qao to twist the classic into something that reads like a travelogue of Taiwan in a glass. A must for anyone who thinks they’ve seen it all.
Bar Otani
Bar Otani is what happens when Japanese bartending philosophy lands in Taipei and gets poetic. The room is spare, monastic—stone counters, dark wood, single-source lighting. The bartender’s performance is deliberate, reverent.
You don’t come here for wild inventions. You come here to experience a martini as meditation. Ice is carved by hand. Citrus is expressed with millimeter-level accuracy. There is jazz, but softly. A perfect place for two-person nights or solo revelations.
Draft Land
The disruptor. The inventor. Draft Land tore up the cocktail rulebook and replaced it with a tap list. Here, all the cocktails are pre-batched, chilled, and poured like beers—but don’t mistake this for laziness. It’s precision scaled up.
Founded by the legendary Angus Zou, Draft Land is about accessibility without compromise. The Tea Collins and Maple Oolong Highball are crowd favorites, balancing complexity with easy-drinking charm. This is the kind of place you end up spending hours in without noticing the time or the crowd shifting around you.
HiBoRu
One of Taipei’s hidden gems, HiBoRu is a Japanese whisky bar that doubles as a kind of spiritual retreat for lovers of all things malted, peated, or aged in sherry casks. Seating is limited, the lighting is soft, and the whisky list reads like a collector’s private catalog.
Order something rare, then let the bartender pair it with a dish or small pour of something adjacent and enlightening. This is where connoisseurs go to shut up and sip.
Indulge Experimental Bistro
Named one of Asia’s 50 Best Bars for good reason, Indulge isn’t just a bar—it’s an opera. Helmed by Aki Wang, this bar blurs the line between mixology and molecular gastronomy. Every drink is an expression of terroir, seasonality, and an almost academic curiosity.
The Taiwanese Tea Ceremony comes in three stages, each playing off different temperatures and textures. You don’t come here to get drunk. You come here to remember that alcohol, at its best, is a kind of art.
Inge’s Bar
High above the city, inside the Taipei Marriott, Inge’s Bar has rooftop energy with lounge bar polish. The views are spectacular—the 101 looming like a neon obelisk—but the drinks don’t phone it in.
Expect elevated classics and well-executed originals that lean toward the citrus-forward and aromatic. It’s the ideal stop for sunset drinks or a low-key date that just so happens to involve sweeping skyline views.
Lab
If Draft Land is the populist innovator, Lab is the boutique mad scientist. This compact, white-tiled space feels like a sterile operating room where flavor is the patient. Cocktails here are high-concept but never cold. Think: miso-infused mezcal or bitters made from burnt toast.
The bartenders love to talk technique—centrifuges, sonic aging, milk-washing. But the drinks always come first. Lab is experimental, yes, but with heart.
Ounce
Taipei’s original speakeasy. Ounce is the stuff of legend—a bar hidden behind a fake wall inside a café. No menu. Just tell the bartender what you like, and watch the magic unfold.
This no-frills, no-pretense approach makes Ounce a kind of bartender’s church. There’s reverence in the way the staff moves, like they’re tuning into the cosmic frequency of your palate. It’s the kind of place where the best drink of your life just sort of… happens.
The Public House
Equal parts cocktail bar and social experiment, The Public House is Taipei’s stylish answer to the gastropub. The décor is industrial-chic, the crowd young and very online, and the drinks are playful without being precious.
Signature cocktails are backed by a strong whisky and beer list. The vibe splits the difference between Brooklyn and Shibuya—hip, but never try-hard.
Room by Le Kief
You don’t walk into Room. You submit to it. A reservation-only experience, Room by Le Kief blends cocktail theater, molecular mixology, and high-concept fine dining into something like a sensory baptism.
Set menus change seasonally and often include edible fogs, crystalized herbs, or drinks paired with sound design. It’s wild. It’s wonderful. It’s not for everyone—but it wasn’t meant to be.
Staff Only Club
This bar lives in the liminal space between cocktail lounge and private club. The interiors are maximalist: velvet, brass, mirrors, and a kind of Gatsby-on-acid aesthetic that makes every visit feel like a costume party where the theme is “decadence.”
But beneath the flash is serious talent. The drink list is robust, global, and unapologetically luxurious. Think truffle-infused spirits and $40 martinis. Come dressed accordingly.
To Infinity and Beyond
It’s a name that sounds like a Pixar pun, but To Infinity and Beyond is one of Taipei’s most future-forward bars. LED lighting, immersive projection mapping, and a rotating menu of cocktails themed around sci-fi, mythology, or even astrology.
The drinks are precise, often whimsical, and occasionally a little cerebral. Think clarified peach sake spritzes, or cocktails that come with a scent capsule you break just before the first sip. The future, it turns out, is delicious.
Under Lab
Under Lab exists in the subterranean twin universe of Lab, and it feels like stepping into a tech-noir dreamscape. There’s heavy metal. There’s minimalist Brutalist furniture. There’s a drink menu that reads like a string of code and occasionally tastes like nostalgia dialed through an AI.
It’s not for everyone—but it wasn’t built for everyone. Under Lab is where you go when you want to drink ideas, not just cocktails.
Wu (Nothingness)
Wu means “nothingness,” and stepping inside feels like crossing into another plane. This is zen minimalism distilled into cocktail culture. The bar is nearly silent. Lighting is ambient. The drinks are as simple as they are profound—each one limited to just a few ingredients, executed with absolute mastery.
Think of it as the anti-cocktail bar. Or maybe the ultimate one. The absence of distraction reveals the soul of the spirit. It’s pure. It’s strange. It’s unforgettable.
Final Sip: Taipei as a Liquid Landscape
What unites these 17 bars isn’t a style or trend. It’s a sense of care. Taipei’s best bars aren’t about chasing global cocktail fads—they’re about translation. Translating Taiwanese flavors into liquid form. Translating the old into something new. Translating the night into a kind of poem, poured over ice.
If you drink here, drink slowly. Ask questions. Lose track of time. The best bar in Taipei isn’t one place—it’s the city itself, whispering through its bartenders, one drink at a time.
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