The Best Cocktail Bars In San Diego

San Diego has seen an explosion of amazing cocktail bars over the last few years, possibly a sign of a city growing up and embracing its middle age. Or maybe cocktail bars are just popular these days. Either way, the citizens of the city are the winners here.

A good cocktail bar will be dimly lit, cozy, friendly, and preferably go all out with intricate designs that don’t match any specific theme, but make you feel like it all works anyway. It will have something for everyone – for those who do not want to taste any liquor and pretend they are drinking Capri Sun to those who want to get slapped in the face by the spirit.

Below we have listed out the best cocktail bars in San Diego.

THE COCKTAIL BARS

La Nacional Chula Vista

La Nacional in Chula Vista is a local cantina serving a small menu of Mexican dishes, such as birria, tacos, and chilaquiles, but the highlight at La Nacional are the cocktails. Indeed, La Nacional serves the best cocktails in all of Chula Vista – with a tequila and mezcal focused menu. Located right in the heart of Chula on Third Ave, this place transitions from restaurant to a dancing bar scene every weekend night, typically with live music on tap. They stay open late on weekends unlike most places in Chula, so take advantage.

Swan Bar In North Park

Swan Bar in North Park is a true hidden gem. It is a moody cocktail bar with some of the friendliest bartenders around. It has a tiny menu, but serves low key one of the best burgers in San Diego. In fact, Swan Bar is low key in every aspect – it even sits hidden behind a wood paneled wall with only a small neon sign outside to guide the way in.

Happy Medium

Happy Medium in North Park is part cocktail bar, part lunch spot. Outdoorsy and breezy – they have cocktails called Porch Pounders that are a bit too easy down the hatch. It’s a solid go to for lunch and a drink or just post up at the bar and watch a Padres game.

Mothership

Mothership is one of the best tiki bars in San Diego because you don’t even know it is a tiki bar. You might even call it a sneaky bar. Sniki bar. Anyway. Mothership, located in South Park, is a space-themed bar and restaurant that truly goes all out with the experience.

Polite Provisions

Polite Provisions in North Park is a decorative and ornate cocktail bar that has tasteful flourishes everywhere you look – including in the cocktails themselves. The bar feels like a throwback to the Art Noveau days of the early 1900s with their intricate level of detail in everything from the decor to the menu to the drinks themselves.

Mabel’s Gone Fishing

Mabel’s Gone Fishing is a Spanish influenced restaurant in the heart of North Park that seems to get everything just about right. The space is cozy but not cramped. The cocktails are perfectly well balanced. The food is beautifully crafted without being pretentious and unapproachable. And the service is knowledgeable without being, well… pretentious and unapproachable. Mabel’s is a great neighborhood spot for North Park and a destination restaurant in San Diego itself.

False Idol

False Idol is the tiki bar speakeasy that started all tiki bar speakeasies in San Diego. The OG if you will. Set up in the corner of Craft and Commerce, follow the sound of booming drums as you descend from the bustling bar into the dim and neon-lit dungeon of False Idol.

Realm of the 52 Remedies

Realm of the 52 Remedies is a speakeasy bar in Convoy District, hidden within a large beer bar called Common Theory. The Realm, as one might call it, feels a world away from the loud and spacious pub it sits within. When you enter Realm of the 52 Remedies you start in a brightly lit, Matrix-like apothecary where a hostess gives you directions on what to expect on your journey, like Morpheus giving Neo a choice of pills. You then are led through a door where you follow a maze before arriving into the space itself. Inside the Realm you’ll find a large lounging space and a bar, all decorated with Chinese flare (the name of the speakeasy comes from Recipes for 52 Ailments, an ancient Chinese medical text). The whole experience is intricately laid out and a lot of fun to experience.