The Best Date Night Bars In San Diego

Love is in the air and you want to find a good date night bar in San Diego. Or maybe you just met someone online and you need to find a place to get a drink rather than sit down to a full on dinner with chewing and all. Or maybe you already ate packaged ramen at home and you look over at your partner and realize if you don’t do something now the spark might well and truly flame out.

Well, below are date night bars in San Diego that are a bit more romantic and fit for couples rather than loud dive bars where you have to scream over twenty people to hear yourself think. Some of them require reservations, such as the speakeasies, but most of these bars are great for a casual walk up date night drink.

The Date Night Bars

Clos Wine Shop

Clos Wine Shop is lovely, locally owned wine shop in University Heights that offers small batch, low-intervention wines sourced from high quality domestic and international wineries, focusing on more organic and low intervention wines that are not loaded with excessive additives. The staff does a helpful job describing their wines with inspiring, hand-written tags placed on the bottles, so you don’t have to ask and then nod in pretend appreciation when they start talking about flavors like “pencil shavings”. They also serve a small menu – mostly gourmet tinned fish, like octopus in a Galician sauce or a smoked sardine pate, as well as charcuterie boards. Most of their items are also available to go so you can bring them home and create your own indulgent meal or take them to the park for a picnic.

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.

We Olive and Wine Bar La Jolla

We Olive and Wine Bar is a wine and olive shop in front with a cozy restaurant and wine bar in back. This quaint establishment offers a lovely setting for any date night or intimate gathering and is one of the secret best spots to watch sunset in La Jolla. The prized seats are on the rear balcony, bar stools and a couple of tables that face west out to the expansive Pacific Ocean.

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.

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.

M Winehouse in Little Italy

M Winehouse has a tiny front porch where you can have a glass of wine and feel like you are sitting in the 19th century while you watch the 21st century pass by on the sidewalk. There is also an old wooden bar inside with seating options, as well as a cozy upstairs with tables. It feels as though every room should be lit by candlelight. It is a nice alternative to the sleek and trendy establishments that tend to pop up in Little Italy and all over the rest of San Diego.

Forbidden Cove Speakeasy

Forbidden Cove is a speakeasy tiki bar in Convoy district, located on a seven lane thoroughfare, amidst office buildings and car lots, inside of Kilowatt Brewing, behind a stack of barrels and a freezer door near the entrance. And Forbidden Cove is a lot of fun.

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.