On the Importance of Sequencing Bars

When visiting multiple cocktail bars in an evening, the order in which you visit them can be crucial.

I spent five nights in London a couple of weeks ago.

Before heading over, I had prepared a long list of bars I hoped to visit, more than 30 in total. I knew it was an overly ambitious plan: Even if I were to have made it to, say, half of them, any way you math it, it would have involved visiting several bars each evening.

This is a pretty normal situation for those who check out bars for personal reasons or professional ones and who don’t have infinite time in which to do so. (Note that I’m not talking about “bar crawls” here, in which quantity—of drinks and/or bars—preempts quality as the top priority. That’s a different thing altogether.)

On previous trips elsewhere, I’ve established that, for me, visiting three or four bars in a night is a comfortable pace if I’m really trying to cover some ground; other drinkers may prefer more or fewer. I recently talked with someone who, during his three nights in London, visited 36 bars. (This is insane even by my standards, but it’s a real example of how some people go about it.)

Compounding my problem was that my flight was delayed and had arrived too late for me to go out on my first night in town. I now had one less evening in which to check anything off that long, long list. I had to recalculate how to maximize my remaining evenings.

At the first place I went to on my first full evening in London, my bartender asked where else I would be heading while in town. I laughed. “I’ve got a huge whole list,” I told him. “Tonight, I’ll be hitting up Happiness Forgets after this, and then I’ll check out [A Beloved Bar That’s on All the Lists, but Where the Drinks Aren’t Actually Good].”

(The following conversation is paraphrased, since I don’t recall our exact wording.)

“Make [ABBTALWFDAAG[ your last stop of the night, for sure,” he said. “It has great vibes, but the drinks are mid, at best.”

“Yeah, I’d heard that, and was already planning for it to be my final bar tonight,” I said. “I wanted to come here first, while my palate’s fresh, to truly appreciate the nuances of the drinks. And then Happiness Forgets for bolder flavors that probably aren’t as precise. Then [ABBTALSFDAAG], because by that point who cares about the quality of the drinks; the final bar of the night is always more about vibes.

“To me,” I continued, “it’s just as important to sequence your bar visits properly as it is to sequence your cocktails at a bar. It’s every bit as crucial.”

“Exactly!” he said. “It’s so important! I wish everyone thought that way. Spread the word!”

So I am.

On some level, you already know what I’m talking about, even if not consciously. Many bar menus are laid out with the lightest or most refreshing, low-ABV cocktails at the top of the menu and the most spirit-forward ones at the bottom; it’s a not-too-subtle suggestion regarding the order in which the drinks you choose would be best consumed. That’s what I’m talking about when I say sequencing your drinks.

Or if you’ve ever looked at a drink menu and thought “I’d love to try that cocktail but it seems too heavy and/or dessert-like; I should probably save it to be my final drink of the night,” that’s another example.

I, personally, being a bit of an overthinker, tend to take it a step further. As I’m evaluating a drinks menu, I’m often thinking to myself “Okay, these are the three drinks I’d like to try while I’m here, and I should probably have them in this particular order, lightest to most intense.” Sometimes I even go as far as asking the bartender “If I’m getting both this cocktail and this other one, which would you recommend having first?”

Sequencing bars, when visiting several in the same evening, is basically the same thing: Choosing the progression that will allow you to optimally enjoy each one.

For me, ideally that means hitting up a bar with a science-focused cocktail program and/or one that offers cocktails with precise or delicate flavors as my first spot of the night while my palate has maximum perceptiveness, then moving on to someplace with drinks that feature bolder flavors, and then finishing somewhere that’s perhaps slightly less about drink quality and more about how I want to feel as I wrap up my night.

And, I mean, look: It’s absolutely not going to ruin your night if you don’t do things this way. But it does mean that you might not be experiencing the strengths of the bars you visit as optimally as you otherwise might with a little advance planning.

The way I planned that first full evening in London turned out to be perfect. (I ended up adding a stop when I crashed a drink-brand party held at the first bar’s sister space up the road; I regret nothing.)

Another example from the same trip: Tayer (the more sophisticated back-room space of Tayer + Elementary) first, with its subtle and nuanced cocktails, then Seed Library, a Mr. Lyan bar with equally precise but much bolder-flavored drinks, to A Bar with Shapes for a Name (I’d been there earlier in the trip and wanted to revisit it for just one drink; ideally I would have done that before Seed Library, but oh well, it was an impromptu stop), then ending the night at 69 Colebrooke Row, with its “Prairie Oyster” bloody mary shots and live music.

Or another one: Starting the night at Kwant and its unusual-yet-precise flavors; moving on to Soma, which offers drinks inspired by Indian cuisine; and then to Scarfes Bar, an elegant but lively hotel bar with great cocktails, live music, and vibes aplenty.

I’m currently planning my evenings for another upcoming trip and figuring out bar visits and timing. This is my thought process for calculating the order in which I’ll be hitting up multiple spots on a given evening—and how you can do the same.

First, choose which bars you want to visit on a given evening—or, if you’re traveling and on limited time, at least get a list going of places you’d like to check out at some point during your trip, and narrow it down from there, grouping them in whichever way makes most sense. In a big city like NYC or London, I tend to group them geographically so as not to waste more time in transportation than I need to. If possible, try to include a range of types or styles each night. (Three tiki-style bars in a single night would likely prove overwhelming, for example.)

Next, do some basic research on each bar in advance. What are the drinks like? What’s the general vibe? Also crucial: Are there specific days or hours when it’s likely to be unpleasantly busy/crowded and thus best avoided then? Google Maps, though fallible, is sometimes helpful with this. (I personally dislike visiting bars when they’re crowded; I recognize opinions on this will differ.) Also: Do any offer food, or will you need to work dinner (or add a restaurant bar) into your evening’s plans?

After that, it’s time to start planning.

First up should be the bar with the most advanced, precisely crafted drinks—the bar for which you want your palate to be most on-point for tasting.

Then, perhaps plan to take a break and get some dinner, or at least order some substantial snacks at your next stop. Follow it up with a place offering bolder flavors or creations that are maybe a little less refined than at the first stop. This is when I’d go for something tropical, say, or a place often described as “a neighborhood bar with great drinks.” Repeat as your liver allows.

Plan to end your night at a place with the late-night vibes you prefer. If you’re like me, you might look for something with an elegant atmosphere and live music. Others might want something divey for a beer and a shot where everyone’s chatting, or somewhere dark and broody for a whiskey nightcap. At this point in the night, good drinks are a bonus; it’s more about the mood in which the bar sends you off into the night.

Again, these are not hard-and-fast rules, and there are exceptions aplenty. Is day-drinking on the schedule? Perhaps then you’ll want to start somewhere with a lovely sun-soaked patio and some spritzes or session beers. Is a rooftop bar on your list? It might be worth fighting the crowds at a prime evening time for a sunset-view seat. Does one spot open notably earlier or later than the others? That’ll play into your decision-making as well.

I’ll be honest: I hadn’t actually thought about all of this consciously until I made my offhand assertion on the matter while chatting with that bartender in London. It’s only in the past couple of weeks that I’ve given actual thought to my unconscious patterns and assumptions about it all. My thoughts on this may well continue to evolve.

But thinking back over the past decade or so, it becomes obvious to me that it’s kind of how I’ve always done things. I mean, hell, it occurs to me just now that for a couple of years, a while back, my usual more-or-less weekly trail through the East Village had me visiting Pouring Ribbons, Amor y Amargo, and Holiday Cocktail Lounge, in that order, and if that’s not a fair example of what I’m talking about, I don’t know what would be.

Maybe a similar pattern is intuitive to you, too! Or maybe you think this is all pretentious and insufferable, and you want to be left to drink your cocktails at whatever places in whichever order makes sense to you by some different standard—starting at the bar farthest from your hotel and working your way back geographically, for instance. That’s fine!

I’ll keep thinking about it, though, and I encourage you to do so as well—figuring out and articulating to yourself your own thought processes and patterns—and, hell, let’s discuss it over a drink sometime.