I just found this thread, and feel compelled to contribute. It's been a few years since I went to the Opera Bar, but that's okay, because it's been a few years since that comment was posted. In my opinion the Opera Bar is a fairly ordinary bar which just happens to be plonked in an extremely spectacular location. The drinks are nothing special, the decor is nothing special, but there it is, plonked between the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House with a view of both. If you're in Sydney for one night only, then that's a fantastic place to grab a drink and watch the sun set. If you're a Sydneysider, and you've seen the view a hundred thousand times before, you'll shrug and sip your overpriced cocktail.

The best bars, though, are the ones were you personally had a fantastic time. These best-bars lists are probably doomed to failure, because if I go to someone else's favourite bar then I'll never experience it in the same way they did on that particular night when they were in a good mood, with good company, and good things happened, and you wound up just the right level of drunk in order to solidify excellent memories in your mind. To me, it'll just be a bar. Trying to persuade someone else that your favourite bar is actually the greatest bar in the world is like trying to persuade someone else that your child is the greatest -- to you they are, but to someone else it's just another freaking kid. (Or so I assume -- I'm more of an expert on bars than I am on children). In this respect they are unlike restaurants; you'll probably never have a memorably great meal in a bad restaurant, but you can easily have a great time in what is objectively a bad bar.

So I could tell you about my own favourite bars (Baxter and Palmer in Sydney, The Daq Shack in Nassau, Romolo 13 and The Bamboo Hut and Bow Bow in San Francisco, Mooserwirt in St Anton, XS in Las Vegas, and that awesome place whose name I don't remember in Portland) but you'll only be disappointed in all of those when you go there (indeed, Bow Bow was rated as one of the ten worst bars in America by at least one publication ).

The best bar is the serendipitous bar, the one you don't even know exists until you go there, but which turns out to greet you with pleasant surprise after pleasant surprise. Ignore my favourites list, and go find your own darn bar!