Jorgen

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!

Marathon Man

I'm going to switch this to include brewpubs and breweries and add the Prohibition Pig in Waterbury, VT.

This area is home to many things, such as the Ben & Jerry's Factory, Stowe Mountain Resort (if you like icecream and great skiing) and of course, The Cannery, which is where the Alchemist makes the famed and hard to obtain hoppy Heady Topper IPA. This canned sensation is only available in select regions and most stores have very limited quantities. Even the tiny brewery itself has limits on how many of the nearly $4 a can beers you can purchase.

And then, 45 mins north through windy dirt roads of rural VT, one can discover Hill Farmstead, which, according to http://www.ratebeer.com/ and http://beeradvocate.com/, has been named one of the best breweries in the world.

ProPig has em all - including other local brews such as Lawsons and Maine's Alligash, another New England favorite. There are other area pubs which I recommend but I'll list em some other time or something.

In fact I am attending the FTU Do in DC on 26-28 April (this coming weekend) and I plan to put 3-4 4packs of Heady Topper in my luggage. I would LOVE to find someone from the west coast who is attending that event and can bring me an equal amount of Pliny The Elder. PM me if interested cuz just like with the VT beers being not available in the West, I cant get that one in the East.

MM

mosburger

Thank you indeed, sounds very interesting actually. So it can be called a pub after all...

I don't mind bitters at all, so looking forward to visiting. Cheers!

braslvr

Reading the responses in this thread, it is becoming clearer why the type of bar I love is so incredibly hard to find anymore. They all went out of business. Except in Bangkok - for now.