2025 North America’s 50 Best Bars – Predictions

As we approach the announcement of North America’s 50 Best Bars, I’ve had a few people comment on one of my old Reddit posts about my tracking spreadsheet so I thought I’d post some predictions I have for this year. Basing predictions on past global trends is flawed because it’s hard to account for new bars (certainly threw me for a loop when Bar Leone premiered at #2 on The World’s 50 Best Bars last October!), but there’s still some interesting info to be found.

So my predictions are based on my All Award Tracker which currently contains the following award info:

Obviously, some of these don’t impact the North American awards – I only listed them because I like to show off. I’ve given every rank, nomination, and win a score, and weighted the scores based on factors like recency and perceived impact of the award.

The North American 50 Best Bars started in 2022 and two weeks ago they announced the inaugural expanded list of 51-100.

My data tells me that the top five won’t change too much.

1. Handshake Speakeasy (also a shoe-in for the first “Legend of the List” award)
2. Double Chicken Please
3. Licoreria Limantour
4. Overstory
5. Cafe la Trova

These predictions are based on past performance globally, but my gut says we may see some upsets here. User pgm123 on Reddit did a great analysis of which bars dropped from 2024 Top 50 into 51-100, leaving at least six open spots for new entries onto the list. I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about Clemente Bar at 11 Madison Park in New York so I think they will likely premiere in the top 25. Several people have asked me about Schmuck, but I think their February opening was too late for this round – watch for them at October’s World’s 50 Best Bars ceremony.

There are also some cool regional things happening in the 51-100 list with seven cities entering the list for the first time!

Fingers crossed this leads to more and more appearances by bars in overlooked markets. (I’m hoping the new North America’s 50 Best Restaurants also helps with this.)

None of this is based on personal opinion, just data and a hunch. I have nothing to do with any of these awards, I’m just a nerd with a spreadsheet.

I’ll be back to see how this all holds up after the announcement!