The case for another 50 Best List: The 50 Best Hotel Bars
When The 50 Best Bars 2026 was revealed here in Milano on 7 October, the city had its own headline: Moebius Milano at No. 2 and The Best Bar in Europe. Read further down the list, though, and another story appears. Only five of the fifty bars are inside five-star hotels. That raises a question worth asking out loud: should hotel bars get a ranking of their own? And if so, does the drinks world really have room for yet another list? Before getting to that, here is who runs the seven, and what makes each one work.
Connaught Bar, London (No. 8)
The highest-ranked hotel bar on the list remains the benchmark. Agostino Perrone has been Director of Mixology at The Connaught in Mayfair since 2008. His right hand, Pisa-born Giorgio Bargiani, joined in 2014 as a barback and rose to Assistant Director of Mixology; in June he won the Altos Bartenders' Bartender Award at the first Europe's 50 Best Bars. The concept has never needed reinventing: the martini trolley rolls to your table and each drink is finished with house essences such as bergamot, myrtle and cardamom. Brexit or not, the team is still largely Italian, and it still delivers the best hospitality in London.
Argo, Hong Kong (No. 25)
Since November 2025 Argo has been led by Lyon-born Beverage Manager Jonathan Gabbay. His Argo Exploration menu moves away from lab-driven drinks toward collaborations with Hong Kong makers, from a punch built with a historic local coffee and tea house to a garnish drawn by a Wan Chai tattoo artist. In July Argo was named Best International Hotel Bar at the Spirited Awards.
BKK Social Club, Bangkok (No. 30)
One of the big climbers this year, up 19 places. Philip Bischoff, Beverage Manager and Four Seasons' beverage ambassador for Asia-Pacific, came over from Manhattan in Singapore and opened the bar in December 2020. The room is pure Latin American glamour on the Chao Phraya, and the current menu pays tribute to the places, people and parties of Mexico City.
Mimi Kakushi, Dubai (No. 42)
At Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach, this Rikas Group restaurant-bar takes its name from a 1920s Osaka hairstyle and leans fully into the jazz-age theme. Bar Manager Manja Stankovic's menu draws on the films of silent-era star Sessue Hayakawa, with drinks presented on movie reels. The signature is the Kori Kakushi Martini: ume-infused gin and a touch of vermouth, bottled and frozen inside a block of ice, then carved out at the table. It holds on to its title as The Best Bar in the Middle East.
Virtù, Tokyo (No. 48)
Thirty-nine floors above Otemachi, Virtù is an Art Deco room built on a Paris-meets-Tokyo idea, pairing vintage French spirits and aperitifs with Japanese whisky and seasonal ingredients. Head Bartender Keith Motsi, from Leeds, opened Equis at Four Seasons Beijing and ran Charles H. in Seoul, where he was named Bartenders' Bartender at Asia's 50 Best Bars 2022. This year Virtù was also a top-four finalist for Best International Hotel Bar at the Spirited Awards.
One List Too Many?
Five out of fifty, four from one hotel group. It is no surprise that some in the trade are asking whether luxury hotel bars deserve their own ranking. The harder question is whether anyone wants another list at all.
The case for is easy to make. Hotel bars play a different game, with corporate budgets and PR machines behind them and long opening hours. A dedicated list could recognise the many excellent ones missing from The 50 Best Bars. A few notables that come to mind: Atrium Bar at Four Seasons Firenze, Wing Lei Bar at Wynn Palace Macau, the Bulgari Bars in Milano, Rome and Tokyo, Darkside at Rosewood Hong Kong, Botanicum Bar at Huus Quell Gonten, Bar Hemingway at the Ritz Paris, Artesian at The Langham, London, Dukes Bar in London, Origin Bar at Shangri-La Singapore, Maiga! Bar at TA'AKTANA in Labuan Bajo, Ambar at Mandapa in Ubud, The Hudson Rooms at Capella Hanoi, the Lobby Bar at EDITION Lake Como, The Portrait Bar at The Fifth Avenue Hotel NY, Punch Room at Tokyo EDITION Ginza, the Library Bar at Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, Lennon's at Rosewood Bangkok and Charles H. at Four Seasons Seoul. The format already exists elsewhere too: Tales of the Cocktail has its Best International Hotel Bar award, Forbes Travel Guide has its Star Bars, and 50 Best itself already ranks hotels with The World's 50 Best Hotels.
The case against is just as strong, and list fatigue is a big part of it. In a few years 50 Best has gone from one bar ranking to a world list, a 51 to 100 extension and three regional editions, each with its own sponsored awards. Every new list adds another ceremony, another round of voting and another set of titles, and each one dilutes the weight of the last. Then there is the principle: the list has always prided itself on putting grand hotel bars side by side with speakeasies and dive bars, and the Connaught's two years at No. 1 (2020 and 2021) prove hotel bars can win head-on. A separate ranking risks becoming a consolation prize, quietly pushing hotel bars out of the main conversation.
My feeling is that both can be true. The main list should stay open to everyone, and nobody needs a fourth regional edition. But a ranking that cuts across regions and looks only at hotels would answer a different question from the ones already being asked, and it would shine a light on a category that is producing some of the best hospitality in the world.
Lorenzo vs Lorenzo: Bar Leone, Moebius Milano and The 50 Best Bars 2026
Lorenzo Querci (Moebius) and Lorenzo Antinori (Bar Leone) at The 50 Best Bars ceremony in Milano
Two Lorenzos stood at the top of the bar world in Milano on 7 October. At the Palazzo del Ghiaccio, The 50 Best Bars 2026 named Lorenzo Antinori's Bar Leone in Hong Kong The World's Best Bar for the second year running. One place behind, Lorenzo Querci's Moebius Milano finished No.2 and took The Best Bar in Europe in front of a home crowd. Two Italians with opposite ideas of what a great bar should be, separated by a single step on the podium.
The Roman: Lorenzo Antinori and Bar Leone
Antinori was supposed to be a lawyer. Born in Rome in 1987, he enrolled in law school with the idea of becoming a sports agent and took a part-time bar job on the side, where an elderly regular who ordered a Perfect Manhattan every day got him hooked on the craft. He dropped law, started out at the Hotel de Russie in Rome, worked his way through Australia and Mexico, and landed in London in 2010.
London was his finishing school. He spent four years at The Savoy, between the American Bar and the Beaufort Bar, then became head bartender at Dandelyan, the Mondrian bar that leapt to No.3 on the world list in 2016 and went on to be named The World's Best Bar in 2018. One was the grand hotel bar at its most classical, the other the most inventive bar of its moment, and Antinori has always said he needed both.
In 2017 Four Seasons sent him to Seoul to run Charles H., in a market where he arrived to find Angostura only recently legalised. Under him the bar was named the best in Korea in 2019 and made Asia's 50 Best Bars for the first time. Hong Kong came next, as beverage manager of Four Seasons Hong Kong and Asia-Pacific beverage ambassador for the group. There he helped relaunch the bar at Caprice and, in 2021, between lockdowns, opened Argo, which reached No.3 in Asia and No.28 in the world in 2022.
Then he walked away. In June 2023 he left the security of Four Seasons to open a bar of his own, a move many in the industry thought reckless. The bet paid off in spades. After the complex, technical drinks of Argo, Bar Leone is a love letter to the neighbourhood bars of Rome's Trastevere: wood, vintage Italian touches, football memorabilia and a room that feels as if it has been there for decades.
The house philosophy is cocktail popolari, cocktails for the people. There is no theatre and no trend chasing, only classics made with precision and hospitality that turns a stranger into a regular by the second round. The kitchen pulls its weight too: the smoked olives and mortadella sandwich are as much a part of the legend as anything in a glass.
The climb has been relentless. Leone debuted at No.1 on Asia's 50 Best Bars and No.2 in the world in 2024. In 2025 it became the first bar from Asia to top the global list, and that summer Tales of the Cocktail named it Best International Cocktail Bar and Antinori International Bartender of the Year. In Milano it kept the world crown and was also named The Best Bar in Asia.
In an interview just after the ceremony, Antinori gave part of the credit to the city itself.
“In Hong Kong we are very lucky, because it's an extremely diverse bar scene that really reflects the diversity of the city. You can come to Bar Leone, but down the road you have an amazing agave spirits bar, Coa, and amazing hotel bars like Argo or Darkside at the Rosewood. That diversity is what makes the scene exciting, and to a certain extent it helps us to be competitive, to push our limits and to keep improving the experience for our guests. For me personally, it's one of the best bar scenes in the world, and we're very lucky to represent Hong Kong on a global stage.”
The host: Lorenzo Querci and Moebius Milano
Querci came to the bar from the dining room rather than from behind the stick. He is Tuscan, from a family of Sienese restaurateurs, and his father Alberto is still his business partner. Milanese profiles paint him as a tall, charismatic host, humble and sociable in equal measure, with two passions that run through everything he opens: comics first, music a close second.
The comics explain the name. Moebius is not a nod to the mathematician's strip but to Jean Giraud, the French artist who signed his work Moebius and helped define the look of surreal science fiction. Querci opened it in 2019 in a former textile warehouse between Stazione Centrale and Porta Venezia, with a design by Studio Q-Bic that pairs raw iron and warm wood with a 700-year-old Andalusian olive tree rising through two floors.
The kitchen has been a partnership from day one with Enrico Croatti, the Rimini-born chef who had already won Michelin stars at Dolomieu and at Orobianco in Alicante, and the first menus played on the Tuscan and Romagnol roots of the two founders. Today Croatti's Moebius Sperimentale occupies a glass-walled dining room upstairs, above the tapas bistro and the bar. It earned a Michelin star of its own in November 2024, the third of Croatti's career, and kept it in the 2026 guide.
The music explains the rest. Moebius sells vinyl and programmes live sets, and it is widely credited with starting Milano's craze for Japanese-style listening bars. Querci takes identity as seriously as the drinks: a graphic designer gives the menus and events their comic-book look, and guest shifts have brought in bartenders from Singapore, San Francisco and Sri Lanka. More recently he and his father opened a second bar, Lubna, another nod to the comics. Lubna is the girlfriend of Ranxerox, the cult antihero created by Stefano Tamburini and Tanino Liberatore.
Antinori bet on restraint. Querci's bet is the opposite: do everything, and do it at volume. Moebius on Via Cappellini puts cocktails, a serious kitchen, music and bold design under one roof, and runs a big, busy room without letting the sense of occasion slip.
And while Leone leans on the classics, the bar team led by Giovanni Allario plays with Italian food culture in the glass. Its calling card is the Pesto Martini, a drink that sums up both the bar's sense of humour and its ambition.
Few bars have moved faster. In 2025 Moebius jumped 31 places to No.7, its first time in the top ten, and took the Highest Climber award. That summer it was also named Best International Restaurant Bar at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards in New Orleans. In 2026 it rose five more places to No.2 and was named The Best Bar in Europe. Winning that title on home turf, a few kilometres from the bar, made for the most exciting moment of the night. For Querci, the jump from seventh to second, in Milano of all places, shines a light on the whole city, and on Italy with it.
Head to head
| Bar Leone | Moebius Milano | |
|---|---|---|
| The Lorenzo | Lorenzo Antinori | Lorenzo Querci |
| Background | Rome; Savoy and Dandelyan in London, Charles H. in Seoul, Argo in Hong Kong | Siena; family of restaurateurs, a passion for comics and music |
| Address | Central, Hong Kong | Via Cappellini, Milano |
| 2026 | No.1, The World's Best Bar and The Best Bar in Asia | No.2, The Best Bar in Europe |
| 2025 | No.1 | No.7, Highest Climber |
| 2024 | No.2 | No.38 |
| The idea | A Roman neighbourhood bar: classics, cocktail popolari | Cocktails, kitchen, music and design in one big room |
| Signature | Classic aperitivo drinks, smoked olives, mortadella sandwich | Pesto Martini |
The verdict for Milano and Italy
Italian hospitality took the top two places in the world, one exported and one at home. Antinori proved that a Roman bar can conquer Asia. Querci proved that Milano can produce a bar the whole world votes for, and he did it on the night the city hosted the ceremony.
Italy has two bars in the top 50: Moebius at No.2 and Locale Firenze at No.33. For anyone planning a night out in Milano, Via Cappellini is now the address. For anyone heading to Hong Kong, the queue at Leone is not getting any shorter.
Round three goes to Antinori. On current form, round four could go the other way.
