Best-of list · Occasion Guide
The best bars open on Sunday across New York, London, Chicago, Amsterdam and more — the ones that actually justify leaving the house on the slowest.
The short answer
9 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
The best bars open on Sunday are worth knowing because they represent a different kind of bar experience entirely — slower, more honest, and often better than the Friday version of the same room. Sunday drinking has its own rhythm, and the bars that understand it open early, stock the vermouth and Bloody Mary supplies, and hire staff who prefer the pace of a long afternoon over the velocity of a Saturday night.
New York's Sunday bar culture is anchored around brunch-hour openings, afternoon football, and the kind of slow drift through the East Village that starts at 2pm and ends when the sun goes down. These are the bars that do that day best.
How we picked
A bar that does Sunday well has a fundamentally different relationship with its customers than one that reserves its best effort for Friday and Saturday. The Sunday crowd comes with more time, more willingness to talk, and a different set of needs — the afternoon pint rather than the round at midnight, the late lunch that becomes an early dinner, the cocktail that arrives at 3pm with no judgment attached.
Every bar on this list understands that dynamic. They open on time, they staff properly, and they treat the Sunday trade as worth showing up for. That is not as common as it should be.
James has spent more Sunday afternoons in more bars than he can account for. He believes that a bar's Sunday trade reveals its true character more accurately than any Friday night.
Last reviewed 2026-01-07 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.