Cool Israeli Cocktail Bar Makes World’s Top 50 List
Image by Facebook/Imperial Craft Cocktail Bar
Artisanal cocktail accoutrements at the bar of Imperial Craft Cocktail Bar, which garnered a coveted spot on Drink International’s list.
A leading publication on alcohol for the first time ranked an Israeli pub on its list of the world’s 50 best bars.
Drink International placed Tel Aviv’s at number 17 on its list, published earlier this month, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported this week.
The same establishment, situated on Hayarkon Street in central Tel Aviv near the U.S. embassy, was already ranked last year by Drinks International as the best bar in Africa and the Middle East, but clinched the 56th slot on the worldwide list.
This year, Imperial Craft retained its regional title and completed the most significant upward leap of all the establishments ranked, according to Haaretz.
The two non-Western bars that ranked above Imperial Craft were in Tokyo and Singapore. The Israeli bar was one of three Middle East bars on the top 50 list, along with Zuma Dubai (ranked 44) and Cyprus’ Lost & Found (48).
Bar Shira, one of the owners, recalled in an interview for Haaretz attending Drinks International’s ceremony on Oct. 9 in London, in which organizers read out bars listed in ascending order of excellence.
“We reckoned we’d get ranked 36, so when number 30 came around and Imperial’s name wasn’t read out yet we were totally psyched. At Number 25, we were nearing cardiac arrest,” Shira said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
