Owner Kevin Diedrich pours one of his signature Thrilla in Manila cocktails at Pacific Cocktail Haven in San Francisco, Calif. on Mar. 11, 2022.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATELast week, the organization behind the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list announced its 2023 list of North America’s 50 Best Bars. Only one Bay Area bar made the list: San Francisco‘s Pacific Cocktail Haven came in at number 28.
Pacific Cocktail Haven reopened last year after a destructive fire forced the Lower Nob Hill bar to close and relocate. Owner Kevin Diedrich, an award-winning bartender, is known for his Asian-Pacific-inspired cocktails such as the Thrilla in Manila made with bourbon, shiso, calamansi, pineapple, coconut, absinthe and li hing mui.
“Thank you to the team, all our guests and @50bestbars for including this tiny bar,” shared Diedrich on Instagram. “We are super lucky and fortunate to keep going and push forward.”
This is only the second year of North America’s 50 Best Bars list, which was newly created to focus on North American establishments. Last year, Friends and Family in Oakland and ABV in San Francisco were both recognized, at number 33 and 38, respectively.
This year’s number one bar was Double Chicken Please in New York. Bon Appetit criticized the organization this year for primarily recognizing American bars, with only one bar in the Caribbean making the list and Central America being left out altogether. The World’s 50 Best Restaurants has a pattern of “largely ignoring restaurants in places like India or the continent of Africa — except for South Africa,” they wrote.