Methodology
Ranked by signal, audited in public.
Most “best bars” lists are votes plus marketing budgets. Kinda Decent Bars blends five signals that are harder to buy wholesale, publishes the weights, and locks that mix as the public standings. Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards sit as their own pillar — not buried under other regional trophies.
Public ranking locked · playground optional
The default experience is simple: choose a region or country and see the best bars under this fixed formula. There is no Composite vs Google vs 50 Best toggle on the main list — that choice lives only in Build your own ranking. The playground reorders a private view and never mutates the public standings; each row keeps its official number so you can compare.
Google crowd signal
32%Bayesian-smoothed star rating times log-scaled review volume. A 4.9 with twelve friends doesn’t beat a 4.6 with thousands of drinkers. Fake reviews still exist — volume + prior damping makes thin PR campaigns expensive.
World’s 50 Best
22%Best placement in the last five years, with year decay. Peer industry recognition matters, but politics and travel-circuit bias are real — so it never gets majority weight.
Spirited Awards (Tales of the Cocktail)
22%Venue wins at Tales — World's Best Bar, Best International / U.S. Cocktail Bar, and peer categories. Scored separately from other awards so a Spirited listing punches at true industry weight: high category multipliers and slower year decay. Same soft-cap shape, but a single World's Best Bar win lands near the top of this pillar.
Other regional awards
14%Asia’s / North America’s / Europe’s 50 Best, plus major national awards — including 30 Best Bars India, James Beard (USA), Class & National Restaurant Awards (UK), Australian Bar Awards, Japan / Korea / Singapore / Thailand cocktail awards, Time Out city bar awards, Fooding (France), Spanish & Italian bar awards, Eat Out (South Africa), Veja (Brazil), Times Nightlife, Canadian & Mexico cocktail awards, and peers. Soft-capped so award farming can’t dominate the composite.
Quality press
10%Features and reviews from Punch, Imbibe, Difford’s, NYT, FT, Michelin, and peers. Listicles are heavily discounted. Sponsored placements are excluded from the corpus by design.
Seed corpus (5-year awards window)
The starting list is the union of every bar that placed in the World’s 50 Best 2021–2025 Top 100 lists, plus Asia / North America / Europe regional 50 Best across the same window (including extended 51–100 where published), Spirited/Tales venue winners, and major national awards by country (see country filter on the rankings board for which awards count in each market).
521
Bars
124
Cities
49
Countries
500
World Top 100 rows
27
Spirited wins
500
Asia (5yr)
300
NA (5yr)
50
Europe 50
- Default experience: region / country / search against the locked public ranking. Every venue carries an editorial blurb; curated bars also get street address, website, and social handles. Build your own ranking opens the playground — dial Google / 50 Best / Spirited / awards / press (or presets), or isolate one signal — without changing official standings.
- JSON API at
/api/rankingswith the same overrides. - Google Places connector ready — set
GOOGLE_PLACES_API_KEYfor live ratings; estimated placeholders until then.