Dante NYC
Caffe Dante has been on MacDougal Street since 1915. Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson took the lease on its hundredth birthday and put the work into the drinks, and four years later The World's 50 Best Bars called it the best bar on the planet.
Why go
Naren Young ran the drinks as creative director when the trophy came, and he built the list like a restaurant menu, with a page of Negronis, a page of spritzes and a page of martinis. The Garibaldi is the one that spread: Campari under orange juice whipped until it foams. Pride's own account of the project, on the night they won, was a modern refresh of the aperitif that stayed true to the room's history (The World's 50 Best Bars). Bryan Kim scored the room 8.1 in April 2025 and named the tension you want to know about before booking: the seating and the menus belong to a restaurant, and the list is why anyone comes.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the house Negroni, which comes off a tap with a hard bitter edge, or the chocolate version under grated Valrhona if that is too much.
- Order: the vermouth service, which is chilled vermouth, a splash of soda and a few frozen grapes.
- Order: the orecchiette if you are eating, with crunchy broccolini and large crumbles of sausage.
- Avoid: the twelve-ounce veal parmigiana unless there are two of you splitting it.
What locals & experts say
- Bryan Kim, The Infatuation (11 April 2025), scoring it 8.1:
You could argue the house martini is a little wet for the current moment, but the vermouth service and Garibaldi with its frothy OJ have entered the city's cocktail pantheon.
1 - The World's 50 Best Bars, 2019: No. 1 in the world, collected by Pride and Naren Young in London on 3 October.2
- The Spirited Awards, the drinks trade's own vote, made the same call in the same year, giving Dante World's Best Bar and Best American Restaurant Bar in 2019, having already given it the American award in 2017.4
- North America's 50 Best Bars 2026, at No. 58, credits the room with repopularising the negroni in the United States and introducing a new generation of drinkers to the garibaldi.5
Good to know
- Timing: it runs from brunch through to late, and the list moves with the season, spritzes in summer and hot pours as it cools. The room still trades as Caffe Dante on its own page.3
- Booking: reserve a table and you have to order food. Walk in and you do not, though those seats are harder to get.
- Which door: MacDougal Street. Dante West Village, at Hudson and Perry, is a separate address that opened in late 2019.
- Price: 50 Best Discovery puts the average cocktail at $22, and the building itself is a registered New York City landmark.6
- Which door: this page is the MacDougal Street room, and it is the one holding the world title. The city's register files its permit under the plain name Dante at 79 MacDougal, last inspected in August 2026. Dante West Village at Hudson and Perry opened in late 2019, Dante Aperitivo took the old Nat's on Bank space at 51 Bank Street, and a 10,000-square-foot room with a wood-fired oven is going into 210 Elizabeth Street.7
Verdict
must-visit — Take a bar stool and drink two. The pasta is better than it needs to be, and it is still not why you came.