Steinhatchee’s scalloping-season legend since the 1950s, the whole state shows up when season opens.
Named for the diving duck that winters on the lower Bay, the Ruddy Duck pairs a serious craft beer list with local oysters and a view across the Potomac toward Virginia that is hard to beat from Maryland’s western shore.
The Cabana Bar sits right at the mouth of Rudee Inlet watching the fishing fleet come home, which makes it one of the most genuinely waterfront bars on a strip that sometimes forgets it is actually next to the water.
Adults-only infinity pool at the far end of Aruba, above Baby Beach, pouring Monkey Juice, Mau’s Rum Punch and a Long Island called the Lionfish.
The oceanfront bar at Captain Don’s Habitat on Bonaire, known for a deep rum shelf, the Monday BBQ and a 7am opening time.
The Kauai outpost of RumFire pours a serious rum list with the turquoise Poipu surf breaking directly in front of the open-air bar, sunny south shore energy in every glass.
An actual fire feature next to an actual ocean view, RumFire pours a serious Hawaiian and Caribbean rum program that has quietly become one of Waikiki’s most respected cocktail bars.
A rum-forward beach bar backed by a 33,500-gallon aquarium of Gulf sea life.
In Chesapeake Citys canal-side historic district, Rummur Lounge pours creative rum and craft cocktails in a beautifully preserved Victorian setting, worth lingering in well past the walk to the C&D Canal.
Ruschmeyer’s started as a fish camp in 1952 on Fort Pond in Montauk. The new version keeps the bones and adds a serious bar and outdoor fire pit lounge.
Eggs served until 1 AM are the legendary detail, but Ruski’s on Regis Street has been the real Portland since 1979, back before the food critics found the city and started charging accordingly.
Parked on the Anclote River in the historic Sponge Docks, Rusty Bellies is a three-generation family operation serving fish caught by their own boats, hush puppies, and a waterfront deck where the shrimp boats dock close enough to wave at.
Houseboat dwellers and bass fishermen converge at the Rusty Porthole for cold beer and Delta catfish, the most honest bar on California’s most overlooked waterway.
Since the 1970s the Rehoboth Bay side has quietly been the best seat in Dewey, calmer water and a deck that has outlasted every trend the ocean-front strip has tried.
Manhattan changes relentlessly around it, and Ryan’s Daughter has survived by refusing to be anything other than exactly what it has always been, cold Guinness and honest Irish pub warmth on the Upper East Side.
Perched on a literal sliver of rock accessible only by water taxi, Saba Rock somehow became one of North Sound’s essential stops for the endless parade of yachts anchoring around it.
An Old Florida working marina on Singer Island, catch-of-the-day fresh off the sport fishing fleet.
Vietnam’s original beachfront party bar, running Nha Trang’s biggest Saturday beach party for 25-plus years.
The Tides Inn has been one of the Mid-Atlantic’s most beloved resorts for over seventy years, and Salt and Meadow is its reward: Carter’s Creek views, Virginia oysters, and a chef who clearly is not coasting on the scenery.
The Columbia Bar is the most dangerous river bar crossing in North America, and it is visible right from the Salt’s waterfront, cold cocktails feel appropriately earned after watching that drama unfold.
Tampa Bay’s ramshackle waterfront dive, an Old Florida holdout in a city that keeps redeveloping around it.
Langley’s arts community sits on a bluff above Saratoga Passage and takes its food as seriously as its natural setting. Saltwater Fish House backs that reputation up completely.
Portland gets called the food capital of New England fairly regularly, and the Saltwater Grille gives that reputation a proper waterfront bar to match on the working harbor.
Madeira Beach’s genuinely local hangout, hidden back bar included for those who find it.
Wood-fired pizza and cold rum punch is not a combination most beach bars think to offer, and the Salty Mongoose has made it a genuine Cruz Bay local favorite.
Elliott Bay, the Seattle skyline, the Olympics, and Mount Rainier on a clear day, all from one deck. The water taxi ride to Salty’s is basically part of the meal.
St. Pete Beach’s classic tiki stop, strong pours and Gulf breezes without the tourist-trap markup.
Blue Heaven’s beachfront sister spot on Higgs Beach, Italian-Caribbean flavors and a killer coconut mojito.
A sunny deck on the Tiburon waterfront since 1920, Sam’s has been watching Bay traffic for over a century and somehow still feels like the best afternoon plan anyone in Marin has ever had.
Half Moon Bay does cold, foggy, and windswept instead of sun-soaked, and Sam’s leans all the way into it, genuinely Northern California beach bar energy, no tan lines required.
San Leon’s oldest bar, better than fifty years running on 1st Street by Mooner Beach, dealing in ice-cold cans and cheap liquor.
Oak Bluffs has been the Vineyard’s party town since the Methodist camp meeting days, and the Sand Bar carries that same easy, celebratory spirit forward.
Amelia Island’s only true beachfront restaurant, three bars and 1,200+ whiskeys deep.
Jetties Beach is Nantucket’s most accessible, most family-friendly stretch of sand, and the Sandbar is the uncomplicated introduction every first-timer needs and every regular keeps coming back for.
A community-anchored St. Pete Beach bar and grill, consistent kitchen and easy Gulf energy.
Delray Beach’s sandy-floored tiki playground, loud, frozen, and steps from the Atlantic.
An oceanfront pier-view bar in Jax Beach with tropical cocktails and weekend brunch.
This is Maui when it stops performing for the tourists and just delivers the honest, sunlit version of itself, cold beer and zero production value required.
Newport’s working bayfront smells like the ocean because it is the ocean, and the Sandbar serves a crowd that is as much crabbers and fishermen as tourists, Yaquina Bay lighting up at sunset with zero filter needed.
Manasota Key tiki bar two minutes from Englewood Beach, known for shrimp fritters in a sand bucket.
Sandbridge exists specifically because it is not the boardwalk, and the Island Restaurant matches that energy exactly: fresh seafood and an unhurried pace next to a wildlife refuge instead of a t-shirt shop.
Sandgates has been feeding the St. Mary’s-Calvert County crowd steamed blue crabs on the Patuxent for decades, the kind of place that never needed a rebrand because the formula already worked.
The only restaurant on the entire island, Santana’s fed Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom during Pirates of the Caribbean filming, and it has been feeding everyone else on Little Exuma’s twelve square miles for decades.
St. Thomas, USVI
You can’t go wrong with this beachside watering hole – go snorkeling and then grab a beer!
Saugatuck-Douglas built one of Lake Michigan’s most artistically vibrant beach communities, and Saugatuck Brewing’s award-winning IPA carries that creative energy right along with it.
Savi sits on Meads Bay, the west-end stretch where most of Anguilla’s higher-end dining has collected. It runs as a full beach club rather than a walk-up shack: restaurant, bar, and chair-and-umbrella service on the sand.
Watching a 600-foot freighter glide past close enough to wave at, cold drink in hand, has not gotten old at Schaefer’s since the 1930s, a C&D Canal institution with a full marina and consistently good seafood.
An open-air Key West institution since 1984, where locals never really leave.
PCB’s last old-school beach club since the ’60s, firing a cannon at sunset every single night.
Sea otters float in the kelp just offshore while you eat. Schooners sits inside the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which is a wildly overqualified backdrop for a plate of fresh seafood and a cold California beer.
Sandra and Eudoxie Wallace turned a barren cay in Island Harbour into a beach bar and BBQ in 1985, and in the early years guests ate off grape leaves while sitting in the sand.
Screwdriver keeps the neighborhood bar formula simple, cold beer and strong cocktails delivered with the kind of easy Pacific Northwest friendliness that makes a first visit feel like a fifth.
Born in an old bait shop on a pier in 1975, Sea-N-Suds still sits right on the beach with the Gulf at your feet. The Tuesday and Friday mullet special is a genuine Gulf Shores tradition.
Seabreeze knows its regulars by name and keeps them coming back with frozen cocktails and tiki bar energy on a stretch of the Patuxent that does laid-back better than most of the Bay.
What started as a tiki bar in 1988 has grown into one of the largest independent entertainment complexes in the country: multiple bars, a sandy bay beach, a distillery, and a nightclub running till 2 AM under the slogan Find Us and Get Lost.
Right along the water on Ocean Drive in Surfside Beach, doing po-boys, crab cakes and shrimp tacos with an outdoor seat as the main draw.
Fish tacos, cold margaritas, and South Texas hospitality make Seaside the kind of unhurried Gulf-side bar that explains why South Padre’s permanent residents never seem to want to leave.
Seawitch delivers exactly the whimsical tiki energy its name promises, cold rum drinks and a crowd that already knows what a good summer afternoon is supposed to feel like.
Sebastian’s beloved Indian River waterfront tiki bar — outdoor dock bar, hand-crafted drinks, live music daily, boat access, Visit Florida mural trail stop, and the views locals have claimed for decades.
This shallow turquoise stretch was a genuine secret until word got out, waist-deep Caribbean water you can walk a hundred meters into without it ever getting deeper.
A beachfront hostel bar collects the most eclectic crowd in town by default, and Selina leans into it, cold beer, ocean views, and Thursday Latin nights that turn into everyone’s favorite accident.
The flagship Shaggys set the standard the rest of the Gulf Coast chain has been chasing ever since, Mango Crush cocktails and Mississippi Sound oysters on a Biloxi beach strip thats more underrated than it deserves to be.
Gulfport gets its own Shaggys outpost, frozen drinks and fresh Gulf oysters proving the brand travels well across the Mississippi shore.
Pass Christian is one of the oldest resort towns on the entire Gulf Coast, antebellum homes and a real yacht club included, and Shaggys pours cold drinks at the harbor that anchors it all.
Weathered wood, cold beer, and the water right there, Shanty Beach Bar feels like its always been on the Chester River because it has, and the crowd reflects exactly who the Eastern Shore actually belongs to.
Surfers and fishermen have always been the actual backbone of Montauk’s identity, and Shark Bar serves them, not the celebrity-spotting crowd, with cold beer and zero pretense.
Shark Shack leans fully into its own theme with good humor, fresh Gulf seafood and cold Texas beer served with exactly the right amount of self-aware silliness.
A block off the Surfside shoreline with a surf-decked patio, live music, Surf Burger baskets and a kids menu called For the Squirts.
A two-story Gulf-front spot on PCB serving fresh grouper with a tiki bar steps from the sand.
A two-story tiki landmark at Venice Fishing Pier, home of the Mango Bango and Gulf sunset views.
Nine-plus screens for the day crowd, a full dance floor by night, Sharky’s is basically Tamarindo’s entire nightlife arc happening under one roof.
Pool tables, cold Pacifico, and a pier a block away, Shellback has been the honest local bar cutting through Manhattan Beach’s glossy reputation since 1976.
Colombier Beach is reachable only on foot or by boat, and Shellona brings full beach club service to one of the most pristine, exclusive settings the Caribbean has to offer.
Clearwater Beach’s liveliest tiki stage, with a dance floor over the water and Gulf sunsets to match.
Kona Village resort bar built around a restored schooner on Kahuwai Bay — tropical craft cocktails, Hawaiian-inspired sushi, and one of Hawaii’s most dramatic sunset settings.
On the Gunpowder River in the upper Bays quiet northeast corner, Shipwrecked keeps the dock bar formula simple: boats tie up, ice-cold drinks appear.
Fort Lauderdale’s Intracoastal institution since 1982, once called the world’s best dockside patio bar.
Chicago’s 26 miles of continuous lakefront parkway is one of urban America’s great public assets, and Shore Club gives North Avenue Beach the proper cocktail anchor that view deserves.
Rolleville’s southern end of Great Exuma has the character of an island not yet fully discovered, and Shoreline pours its cocktails at exactly that unrushed pace.
A raw bar worthy of Siesta Key’s famous quartz sand, fresh Gulf oysters in the Village.
The Freeman Park beach crowd and Carolina Beach’s year-round locals converge here in equal measure, a genuine dive bar that has never once wanted to be anything fancier.
A cash-only Mayport institution at the mouth of the St. Johns, the most authentic seafood shack near Jacksonville.
Small, cheap and on the sand, with the highest rating per review on the boardwalk and none of the packaging.
Three levels overlooking the ship channel and a rooftop view of passing ships that is genuinely spectacular, Sip Yard is the new kid on the Port A block that has already earned the buzz.
Sirens sits in the honest gap between AC’s casino floors and the actual South Jersey community that lives here year-round, cold cocktails without a single slot machine attached.
Port Townsend preserved its Victorian seaport character better than almost anywhere in North America, and Sirens is the pub that actual wooden-boat builders and locals treat as their own.
Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, Great Lakes, Arctic, and Hawaiian, this NYC bar built its whole cocktail program around celebrating all six official American coastlines, a genuinely nerdy premise executed with real enthusiasm.
Coral Bay is St. John without the tourists, and Skinny Legs is Coral Bay’s actual heart, a fiercely devoted local following and burgers that have earned every bit of the legendary status.
Working lobster boats and a granite seawall frame Stonington Borough’s village dock, one of New England’s most beautifully preserved maritime settings with a bar to match.
Skipper’s Pier has anchored the West River waterfront for so long it knows exactly what its regulars want before they order it, crabs, live music, and a pier that stretches right out over the water.
Skull Creek, Port Royal Sound, and the Intracoastal all converge in view of this multi-level complex, one of the most active waterfront settings anywhere on the South Carolina coast.
Ocean City’s rooftop option, Skye Bar trades street-level crowds for elevated views over the resort town’s roofline to the Atlantic beyond.
A 50-year Amelia Island beach bar institution, oceanfront tiki and a sand-side playground for the kids.
Hemingway’s legendary Duval Street bar since Prohibition ended, still the loudest party on the strip.
The beachfront cousin of Key West’s legend, serving conch fritters and frozen drinks on Gulf sand.
Not really a bar in the conventional sense, Wednesday nights at Smith’s Point are an open-air fish fry tradition that predates the tourist industry entirely, fresh cracked conch and the genuine community spirit of Grand Bahama.