Wagyu, Bacon Fat and Beeswax: The Wildest Old Fashioneds in New York Right Now

There is something wonderfully reassuring about an Old Fashioned: a little sweetness, a little bitterness, a generous pour of spirit and a large cube to keep it company. New York, naturally, can’t leave well enough alone. This Old Fashioned Week (October 9–18, ending today but it’s always a good time to drink an Old Fashioned!), the city’s best bars are putting wagyu, bacon fat, beeswax, matcha and even marshmallow fluff into the glass. You’ll find the drinks in a Gramercy carriage house, behind a phone booth in an East Village hot dog shop and 64 floors above the Financial District, alongside the bacon-washed PDT classic that changed modern bartending.

Some of these are devotee’s drinks; others are designed to make a whiskey purist clutch their pearls. All of them are worth the trip, and with $1 from every participating Old Fashioned going to the Southern Smoke Foundation this week, you can tell yourself the second round is philanthropy.

Sip at Sip & Guzzle

West Village

Sip is the more experimental, downstairs half of Shingo Gokan and Steve Schneider’s West Village bar, which just happened to be named No. 1 on North America’s 50 Best Bars 2026. Its Wagyu Old Fashioned takes bourbon squarely into culinary territory with peanut butter and wagyu beef. Yes, really. It’s savory, rich and dangerously drinkable, the order for anyone who already loves whiskey with something indulgent on the side. Be specific when you book: Sip and Guzzle have entirely separate menus and moods.

Haute Living take: Steakhouse dessert in a rocks glass. Weird on paper, wonderful in practice.

Martiny’s

121 East 17th Street, Gramercy

Takuma Watanabe’s Tea Ceremony brings Japanese whisky, matcha, cacao and coconut water together in an Old Fashioned with a ritual of its own: the matcha is whisked into hot coconut water before it’s combined with everything else, giving the tea a starring role. Recent menus list Nikka Coffey Grain as the base. In Watanabe’s gorgeous former carriage house, it reads as a love letter between his Japanese heritage and an American classic.

Haute Living take: The most elegant drink on this list, in the most beautiful room. Go upstairs if they’ll let you.

Double Chicken Please

115 Allen Street, Lower East Side

Double Chicken Please’s She’s So Old Fashioned takes the aromatic route. From the Free Range menu, it pairs Glenfiddich 12 with MUYU Vetiver Gris, Bénédictine, shiso and palo santo for a drink that smells as interesting as it tastes. The familiar name is the invitation; the herbal, woodsy ingredients are the plot twist.

Haute Living take: For the drinker who sniffs the glass before sipping. You know who you are.

Photo Credit: Giada Paoloni

Dante West Village

551 Hudson Street, West Village

Dante’s Fireside Old Fashioned was practically built for the week New York pulls its coats out of storage. Johnnie Walker Black and Glenfiddich 14 meet Lustau palo cortado sherry, smoked raisin and decanter bitters, bringing smoke, sherry and dried fruit into the conversation. If you lean toward peaty Scotch, or simply love what a little sherry does to a cocktail, this is your drink.

Haute Living take: Sweater weather, bottled. Get a seat by the window and order two.

Overstory

70 Pine Street, 64th Floor, Financial District

Overstory proves the Old Fashioned doesn’t need whiskey at all. Its Terroir Old Fashioned combines reposado tequila, palo santo and Tilden salt, a compact ingredient list with a very clear point of view. The setting does the rest: a 64th-floor room wrapped by a terrace with sweeping skyline views. Few places in the city turn an ordinary weeknight into an occasion quite so efficiently.

Haute Living take: Agave, altitude and the best view on this list. Time it for sunset.

PDT (Please Don’t Tell)

113 St. Marks Place, East Village

Few New York cocktails have had the impact of PDT’s Benton’s Old Fashioned. Created by Don Lee, it combines bacon fat–washed bourbon with maple syrup and Angostura bitters: an American breakfast, distilled. It helped bring fat-washing into the mainstream bartending conversation and remains the reference point for savory whiskey drinks everywhere. You still enter through a phone booth in Crif Dogs, which never stops being fun.

Haute Living take: The one that started it all. Essential, iconic and still delicious.

Photo Credit: Nicholas Ruiz

Seed Library

Manhattan West

Ryan Chetiyawardana, better known as Mr Lyan, is the reason this list starts here. His Beeswax Old Fashioned pairs Michter’s whiskies and bitters with New York State beeswax, which lends the drink a soft, honeyed texture without tipping it into sweetness. It’s one of the earliest creations in the Lyan repertoire, predating his game-changing London bar White Lyan, so you’re essentially drinking a piece of cocktail history that has finally landed in New York.

Haute Living take: The connoisseur’s opener. Whiskey stays front and center; the beeswax does the seducing.

Attaboy

134 Eldridge Street, Lower East Side

At Attaboy, your Old Fashioned starts with a conversation. There’s no printed menu, just a bartender who wants to know what you like. Tell them bourbon or rye, sweet or dry, and they’ll build the drink around you. In the former home of the legendary Milk & Honey, it’s the classic Old Fashioned approached the way it should be: personally.

Haute Living take: The purist’s pick. Bespoke tailoring, but for whiskey.

Bar Snack

East Village

Bar Snack, the highest-ranking newcomer on North America’s 50 Best Bars 2026, brings a sense of humor to the East Village, and its Phish Food Old Fashioned is the proof. Inspired by the Ben & Jerry’s flavor, it works marshmallow fluff syrup into the formula for a dose of pure dessert nostalgia. At a bar that bills itself as dressed-up classics for dressed-down people, it fits perfectly.

Haute Living take: Proof the Old Fashioned can have fun. Order it last, like dessert.

Menus change frequently; confirm availability before you go.

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Want more from the team behind Sip & Guzzle? Step inside Shingo Gokan’s Tokyo flagship, The SG Club, or catch up on the bars and bartenders that swept the Spirited Awards.