Manhattan is a cocktail bar on Level 2 of the Conrad Singapore Orchard hotel at 1 Cuscaden Road, in Orchard, holding a 4.7 rating from 1,107 Google reviews. Customers single out its creative whiskey cocktails, its welcoming staff, rooms with several different moods and — often — the popcorn.
The best hotel cocktail bars work as destinations in their own right: unhurried rooms where it's comfortable to drink alone and staff have time to talk you through the list. Craft shows in details like barrel ageing, where cocktails rest in oak for weeks so the spirit softens and picks up gentle vanilla and tannin — a technique worth revisiting, since each batch shifts a little. When choosing a bar, ask what's made or aged in-house and trust the bartender's pick over the biggest name on the menu.
Tucked above Cuscaden Road in Orchard's hotel belt, it's a bar people seem happy to come back to, years apart.