Mirror Bar jumps 28 places in The World’s 50 Best Bars
The World’s 50 Best Bars, sponsored by Perrier, has just released the extended list of their ranking for 2024 two weeks ahead of the awards ceremony in Madrid. The list held good news for Mirror Cocktail Bar in Bratislava, Slovakia: last year the bar was pleased to achieve No.90; this year, Mirror Bar jumped 28 places to land at No.62 in the ranking.
Pursuit of excellence
Such recognition has come after a year in which Mirror Cocktail Bar has made purposeful strides to improve and reach ever higher standards of quality. For starters, the bar came out with its third menu, Essence of Design Cocktail Book, which involved collaborating with over 60 local artists, artisans, and product designers for almost two years.
They also created a Global Ambassador position to focus on meeting new people all around the world, sharing the Mirror Bar philosophy, concept and hospitality, and building new relationships. At the same time, those people often also return the visit, coming to experience Mirror Bar, Bratislava, and the local bar community. They bring their own experience, knowledge, and skills, and share them through seminars to broaden the horizons of the local community, as all are welcome to attend.
The Global Ambassador for Mirror Bar, Stan Harciník, is proud to share his home with friends made across the world. “When they come, we are able to show them our hospitality, culture and what we love about our home, which is not only Mirror Bar but Slovakia and Bratislava as well. We have been doing so since the very first day of the year 2024.”
By hosting the Mirror Hospitality Expo for the second year in a row, the bar brought even more the international bar community and professionals to Bratislava and Mirror Bar. They also collaborated with globally recognized PR agency Rachel Harisson Communications to improve their reach even further than their personal contacts and relationships.
The meaning of recognition
For Stan Harciník, being recognised for excellence is a recognition of the hard work and dedication that has gone into the bar. “Being globally recognized as Mirror Bar from the small country of Slovakia and even smaller capital of Bratislava is a huge achievement for us. I believe and hope that it can be also an inspiration to others, that such an achievement really can be done by a few very passionate people that are directly involved, want to push themselves above and beyond, and shout out to the world, ‘Hey you, here we are and we mean it!’ We want to show you around and show you why we love what we do here. Recognition like this is not something that especially Central Europe experiences much, so it is also a huge responsibility for us because we are not representing only ourselves, but all of our friends, colleagues, supporters, partners and community that have supported us on our journey to reach our goal.”
On the 51-100 list are 50 bars from 32 cities, with 18 of the bars from Europe. Two are from the Central and Eastern European region; besides Mirror Bar, Nouvelle Vague in Tirana, Albania, joins the list at No.95. Achieving a place on the 50 Best Bars ranking is an incredible achievement for cities that were behind the Iron Curtain not too long ago. The only other bar in Slovakia to have reached the 50 Best Bar rankings is Antique American Bar at No.91 in 2022.
About the ranking
The World’s 50 Best Bars is voted for by an Academy of more than 700 experts worldwide. The World’s 50 Best Bars list has been published annually since 2009 and has become the most anticipated ranking for drinks professionals and cocktail aficionados across the world, with the awards the highlight of the bar industry calendar.
The Academy of voters is spread across 28 global geographic regions, each headed by an Academy Chair who selects their region’s voters, with the distribution of voters designed to reflect the relative development and sophistication of the drinks sector, and the concentration of quality bars, in each region. Each voter casts seven votes based on their best bar experiences of the previous 18 months. Voters are required to remain anonymous and voting is confidential, secure and independently adjudicated by Deloitte.
Congratulations to the whole team at Mirror Cocktail Bar, and to all the bars on the list!
