Editorial Top 10 lists across every category that matters in Wellington — search, sort, switch list ↔ grid. Updated live, curated by locals.
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Craft beer, cocktails and the best of Courtenay & Cuba.
Tory Street prohibition-era cocktail bar — leather, tableside service and serious classics. Long the city's best bar.
Pastel-pink Leeds Street craft beer pioneer — 18 taps, pizza next door and the city's most photographed neon.
Edward Street basement cocktail bar — long marble bar, perfect spritzes and one of Wellington's best wine-by-the-glass programs.
Garrett Street pub with the city's best beer garden — live music every weekend, woodfire pizza and 12 rotating taps.
Courtenay Place upstairs cocktail bar with bookshelf walls — long the late-date go-to for cocktails and dessert.
Leeds Street brewpub — the brewery is in the basement, four floors of taps and rooftop above.
QT hotel's 3rd-floor cocktail room with an eight-metre champagne wall and a harbour view that beats most rooftops.
Aro Valley's tasting room from NZ's most adventurous brewery — 30 taps and the rarest small-batch beers in the country.
Hannahs Laneway rooftop — open-air, palm-tree-flanked and the best summer drinks spot in town.
Queens Wharf two-floor bar/restaurant — harbour-side balcony, late-night dancing upstairs and one of the biggest crowds in town on Fridays.
Swan Lane red-brick bakehouse turned wine bar — nearly 1,000 wines, 100 by the glass and a kitchen to match. A serious oenophile's room.
Bright waterfront bar and eatery on the wharf — pink-hued, sun-soaked and one of the best spots in town for a harbourside afternoon drink.
Restored Edwardian villa on Willis Street — bar, restaurant and leafy courtyard with a relaxed all-day vibe and a strong cocktail and wine list.
These 14 listings are not ranked and not reviewed by us. Each one is reproduced verbatim from OpenStreetMap on 2026-08-07, with a link to the exact map entry so you can check it or correct it yourself. Opening hours are shown in OpenStreetMap's own notation.
7 Leeds Street
Hours (OSM): Su-Th 11:00-23:00, Fr,Sa 11:00-24:00
35 Agra Crescent, Wellington
Hours (OSM): Mo-Su 11:30-22:00
101 Lambton Quay, Wellington Central, Wellington
Hours (OSM): Mo-Fr 07:00-03:00, Sa,Su 10:00-03:00
18A Bond Street, Te Aro
Hours (OSM): Mo-Th 12:00-20:00; Fr 12:00-22:00; Sa 11:00-22:00; Su 11:00-18:00
155 Lambton Quay, Wellington Central
Hours (OSM): Mo-Fr 07:30-23:00
162 Karori Road, Karori
Hours (OSM): Tu-Th 12:00-22:00; Fr-Sa 09:00-23:00; Su 09:00-22:00
6 Edward street, Te Aro, Wellington
Hours (OSM): Mo-We 15:00-23:00; Th-Sa 12:00-23:00; Su 15:00-23:00
99 Main Road, Tawa
Hours (OSM): Mo-Su 11:30-21:00
2 Courtenay Place, Te Aro
Hours (OSM): Mo-Su 11:30-23:59
5 Parkvale Road, Karori
Hours (OSM): Mo-Su 11:30-18:00
7 Moxham avenue, Hataitai
Hours (OSM): Tu-Fr 17:00-21:00; Sa-Su 10:00-21:00
20A Bond Street, Te Aro
Hours (OSM): Mo-Sa 11:30-23:00; Su 11:30-19:00
52 Taranaki Street, Te Aro
Hours (OSM): Mo-We 12:00-23:00; Th 12:00-00:00; Fr-Sa 11:00-03:00; Su 11:00-23:00
95 Upland Road, Kelburn
Hours (OSM): We-Fr 16:00-23:00; Sa-Su 12:00-23:00
Business details from OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 — licence. Something wrong or out of date? Edit it at the source and it flows back here on the next refresh. Prefer our hand-checked picks? Read the Wellington guide.
Wellington's small-bar laws and concentrated CBD give it one of the densest, most exciting bar scenes in Australasia. Our top 10 covers the cocktail dens, craft-beer institutions and laneway hideaways that locals actually love.
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// Same list, other cities
Ranked to the same editorial standard as this page, by the same team.
Good to know
// Ready-made plans
Fixed routes built from the ranked lists on this site — walkable, in order, and copyable.
Four cups, one morning, all walkable: start in Te Aro where most of the roasteries sit, work north through Cuba Street, and finish in the CBD before the lunch rush.
Start at a roastery while it is quiet — this is the espresso benchmark you will judge the rest of the morning against.
Local tip: It is a coffee bar, not a brunch kitchen — the food is toast, sandwiches and pastries, so come for the cup.
Second stop, different method: order filter or batch brew rather than another flat white so you can taste the difference.
Local tip: One of the few Wellington cafes that opens on public holidays — worth knowing on a long weekend.
Now walk Cuba Street. This is the sit-down stop — food, people-watching, and the street the city's cafe culture grew out of.
Local tip: Order the signature hash browns. Note it has left 234 Cuba Street — directions in older guides send you to the wrong address.
Finish with something baked before lunch, then you are already in position for the waterfront or Te Papa.
// Plan your day
Pick a vibe and we'll build a morning-to-nightcap itinerary from our real ranked Top 10s — then shuffle it or copy it to your phone.
The coffee capital, done properly — flat whites to long lunches.
Coffee Supreme's flagship cafe since 2010 — minimalist, exacting, and the espresso benchmark the rest of the city gets measured against.
All-day cafe and deli on Market Lane — house-made bakes, a strong a la carte menu and a busy fit-out.
Venetian bacaro-style Italian on Cuba Street — small sharing plates, standing room at the bar, and the closest thing Wellington has to a Venice bac…
The original late-night cafe on Cuba Street, trading since 1988 — vegetarian counter food and strong espresso until 3am, every day.
Want this planned for you? Ask the AI Concierge — one of our free Wellington tools.
// Through a local's eyes
Beyond the Top 10s — the laneways, ridgelines and harbour-edge rituals that make Pōneke tick. Here's where we'd actually send a mate when the southerly clears.
☕Coffee & bohemia
Wellington runs on flat whites, and Cuba Street is its caffeinated heart. Locals slip down to Te Aro for a single-origin pour-over, then drift past the Bucket Fountain, the record shops and the vintage stores as buskers warm up. It's scruffy, creative and fiercely independent — the city that arguably perfected New Zealand coffee culture, one tiny roastery at a time.
🌊Harbour days
When the wind drops, the whole city spills onto the waterfront. Locals walk the harbour edge from Te Papa past the rowing sheds, brave a jump off the diving platform, then stretch out on the golden sand at Oriental Bay with a gelato. Sunday mornings mean the Harbourside Market, mountain backdrop on the ferry to Days Bay, and that unmistakable salt-and-southerly Pōneke air.
🌲Hills & native bush
The Town Belt wraps the city in native bush, and Mount Victoria is its crown. Locals climb the lookout for the postcard view over the harbour and CBD, then thread the trails the Hobbits actually ran through on film. Over the hill in Miramar — home of Wētā Workshop — the magic that built Middle-earth still hums quietly behind suburban garage doors.
🍺After dark
Wellington earned its craft-beer crown the hard way — pint by pint along Cuba, Dixon and Leeds Streets. Locals chase a hazy IPA at a Garage Project taproom, catch a gig at San Fran, then dive into a late-night dumpling or a kebab on the way home. The compact CBD means the whole night is walkable, and the energy holds right up until the last bar pulls its shutters.
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