Sora

Head down Rougier Street towards the river and you'll find yourself in the kind of space that makes you feel like you've properly gone out. Sora sits inside the Malmaison—that sharp, modern hotel that's been a fixture of York's more polished corner for a while now—but this isn't stuffy hotel-bar territory. The cocktails are genuinely excellent, crafted with the kind of precision that suggests whoever's behind the bar actually knows what they're doing. The room itself has that dark, leather-and-low-lighting energy that works brilliantly when you want to impress someone, or when you just fancy feeling a bit more dressed-up than usual.