The Ultimate Beach Bar

  We Made Esquire Magazine Best Bars List!

"Tamboo Tavern
Rincon, Puerto Rico
You're having: A piña colada with a dark-rum "floater." What the hell.
 

Tamboo Tavern is not a beach bar but a bar on a beach. It juts way out into the sand in the middle of a sleepy alcove of shoreline near Rincón. Midmorning, the people who know about it trickle onto the beach and towel-mark their territory, starting closest to Tamboo's stilts and spreading outward. Proximity is key, because the days are metronomed by trips back and forth to the bar for to-go-friendly piña coladas. The human-to-surfboard ratio is about three to one. The afternoon showers come in like clockwork and everybody takes cover on Tamboo's deck. That's when the day gets its second wind. The Postal Service album is playing. There's a black-and-white Cary Grant movie on in the corner. The band sets up for the night crowd while the sun turns more orange and truncated by the minute. And -- as if on cue -- the foggy spray of the humpback whales emerges on the horizon. And even with all of this -- the sunset and the whales and the smell of Sex Wax in the air -- Tamboo fends off every ounce of hackneyed Jimmy Buffettisms the way a beach bar couldn't possibly do. (Road 413, Kilometer 4.4, Sandy Beach Road; 888-823-8550)
-- Neely Harris"

Open Wi-Fi is available at Tamboo.