Las Brisas, Calle Principal Cabarete (tel. 809/571-0614), is the most popular nightlife venue in Cabarete. Arrive after 10:30pm when the dance club action begins. From 8am to 10:30pm daily, food is served. The dance floor is illuminated with strobe lights and lasers, and the bar is always busy. Many patrons arrive with dates of their own, but if you're a man flying solo, never fear, as a bevy of attractive working women are invariably on hand to provide companionship.
Hip nightlife is also found at the little bars -- shanties, really -- along the beach. There's live music every night after sunset. Tuesday nights it's salsa and merengue at Onno's Bar (tel. 809/571-0461). The Bamboo Bar is the place to be on Friday night, and on Saturday the new Wave Bar and Tribal Café (no phones) draw the most patrons. On virtually any night of the week, you can find dialogue and a sense of cosmopolitan hip at the Café Pitu, Calle Principal (tel. 809/571-0861). Set a few steps from the also-recommended Onno's Bar and radically upgraded late in 2006, it's the bar that's almost always cited as a centerpiece of Cabarete nightlife. It also offers wireless Internet access throughout its premises, thereby creating a sometimes studious venue of scantily clad athletes swigging rum punches and surfing the Net. Note: Only some of these bars have phone numbers, and none bears an individual street number on the Calle Principale, but each of them is easy to spot as you walk up and down either the beach or the town's main street.