If it’s not on a list, does it even exist? Best restaurants, best bars, best dog park, best neighborhood: you name it, there’s a list for it. Depending on where you look, there might be several. Lists are taking over travel like never before. I myself am guilty of jumping on Eater to see their 38 essential restaurants of London or Lisbon or checking out the Michelin guide when I get to a new city. As a travel writer, I’ve participated in creating more than one best-of list myself.
These lists can be fun, a kind of passport that allows you to check off places one by one and decide whether you think the person making the list even knows what they’re talking about. But they can also be a headache, making places impossible to get into, filled with influencers and selfie-takers, guarded by secret handshakes and passwords and just plain boring when you suddenly realize you went to all the same places on vacation as your friends did.
I happen to be on the ground in one of the best food and drink cities in the world and while the lists are fine, I know plenty of places that aren’t on them but are just as wonderful. I recently covered the Mexican establishments that made this year’s list of North America’s 50 Best Bars, and while there are some excellent Mexico City locales that won spots, it got me thinking about all the great cocktail places that didn’t make the list.
It takes money, influence and desire to be noticed by the listers. So many places remain off the beaten path and yet special to those of us who know where to look. As a cocktail fanatic, here’s another list: eight cocktail bars I love in Mexico City that aren’t on the 50 Best.
Santo Hand Roll
I was amazed to find such good cocktails at a sushi restaurant the first time I went to Santo Hand Roll, even a hip one like this. I found myself enjoying the drinks even more than the food — which is very good on its own — and wondering why so few people seemed to know about it. Santo opened about five years ago and its owners now have several other projects in Mexico and the U.S.
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Santo’s cocktail menu has been crafted to pair with the food menu, and you’ll find flavors of Japan interwoven in the mixology: shiso leaves, yuzu, Japanese gin and lychee. My personal favorite is Tokyo to Roma — Japanese whiskey, rosemary, angostura and orange and grapefruit bitters — but their cocktail of the month is usually dope as well.
Calle Colima 161, Roma Norte, Cuauhtemoc
Lina
Lina is Chef Mariana Villegas’s long-awaited debut after working for big names like Enrique Olvera’s Cosme in New York and Contramar in Mexico City. The Michelin-featured menu is a mix of dishes inspired by the freshest ingredients of the season and has excellent, vegetable-forward options: the charred bok choy with macadamia nuts and green curry is a personal favorite.
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While the food delivers, the cocktails are also delish and if you can’t get a table just saunter up to the bar and try a few. Get yourself a Lulo with mezcal, lulo fruit, tangerine and cacao flower or the Hicox Elixir with Dolin vermouth, fig leaf, St. Germain and prosecco.
Yucatán 147, Roma Norte, Cuauhtémoc
Salón Palomilla
The oval-shaped ceiling, open to the night sky, alongside dark green walls with exposed metal support beams, make drinking at Salón Palomilla feel a bit like cocktails in a spaceship. Industrial designer Martina D’Acosta Turrent has given the place an silky and otherworldly vibe with low lamplight and the twinkle of the stars above.
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That might sound like a place that takes itself too seriously, but not so. The crowd is lively, loud and fun and the waiters’ attention feels genuine. The drink menu is almost straight classic cocktails — lemon drops, vesper martinis, Last Words — with some riffs, like a mezcal Naked and Famous or a Fernet Mule. Straightforwardness is a virtue in this case — a classic cocktail done well is just as important as the newest crazy concoction — and the presentation is classy to boot.
Yucatán 84C, Roma Norte, Cuauhtémoc
Caviar Bar Alexander
Sometimes it’s hard for those of us who live in the Roma-Condesa-Polanco bubble to think about venturing out beyond our borders, but trust me when I tell you that some of the best cocktails I’ve had this year are in the tiny neighborhood of Molino del Rey, part of the larger Lomas de Chapultepec area. On the edge of this exclusive neighborhood, inside Torre Virreyes — the building affectionately referred to as El Dorito because of its resemblance to the snack chip — is the Alexander Hotel’s Caviar bar.
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Torre Virreyes houses the offices of Blackrock and luxury real estate, so expect business types, but it’s also a hotel, so the scene is mellow. This bar should probably be on 50 Best but its location in the city and inside a hotel make it unlikely. I was blown away by the Sabina — Abasolo Whiskey, cacao-and coffee-infused vermouth, Nixta, avocado bitters and truffle oil — which had a tiny cricket floating on a leaf as a garnish, and the refreshing Bellini Vargas, made using 7 Leguas tequila, white wine with macerated peach and cocoa bitters.
Pedregal 24, Molino del Rey, Miguel Hidalgo
Cicatriz
Cicatriz was one of the first places I had a really good cocktail in the city. Opened by brother-and-sister team Jake and Scarlett Lindeman way back in 2014, Cicatriz was ahead of the curve but also never made the cocktail menu the sole focus of the place.
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Located in La Juárez, Cicatriz serves great comfort food like big green salads and their famous fried chicken. Cicatriz also has an excellent wine selection: they jumped on the natural wine trend early, and Scarlett is now a partner of local wine shop Escorpio. Their cocktail list is small but delightful, nothing too complex or outrageous, but everything interesting. Personal favorites include the Yoko, a mezcal aperol spritz, and Tiburón, a Mexico-inspired gin and tonic with thyme and avocado leaf.
Dinamarca 44, Juárez, Cuauhtémoc
Parker & Lenox
This is another place that has an excellent drinks program but whose focus is something else; in this case, music. This speakeasy hosts intimate shows Tuesdays to Sundays and you must reserve your seat in advance. They host everything from jazz flamenco to old-timey trios and always serve a well-made drink to accompany it.
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The Cherry Fuzz — tequila, maraschino cherry, egg white and lime juice — and the classic old fashioned are two of my favorites at Parker & Lennox. Everything is served in a moody atmosphere that, of all the speakeasies in the city,feels the most loyal to the actual concept, especially with strains of jazz in the background.
General Prim 100, Juárez, Cuauhtémoc
Rayo
This bar was actually listed on the 50 Best two years in a row but was suddenly removed for reasons unclear to me. The scene is set as you ride up the elevator and are served a premixed cocktail to start your evening. Once seated your server brings out 10 glass stopper bottles and a spoon for you to sample a taste of the in-house cocktails before you make a commitment.
The service can be a bit slow depending on what night of the week you there, but the drinks are worth the wait, each a combination of Mexican ingredients like hoja santa and cilantro combined with tropical fruit like guava and kumquat. For lesser-known Mexican spirits like pox, sotol, raicilla or charanda, this is a good place to start your education.
Salamanca 85, Roma, Cuauhtémoc
Maison Artemisia
Maison has a deliciously dark and romantic vibe that’s sometimes augmented with a live band in the front room. They were one of the early specialty cocktail bars, opened in 2012, a collaboration among several Europeans transplanted to Colonia Roma.
Maison has a solid list of classic cocktails as well as a rotating signature cocktail menu, usually with a theme, such as the current one: an ode to “La Roma and Mexican Terroir.” From that menu I am particularly fond of Don Gastón, an homage to a French herbalist who used to live in the house where the bar now sits. A delicious blend of armagnac, vermouth, strega liqueur, honey, chamomile and fennel, it tastes a bit like an old-fashioned spice gumdrop.
Tonalá 23, Roma Norte, Cuauhtémoc
Lydia Carey is a freelance writer and translator based out of Mexico City. She has been published widely both online and in print, writing about Mexico for over a decade. She lives a double life as a local tour guide and is the author of “Mexico City Streets: La Roma.” Follow her urban adventures on Instagram and see more of her work at mexicocitystreets.com.
