Mexico city - cocktail capital of the world?

Decca booked us a 5 day whirlwind trip down to Mexico City to check out the bar scene. It is home to a bustling cocktail scene that’s worthy of recognition on the global scale - bartenders in several of the bars we visited have been to the same amazing cocktail bars across the world that we’ve been frequenting. Mexico City just may be the most amazing cocktails per capita city in the world, y’all.

I’ll be honest- I don’t remember how many bars we hit- I think Decca said it was around 19? I can tell you that not one of them was bad, and we did it all from the #2 cocktail bar in the world (Handshake) to a very local pulque dive bar (Pulqueria Los Insurgentes).

Standouts for me included the above two - Handshake is absolutely razor sharp on detail and earned that #2 spot with ease when I tried the Butter Mushroom Old Fashioned, and the Pulqueria is a genuinely local experience- but so many others were worth visiting again.

Rayo was also a top pick for me. The bartenders were friendly and knowledgable, shared a ton of detail on the spirits they used (so many locally produced! Mexican whiskey? And delicious?!), and made some great drinks. Decca got a ‘cocktail flight’ that… well, the picture will speak for itself.

They don’t look at me the way they’re looking at these drinks! Sheesh! (Rayo’s Mini-Cocktail Flight)

Hanky Panky - the first real speakeasy bar in CDMX, which may have set off their cocktail gentrification. High on vibes and flavor.

Chow Chow is a Mexican-Chinese fusion vibe with INCREDIBLE food- I loved the crab rangoons and the beef and broccoli- and the cocktails were similarly off the charts. They do a ton of their own in-house fermentation on specialty drinks. If you want to do an easy dinner with great drinks to start off the night… this is my pick.

I could go on for days here, truly, but I’ll cut it before I get long in the teeth. CDMX has more amazing bars to visit than you’re ever going to manage in one trip… so you should probably start planning the first of several.

Until I get dragged onto a plane again real soon - Anton, signing off!