Ranking bars is inherently stupid.

Yet every year, when a new list comes out from the vaunted 50 Best organization, I drop everything to see which bars made it. Immediately, I am enraged, shocked, confused, and, sometimes, in agreement.

Since The World’s 50 Best Bars list first debuted in 2009—a spin-off of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list which first appeared in 2002—London and New York have dominated, while also always volleying back and forth between owning the #1 spot, with places like PDT (New York), the Artesian (London), The Dead Rabbit (New York), The American Bar (London), Dandelyan (London), Dante (New York), and The Connaught Bar (London) claiming the crown in various years.

That started to change in 2022, when, suddenly, cities like Singapore, Athens, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, and Tokyo seemed to become every bit as significant to the list as London and New York. That year, for the first time, a bar outside of those two cities also hit #1, with Paradiso from Barcelona claiming the honors. The next year, Sips from Barcelona would grab the top spot.

In October of last year, Mexico City’s Handshake Speakeasy took over the #1 slot, with CDMX likewise placing six different bars in the top 100. For reference, London also had six, while New York had eight. (Yes, 50 Best now ranks the 100 best bars; better to not overthink this.)

Then, in late April of this year, when 50 Best released its list of North America’s 50 Best Bars, Mexico City claimed 11 in the top 100 (and three of the top 10). Ranking bars may be inherently stupid, but how could I not sit up and take notice? Could Mexico City really now have arguably the best cocktail bar scene in the entire world?

I decided to fly down and investigate, with a plan to drink at as many 50 Best bars as I could in just a couple of nights. Because I am inherently up for stupid things as well.

Some brief notes:

• The following is written with full awareness that attending venues at random times, on a Tuesday and Wednesday in June, to have a single drink (perhaps two) is probably not the best or fairest way to fully evaluate a spot.

• For bar-hopping efficiency purposes, I mostly chose bars located near one another.  Luckily, many of the bars on the list are in or near the Roma Norte neighborhood, where I chose to stay. (On this topic: it's crazy how many great bars there are in Roma Norte, and how easy it is to get from one to another. Yet, unlike, say, Manhattan’s East Village, it doesn’t feel like a “bar” neighborhood; it’s lush and lovely and mostly peaceful.)

• I attended these bars not as “Aaron Goldfarb, booze journalist from America who has called ahead to assure elite and/or comped service,” but as a (mostly) normal schmo like anyone else. 

Kaito del Valle

Ranked #40 in North America

Most of the bars I planned to visit didn’t open until 6 p.m., meaning I’d have to pass my daytime hours battling hangovers and tackling al pastor tacos.  Kaito del Valle, down south in the Colonia del Valle neighborhood, however, conveniently opens at 3 p.m.. And that’s because it’s a somewhat secret izakaya bar inside a roomy sushi restaurant.

I walked through the sparsely-populated restaurant—a few stragglers still lunching—past the koi pond near the hostess, upstairs past bussing stations, past the bathrooms, past an out-of-place Ocean Spray vending machine, until I was finally in the bar.

It, too, was sparsely populated at this hour, minimalistic and industrial in design, with exposed concrete ceilings and a tile floor, winking Maneki-neko aplenty, and an anime I couldn’t identify playing on a TV screen that would surely be better used for karaoke later in the night.

The bar is named after female pearl divers in Japan and the staff is said to be all-female, though a man helped me with my order, explaining that Woodford Reserve was the only bourbon possibly fit for a certain cocktail and no substitutions would be allowed. The rest of the menu was less strict and more playful, with a frozen Negroni (quite good) and Japanese-inspired cocktails like a Shiso Collins and a Kobe Fashioned made with a beef- and butter-washed Wild Turkey (sweet and creamy). The small bites — nigiri and takoyakis — were perhaps even better.

I will say that I can imagine Kaito being a blast late at night, slamming drinks served in Pokemon mugs in a dark room as a couple belts out “Islands in the Stream” on karaoke. But at 3 p.m., with the sun peeking through the windows, it wasn’t ideal.

Unfortunately, I will never get to see the bar at a better hour since it closed shortly after my visit (hopefully just for the time being as the owners attempt to find a new location).

Licorería Limantour

Ranked #32 Overall, #9 in North America

Mess around in the bar world long enough, you meet people. Thus, at Licorería Limantour, back in Roma Norte, I ran into Alberto González, co-founder of the bar and arguably the most in-the-know person in CDMX cocktail past and present.

Limantour started the modern cocktail scene when it opened in 2011. I was placed in a private room in the back, with a bar featuring unique and rare (and typically-not-seen-in-Mexico) spirits gifted to the bar from visitors around the world. González proceeded to blow my table up with a non-stop barrage of pretty much every cocktail on the lengthy and inventive menu: a Fluffy Paloma, a tequila Negroni, a Mexican Old Fashioned with Nixta corn liqueur, a Margarita al pastor rimmed with taco seasoning, the Jamaica Mezcal.

It was dizzying. I was supposed to only have a single drink per spot. OK, so how about 25 sips of 25 drinks instead? The cocktails were all very good, everything perfectly executed and beautifully presented, though some perhaps a tad sweet for my palate. (This seems to be a common complaint from Mexico City cocktail tourists across the board.)

Baltra

Ranked #83 Overall, #20 in North America

González told me that the place to be on a Tuesday in Mexico City is Baltra, which hosts Martes Martinis. Martinis for just 100 pesos! ($5!)

It was Tuesday, so off I went to Baltra, which has one of the stranger themes of any top cocktail bar I’ve ever encountered:  Charles Darwin. The bar claims Baltra was the second island the naturalist visited on his Galápagos adventures, but that doesn’t seem to be true. It wasn’t even called Baltra back in 1835. Whatever!

I’m into evolutionary biology and the offbeat aesthetics worked for me: weird trinkets and maps, butterflies and taxidermy, jars filled with who-knows-what. The vibes were immaculate. The Martini was fantastic. But did drinking a standard London dry gin Martini with a lemon twist that I could have had anywhere back home teach me anything about Mexico City’s cocktail culture? Not really.

Though in hindsight, with so many other spots leaning heavily into preciousness and razzle dazzle and over-the-top drinks (I would eventually learn), I could see Baltra being my most “regular” spot were I to live in the neighborhood.

Bijou Drinkery Room

Ranked #34 in North America

I’m not sure it’s ever taken me longer to merely enter a bar, get to my seat, and get a drink order placed than it did at Bijou. Not ideal as the evening neared midnight.

I arrived at the address online and found an empty lobby with a woman at a hostess stand. It didn’t seem like a bar was nearby. “It’ll be a few minutes,” she told me. “Why? Is the bar busy?” I wondered.  No. Because I needed to be escorted upstairs.

Eventually, a man arrived and took me upstairs to (what I later learned) is a culinary school during the day. He made a joke about seating me at a table right in front of the test kitchen, and I kind of believed him because this setup was so disorienting, as if I was on a cooking show TV set, before he finally took me to a bejeweled door — the entrance to the speakeasy.

What’s the password? Open sesame? No. Just a smile. 

The smile opened the door onto a surprisingly empty bar (at least, on this night) where I was seated, then handed a custom-made, knock-off Rubik’s Cube. A server came over and spent another ten minutes explaining how to use the custom-made, knock-off Rubik’s Cube to order a random drink: you twist it to the various spirits, ingredients (maracuyá) and drink traits (dry) you want—there must be thousands of combinations.

I fooled around with the toy for several minutes then, frustrated, decided to just order the house Bijou that was available on a secondary, diner-style photo menu of classics and riffs. Have I ever had a Bijou before? Gin, sweet vermouth, green chartreuse? I couldn’t recall. I couldn’t recall my home address any more either after all this pomp and circumstance just to get a single drink. Glancing down at my phone, I see the Bijou was placed in front of me 42 minutes after I first spoke to the hostess downstairs.

The Bijou, however, was great and I downed it.

Hanky Panky

Ranked #93 Overall, #35 in North America

I was not particularly interested in visiting Hanky Panky. Of late, I’d seen it get a lot of flack on the internet, with many calling it overhyped and accusing the bar of resting on its laurels as it approaches nearly a decade in the business.

Wow, was the internet wrong. Hanky Panky is still an exceptional bar.

Yes, it requires a trek to enter (and eventually exit) the Colonia Juárez bar — through a trick Modelo cooler door that’s maybe more hassle than genuine novelty. And you have to listen to a ten-minute explanation of how to use the menu (it’s entitled “12 Wonders of Mixology” on the evening I’m there). And there’s even another children’s toy employed to help in your drink ordering (a View-Master).

But it’s worth going through the process because once you’re tucked into a red leather booth, seated under a bison’s head, jamming to American West Coast rap, enjoying a Grand Bazaar cocktail from Turkey (an Old Fashioned spec of mezcal infused with raisins and black cumin, Pedro Ximénez sherry, Talisker, and Angostura bitters) while the neon “We Are Hanky Panky” sign glows on the wall, you won’t want to leave.

But when you do, you’ll have to walk through that damn Modelo cooler.

Tlecān

Ranked #20 Overall, #3 in North America

Now this is an elite bar!

Yet another Roma Norte bar, but once you enter you are … transported. Tlecān is dark and atmospheric, with a haze seemingly floating over everything. The design is pre-Hispanic with a red clay bar and sculptures recalling an ancient tomb. A Disk of Mictlāntēcutli, the Aztec god of death, lords over everything.

You can tell you’re in a bar, sure, but there are no bottles on a back wall, no brands to be seen. It almost feels like the bar inside a theme park. Yet it’s not pretentious or fussy. Have a Pulque Colada — just what it sounds like — or some obscure bacanora pour (from a Mexican-spirits-only menu) that will surely knock your socks off.

This is what a 50 Best bar should feel like. I didn’t want to leave.

Mauro

Ranked #14 in North America

If you go to enough bars, some just get lost in the shuffle.

Such was the case of Mauro, which had to be crammed into a half-hour slot so I didn’t miss the strict reservation at the next spot on my list.

In my brief stay, I could tell this was a great bar. It had the coolest-looking crowd of any of these spots, everyone vibing to a swinging 1970s Italy aesthetic. Amari and vermouths lined the back bar’s top shelf and I sped through fun cocktail riffs like a Banana Adonis and a Garibaldillo (both great).

Like Baltra, this felt like a bar that would shine more as a frequently-visited local spot than some of the more over-the-top locales I tried.

Handshake Speakeasy

Ranked #1 Overall, #1 in North America

Finally, I was at the end of my crawl: the #1 bar in the world.

Perhaps it was unfair to slot it in the final position, to try it after going to every other bar, to visit after having already consumed dozens of other cocktails and walked tens of thousands of steps through the city. 

Alas, it didn’t do it for me. It took forever to get inside the bar, but not because of any cutesy set design or performance art this time. Instead, despite a reservation (the only reservation I made on this whole crawl), it took forever to get in simply because we were being (needlessly?) held up at the door.

Upon entering the extraordinarily dark bar, every employee shouted out “¡Bienvenidos!” Though I kind of felt like everyone was going through the motions, as if to say “This is what we do at the #1 bar in the world.” From the get-go, I felt rushed through my stay, so the table could be freed up for yet another cocktail tourist wanting to check out the so-called best bar in the world.

The menu was impossible to read without doing the old man iPhone flashlight maneuver. The one drink I had—Once Upon a Time in Oaxaca, an infused and clarified mezcal drink, painstakingly made—was admittedly great. But the one bite I had—an octopus hot dog mashup—was the worst thing I would eat in my 72 hours in Mexico City.

When you’re at the top, I guess, as so many other bars have learned over the last two decades, the only way to go is down. Handshake Speakeasy is the top bar in the world … for this year at least. I should go visit them again when they’re lower on the list and undoubtedly better.