The 66 Best Places to Drink in Mexico

The entrance is a secret door, which is either thrilling or exhausting depending on your mood. Once inside, Handshake is a dimly lit speakeasy in Juárez where the cocktail program leans heavily on vintage spirits and the whole room feels like someone's very expensive idea of the 1920s. It holds the number two spot on the World's 50 Best Bars list, which the regulars probably know and definitely don't mention.

The name means "place of fire" in Nahuatl, and the Roma Norte agave bar commits to that fully: monochrome earthy materials, sparse dramatic lighting, burning incense, and a design meant to feel like walking into an ancient tomb. It's moody in the way that actually works, where the atmosphere doesn't fight the drinking. North America's 50 Best Bars ranked it fifth, and The World's 50 Best Bars placed it at 23.

Black-and-white photos of a man named Mauro watch over the room while his grandsons run the bar below him, which tells you most of what you need to know about Bar Mauro. This Italian cocktail bar in Roma Norte pours vermouth and amari the way Milan used to, somewhere between a classic aperitivo hour and a very considered modern lounge. Ranked second on North America's 50 Best Bars, it also holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Bars list.

Stone-block courtyard, old-growth trees, ivy-wrapped columns, and a wrap-around terrace before you've even looked at the menu. El Tigre Silencioso is a cantina in Roma Norte where the setting does a lot of the talking and the kitchen answers back with creative Mexican cooking that likes unexpected combinations. The open kitchen and corner bar keep things loose, and the crowd tends to dress like they've been here before.

Neon kanji on the walls, sake threading through nearly every cocktail on the menu, custom glassware on every table: this Japanese cocktail bar in Juárez commits to the bit without feeling like a theme park. Sit down, order something from a list that leans hard on East Asian flavors, and let okonomiyaki or a katsu sando arrive alongside. It landed at number 25 on North America's 50 Best Bars in 2026.

The bar's name comes from the Tzotzil word for "seed," and that's not just branding. Bekeb is a plant-driven cocktail bar in San Miguel de Allende that builds its menu around Mexican produce and spirits, with a non-alcoholic list treated as seriously as the rest. Ranked 24th on North America's 50 Best Bars, it draws the kind of crowd that comes to drink deliberately rather than just drink.

Mezcal is the spine of the menu here, which makes sense given that Oaxaca is basically ground zero for the stuff. Selva is a cocktail bar that leans hard into local and seasonal ingredients, building drinks around the landscape rather than the back bar. A spot on North America's 50 Best Bars says the room is doing something worth noticing. Come for the cocktails and stay because the food snacks keep arriving and nobody seems to be in a rush.

A former parking garage turned stuccoed cocktail bar, Mecenas lands at number 18 on North America's 50 Best Bars list. The name nods to the Roman arts patron, and the ethos follows: everything here is made with care, from spirits to reductions brewed in-house. Liqueurs follow Jalisco's tradition of cane alcohol distillation, with neutral cane spirit as the base for things like limoncello and lavender cream.

An open-air palapa built on sand in the Tulum jungle, Arca is a contemporary Mexican restaurant where nearly everything passes over live fire and the menu follows whatever the farmers showed up with that week. The chef, originally from Tijuana, drags Baja street-food instincts deep into the Caribbean jungle with results that feel neither beachy nor precious. It holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, and the bar is no afterthought either.

The bar takes its name from a Yucatan tree that the Maya associated with hospitality, which sets the tone neatly. Zapote Bar is a cocktail bar inside a luxury resort in Playa del Carmen, where the drinks lean hard into local ingredients and Mayan references rather than the usual tropical-hotel playlist. North America's 50 Best Bars has it at number 95. The crowd tends toward guests who wandered in for one drink and lost track of time entirely.

Street tacos and cocktails share equal billing here, which tells you everything about what kind of place this is. The bar runs as a coffee shop through the day before settling into a livelier cocktail spot come nightfall, with the Roma Norte crowd packed in close enough that it genuinely feels like someone's living room, just with better drinks. Bartender Khristian de la Torre's menu is the reason to linger past the tacos.

The art deco bones of this two-story cocktail bar on Álvaro Obregón set the scene before you've ordered a thing. Limantour has been pulling serious drinkers to Roma Norte for years, and the downstairs bar fills fast with a crowd that has opinions about mezcal. Cocktails lean into regional Mexican flavors without making a big announcement about it. The 50 Best Bars list has been a regular stop for them, which tracks.

Absinthe gets the louche, ceremonial treatment it deserves at this intimate cocktail bar above natural wine spot Loup Bar in Roma Norte. The rotating menu runs to about a dozen drinks, swapped out weekly, or the bartender will just make you something. New Orleans French Quarter is the aesthetic, which sounds like a stretch until you're inside and it isn't. A Discovery from The 50 Best.

The stained-glass bar runs clear, ruby, and emerald, a nod to the three "jewels" in the Bijou cocktail that gave this speakeasy its name. Bartenders here work from a Rubik's Cube menu, literally spinning the cube to unlock new flavor combinations each session, which sounds like a gimmick until you watch them pull it off. A 50 Best Discovery pick and a Spirited Awards regional honoree, it's the kind of place that earns its theatrics.

The More Room runs on cocktail mathematics: every drink from the adjoining café gets reimagined through actual formulae, so ordering here feels vaguely like a physics exam you want to take. This dimmer, livelier side of Less Is More is a sophisticated cocktail bar in Roma Norte, and for the arithmetically allergic, the menu section called Less Thinking More Drinking is a genuine diplomatic gesture. A regional honoree at the Spirited Awards two years running.

The name translates as "end your suffering," which sets the tone pretty well for a mezcal bar stocking more than 70 varieties. The founder is a documentary filmmaker and mezcal industry organizer, so this is less a bar than a small education in smoke. Pechuga, made with chicken breast and tasting nothing like it sounds, is worth asking about. Named a Discovery by The 50, it draws the kind of regulars who actually want to talk about what's in the glass.

Set inside the Puerta del Lobo vineyard, Vertical is a cocktail bar where the wine list is not actually the point. The drinks lean on Mexican gastronomy with genuine intent, and the kind of place that lists both a mango Negroni and a coconut lime clarified cocktail on the same menu is making an argument without saying a word. The 50 Best Discovery program has taken notice, as have the Spirited Awards.

A basement cocktail bar in Colonia Juárez where the staircase down feels like a commitment. Hanging plants, low light, and a shamanistic theme drawn from pre-Hispanic Mexico set the mood, and the drinks follow through with smoke and botanical ingredients that treat plants as something close to medicine. The 50 Discovery named it, and the crowd that fills it seems to know they've found something worth keeping quiet about.

The name comes from the lightning bolt that, in Aztec myth, struck an agave plant and cooked it into the first pulque. That creation story shapes the whole program at this cocktail bar in Roma Norte, where the drinks lean heavily on Mexican spirits, mezcal and its relatives, built into cocktails that are meant to carry a narrative. Small sharing plates keep things going, but the spirits are the point.

The building is called Casa de las Brujas, House of the Witches, and the cocktail bar inside leans all the way into that. Dim, esoteric, and intimate, this female-led bar works through a rotating menu rooted in Mexican herbalism, with ingredients prepared in a small lab on site and drinks named for Latin American writers and activists. A genuinely witchy place that earns the word.

The jukebox still sits beside the cocktail bar, the red lights are still dim, and the pool table is still upstairs on the mezzanine. Cananea is a cantina inside a hotel in Juárez, where the bar has been around forever but now runs a Sonoran-leaning menu of chivichangas and dried meat alongside classic margaritas, gimlets, and mezcal spritzes. It draws the kind of crowd that stays much later than planned.

The entrance opens onto a comal set into the kitchen, so the smoke hits you before you've found a seat. Enrique Olvera's mezcal-and-snacks bar in Polanco leans Oaxacan, with a drinks list that runs from tequila through bacanora and sotol into rare mezcals most places wouldn't stock. The food is mostly vegetables and small bites, the kind of snacky, shareable things designed to give you a reason to order one more pour.

The building looks like a face, the peaked roof a witch's hat, the windows two wide eyes staring down Colonia Roma. The cocktail bar inside leans into all of that, with an all-women team turning Mexico's native botanicals into drinks that feel less like cocktails and more like something brewed. The crowd tends toward the architecturally curious who then find a reason to stay for a second round.