The Best Bars in Cortes & Jerónimos

The bar counter runs along stainless-steel fish scales, with a fluorescent seascape glowing behind it, which tells you everything about the commitment level here. Salmon Guru is a serious cocktail bar on one of Madrid's liveliest streets, ranked among the World's 50 Best Bars, with a menu that runs from impeccable classics to stranger, chipotle-forward originals. Grab a counter seat if you can; the booths are fine, but the bar is the point.

1. The 50 #37 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #46 · Europe's 50 Best Bars
3. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Sherry bars don't come more committed than this one: no beer, no wine, no water, no tips, and absolutely no photos. The ban on cameras dates, according to local lore, to the Franco era when spies used them to identify enemies. A chalk tally on the bar keeps track of what you've drunk. Order fino, manzanilla, or oloroso, let the black cat wander past, and don't ask for anything that isn't sherry.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
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The azulejos tiles and carved wooden facade have been pulling people off the street in Las Letras since forever. Up front it reads like a classic Madrid taverna, wine and fino and all the rest; out back, Diego Cabrera of Salmón Gurú runs a cocktail bar that gives the old bones something to talk about. The crowd arrives for tapas and stays longer than planned, which is more or less the idea.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A mini luggage rack runs under the bar, a nod to the old design bones this cocktail bar chose to keep when it refurbished. Shingo Gokan's fingerprints are all over it: Japanese precision meets New York swagger, with the Sixty Forty on the menu, a drink that opens as a Martini and quietly becomes a Manhattan by the end. The room has enough hotel polish to feel intentional without losing the neighbourhood ease that keeps regulars coming back.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Cocktail Bar – Europe

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A discreet door off the street opens into a dim, velvet-and-shadow cocktail bar styled after the private haunts of 1970s New York's moneyed class. The concept is unabashedly theatrical, and the drinks lean into it: the team uses fine-dining technique to render things like tiramisu and cinnamon rolls as cocktails, which sounds gimmicky until you're two in and reconsidering your life choices. Difford's Guide has taken notice.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar on Calle de las Huertas where the espresso martini comes with a sustainability footnote, made with vanilla beans recycled from other productions and cold brew steeped for a full day. The philosophy, as the team puts it, is product, service, and experience in harmony, which sounds lofty until the drink arrives and the argument makes itself. Difford's Guide has taken note.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The cocktail menu runs to eight drinks, and the team seems to regard that as plenty. Inclán Brutal Bar is a cocktail bar in Centro where the glassware is as considered as what's in it, trompe l'oeil details and all. The short list swings between originals and classics treated with unusual fidelity, which is a rarer combination than it sounds. A good room to visit when you want someone to have thought very hard about your drink.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Mirrored walls and warm wood paneling line this cocktail bar on Echegaray, Madrid's reliable street for a late night out. The signature Espresso Martini swaps the usual formula for cold brew, house coffee liqueur, and local heather honey sourced from a neighborhood beekeeper working on native bee recovery, which is a more interesting origin story than most bars bother with. The room gets festive well before midnight.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The Espresso Martini here comes with a coffee foam, an egg yolk, and a cookie wafer sourced from a local convent whose proceeds go to people in need, which gives ordering a cocktail a quietly unusual moral weight. Santos y Desamparados is a bar in Madrid's Centro, the kind where a drink can arrive with a small story attached. The room pulls in locals who know where they are, geographically and otherwise.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide