A night at the best bar in the world: Caught between The Great Gatsby and a Hopper painting

—No crossing the curtain!

It’s Tuesday and the bar is concealed behind a door with the number 13 on it. It’s not a bad omen. Handshake Speakeasy likes to make fun of luck and tonight, notwithstanding any lingering superstition, it will open its doors as the newly designated best bar in the world. Or at least that’s what the annual ranking The World’s 50 Best Bars says.

The street that houses this establishment is not particularly pretty or glamorous. It is in the Zona Rosa, a neighborhood in the center of Mexico City that fills up with office workers during the day and hosts parties by the LGBTQ+ community at night. Surrounding it are a discount supermarket, a cafeteria with hospital-like lighting, and a hotel.

Located at the hotel entrance, the door with the number 13 is easy to miss the first time you walk past it. There are no signs indicating that this is a bar. It takes a while for the brain to process it: a 13, sandwiched in between a 65 and 67. How odd.

A waitress opens the door for you. You enter a small, dark entrance hall, facing a curtain that you cannot cross until she passes in front of you and draws it open. All the workers, black aprons over white shirts, shout as one:

-Welcome!

And there it is, the best bar in the world.

No trace of Al Capone

It is a small, dark, windowless room, rectangular in shape. It is lit by a dozen lamps hanging from the ceiling that cast a soft, orange light on the minimalist black-and-gold furniture. To the right is the bar, to the left a huge mirror with a somewhat rococo frame. Against the walls are black leather sofas bordered by small tables with candles. In the center of the room there is a high table and stools. With 30 people arriving in the first hour alone, the room is packed.

It’s something like the bar where you’d imagine yourself drinking until the early hours of the morning like The Great Gatsby, or at least that seems to be the idea. It’s like being inside a painting by Hopper. The style is Art Deco, the kind so common in the classic buildings of the wealthy neighborhoods of the old Federal District, with a touch of Victorian England due to the omnipresent black tones. Call it chilango steampunk. Everything has been thought out down to the last millimeter, even the immaculate attitude of the waiters, who refill your glass before you even finish it.

First, you’re brought warm, damp towels in a wooden box to clean your hands with. Then come water and a plate of nuts with a fine seasoning. Then comes the cocktail menu, designed by Dutchman Eric Van Beek, with drinks with names like Once upon a time in Oaxaca, which is presented with a ball of steel wool that is set on fire to imitate how agave is cooked when making mezcal. It won’t affect the taste, it’s purely an aesthetic thing. Before drinking, the priority is to take a good photo of the still-steaming glass for Instagram.

Each customer can stay at the bar for an hour and a half. Drinks range from 200 to 300 pesos (around $10 to $15), roughly what the average Mexican makes a day. That exclusivity is part of the appeal. It’s also probably why most of the customers here tonight are white and speak English.

Nandini, 29, is from Los Angeles and her friend Anya, 28, is from New Jersey. They are studying medicine and are in town for a five-day trip. Friends of theirs already knew about Handshake before it made headlines and had told them they couldn’t miss it. They booked a spot a month ago. “The drinks are amazing. It feels like a real speakeasy – you don’t find it right away, at first you walk past it and don’t see it. There are a lot of speakeasies in the U.S. that don’t really have the right atmosphere, they just call it that because it’s trendy. Here you do feel it,” they agree.

Speakeasies were born in the United States in the heat of the Prohibition Era, which banned alcohol during the 1920s. They were seedy dives concealed behind the facade of other businesses, hidden from the police in plain sight, and fueled by bootlegging. They were the economic engine behind Al Capone and all those early gangsters in Italian suits and Thompsons hidden in violin cases. Nothing remains of that except the name — because let’s face it, who doesn’t like to feel a little rush of clandestine pseudo-adrenaline from time to time, drinking on what looks like the set of a gangster movie?

The clients have also changed since those long-gone days. Here you only see young, good-looking, well-dressed people. Even the staff is elegant, with 34 workers who change positions every day: they alternately juggle cocktails behind the bar, serve tables or take care of the “laboratory” where a morning team leaves the ingredients ready for the evening.

Pamela Michelle Martinez, 28, studied to be a lawyer but ended up working here instead. “I don’t miss law. It’s tiring because it’s a night job, you have to reprogram your brain, but being a bartender here is incredible, there are other places where you are exploited. Sometimes I would like to have a day job, but I’m still young.” Lonchi York, 27, was born on the small Caribbean island of Curaçao, learned the trade and is now honing his technique in Mexico. In a few months he will go to Amsterdam, where the owners of Handshake are planning to open a new speakeasy.

Handshake Speakeasy served its first drink in the neighborhood of Polanco in 2019, but moved to Zona Rosa in 2021. Less than two years ago, the space became too small and they opened another room in the hotel’s garage with space for 50 people and the same aesthetic. In the basement, the drinks and music are bolder, more vitalist, to “enjoy the drink” instead of leaning bitterly on the bar counter while sad jazz plays, jokes Javier Rodríguez, 31, while preparing a cocktail inspired by a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Trap and pop music is playing, mixed with the metallic sound of cocktail shakers being shaken, ice cubes clattering against glass and the murmur of conversations. The hour and a half has passed. A waiter escorts you to the exit. All the workers say goodbye with a shout in chorus:

-See you later!

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