—Without crossing the curtain!
It’s Tuesday and the bar is hidden behind a door with the number 13. It’s not a bad omen. Handshake Speakeasy likes to make fun of luck and tonight, against all superstition, it will open its doors for the first time as the best bar in the world. Or, at least, that’s what the annual ranking says The World’s 50 Best Bars.
The street that houses it is not particularly pretty or glamorous. It’s in the Pink Zonea neighborhood in the center of Mexico City that during the day is full of office workers—godines, in local slang—and at night hosts the parties of the LGBT community. Around it there is a savings supermarket, a cafeteria with hospital lighting and a chain hotel.
At the hotel entrance the door is camouflaged with the number 13. The first time you pass by it, you skip it. There are no signs indicating that it is a bar. It takes a while for the brain to process it: a 13, between portal 65 and 67. How strange.
A waitress opens it for you. You go into a small, dark hall, surrounded by the curtain that you cannot cross until she passes in front and slides it past you. All the workers, black aprons over white shirts, shout in chorus:
-Welcome!
And there it is, now, the best bar in the world.
No sign of Al Capone
It is a dark and small room, without windows. Rectangular. It is illuminated by a dozen lamps hanging from the ceiling that shed 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. Along the walls, black leather sofas bordered by small tables with candles. In the center, a high table and stools. With 30 people, who will arrive in the first hour, the room is packed.
It’s kind of like the bar you’d imagine drinking at until the wee hours of the morning. to the great gatsbyor so he claims. A living painting of Hopper. Art Deco style, the kind so common in the classic buildings of the wealthy neighborhoods of the old Federal District, and a touch of Victorian England due to the omnipresent black. Steampunk chilango. Everything is measured to the millimeter, even the immaculate treatment of the waiters who refill the glass before you finish it.
First, they bring you hot, wet towels in a wooden box for you to wash your hands. Water, nuts with fine dressing. Then, the cocktail menu, designed by Dutchman Eric Van Beek, with drinks with names like Once upon a time in Oaxaca (Once upon a time in Oaxaca), which is presented with a ball of steel wool that is set on fire to imitate how the agave is cooked when making mezcal. It will not affect the flavor, it is purely aesthetic. Before drinking, the priority is a good photo of the still steaming glass for Instagram.
Each client can be in the bar for an hour and a half. Drinks range between 200 and 300 pesos (between 10 and 15 euros), about what an average Mexican earns a day. That exclusivity is part of the appeal that sells Handshake. Also probably the reason most of the customers here tonight are white and speak English.
Nandini (29 years old) is from Los Angeles and her friend Anya (28) is from New Jersey. They study medicine and are in the city for a five-day trip. Some friends knew about Handshake before and told them they couldn’t miss it. They booked a month ago. “The drinks are amazing. You feel like you’re in a real speakeasy: you don’t find it the first time, you walk past it and you don’t see it. In the United States there are many speakeasy that They don’t really have the atmosphere of a speakeasy, they just call it that because it’s trendy. You do feel it here,” they agree.
The speakeasy They were born in the United States in the heat of Prohibition, which banned alcohol during the 1920s. They were seedy slums with the facade of other businesses, hidden from the police in plain sight, fueled by smuggling. They were the economic engine of Al Capone and all those early gangsters in Italian suits and Thompsons hidden in violin cases. Nothing remains of that except the name, which remains because who doesn’t like to feel a little clandestine pseudo-adrenaline from time to time, drinking on the set of a gangster movie.
The clientele has also changed since those years. Here you only see beautiful, young and well-dressed people. Even the staff is elegant, 34 workers who change positions every day: they either juggle the cocktail shaker behind the bar, serve the tables or take care of the laboratorythe team that in the morning leaves the ingredients ready for the night.
Pamela Michelle Martínez (28 years old) studied to be a lawyer but ended up here. “I don’t miss the law. This is tiring because it is a night job, you have to reprogram your brain, but here it will be bartender It’s incredible, there are other sites that you are exploited. “Sometimes I wish I had a day job, but I’m still young.” Lonchi York (27) was born on the small Caribbean island of Curacao, learned the trade in bars and is now polishing his technique in Mexico. In a few months he will go to Amsterdam, where the owners of Handshake will open a new speakeasy.
Handshake Speakeasy served its first drink in Polanco in 2019, but moved to the 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 aesthetics. . In the basement, the drinks and music are more daring, more vital, to “enjoy the drink” instead of leaning bitterly on the bar while sad jazz plays, jokes Javier Rodríguez (31 years old), while preparing a cocktail inspired by a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Trap and pop sounds mixed with the metallic noise of shakers shaking, ice hitting the glass and the hum of conversations. The hour and a half has been consumed. A waiter accompanies you to the exit. All the workers say goodbye to you with a chorus:
-See you later!
