Handshake Speakeasy

The Bar That Reset the Conversation About Mexico City Cocktails

Pull back the theatrical curtain on the ground floor of a Colonia Juárez hotel and the entire team greets you in unison. It is a deliberate choreography, and it signals something broader about how Handshake Speakeasy operates: the ritual of arrival is as considered as anything in the glass. Mexico City's cocktail scene has matured rapidly over the past decade, moving from novelty tequila-and-mezcal tourism into a genuinely competitive international circuit. Handshake sits at the far end of that arc. Named World's Leading Bar at the 2024 World's 50 Best Bars ceremony, it has held the North America number-one position in that same ranking for three consecutive years, from 2023 through 2025, and currently ranks fourth globally in the Top 500 Bars index. Pearl Recommended Bar recognition in 2025 adds a separate critical endorsement to the record.

That trajectory is worth contextualizing. In 2021 the bar relocated within the hotel and brought in a new drinks director. The 2022 ranking placed it at number two in North America and twenty-fifth globally. By 2023 it had climbed to third globally and second in the region. The 2024 global title followed. That kind of ascent is not incidental; it reflects both a sharpening of the program and a growing international recognition that the most technically serious cocktail bars no longer cluster exclusively in London, New York, or Tokyo.

Two Floors, Two Registers

The physical structure of Handshake enforces a specific drinking ritual. The ground floor is where you begin. Low lighting, dark hues, and décor drawn from Prohibition-era aesthetics and the visual language of the Great Gatsby create a setting where conversation comes easily and the pace is deliberate. A 1990s soundtrack runs underneath. Cocktails here lean toward the culinary: the clarified piña colada is a documented example from the bar's own awards submissions, stripped of the cloying sweetness of the original and rebuilt as something closer to a clean, acidic citrus drink. The clarification technique, now widely associated with the bar's identity, places Handshake in the same technical conversation as the program-driven bars in London and New York that pioneered translucent drinks over the past fifteen years.

The basement operates differently. The tempo is higher, the soundtrack is hip-hop, and the menu leans toward drinks with more theatrical presentation. The Fig Martini has been on the menu since the bar opened and functions as a fixed point of reference across both the team and the guest experience. The Three Sips Martini arrives presented as a floral arrangement. These are not gimmicks layered onto a shallow program; they are presentation choices made by a team that has consistently placed at the leading of the most scrutinized ranking in the global bar industry. The two-floor format is a structured sequence, not two separate venues operating in parallel.

The Service Model as Program Architecture

Across the broader category, bar service tends to split between specialized roles, where bartenders stay behind the stick and floor staff handle everything else, and more fluid models. Handshake runs the latter in a specific way: every member of the team is a trained bartender, and they rotate weekly through prep, floor, till, and maître functions. The result is a floor where whoever brings your drink and whoever greets you at the door share the same technical knowledge base. It also means the bar's institutional knowledge distributes across the whole team rather than concentrating in one or two individuals.

This is not an insignificant operational choice. Service parity across a team of this size, at this volume and recognition level, requires a degree of training investment that distinguishes Handshake from bars that operate on reputation alone. The synchronized welcome at the curtain is the visible surface of a model that runs considerably deeper.

Colonia Juárez and the City's Cocktail Geography

Mexico City's serious cocktail bars distribute across several neighborhoods, but Colonia Juárez, which sits just west of the historic center and southeast of Polanco, has accumulated a meaningful concentration of them. The address at Calle Amberes 65 places Handshake inside a walkable area where other bars operate within a short radius. Baltra Bar and Bar Mauro represent different points on the city's bar spectrum and are worth including in any extended evening. Bijou Drinkery Room and Brujas add further range to what is a genuinely diverse bar city.

For visitors comparing Mexico City's bar scene to other major Latin American cities or to established bar destinations globally, the 50 Best and Top 500 data now positions the city as a primary rather than secondary destination. Arca in Tulum, Aruba Day Drink in Tijuana, and Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu illustrate the range of the broader regional circuit, but no single bar in that set carries the same combination of global ranking and regional dominance that Handshake currently holds.

Planning Your Visit

The bar occupies a hotel building on Calle Amberes in Colonia Juárez, which is well-served by rideshare from most central neighborhoods and reachable on foot from the Insurgentes metro station. Given the bar's global ranking and the resulting international demand, advance reservations are the sensible approach, particularly for weekend visits or for anyone traveling specifically to secure a seat. Arriving without a reservation is not impossible, but the bar's profile makes walk-in availability unpredictable. Specific booking channels and current hours are confirmed through the bar's own platforms; phone and website details are not listed here. A Google rating of 4.4 across more than 1,600 reviews reflects a consistent guest experience at volume, which is its own form of operational evidence at a bar receiving the level of inbound traffic that a World's Leading title generates.

For broader planning across the city, our full Mexico City bars guide covers the wider circuit. Our full Mexico City restaurants guide, hotels guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide cover the rest of the city in the same depth.