Licoreria Limantour, Mexico City

Roma Norte's Anchor Bar

Roma Norte runs on a specific kind of civic energy: tree-lined streets, mid-century apartment blocks, independent restaurants pressing against one another, and a population that treats going out as a routine rather than an occasion. Álvaro Obregón is the neighbourhood's main artery, and Licoreria Limantour sits on it at number 106 with the ease of a place that has never needed to announce itself. The bar has been on the World's 50 Best Bars list every year since 2014 — eleven consecutive appearances — and its regulars still arrive on weekday evenings the way people arrive at a local that happens to be very good rather than a destination that happens to be local.

That tension between international standing and neighbourhood identity is what makes Limantour worth understanding beyond its ranking. Mexico City's cocktail scene has expanded considerably since the bar opened, with Roma Norte, Condesa, and Juárez now producing a cluster of programmes that compete on technique. Baltra Bar, Bar Mauro, Bijou Drinkery Room, and Brujas each represent different positions in that scene. Limantour's position is older, more embedded, and carries the accumulated weight of a place that shaped the conversation before the conversation became crowded.

The Weight of a Consistent Record

Consistency in the World's 50 Best Bars rankings is more revealing than any single high placement. A bar that peaks once at #3 and disappears tells a different story than one that holds between #6 and #52 across more than a decade. Limantour's record covers both: it ranked #47 in 2014 and climbed steadily, reaching #6 in 2021 and #7 in 2023. The 2024 and 2025 rankings show a decline , #32 and then #52 globally , with the North America-specific list placing it at #9 both years. The Pearl Recommended designation for 2025 adds a secondary endorsement from a separate awards body.

What the trajectory describes is a programme that built genuine depth during a period when Mexico City was being rediscovered internationally as a food and drink destination, and that now holds its position as the field has grown denser. A 4.4 rating across 3,662 Google reviews is the kind of aggregate that reflects repeat visitors and locals as much as tourists with ranked lists in hand , it is not the profile of a bar that only attracts one-time pilgrims.

Roma Norte as Context

The neighbourhood sets the terms. Roma Norte occupies a zone of the city that has been through cycles of affluence, decay, and careful regeneration, and its current character reflects all of that: there is old money in the architecture, creative-class money in the restaurants, and a street-level sociability that resists the sterility that tends to follow rapid gentrification. Álvaro Obregón, with its central camellón running the length of the boulevard, is built for the kind of slow-moving evening that starts with a beer on a terrace and ends several bars later.

Limantour operates within that logic rather than against it. The bar's address places it in the middle of a strip where the density of good options makes bar-hopping the default mode. Arriving early on a weekday gives you the more composed version of the room; weekend evenings push toward capacity and the energy shifts accordingly. Either version is consistent with how Roma Norte works as a whole.

For a broader map of where Limantour sits within Mexico City's full drinking and dining picture, the EP Club Mexico City guide covers the key neighbourhoods and the bars and restaurants that define each one.

What the Programme Signals

Bars that hold World's 50 Best placements across multiple years typically share a few structural characteristics: a programme built around Mexican spirits and ingredients in a way that extends beyond novelty, a technical approach that can produce consistency at volume, and a staff depth that means the bar doesn't collapse when one person leaves. Limantour's sustained presence in the rankings, including the years when its global position was highest (2018–2023), suggests all three are in place, though the specific menu and format are not available in verified data for this record.

What can be said with confidence is that the bar operates in a city where agave spirits , mezcal in particular , have moved from regional identity marker to global category over the same decade that Limantour has been ranked. Bars in this tier of the Mexico City scene are not simply serving mezcal Negronis to tourists; they are working with producers, formats, and techniques that treat agave as a base for serious programme-building. The North America ranking at #9 in both 2024 and 2025 places Limantour in a peer set that includes bars in New York, Mexico City, and elsewhere in the region working at the highest documented level of the discipline.

For comparison across Mexico's broader bar scene, Arca in Tulum, El Gallo Altanero in Guadalajara, and La Capilla in Tequila each occupy different positions in Mexico's drinking culture, ranging from the ceremonial to the technically experimental. Internationally, bars such as Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu illustrate how this tier of programme operates across different markets and ingredient bases.

Within Mexico itself, Aruba Day Drink in Tijuana, Bekeb in San Miguel de Allende, and Coco Bongo in Cancun show the range of formats the country's bar scene spans, from intimate specialist programmes to high-volume entertainment venues , a range that makes Limantour's position as a neighbourhood-rooted, internationally ranked cocktail bar all the more specific.

Planning a Visit

Licoreria Limantour is at Av. Álvaro Obregón 106 in Roma Norte, Cuauhtémoc. The neighbourhood is walkable from Condesa and accessible by metro (Insurgentes station on Line 1 is a short walk). Roma Norte's bar and restaurant density means an evening here rarely involves just one stop, and Limantour works as either an anchor or a mid-evening destination depending on how the night is being built. Given its profile and the volume suggested by the Google review count, arriving early or on a weeknight is the lower-friction approach if a seat at the bar matters more than the energy of a full room.