La Diagonal Agaveria

St. Nicholas Avenue and the Agave Question Uptown

The serious agave bar in New York has, for most of its history, been a downtown and Brooklyn proposition. The mezcalerias and tequila-focused programs that drew critical attention through the 2010s clustered in the East Village, the Lower East Side, and pockets of Williamsburg, leaving Upper Manhattan as an afterthought in most published round-ups. La Diagonal Agaveria, at 185 St. Nicholas Avenue in Hamilton Heights, is a contemporary Mexican tapas and agave spirits restaurant.

Hamilton Heights sits at the upper edge of Harlem, bounded by the City College campus to the south and Washington Heights above 155th Street to the north. St. Nicholas Avenue runs through it as a commercial artery with a distinctly neighborhood character: bodegas, Dominican restaurants, nail salons, the occasional newer wine bar. It is the kind of block where a specialist agave program has to earn its place on local terms rather than arriving with downtown credibility pre-packaged. That positioning matters for understanding what La Diagonal Agaveria is and what its presence in this particular stretch of the city signals about how the New York agave scene is spreading.

What an Agaveria Format Actually Means

The term agaveria carries specific weight in Mexico City, where it describes a venue built around agave spirits as a serious category rather than as a mixer or a novelty. The leading examples in the Mexican capital treat mezcal and tequila with the same structural seriousness that a wine bar applies to bottles: producers named, regions identified, production methods noted. When that format travels to New York, it sits in a competitive context that includes both the broader cocktail bar market and the smaller sub-category of agave specialists.

New York's agave specialist scene has matured considerably since mezcal first gained traction with bartenders around 2012 to 2014. The city now has venues with deep sotol and raicilla selections alongside the more familiar Oaxacan mezcals, and the conversation among serious drinkers has shifted from basic Del Maguey producers toward smaller ensambles and wild-agave expressions. A venue identifying itself as an agaveria in 2024 is entering that conversation with a level of expectation attached. The name implies a curatorial commitment to the category, not just a large-format tequila list.

The Neighbourhood as Context

Hamilton Heights has an established Dominican and Caribbean population that predates any recent wave of restaurant openings, and St. Nicholas Avenue reflects that. A specialist spirits concept at this address operates within a neighborhood that will judge it on how it fits the block as much as how it fits the critical agave-bar conversation happening downtown. That dual accountability is what makes the location editorially interesting.

The broader Harlem dining and drinking scene has seen investment at multiple price points over the past decade, with the stretch from 125th Street north through Washington Heights absorbing a range of concepts that would previously have located further south. For the purposes of New York's agave scene specifically, the move uptown represents a geographic expansion of a category that had concentrated its energy below 14th Street for most of its formative years.

Where La Diagonal Sits in the Wider New York Drinking Map

New York's highest-profile drinking and dining addresses remain heavily concentrated in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. The restaurants that draw the most sustained critical attention, places like Le Bernardin, Atomix, Masa, Per Se, and Jungsik New York, occupy a completely different format from an agaveria on St. Nicholas Avenue. The comparison is instructive not because La Diagonal competes with those rooms but because the city's drinking culture operates across a much wider spectrum than the Michelin-starred tier tends to suggest. Specialist spirits bars with genuine curatorial ambition exist at a different price point but require the same level of category knowledge from the people running them.

The agave specialist format also sits in interesting relation to broader American dining trends. High-commitment tasting-menu restaurants like Alinea in Chicago, Lazy Bear in San Francisco, The French Laundry in Napa, Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg, Providence in Los Angeles, Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, Addison in San Diego, The Inn at Little Washington, Bacchanalia in Atlanta, and Emeril's in New Orleans represent one end of the American dining commitment spectrum. The specialist agave bar represents another: lower barrier to entry, higher category specificity, and a set of rewards that are less about formal service and more about what ends up in the glass. Internationally, the emphasis on producer transparency and regional specificity in agave is comparable to what natural wine bars in Paris and dining rooms in Hong Kong or Monte Carlo apply to their cellar selections.

Planning Your Visit

La Diagonal Agaveria is located at 185 St. Nicholas Avenue, New York, NY 10026, in the Hamilton Heights section of Upper Manhattan. The address is accessible via the A, B, C, and D subway lines, with stops at 145th Street placing the venue within a short walk. Reservations are recommended. Budget: Expect about $45 per person. Dress: Smart casual.