The atlas · A cuisine · New York, Mexico City, London, Barcelona

The cocktail bar

Also Cocktails, The bar

Spirit, acid and sugar balanced to the gram — and lately a lab's worth of technique: clarifying, fat-washing, infusing, carbonating, until a drink can taste of a whole dish.

Where it comes from

Jerry Thomas's bar guide of 1862 is usually counted the first cocktail book, and the drinks it set down — sours, punches, juleps, the old fashioned — are still the grammar. From the late twentieth century a craft revival rebuilt them with fresh juice and measured pours, and it went round the world.

By the 2010s bars had brought in the kitchen's tools. Dave Arnold's Booker and Dax in New York chilled glasses with liquid nitrogen, clarified juice in a centrifuge and carbonated its cocktails. Today the most celebrated bars build drinks the way a kitchen builds a plate — Double Chicken Please lists its back-room drinks like a menu of dishes, and Superbueno clarifies guava for a vodka soda.

Where in it

  1. East Village, New YorkSuperbueno, opened in 2023 by Ignacio "Nacho" Jiménez and Greg Boehm, a Mexican-American bar ranked 12th in the world in 2025. A few blocks away, PDT, where Don Lee washed bourbon with bacon fat — and Booker and Dax, Dave Arnold's lab of a bar, from 2012 to 2016.Vodka y SodaRoasted Corn SourBenton's Old Fashioned
  2. Lower East Side, New YorkDouble Chicken Please, opened in 2020 by GN Chan and Faye Chen after years as a pop-up in a camper van, and second in the world in 2023. Its back room, the Coop, lists its drinks like a menu of dishes.Cold PizzaJapanese Cold Noodle
  3. Mexico CityHandshake Speakeasy, whose own lab clarifies juices and infuses cordials, named the world's best bar in 2024 — the first in Mexico. Its clarified mezcal milk punch is one of its signatures.
  4. HavanaWhere the daiquiri, named after a beach and mining town near Santiago de Cuba, became famous — at El Floridita it was a house speciality, frozen as often as shaken.Daiquiri
  5. FlorenceThe negroni's home town, by the usual story — the Americano made stronger with gin.Negroni
  6. BarcelonaSips, opened in 2021 by Simone Caporale and Marc Álvarez and the world's best bar in 2023. There are no bar seats: drinks are made at a central island and brought to the tables.
  7. LondonRyan Chetiyawardana's Lyaness, which builds its menu ingredient first, and Tayēr + Elementary, whose One Sip Martini is pre-batched and kept in the freezer.Martini

How it cooks

Milk-washing
A punch poured slowly into a quarter of its volume of whole milk, left to curdle, then strained back through its own curds until it runs clear.
Agar clarification
Agar at 0.2% of the juice's weight, boiled in part of it, set, broken up and drained through cloth — clear juice in an hour, no centrifuge.
Fat-washing
Melted fat stirred into a spirit, rested, frozen and lifted off: the flavour stays, the fat doesn't.
Acid-adjusting
Citric and malic acid added to a gentler juice to bring it to lime strength — 32g citric and 20g malic per litre of orange juice.
Rapid infusion
Spirit and aromatics in a cream whipper, one charge of N2O, a minute's agitation, vented fast and strained.
Force-carbonation
Clear, very cold, and charged with CO2 — haze and particles give the bubbles somewhere to escape.

Always in the kitchen

london dry ginwhite rumblanco tequilamezcalrye whiskeybourbondry vermouthsweet vermouthcampariangostura bitterlime juicelemon juicesimple syrupegg whitecitric acidmalic acidagarsaline solution

Cook from it

Its classics

The cocktail barVodka y SodaA vodka soda with everything done to it: chilli-infused vodka, clarified guava, its own acids, force-carbonated, a guava-salt rim.No one here has made it yetThe cocktail barRoasted Corn SourA whiskey sour on Mexican corn whisky, sweetened with a syrup of charred corn and its cobs.1 version hereThe cocktail barCold PizzaA slice of pizza as a sour: tequila with Parmigiano and burnt toast, tomato, basil, honey and egg white.No one here has made it yetThe cocktail barJapanese Cold NoodleA piña colada rethought as a bowl of cold sesame noodles: rum, pineapple, cucumber, coconut, lime and sesame oil.No one here has made it yetThe cocktail barClarified milk punchA punch poured into milk, left to curdle and strained clear: silky, glass-bright, and stable for weeks.2 versions hereThe cocktail barBenton's Old FashionedBourbon washed with bacon fat, stirred down with maple and Angostura: the drink that made fat-washing a bar technique.1 version hereThe cocktail barDaiquiriWhite rum, lime and sugar, shaken hard: the benchmark sour, and the drink a bartender is most often judged by.No one here has made it yetThe cocktail barNegroniGin, Campari and sweet vermouth in equal parts, stirred: bitter, sweet and strong at once.No one here has made it yetThe cocktail barMartiniGin and dry vermouth, stirred until very cold: the drink where dilution and temperature are most of the recipe.No one here has made it yet

Cooked here

v6Clarified milk punch, mezcal and pineappleRosa Ibarra · v6v5Corn sour, charred cob syrupRosa Ibarra · v5v4Fat-washed old fashioned, brown butterRosa Ibarra · v4v3Milk punch, with hojichaKenji Hara · v3