A Mexico City Bar Dressed as a Bookshop Pairs Classic Cocktails With Tins From Spain and Portugal
"Si la luz está encendida, toca la puerta," reads one of the first posts on Librería Valladolid's Instagram: if the light is on, knock on the door. Behind that door, at Tabasco 321 in Roma Norte, Mexico City, is a cocktail bar fitted out as an old bookshop, its shelves running floor to ceiling and lit amber from behind.
The room
Under the shelves, deep red banquettes line the walls and round tables are topped in dark marble, some with a small brass lamp, and high tables stand close to the stacks. The long bar counter is marble too. The house sums itself up in four words, classic cocktails and tins, and the tins come from Spain and Portugal, sardines to octopus.
On the marble counter, a hardbound book carrying the bar's name lies open to pages of archival photographs.
A Batanga, stirred with the knife
The list stays with the classics, the martini and the Espresso Martini among them, and the bar's own posts tell where many of them came from. The one from closest to home is the Batanga. It was created in the town of Tequila, Jalisco, by Don Javier Delgado Corona, the owner of La Capilla, one of the town's oldest bars, and its defining step is that it is stirred with the same knife used to cut the lime.
Numbered like volumes
The bar numbers its guest bartender nights like volumes and calls them Tomos. Each one is announced on its Instagram and is by RSVP, most of them from 8pm. The series began with Tomo 01 on November 27, 2025. Tomo 04, titled Entre Mujeres, in March 2026, brought together women bartenders who are shaping Mexico's cocktail scene. Tomo 11, on Friday, August 28, brought guests from San Cristóbal and, with them, the cocktails of Mexico's southeast. A second series, the Capítulos, has paired cocktails with DJ sets.
Hours
Librería Valladolid opens Tuesday to Saturday from 5pm to 2am and, since April 2026, Sunday from 3pm to midnight; it is closed on Monday.
