What It’s Like to Drink at Alquímico, Just Named the World’s Best Bar

And what it was like to be there when it won the award.

While seemingly everyone was in New Orleans for Tales last week, I, too, was enjoying fantastic food and drinks in 90-degree temperatures and 90 percent humidity.

But I was doing it in and around Cartagena, Colombia.

And I spent last Thursday evening not at the Spirited Awards, but instead at a bar that was named, during my visit, Best International Cocktail Bar at those prestigious awards. Later that evening it was awarded the title of World’s Best Bar.

Alquímico, a high-volume bar if there ever was one, is at very first glance perhaps an unlikely choice to receive such prestigious awards. I’m told that locally it’s known as much as a nightclub as it is a cocktail bar. It serves hundreds of people each night in its three-level space with ample neon signage; a DJ comes on early in the evening, and by the late-evening hours, it morphs into a full-on nightclub, packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that world-class drinks surely couldn’t be made in such an environment. And for wondering whether they’d really be appreciated by a clientele that might instead prefer a vodka-soda.

But then you have a sip of, say, a Mantilla (passionfruit-infused rum, black tea and hibiscus syrup, lime juice, Ango), and you realize these drinks are delicious at whatever level they’re appreciated.

Let me try to describe as best I can the experience of drinking in this bar, because it’s unlike anything I’ve encountered anywhere else.

I’ll start with the physical space. It’s a massive century-old converted mansion in the center of the walled city (Cartagena’s main tourist area) that has retained many of its original details (pillars, crown moldings, etc). There are two floors indoors, plus a rooftop terrace.

Step through the red velvet curtains into the grand, high-ceilinged ground floor space, and you quickly realize that the bar is in center of the room, a square space framed by corner pillars, with stations on three sides (to accommodate the teams of half a dozen bartenders that are on by late evening). To the left, the wall is covered with concoctions in large jars: ingredients infusing for drinks like the Inquisicion (ginger-infused rum, lime juice, pepper-spiced salt); banquettes and tables line the two long sides of the room. A DJ booth stands in the corner. And to the back of the space, a dramatic double-sided staircase leads up to the second floor, “El Balcon,” as the bar calls it.

In the center of this mezzanine level, balcony railings encircle an opening that overlooks the ground-floor bar. But it’s tough to see it at first through all the people: This level was busier than the ground floor during my visits, with patrons standing and dancing by mid-evening, versus the still-mostly seated crowd on the ground level.

I would love to tell you about the rooftop terrace, which I was dying to see. But it was closed during both of my visits to the bar: It’s only open Wednesday through Saturday, and then only if there’s no threat of rain. And in Cartagena, for eight months of the year, there’s always the threat of rain. Oh well; next time, I suppose.

Each floor has a different cocktail menu. On the dance-party rooftop, the concept is “From the Farm to the Bar”; the menu explains that the drinks pay tribute to a farm in Colombia’s coffee region to which the bar’s team apparently relocated during early-pandemic times. (I found myself imagining a NYC bar owner saying to their team, “Okay, we’re all gonna head to my farm upstate and live there for a few months! Yes, all of us”; I don’t imagine it would’ve gone over as well.) I wish I’d been able to try the Yipao (mezcal, tamarillo syrup, thyme and bay leaf soda) or the Ayu (Johnnie Walker Black, coca-leaf cordial, orange-flower water, soda), but, alas, those drinks will have to wait until my next visit.

On the second floor and its wraparound interior balcony, the cocktails are all popular classics given a slight Alquímico twist: Think a mojito with fresh spearmint and lemon sage, or a paloma with mezcal and tamarind as well as the usual grapefruit and soda.

And on the ground floor, each cocktail highlights ingredients from a different region of Colombia, from the Andes and Amazon to the Caribbean. I’m not familiar with many of the ingredients on the menu, and some have no English translation that I could find. I loved the Yurupari, representing the Amazon region, its ingredients listed as Beefeater gin, copazu infusion, chuchuwasa tincture, and soda. The Palabrero (Mezcal Union, iguaraya liquor, champurrado wine) was a recognizable spin on a negroni, representing the Caribbean region, and the Kianga (Talisker whiskey, chontaduro marmalade, borojo infusion, honey) was a wonderfully bright whiskey sour using ingredients from the Pacific region.

(Note: I got up this morning, after this had been written, to find that the bar had apparently changed its ground-floor menu overnight. Yippee! The theme is now “Community,” and it seems that the bar is donating to a Colombian agricultural association to support a different infrastructure project for each cocktail on the menu. Guess I have to return soon and drink my way through this entire new menu, as I did the last one!)

I should mention that these drinks all go for 38,000 Colombian pesos, which is less than $10 US—considerably less than at most other cocktail bars in town, and quite a bit less than the cocktails at any restaurants I went to. Which is remarkable, given their quality.

(Last Thursday’s ground-floor team, beaming after winning Best International Cocktail Bar)

So what was it like last Thursday? Pretty great, of course. We had arrived early enough to watch the scene change as the evening grew later: the music louder and more club-like, the space (both inside and outside the bartenders’ area) filling up with people (the evening started with three bartenders manning the ground-floor bar, which increased to six by the time we left).  

We were posted up on our bar stools, keeping a casual eye on the Spirited Awards livestream on our phone, when suddenly Best International Cocktail Bar was being announced and the livestream showed a photo of…where we were sitting, basically. I let out a whoop, and when a couple of bartenders turned toward me, I thrust the phone toward them and shouted “You guys won!” They gave me a puzzled look, and I added “At Tales! Best International Bar!” (Yes, in retrospect, I admit I maybe should’ve let the bar’s owner tell them himself, but I was caught up in my un-sober excitement.)

The team stopped making drinks and huddled around the bar’s iPad, presumably watching Jean Trinh’s acceptance speech, then broke into a dance for a moment, circling around within the square bar area. And then they got right back to work. With, perhaps, a little more energy than before.

I left about a half-hour later; I’d had enough drinks and the space was filling up—there was quite a queue outside—and I’m too old and claustrophobic to do the packed-nightclub thing anymore. So I wasn’t there when it was announced that Alquímico had been named World’s Best Bar. I didn’t even finish watching the rest of the livestream.

I didn’t need to. I already knew the winner in my tipsy heart.