Madrid’s nightlife reinvents itself with each generation and never loses steam nightclubs y cocktail bars of a lifetime, plus the speakeasies. The fact that a joint is hidden adds emotion, without prohibition – it’s all facade – what counts is the experience.
The idea has caught on so well that it has also bars and speackeasy cocktail bars, karaokes and restaurants that combine a little bit of everything.
1. Bad Company 1920
Cocktail bars are experiencing a new boom and setting the scene is key to their success. Bad Company 1920 works like a Delorean. Back in the middle of Prohibition and welcome the opportunity to meet the speakeasy (type of clandestine business that was born in New York and where alcohol was consumed: on the outside it looked like a nondescript establishment and inside it was a bar). Not for nothing do cocktails arrive in containers that seduce and invite you to think they are anything: the Peaky Blinders beret or the Lancelot projectile are good examples.
You will need a password to log in. Hint: they renew it every month and announce it on their Instagram.
📍 Calle de Miguel Moya, 8 (Malasaña)
2. Jack’s Library
Jack’s Library is a bookstore with a suspiciously dim, warm light, filled with plants and candles. The reality is that it is a cocktail bar with speakeasyreferences. Its founder, Murray MacDonald, a Scotsman who has been preparing cocktails in Madrid for years, also runs the adjoining African-inspired cocktail bar, Ficus.
MacDonald designed this intimate cocktail bar from scratch, where privacy is closely guarded and photographs are not allowed.
📍 Calle Santo Tomé, 8 (Salesas)
3. Guru Lab
A speakeasy must maintain that essence of a speakeasy, of a hidden space where alcohol is sold illeg ally; of something that is but should not be. And that is something that conveys perfectly Guru Lab the Salmon Guru, a fascinating space hidden behind the door of what looks like a desolate Chinese restaurant, was born as a laboratory of experimentation for Salmon Guru, one of the best cocktail bars in the world. Specifically, number 16 according to the 50 World’s Best Bars.
In the purest “omakase” style, a Japanese expression that means “trusting the chef”, you go there and depending on your tastes, intolerances or food restrictions, and according to the food and liquors of the day, you try the cocktails and dishes that they bring out. All of them delicious. It is a space where creation and creativity have no limits, a place to go to let yourself be surprised. Reservations are recommended: it is only open from Thursday to Saturday, and as it is an intimate and exclusive place, there is not enough space for too many diners.
📍 Calle de Echegaray, 14 (neighborhood of Las Letras)
4. Great coffee bar
Estupenda Café-Bar wants you to feel like you are inside the David Lynch series, Twin Peaks. And it makes perfect sense that behind one of the more alternative bars of the neighborhood of Malasaña is Silvia Superstar. One of the last icons of La Movida, singer of the group Killer Barbies, who renovated the old Coconut Bar, turning it into Estupenda Café-Bar.
Upstairs is an American dinner with a menu that makes it clear: homemade pies, hot dogs, milkshakes or cocktails from noon to dawn. While the downstairs takes over for the night and is transformed into a space for DJ sessions, movies and monologues.
📍 Calle de San Roque, 14 (Malasaña)
5. Medias Puri
Medias Puri is not a normal haberdashery. We could give you several reasons why you shouldn’t go looking for stockings, buttons or threads, such as, for example, its Time:. Their doors open when many go to bed and the truth is that although there will be a lot of lycra, you won’t be able to buy it there.
The first floor of the Teatro Nuevo Apolo (Tirso de Molina, 1) houses the premises of Puri, a 60-year-old lady who, together with Felipe de Lima (Max Award 2015 for Best Costume Design), has revolutionized the Madrid nightlife. The back room of his haberdashery is the entrance to a clandestine club capable of holding up to 1,000 people.
📍 Plaza de Tirso de Molina, 1 (downtown)
6. Hemingway Cocktail Bar
Hemingway Cocktail Bar is the Hotel’s speakeasy NH Madrid Sweden. Located behind the Círculo de Bellas Artes, the cocktail bar takes its name from the famous American writer who, in addition to visiting many of Madrid’s bars, stayed at the hotel before returning to his country for good.
Access is neither intuitive nor easy. This speakeasy is accessed through a side door in the unisex restroom accessed by stairs leading down from the second floor. But it all adds up to create the true speakeasyfeel.
📍 Marqués de Casa Riera Street, 4 (center)
7. The Collector
El Coleccionista is the cocktail bar hidden inside BiBo, by prolific chef Dani García. Innovation is the guide that unites every cocktail served at this hidden bar, but each one has particular inspiration. The Fatum with heather and palo santo takes reference from a 1593 occult book, and the Lucero del Alba from the liquor store where Jules Verne developed part of his work, two good examples of this spirit proposal.
📍 Paseo de la Castellana, 52 (Castellana)
8. Medium Club
Medium Club is a cocktail bar with mythical touches and Victorian inspiration. The mentalist Pablo Raijenstein and the cocktail maker Hugo Boscovich have created this club that unites the knowledge of each one of them. There are hypnosis sessions , psychological tarot and astral chart readings, as well as a cocktail proposal signed by Javier Caballero, one of the most renowned specialists in the world of cocktails. The decoration of the place mixes wood that occupies almost everything with William Morris papers and art deco decoration in a way that is as mystical as it is cozy.
📍 Calle del Pez, 18 (Malasaña)
9. Lady Bongo
Lady Bongo defines itself as a tiki raw bar, that is, a space with a Hawaiian spirit whose menu features raw food. The menu includes oysters (cooked in different ways), nigiris and rolls, cebiches, tiraditos, pokes and salads.
But amidst plants, fish and Polynesian masks, this restaurant in the salamanca neighborhood still has one more surprise in store. On its lower floor there is a secret bar with karaoke including. From the ceiling to the floor mosaic are a trompe l’oeil of the seabed. It’s the place to fulfill a Disney-worthy childhood dream: singing under the sea.
📍 Calle de Serrano, 1, (Retiro)
10. Playback
PlayBack is karaoke with a twist, it’s in the back of a designer store, so they have the exciting part, not just for singing in public, but for the secrecy a la speakeasy.
It has eight private rooms, each with a different decoration and theme. In addition to the signature cocktails that can be served between songs, there is a menu of fusion food ranging from tacos al pastor to octopus ceviche. An all-in-one.
📍 Calle Piamonte, 12 (Salesas)
11. 365th Street
Calle 365 is a clandestine bar and restaurant with a lot of history behind it. To enter, you first have to cross the Margarita’s botillería, and suddenly you will find yourself in a dreamlike world of saturated colors that changes its theme and menu every year. Mexican, Indian and even Avatar references are mixed in this hidden bar that is open until the wee hours of the morning and where you can enter with the password published on their website Instagram.
📍 Calle de Echegaray, 18 (neighborhood of Las Letras)