Madrid’s nightlife reinvents itself with each generation and never loses steam. In addition to the traditional nightclubs and cocktail bars, there are speakeasies hidden around Madrid. The fact that a speakeasy is hidden adds excitement, without prohibition -it is all facade-: what counts is the experience.
The idea has caught on so well that in addition to undercover bars and clandestine cocktail bars, karaokes and restaurants that combine a little bit of everything have also been added.
Bad Company 1920
Cocktail bars are experiencing a new heyday 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 in Madrid (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 surprisingly, the 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’ll need a password to get in. Hint: they renew it every month and announce it on their Instagram.
Price: €.
Location: calle de Miguel Moya, 8 (Malasaña)
Jack’s Library
Jack’s Library is a bookstore with a suspiciously dim and warm light, full of plants and candles. The reality is that it is a cocktail bar with speakeasy references. Its founder, Murray MacDonald, a Scotsman who has been preparing cocktails in Madrid for years, also runs the adjoining cocktail bar, Ficus, of African inspiration.
MacDonald designed this intimate cocktail bar from scratch, where privacy is carefully guarded and photographs are not allowed.
Price: €.
Location: calle Santo Tomé, 8 (Salesas)
3. Guru Lab
A speakeasy (in Madrid or anywhere else in the world) must maintain the essence of a speakeasy, a hidden space where alcohol is sold illegally; something that is but should not be. And that is something that perfectly conveys Guru Lab, a fascinating space hidden behind the door of what looks like a desolate Chinese restaurant that 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. We recommend booking: only open from Thursday to Saturday and, being an intimate and exclusive place, there is no room for too many diners.
Price: €€€€.
Location: Calle de Echegaray, 14 (Las Letras neighborhood)
4. Estupenda Café 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 most alternative bars in the Malasaña neighborhood 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 (and speakeasy).
Upstairs is an American diner with a menu that makes it clear: homemade pies, hot dogs, milkshakes or cocktails from noon to dawn. While the downstairs takes over at night and becomes a space for DJ’s sessions, movies and monologues.
Price: €€€.
Location: Calle de San Roque, 14 (Malasaña)
5. Puri Stockings
Medias Puri is not a normal haberdashery. We could give you several reasons why you shouldn’t go in search of stockings, buttons or threads, such as, for example, their opening hours. Its doors open when many people go to bed and the truth is that although there will be a lot of lycra, you will not 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 woman who, together with Felipe de Lima (Max Award 2015 for Best Costume Design), has revolutionized the Madrid nightlife. The back room of her haberdashery is the entrance to a speakeasy capable of hosting up to 1,000 people.
Price: €€€.
Location: Plaza de Tirso de Molina, 1 (Downtown)
6. Clandestino Cocktail Bar
Clandestino Cocktail Bar is the speakeasy of the Hotel NH Madrid Suecia. Located behind the Círculo de Bellas Artes, its access is neither intuitive nor easy. It is accessed through a side door in the unisex bathroom, which is accessed by stairs leading down from the second floor. It all adds up to recreate the atmosphere and ambience of this type of establishment.
Price: €.
Location: Marqués de Casa Riera Street, 4 (Downtown)
7. The Collector
El Coleccionista is the cocktail bar hidden inside BiBo, by prolific chef Dani García. Innovation is the guide that unites each cocktail served at this hidden bar, but each one has particular inspiration. The Fatum with heather and palo santo takes reference from an occult book from 1593, and the Lucero del Alba from the liquor store where Jules Verne developed part of his work, two good examples of this spirituous proposal.
Price: €€€€€.
Location: 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 barman Hugo Boscovich have created this club that unites the knowledge of each one. There are hypnosis sessions , psychological tarot and astral chart readings, and at the same time a cocktail proposal signed by Javier Caballero, one of the most renowned specialists in the world of cocktails. The place has a decoration that mixes the wood that occupies almost everything with William Morris papers and art deco decor in a mystical and cozy way.
Price: €€€€.
Location: Calle del Pez, 18 (Downtown)
9. Lady Bongo
Lady Bongo is defined as a tiki raw bar, that is, a space with a Hawaiian spirit whose menu features raw food. Thus, in its menu we find oysters (cooked in different ways), nigiris and rolls, cebiches, tiraditos, pokes or salads.
But among plants, fish and Polynesian masks, this restaurant in the Salamanca district still has one more surprise in store. On the lower floor is one of the most picturesquespeakeasies in Madrid, with karaoke included. From the ceiling to the floor mosaic are a trompe l’oeil of the seabed. It is the place to fulfill a child’s dream worthy of Disney: singing under the sea.
Price: €€€€
Location: Calle de Serrano, 1 (Retiro)
10. Playback
PlayBack is a karaoke with a twist, is in the back of a design store, so they have the exciting part, not only for singing in public, but for the secrecy in the purest style speakeasy in the heart of Madrid.
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.
Price: €€.
Location: Calle Piamonte, 12 (Salesas)
11. 365 Street
Calle 365 is a clandestine bar and restaurant with a lot of history behind it. To access it you first have to cross 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 opens until the wee hours of the morning and where you enter with the password posted on their Instagram.
Price: €.
Location: Calle de Echegaray, 18 (Las Letras neighborhood)
12. La Santoría
Although they have many things in common, obviously not all speakeasies in Madrid are the same, but some of them are also themed: La Santoría is one of them and that’s why in this speakeasy what you can find (and order) are potions. Diving into their menu you will see that they have remedies whether you are looking for your projects and desires to bear fruit or if what you want is an intense spiritual cleanser. And all of them are drunk in a cocktail glass.
Price: €.
Location: Lope de Vega street, 30 (Downtown)