Bósforo — Restaurant in Mexico City

The kind of place you will remember many, many years after experiencing it.

This is not a typical mezcal bar. The owner gets the mezcals directly from the maestros in a handful of villages in Oaxaca, so they are all in unmarked bottles behind the bar. This is NOT commercial mezcal, and if you like one that you try, enjoy another glass. You'll never find it anywhere else.

Michel (the owner?) knows every bottle by heart, and he's fluent in English, and incredibly friendly. So ask for him if you are intimidated. He'll ask what kind of flavors you like, and bring you something to try.

There are some basic cocktails on the menu. (DO NOT ask for a mezcal cocktail. That's a perversion of the stuff here. It is to be sipped (neat) slowly, and savored.) Beer and wine, too. So if your friends are not into mezcal and just want the atmosphere, they'll find something to drink. Also I must mention that, compared to US prices for commercial mezcal, the prices here are astonishingly cheap. I don't think ANY mezcal on the menu was more than $10USD for a shot, and most were $4-$7.

The menu is compact and funky. We had already eaten dinner but I wanted to try at least one dish, so we got the octopus tlacoyo. Tender, succulent, with a light but complex salsa. Impressive.

Still, the overarching thing here is the ATMOSPHERE. You push your way through a dense velvet curtain from the street and enter a creepy, candlelit space with a reincarnated beat poet from the 50s in the corner VERY SERIOUSLY spinning a mind-melting mix of acid jazz and ancestral Meso American chants. You will wonder what planet you've landed on.

This place fully embodies the wonderful weirdness of contemporary CDMX. It's a DON'T MISS. Go early to avoid the crowds, and don't...

Bosforo is one of those hole in the wall places that are amazing to discover. After finishing dinner 3 of us were looking for a bar to get our mezcal fix, experience a place whose regulars include locals, and generally have a night cap. After peeling back the drapes at the entrance we were pleased to find a packed bar. It was a bit humid due to the drapes being closed but they provided a nice level of privacy for this location. We ended up trying multiple mezcals here and were pleased with the selection and impressed with the overall service. We decided to head up to the mezzanine and enjoyed the unique floor seating experience there. Overall would highly recommend and we plan to drop in again tonight...

First time was an excellent moment. Second time was the worst experience I had in a bar. It began very well, the group was pleased. We had some drinks, we paid, and then we left the bar. 2 waitresses ran after us in the street because “3 drinks weren’t paid”. We got back there and then one waiter shouted at us like we were robbers. After a double check, they forgot to mark 2 drinks as paid, and then they threatened to call the police. Everybody in the group had paid for their own drink. We ended up paying one extra drink just to leave the bar, knowing that everything was paid + tips. The waiter said “never come back again”… well I won’t and I won’t recommend this place...