The Taqueria Door That Hides One of Paris's Original Speakeasies
The taco shop on rue de Saintonge is real. The bar behind the white door is the reason people have been walking past it since 2011.
The room to look for is behind a plain white door at the back of what looks like a taco shop. Push through it. That is the entire trick, and it has been the trick since 2011, when Candelaria opened as the first modern hidden bar in Paris and forced every subsequent Marais operator to reckon with what a speakeasy was for.
The taqueria up front is a functioning taqueria — carnitas, barbacoa, a small counter, a few stools. The bar in the back is agave-forward, mezcal-serious, and small enough that arriving after nine on a Friday means standing in line on rue de Saintonge with everyone else who has read the same guides. In 2012 the World's 50 Best Bars list took Candelaria at #45, and it was ninth globally in 2013 and inside the top twenty through 2018. Fifteen years in, the door is still unmarked and the drinks are still the reason.
Fifteen years after opening, Candelaria still runs the best agave programme in Paris behind a door most first-timers walk past twice.
Editorial Deep
The programme is built around tequila and mezcal, and the house move is a cocktail that treats agave as the lead ingredient rather than the base to hide under citrus. La Guêpe Verte is the one to order first — pepper-infused tequila, cucumber, coriander, agave, lavender and lime, a drink that has been on the menu long enough to have shaped what Parisians expect a modern cocktail to taste like. The Chuckie (gin, mint, beetroot, ginger) is the outlier for anyone who doesn't want agave, and it holds its own. The Wombat leans into kiwi against tequila and reads younger, sweeter, easier to send around a table of four.
The back bar is dimly lit, low-ceilinged, and worked around banquettes and bar stools that hold a couple or a group of three without strain. Sit at the bar if the drinks are the point of the evening — the bartenders talk if you want them to and leave you alone if you don't. The banquettes are for longer conversations. Avoid the stools nearest the door; the traffic in and out breaks the room.
The crowd skews late-thirties, dressed the way Marais residents dress when they are not trying — good denim, a knit, nobody in heels, and nobody here for a scene photograph. Weeknights before nine are Marais locals and industry drinkers on a night off — the room is quiet enough to hear the shaker, and the seat you want is the seat you get. After nine, especially Thursday through Saturday, the queue outside starts and the room fills with a mix of Parisians who know the door and visitors who read about it. The crowd is the reason to arrive early, not the reason to stay late. If you're here for the drinks and the conversation across the table, be inside by 8:30.
The trap is ordering tacos through to the back bar: the same barbacoa costs less if you eat it at the taqueria counter up front before walking through the door. Eat first, drink second. The drinks are the thing worth paying for.
Come back on a Wednesday in October, before nine, and sit at the bar with La Guêpe Verte and whatever the bartender is drinking that week. That is Candelaria at its best — the room half-full, the queue not yet formed, the programme doing what it has done since 2011. Skip it on a Saturday at eleven; the room is the same room, but the evening becomes a queue-and-crush that better rewards a first-timer than a return visit.
Order this
Drink this.
La Guêpe Verte
“The original Paris hidden bar, still one of the best agave programmes in the city.”
Walk through the taqueria at 52 rue de Saintonge and push the unmarked white door at the back. Order La Guêpe Verte. Arrive before nine on a weeknight and the room does what it has done since 2011 — an agave-forward programme executed by bartenders who know the classics cold, in a low-lit back room with comfortable seats and no one performing for a camera. Come on a Saturday at eleven and the queue on rue de Saintonge is the evening. Skip the tacos through the back bar; eat them at the counter up front first, then walk through.
The Verdict
