The Twelve-Seat Room That Rewrites Your Tuesday
The Limantour family's smaller, stranger sibling in Condesa — a Darwin-themed cocktail room where the martini is the point and the reservation is not optional.
A bartender is spooning brine into a coupe with the concentration of someone measuring a chemistry reagent, and behind him a taxidermied bird is pinned to a wall of nautical brass and dark wood. The room seats what looks like fifteen people at most. On a Tuesday at eight, every one of those seats is taken by someone drinking a martini.
Baltra is the smaller, stranger sibling to Licorería Limantour, from the same family — a Condesa cocktail room built around a Galápagos and Darwin theme that could easily read as gimmick and does not. It has been on the World's 50 Best Bars list in 2021, 2022 and 2023, peaked at #7 on North America's 50 Best in 2022, and still fits in a corner of Iztaccihuatl that a passing cab would miss. The bar it wants to be is a small, ingredient-serious cocktail room where the bartenders know the menu cold and nobody is pretending to be a scene. It clears that.
A twelve-seat cocktail room where the drinks are worth the trip and the reservation is what makes the trip possible.
Editorial Deep
Order the Old George Sour. Tequila, absinthe, cucumber, cardamom — the kind of build that reads clever on paper and lands clean in the glass, herbal and cold and long. The Kiwi and Lemon Balm cooler pulls the same trick with Jack Daniels, fino sherry, lemon and kiwi, which should not work and does. Both come in glassware chosen for the drink rather than the shelf.
Dark wood, brass fittings, and a Darwin-voyage conceit executed with more restraint than the pitch suggests — a few pieces of taxidermy, nautical hardware, warm low light from wall sconces. The seating is a short bar and a handful of small tables, plus a bit of outdoor space on the street. Music sits under conversation rather than over it, and the acoustics of a room this size mean you can hear the person across from you without leaning in.
Locals in their thirties, cocktail people from other bars on their night off, a scattering of visitors who found the place through the 2025 North America's 50 Best list and were smart enough to book. The room is small enough that the energy is entirely a function of who is in it, and on most nights that is people who came specifically for the drinks rather than to be somewhere. Tuesday is the loudest and most fun; the martini programme pulls a crowd that came to drink martinis, which is a specific and welcome kind of person. Weekend late nights tilt busier and slower on turnover.
The bar publishes no prices, and older figures floating around the internet are not reliable enough to quote — assume Condesa cocktail-bar rates, with tax and service added on top of whatever the menu says on the night. Martes Martinis discounts the martini and is the clearest value play of the week. A round of two proper cocktails from a bar of this standing is defensible against Limantour and the rest of the Roma–Condesa top tier; nothing on the tab reads as a gouge, and nothing reads as a bargain either.
This is a two-drink bar, not a whole-night bar. Come at seven for the first round of an evening that continues elsewhere, or make it the last stop after dinner in Roma or Condesa when you want one considered drink before bed. The reason to come back tomorrow is Tuesday — the martini, the seat you booked, the bartender who remembers the order. The reason not to come back is if you wanted a scene, a big group table, or dinner: the room is too small for the first two and not built for the third.
Order this
Drink this.
Dirty Martini; Old George Sour; Kiwi + Lemon Balm cooler
“Book it, order the martini, plan around Tuesday.”
One of Mexico City's most serious small cocktail rooms, from the Limantour family, and the reservation is the whole game — the space is tiny and fills fast. Come for two drinks built with care, sit at the bar if you can, and put Martes Martinis on the calendar. Skip if you wanted dinner, a group, or a scene.
The Verdict
