Barcelona will host the best bar in the world for another year, although it is not the Paradiso cocktail bar, which until a few hours ago topped the ranking of The World's 50 Best Bars. Sips, the avant-garde bar of bartenders Marc Álvarez and Simone Caporale in Eixample (Muntaner, 108), will be in charge of taking over after becoming number one (previously it was third) in the new list of the 50 best bars in the world announced this week. night in Singapore.
Even so, Paradiso, Giacomo Gianotti's cocktail bar hidden behind a pastrami bar in Born, continues to occupy a high place in the ranking: 4. In front of it have managed to sneak in the New York-based Doble Chicken Please (number two) and the Mexican Handshake Speakeasy (number three).
Salmón Guru, Diego Cabrera's bar in Madrid, has dropped one place on the list, going from 15th to 16th, and Barcelona's Two Smucks has disappeared from it, which in 2022 was number seven, before its bartender Moe Aljaff will announce his departure due to disagreements with the rest of the business owners.
For those who do not know Sips, it opened its doors in the middle of the pandemic with the help of two highly-reputed bartenders Marc Álvarez, who was responsible for the elBarri group's cocktail bar, and the Italian Simone Caporale, who was number one on The list for four years. World's 50 Best Bars while at the helm alongside Artesian's Alex Kratena at The Langham hotel in London.
Together they created what they like to call a “drinkery house”, that is, a drinks house with a very London concept and spirit in which cocktails coexist with other drinks and in which they plan to soon open Esencia in its speakeasy, the first bar with a cocktail tasting menu in Barcelona and, possibly, in the world. An opening that was already announced last year and that seems to be finally about to arrive.
Their cocktails, although creative and innovative, remain faithful to the classic, since, according to both mixologists, there can be no avant-garde without tradition.
A year ago, Álvarez and Caporale also took the reins of the historic cocktail bar Boadas (Tallers, 1). Although both are creative mixologists, they assured a few days ago on their 90th anniversary that there will be no changes to the offer. “We intend to fix some details and improve the quality of some ingredients, but we are not going to change the decoration or the style of the cocktails. Boadas remains as is.”
