Speakeasy bars of Buenos Aires serve cocktails with a native twist

Martín Auzmendi, former bartender, prolific cocktail writer and organiser of Buenos Aires Cocktail Week, looks as if he has a bad taste in his mouth.

“It seems like every journalist around the world is saying, ‘I want to make an article about the secret speakeasy bars of Buenos Aires’,” he complains.

He understands the attraction of the illicit drinking dens of the American Prohibition Era and their modern incarnations. There’s always a story to tell, no obvious entrance and an appealing mock secrecy. But Auzmendi’s been to speakeasies from New York to Taiwan, and heard the same jazz, seen the same photos of jazz musicians and drunk the same cocktails.

“But we’re in Buenos Aires,” he says. “And we have our own stories to tell.”

The city has a long tradition of inventing hit cocktails with classic ingredients, and a modern inventiveness with local ingredients that result in small symphonies for the mouth.

We begin in oak-lined Los Galgos, on a busy corner site near Avenida Corrientes, once the centre of Buenos Aires’ nightlife. Los Galgos is officially a bar notable, which is the cocktail equivalent of heritage listing, and which opened in 1930. Now authentically restored by Julián Diaz and partner, the refurbishment of the bar is part of a widespread revival of tradition.

“The cocktail movement started in Buenos Aires 100 years ago,” Auzmendi says. “Some bartenders from the United States came here during Prohibition to open bars. Like New York, Buenos Aires is a port and you have a lot of immigrants, so it’s a city with this idea of mixture. A big city with strong cultures.”

A taste for simple drinks made with vermouth or fernet had already been imported by French and Italians, but the new bartenders began to train locals in the art of mixing more complicated concoctions. And it wasn’t long before Porteños, as the people of Buenos Aires are called, were turning the tables.