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Altavista 154
This San Ángel club has three rooms: red, yellow and blue. Superior DJs rule the red room, laying down such dense grooves that even certified non-dancers must get up and move their butts. A lounge and bar occupy the other rooms. Admission is free though cocktails are typically pricey for the zone.
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Área
Atop the Hábita Hotel, this open-air roof lounge does a brisk trade in exotic martinis, with sweeping city views as a backdrop and videos projected on the wall of a nearby building for entertainment. On chilly evenings beautiful scenesters gravitate toward the wall-length fireplace; in warmer weather they cool their toes in the pool on the deck below.
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Bar El Vicio
With liberal doses of politically and sexually irreverent comedy and a genre-bending musical program, this offbeat cabaret is appropriately located in Frida Kahlo's old neighborhood. It's also the showcase for Las Reinas Chulas, an all-girl troupe who put a feminist spin on the normally macho-intensive grupera genre.
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Bar Mancera
This atmospheric gentlemen's salon seems preserved in amber, with ornate carved paneling, flowery upholstered armchairs and well-used domino tables. Lately it's been adopted by young clubbers who set up turntables Friday nights from around .
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Bar Milán
Tucked away on a quiet backstreet, this casual hangout is the closest you can get to riding the metro at rush hour, with a college crowd jamming three narrow rooms. Purchase beer tickets, then make your way over to the cactus-trimmed bar. The soundtrack ranges from classic rock to Café Tacuba; don't be surprised if the crowd spontaneously bursts into chorus.
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Bengala
This low-lit concept bar evokes a desert trek, with decor influenced by Casablanca and The Sheltering Sky, though disco-friendly DJs may put you on an entirely different plane. Its slightly out-of-the-way location only adds to the conspiratorial air. Have a 'Module' (a green cocktail of cucumber, Pernod and mescal) and mingle with the film and TV figures who customarily pop up here.
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Big Red
Big Red is a volume dealer. Drinks are priced by the ounce (around $14 for Bacardi, around $16 for Centenario tequila), plus whatever mixer you choose. Thus the place attracts a broader cross-section of the populace than the usual Polanco antro . And rather than the icy electronica favored by such places, Big Red dares to blare banda (brass band music from northern Mexico)and pop.
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Black Horse
It isn't just because they prepare bangers and mash and screen the soccer match that this authentic British pub has earned a spot on the Condesa map. The place also boasts an international social scene and has excellent bands playing the back room mid-week.
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Café Bola De Oro
An outlying branch of the Xalapa coffee purveyor, this is a good place to score a bag of Coatepec beans or simply enjoy a cup of Veracruz' fine, full-bodied blends.
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Café Corazón
Folk singers in the Silvio Rodríguez mold take the small stage at this temple of trova near San Ángel's Plaza San Jacinto.
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Café De Carlo
Coffee connoisseurs head for this unassuming sidewalk café, with an aromatic roaster and vintage espresso machine. Across the street is a relic of 1950s Roma, La Bella Italia, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor that sees few customers these days.
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Café El Jarocho
This immensely popular joint churns out around $7 cappuccinos for long lines of java hounds. As there's no seating inside, people have their coffee standing in the street or sitting on curbside benches. The branch just around the corner makes great tortas, and both branches have terrific doughnuts.
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Café Jakemir
Run by a family of Lebanese coffee traders from Orizaba, this old distribution outlet was transformed into a popular café and has excellent and inexpensive cappuccinos, as well as baklava and other pastries. Bulk buyers will find bins of beans from Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas below the counter.
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Café La Habana
This grand coffeehouse is a traditional haunt for writers and journalists, who linger for hours over a café americano . Legend has it that Fidel and Che plotted strategy here prior to the Cuban revolution.
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Café Villa De Madrid
With just a few sidewalk tables at the top of the Plaza Villa de Madrid (aka Plaza Cibeles), this longtime storefront operation roasts beans from the family finca in Chiapas (they also roll their own cigars). Espressos are just around $9 a shot (about half what Starbucks charges).
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Cafetería Gabi's
Cluttered with caffeine-related paraphernalia, this family-run coffeehouse perks with conversation midmornings and early evenings, when the occupants of neighboring offices pour in for a rich café con leche (coffee with milk) and a crispy banderilla (stick-like glazed pastry).
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Caffé Toscano
This sidewalk café opens onto a delightful corner of Parque México, making a fine setting for a latte and the morning paper - grab one off the rack.
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California Dancing Club
More popular (low-brow) than the Colonia Roma clubs, this old-fashioned hall has marathon dance sessions, with half a dozen bands on the bill. Hundreds of couples bounce around a vast tiled floor flanked by stout mirrored columns as groups like Los Escorpiones de Durango keep the cumbias (Colombian dance music) coming. Beer and soft drinks are dispensed from two humble bars.
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Cantina Covadonga
Echoing with the sounds of clacking dominoes, the old Asturian social hall is a traditionally male enclave, though hipsters of both sexes have increasingly moved in on this hallowed ground.
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Cantina El Centenario
Behind the swinging doors is an enclave of tradition in the heart of modish Condesa, brimming with bullfighting memorabilia and adorned with Spanish azulejo tiles. Sure, hipsters fill the place every evening, but the domino bouts, roving musical trios and tasty drinking snacks are the same as ever.
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Cantina La Jalisciense
This always lively neighborhood cantina is frequented by the arty characters who populate the southern district, though it has a distinctly down-to-earth atmosphere. In operation since 1870, in the revolutionary era it was a parting stop for gun-toting bandidos bound for the hills. Gregarious owner Miguel Ángel Fernández carries forward the legacy with his homemade sangría and toothsome bacalao sandwiches. But take heed: swearing is strictly prohibited.
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Celtics
An Argentinean-run facsimile of an Irish pub, Celtics remains hugely popular with young defeños . A Guinness will set you back around $70 here, a draft Sol around $35 . The soundtrack is more U2 than Chieftains; bands play Sunday to Tuesday evenings.
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Centro Cultural De España
Young hipsters pack the roof terrace of the Spanish cultural center each weekend for its excellent DJ sessions. Located directly behind the cathedral, the rebuilt colonial structure is usually quaking by midnight.
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Cibeles
This fashionable new antro is a low-ceilinged, L-shaped living room with a perversely eclectic array of mismatched sofas, armchairs and coffee tables. The mood swings throughout the week from quiet and conversational (Tuesday) to loud and raucous (Friday, when DJs mix '80s hits with lounge-y beats). Reservations are a must on weekends.
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Cinna Bar
Looking at Parque España through red-tinted windows, this lounge-cum-dining room sports a self-consciously minimal aesthetic. Smartly outfitted professionals stop in after work to nosh on Vietnamese spring rolls, sip raspberry martinis and groove on sounds concocted by DJs with iBooks.
