Which is the oldest bar in Mexico?

Hussong's Cantina in Ensenada, on the evidence: John Hussong obtained a liquor licence in 1892 and the cantina still holds Ensenada's municipal licence number two in the same building. Bar La Ópera claims 1876 but as a pastry shop at a different address, moving to 5 de Mayo in 1895.

Did Pancho Villa really shoot the ceiling of Bar La Ópera?

A hole in the gilded ceiling is attributed to his pistol in 1914, and the attribution is traditional rather than documented. The room around it is not in doubt: Belle Époque booths, that walnut bar, and a guest list running from Porfirio Díaz to Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez.

Was the margarita invented at Hussong's?

Its bartenders claim it and date the drink to 1941, which is one of several rival origin stories with no settled answer. The cantina itself needs no embellishment: it has changed little since the 1890s and a namesake branch opened in Las Vegas in 2010.

Which is the oldest cantina in Mexico City?

Bar La Ópera, at its present address on 5 de Mayo since 1895. Salón Tenampa on Plaza Garibaldi is later — the salon and Spanish Wikipedia give 1925, while the English Wikipedia article on the plaza gives 1923 — but it is where mariachi took root in the capital.

3 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026

The oldest pub in Mexico

The short answer

Oldest claim

Bar La Ópera

Says 1876. The first record is 1895.

Grade C · Tradition

Oldest proof

Hussong's Cantina

On record from 1892; the building is dated to about 1892.

Grade A · Documented

By claim, the oldest bar in Mexico is Bar La Ópera on Avenida 5 de Mayo in Mexico City, which traces itself to a French pastry shop of 1876 and moved to its present address in 1895, opening there as a cantina. By evidence it is Hussong's Cantina in Ensenada, where the German immigrant John Hussong obtained a liquor licence in 1892 in a former stagecoach stop, and which still holds the town's municipal liquor licence number two in the same building.

Mexican drinking history in this collection is short, well documented and unusually continuous, because a cantina tends to pass between families with its licence attached. All three houses here belong to the same fifty-year window and to three quite different worlds. Bar La Ópera is a Belle Époque room from the Porfirian city: gilded ceilings, carved booths and a walnut bar said to have come from New Orleans, the sort of place where a president, a poet and a revolutionary could all plausibly have drunk. Hussong's is the Baja border cantina, sawdust on the floor, opened by a German immigrant in an old stagecoach station and barely altered since. Salón Tenampa is the one that changed Mexican music, founded on Plaza Garibaldi in the mid-1920s by a Jaliscan who invited mariachi players from his home state to perform, and the bands still serenade tables there until the early hours. Between them they cover the cantina as a civic institution, a frontier business and a stage.

Two cantinas and a stage

Bar La Ópera is the grandest room in this part of the collection and the easiest to visit, a few minutes from the Zócalo. Hussong’s is the most authentic in the narrow sense that matters here: same building, same trade, same licence number, since 1892. Salón Tenampa is the one with the loudest history — Juan Indalecio Hernández of Cocula brought Jaliscan musicians to the capital, the mariachi Cirilo Marmolejo was hired by 1927, and the Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán is among the groups that have played there. Frida Kahlo and Chavela Vargas were both visitors, and it stays open until two or three in the morning.

Where Mexico sits in the wider list

Mexican cantina records are better than European pub records for the simple reason that they are recent, and worse than Australian ones because the licensing archives are less accessible online. What Mexico offers instead is continuity of ownership and of room: three bars that look and work much as they did when they opened. For the neighbouring tradition of the American saloon, with its prohibition-shaped gaps, see the oldest bars in the USA; for how we weigh a licence against a building, the methodology. The full international ranking is at the top 100 oldest pubs.

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The contenders, oldest claim first

ClaimProof

Bar La Ópera
Grade C
Mexico City, Ciudad de México
Three accounts agree on the sequence and not one of them points at a document. The house says it opened in 1876 as a French pastry shop at another address and moved to 5 de Mayo in 1895 as a cantina. Mexico City's own visitor service says the same: an exclusive pastry shop run by the French Boulangeot sisters, which gave up desserts on moving in 1895 to become the most sumptuous bar in the capital. Excélsior adds
Claims 1876; first recorded 1895.
Hussong's Cantina
Grade A
Ensenada, Baja California
The 1892 is the house's own, published under its name. The Hussong's history page says the cantina opened in 1892 with the second liquor licence issued in Mexico and describes Johan Hussong, a German immigrant, serving nickel beer and dime whiskey in what was then a fishing village, with the Sutherland stage company watering horses and passengers outside; the Ensenada cantina's Instagram account, which is the only
Claims 1892; first recorded 1892; building c.1892.
Salón Tenampa
Grade C
Mexico City, Ciudad de México
The salon and Spanish Wikipedia give 1925, founded by Juan Indalecio Hernández of Cocula, Jalisco; English Wikipedia's Plaza Garibaldi article gives 1923. Hiring of mariachi Cirilo Marmolejo by 1927 is widely recorded. Mexico City's own visitor service, read on 17 September 2026, is the first publisher here that is neither the house nor an encyclopaedia, and it settles less than it confirms: it credits the cantina
Claims 1925; no early record found.

The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits.

Common questions

Which is the oldest bar in Mexico?: Hussong's Cantina in Ensenada, on the evidence: John Hussong obtained a liquor licence in 1892 and the cantina still holds Ensenada's municipal licence number two in the same building. Bar La Ópera claims 1876 but as a pastry shop at a different address, moving to 5 de Mayo in 1895.
Did Pancho Villa really shoot the ceiling of Bar La Ópera?: A hole in the gilded ceiling is attributed to his pistol in 1914, and the attribution is traditional rather than documented. The room around it is not in doubt: Belle Époque booths, that walnut bar, and a guest list running from Porfirio Díaz to Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez.
Was the margarita invented at Hussong's?: Its bartenders claim it and date the drink to 1941, which is one of several rival origin stories with no settled answer. The cantina itself needs no embellishment: it has changed little since the 1890s and a namesake branch opened in Las Vegas in 2010.
Which is the oldest cantina in Mexico City?: Bar La Ópera, at its present address on 5 de Mayo since 1895. Salón Tenampa on Plaza Garibaldi is later — the salon and Spanish Wikipedia give 1925, while the English Wikipedia article on the plaza gives 1923 — but it is where mariachi took root in the capital.