Six Cocktail Menus Worth Crossing Mumbai For

There is no shortage of new cocktail bars in Mumbai, but the city’s pace doesn’t leave time to try them all. For most of this year I have been doing precisely that, running from one new menu to another between flights and before filing deadlines. The following six bars have earned a second visit.

Papi

Mumbai’s latest cocktail bar, Papi is located on Linking Road, at the point where Bandra and Khar meet, and doesn’t use cocktail names; instead, the drinks are given numbers, a feature that seems rather gimmicky until you order No. 2 and see a crown of mango foam settle over the tequila, passionfruit and red jalapeño. This is Papi’s version of a picante, being both tropical and sharp in equal parts.

Three cocktails are served on tap right by the door: an Aperol Spritz, an Espresso Martini and a Paloma, all of which are poured fresh every day for those who are in a hurry to begin. Further inside the bar, the real effort takes place on site. The team brines, ferments, and distils its own ingredients, so the chamomile whisky highball comes with salted peach foam, and the savoury martini is based on cucumber and dill brine, served directly from the kitchen. The room also contributes to the experience: a glass ceiling bathes the area in natural light, and by midnight it feels more like a private house party.

Sixteen33

Sixteen33 sits at the actual crossroads of 16th and 33rd roads in Bandra, and the address has always been the whole premise. When it opened in October 2024, founder Shahrom Oshtori built the debut menu around six of Bandra’s historic villages, turning local stories into six distinct cocktails. Two years on, the bar has returned with Cocktail Menu 2.0, and the villages have not changed, only the craft behind them.

Ranwar is now a whisky highball, built with Indriyani rice-infused whisky, jaggery syrup, and coconut water and finished with roasted puffed rice and salt. Chimbai leans further into its fishing village roots with a shrimp liquor, a house-made vinegar shrub, and a touch of wasabi, sitting somewhere between a martini and a Japanese-style sour. Pali has turned lighter and more herbaceous with a peppermint tea cordial, while Sherly pairs Kodu millet whisky with an apple-popcorn foam. Kantwadi keeps its raw mango streak, now built on tequila and a house-made mango seltzer. Head mixologist Ethan Campbell leads the technique: shrubs, grain infusions, carbonation and saline solutions, nearly all made in-house. The Negronis remain, still reworked with plum, banana, and peanut butter.

Koliwada Cocktail Club

Hidden within Slink & Bardot in Worli, behind a red door and velvet curtains, the Koliwada Cocktail Club is Mumbai’s first savoury cocktail tasting menu, fully embracing the concept. The menu consists of six courses, presented as a regular dinner, starting with an amuse-bouche and ending with a dessert. A tequila-based gazpacho comes with a cloud of salted celery air; the course featuring corn-husk-smoked tequila pays homage to the classic picante and is served with a charred jalapeño and a corn tostada on the side.

The bartenders, Guruprasad Tripathy and Mayur Tanpure, together with partners Vicky Singh and Riyaaz Amlani, regard technique as the main focus rather than just using it for decoration. The room, which has 20 seats, is located behind fish nets and ocean-blue walls and is intentionally kept separate from Slink’s weekend atmosphere so the cocktails can receive proper attention. It isn’t necessary to have all six courses every night, and the good point is that you don’t have to commit; those who would like two serious drinks can choose the Timeless menu, which is available à la carte. Regardless of the option chosen, this represents the most thoughtful aspect of Mumbai’s cocktail scene. If you can, book the tasting menu, as it deserves the ceremony.

Bar Find

Bar Find isn’t actually a bar in Mumbai; it’s Diganta Chakraborty’s mobile cocktail project from Kolkata, currently based in a shaky Fort building at Kitaab Mahal until early September. I discovered it from a message sent by a friend rather than from an official listing, and that seemed appropriate for a bar that has no location marker and barely even has a sign.

Once you climb the stairs, the room takes care of the rest: it has art, playlists and a drinks philosophy which clearly hasn’t been affected by the move. The Negroni I had stayed with me longer than most cocktails do, not because of any one particularly clever ingredient but because it was so simple. By 8.30 pm the room will be full, with birthday tables sharing plates across the aisle and three bartenders taking orders. Nobody appears to be in a hurry to leave, not even I on the night I visited. Since this particular phase is genuinely coming to an end in just a few weeks’ time, it should be at the top of any list, not at the bottom. It’s rare for Mumbai to have a bar with an expiry date, so make sure you go before it moves.

Bare

The bar at Raheja Altimus in Worli doesn’t appear to be a bar from the outside. It is hidden behind a façade featuring a rotating art gallery, and you have to press against a wall labelled “Patience” to find the door. Inside, there is an 11-seat chef’s table, an espresso bar operated by Boojee Café, and a cocktail programme that varies with the guest chef. During the day, it is a quiet and simple place where you can have coffee and dessert; in the evening, the lighting is reduced, and the room becomes more atmospheric, the ceiling panels changing colour as the night progresses.

The drinks are based around stories rather than following classic recipes and are closely matched with small plates inspired by different parts of the world, which also change as the line-up of chefs rotates. The space was designed by Pooja Raheja of Eat Drink Design and is easily one of the most multifaceted new establishments the city has seen this year, functioning as both a gallery and a kitchen and also as a bar, with all the elements never vying for attention. I would visit once to experience the discovery and then again once I knew where the door was.

Idoru

In Khar, above Izumi, Idoru operates as much on vinyl as it does on spirits. Before any drink is served, the atmosphere is established by two PLX1000 turntables, custom-built speakers, and about 200 records bought specifically for the room. The cocktail menu is based on Japanese techniques developed during Koki San’s research trips to Tokyo, and this is evident in its precision rather than its showmanship.

The Ikura Opera, a Roku Gin cocktail with salmon roe on a golden spoon, is the drink that people tend to mention, but on a more relaxed night a simple Japanese whisky sour or an Umeshu spritz is just as appropriate for the setting. There are 28 seats and 4 standing places, and there is a determination to remain an unpretentious listening bar rather than become a shrine to audiophiles. The food is also Japanese in style, small in portion, and thoughtfully prepared to complement the drinks rather than compete with them. It’s a place well worth spending a slow evening at: choose a record, order something simple, and let the room’s pace take control. It is Bandra’s most recent addition this year.