Best-of list · City Guide
The best mezcal bars in Los Angeles, from Silver Lake agaveries to Downtown LA smoke dens. Our editors ranked the bars worth your time and money.
The short answer
8 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
Los Angeles has quietly become one of the best cities in the world for mezcal. The combination of a massive Mexican-American community, an adventurous drinking culture, and bartenders who actually visit Oaxacan distilleries has produced a scene that puts most other cities to shame. These are the best mezcal bars in Los Angeles — the ones worth your time, your palate, and your Uber fare home.
LA's mezcal culture has moved well beyond tourist-facing margarita menus. The bars on this list carry serious agave programmes — espadín alongside tobalá, tepextate, and madrecuixe — with bartenders who can actually tell you where the maguey was grown and who made it. This is LA drinking at its best.
How we picked
The best mezcal bars in Los Angeles have earned their reputation honestly. This is a city where the community is close to the source — Oaxaca is two hours by plane, and the cultural connection runs deep. If you're visiting and want to understand the range of what agave spirits can be, start with Agave Moderno for the education, then take yourself to El Copal or Mezcalería Humo for the experience of just drinking something brilliant in a room full of people who feel the same way.
Book the flights and the tasting menus in advance. The neat pours, happily, are walk-in only.
Agave spirits don't stop at mezcal. If tequila is also on your radar, our guide to the best bars for tequila lovers worldwide covers the dedicated agave programmes in NYC, Chicago, and Austin alongside LA's finest.
Marcus covers the LA and Miami drinking scenes for barsforKings. He has been following the agave spirits revolution since 2015 and visits Oaxaca most years. He has a strong view on which Silver Lake bars are worth the wait and which ones are just Instagram.
Last reviewed 2026-01-17 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.