Salmon Guru
The Pantera Jackson is a milk punch built on pisco, mango water and fish sauce.2 Diego Cabrera opened the bar in the Barrio de las Letras in 2016. 50 Best ranked it No.37 in The World's 50 Best Bars 2025.52
Why go
Guru came with the room from the previous tenant, and Cabrera picked Salmon because the fish swims upstream.1 He builds drinks with Pepe Orts, a botanist, which is where the fermented and foraged half of the list comes from.4 The bar is three rooms and each one is a different idea. The main space is tropical, with the big bar. A second is done as Hollywood's golden age. The third is semi-private and built out of vintage comic panels.3 The comic room is Cabrera's own favourite, and he says people thought he was mad when he built it.3 His team designs the glassware alongside the drinks, so the Flower Power arrives inside an open-mouthed angler fish.3 He rebuilt the whole place in 2023 with neon and painted murals, and wrote a new menu with it.2 There is a seat called the barman's table, past the bar, where he works in front of you.4
Order this / avoid
- Pantera Jackson, pisco, mango water and fish sauce, clarified as a milk punch.2
- La Mano de Dios, gin with fernet, lactofermented strawberry, balsamic vinegar and Pepsi.2
- Dragon Daughter, rum with dried fruit and horchata syrup, cut with passion fruit and pineapple.3
- Eat. Hummus, mini-burgers, tapas and a run of pickles that Time Out warns are addictive.4
- Old School Funny, an Iberian negroni aged five years in a dynamic solera. Order it if the milk punch sounds like too much.1
- If you are not drinking, the low- and no-alcohol section is a real one rather than two sodas.2
What locals & experts say
- Diego Cabrera, in a 50 Best interview after the bar took the Michter's Art of Hospitality Award in 2021, on what he is aiming at:
I hope that when you go into Salmon Guru for the first time, it feels like home.
He wants a stranger to be greeted like a regular.3 - 50 Best Discovery quotes the bar's own line back at it:
Only dead fish go with the flow.
2 - Time Out Madrid gave it five stars in November 2018, and put the point of the place in one line: Cabrera
aims to democratize and dignify everything related to mixology.
4 - The bar is No.37 in The World's 50 Best Bars 2025 and it is on Europe's 50 Best Bars list for 2026.1 It ranked 24th in the year it took the hospitality award.52
- I have not found a Spanish critic's review of this bar. The judgments above belong to the awarding body and to Time Out.
Good to know
- The bar tests its own products at a plant outside the city, the Dragon Experience Factory in San Sebastián de los Reyes.5
- The door is Echegaray 21, in the Barrio de las Letras, on a street that also holds La Venencia and Chuka Ramen.2
- Tuesday to Sunday, by 50 Best's own listing.2
- Reckon on about fifteen dollars a cocktail, which is the only figure any page carries.2
- Hygiene: I have not read a Spanish inspection record for this bar, so I have nothing to report either way.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "one of the top cocktail bars in the city; on world top 50 bars list"
Verdict
must-visit — Start with the Pantera Jackson. Ask for the comic-book room and eat here too. It has been on The World's 50 Best Bars list since 2021 and took the hospitality award that year, and Cabrera engineers the drinks with a botanist.