Five Super Cocktails to Try at Superbueno
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Ignacio “Nacho” Jimenez wanted to do something different. Back during the pandemic, the 20-plus-year veteran of the New York City bar and restaurant industry and native of León, Mexico, was thinking about his next venture. He knew he wasn’t interested in a typical Mexican restaurant or agave-focused bar. Rather, he aspired to create a place that reflected his own story, of immigrating to New York and rising through its dining scene: a Mexican American cocktail bar. In 2023, he realized that vision in the East Village by opening Superbueno.
“I wanted to do something that liberated me from the constraints of reacting to a genre of restaurants,” says Jimenez, formerly of Ghost Donkey and Saxon + Parole. “It was in front of me all along, because Masa [Urushido], my best friend, owns Katana Kitten, and he calls his restaurant a ‘Japanese American cocktail bar.’ I was like, I should just name it a Mexican American cocktail bar. That gave me the freedom to do a menu where the feature is a Vodka y Soda.”
Emancipation from the tyranny of Tequila has allowed Superbueno to develop an ingredient-driven concept that has earned wide acclaim, including a number two ranking on the North America’s 50 Best Bars list for two years running and a 2025 James Beard Foundation nod to Jimenez for outstanding professional in cocktail service. The menu is tight at just 10 drinks, but each offering is meticulously thought out, featuring surprising elements and inspirations from Mexican cuisine, including huitlacoche (corn smut) and al pastor-style grilled pineapple.
“My experience in the cocktail world has always been through food,” Jimenez says. “I know a lot of my peers and fellow bartenders, their approach is more [from the] technical side. My approach is always, ‘Oh, I like this ingredient. How can we make the most out of it?’ When it comes down to reflecting something that is Mexican, it’s grabbing these ingredients and being able to portray them on a menu in a way that is unexpected.”
While the drinks are precisely executed, Superbueno is anything but buttoned up. Latin music is always blaring from the stereo, and Jimenez cares deeply about providing a space that’s welcoming and fun. “It makes me so happy when I see a conga line happening,” he says. “You don’t know the person in front of you or the person behind you, but you’re still part of this joyful moment. That feeling is the best reward ever.”
Here, Jimenez steps off the dance floor and walks us through five of Superbueno’s standout cocktails.
Must be 21 years of age or older to consume alcoholic beverages. Please drink responsibly.
The Resy Rundown
Superbueno
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Why We Like It
The vibe is the perfect blend of fun and welcoming — imagine if your best friend had a cantina in their apartment and invited the whole neighborhood over every night — and the menu offers an impeccably crafted cocktail for every kind of drinker. -
Essential Dishes
Dorilocos (shrimp ceviche served in a bag of Doritos) and birria grilled cheese sandwich always hit the spot. -
Must-Order Drinks
Vodka y Soda; green mango martini; Adobada Bam Bam; roasted corn sour; and mushroom margarita.
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Who and What It’s For
The bar aspires to appeal to everyone, from serious cocktail connoisseurs stretching their palates to weekend partiers looking to join a midnight conga line. (The music is always pumping, so it is perhaps not a place for a quiet conversation.) -
How to Get In
Reservations for tables drop two weeks in advance at midnight, from opening time to 12 a.m. (there are no reservations taken for after midnight). Jimenez says that reserving generally isn’t necessary before 7 p.m. in the early part of the week, but for a Friday or Saturday evening he recommends doing so at least three days in advance. The bar area is walk-in-only, and you can expect a 45- to 90-minute wait during peak hours. -
Fun Fact
When the party ramps up later in the evening, staffers swing the globe lights hanging above the bar, making the place somehow even livelier.
1. Vodka y Soda
“This is our most-sold cocktail. We serve around 2,500 a month. It has taken the neighborhood by storm. The whole idea was to reflect a very iconic guava cold drink in Mexico called Boing. One day, I was walking on Avenue A and 14th Street — there’s this really old Mexican deli that serves food called Zaragoza Deli — could be, like, three in the morning, and I go and get a late-night burrito there, and I drank the Boing, and I was like, Wow. I thought of guava, and I was like, This is amazing, and it’ll be amazing to reflect it in a drink.”.
“I always found drinks with guava pulp, but the pulp didn’t feel right for me. It had kind of a grainy, sandy quality, and I didn’t want to do a tiki drink. I wanted to do a highball, [to] elevate this flavor. We use a very high-quality guava puree, clarify the puree, and then rectify all of that with some acids, and then also add some sugar. We use Grey Goose with guajillo and pasilla peppers, put a little kick of falernum to keep that tropical flavor going, and we force-carbonate the whole thing. Then you have a little bit of guava and pasilla salt on the rim. We recommend to grab just a little bit of the salt and drink it.”
2. Green Mango Martini
“We’re in New York. What’s a good bar without a good martini? I wanted to do a Tequila martini, and I always feel that they’re so hard to achieve. I took inspiration from a drink called La Perla, developed by a very good friend of mine, Jacques [Bezuidenhout], and I also took inspiration from the ladies selling mango on the subway platforms of New York. It starts as an infusion of Tequila and green mangoes, and we add a little bit of mango distillate that we import from Mexico. It’s 100% mangoes, fermented and distilled, kind of in the same way that we’ll do an eau de vie, but a little bit higher percentage of alcohol: 49%. We mix it with a little bit of Sauternes, which is the perfect pairing for a mango, and then we finish everything with a little dollop of chile oil — Costeño chiles and olive oil — served tableside.”
3. Adobada Bam Bam
“For this one, the whole inspiration is the adobada pastor tacos: the smokiness, the pineapple, the spices. We grill the skin of the pineapple, and we infuse the mezcal for 48 hours. Then we do a falernum with some of the spices that will go into an adobada rub: guajillo peppers, achiote, orange, cloves, black pepper. We blend the mezcal, falernum, fresh pineapple juice, and lemon all together. We use the [leftover] pineapple pulp for a smoked pineapple salt with a little bit of guajillo. All our salt is made with Maldon salt, a really fine but flaky sea salt, which is a little bit more delicate. All of the elements of the pineapple are used; there’s nothing that goes [to] waste. You have the smokiness from the char of the pineapple, accentuated by the smokiness of the mezcal. The pineapple itself is very nice, and I think you’re still able to reflect a little bit of the achiote and other spices in there.”
4. Roasted Corn Sour
“This is one of the more ingredient-driven cocktails. I wanted to do a whiskey sour, and corn is that seminal ingredient in Mexican cuisine, so it felt right to do something with corn. We start by charring the corn, and then we let [the kernels] sit for 24 hours with brown sugar, guajillo pepper, epazote, and other spices in the mix. And then out of the corn cobs we create a tea and blend it into, I think it’s a two-to-one ratio of sugar and corn tea, so we end up with this super-rich roasted-corn syrup. We take a whiskey made out of corn from Mexico, [called] Abasolo, a little bit of Tequila to concentrate that kind of peppery note, vanilla, caramel, egg white, lemon, and then we finish it all with [a dusting of charred] corn husk. I had Chabela [Isabel] Coss [the chef at Lutèce and Pascual in Washington, D.C.] here, who did desserts for Cosme, and this is the same way that they do the corn husk on the meringue.”
“In opening Superbueno, I’m honoring not only my heritage, but so many relationships from my many years of experience here in New York. Talking particularly about the corn sour, I remember a corn drink that I was served once by Joaquín Simó at Pouring Ribbons. It was just delicious — sweet corn, vanilla, every element — and ever since, I’ve been trying to replicate a drink that delivers like that.”
5. Mushroom Margarita
“I won’t take credit for this one at all. It’s a cocktail developed by Eben Freeman, who was one of the pioneers of molecular mixology. It’s one of those drinks that I wanted to carry with me, because it represents kind of that ultimate ingredient of Mexican cuisine: huitlacoche. If you want to make a Mexican feel proud, you talk about huitlacoche. It’s a pre-Hispanic ingredient, and it has been served forever. There was no tweaking that made this cocktail better — it was really good the way he created it. I just wanted to do it here.”
“It’s an infusion of huitlacoche, which is extremely expensive.: Two pounds of huitlacoche is $82, and two pounds gives us about five liters of product, so we have to work smartly about it. We blend it in [Mal Bien mezcal], let it sit for 24 hours, and then strain it. We don’t want it to be clear; I wanted to leave the texture and graininess and earthiness. A lot of lime juice, heavier on the pour, like an ounce, and an orange liqueur from Mexico called Alma Finca that’s a little bit drier. We do just a touch of simple syrup to balance it all, and then you have lava salt on the rim. For me, the way to explain it is it’s the perfect combination between earth and smoke, which is in essence what mezcal is. It’s an acquired taste, because not everyone gets it, but it is the one cocktail that chefs and sommeliers like the most. It’s a bold flavor.”
Superbueno is open Monday through Thursday from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. and Friday to Sunday from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Justin Goldman is a Brooklyn-based writer covering travel, culture, food, and wine. A former editor at Hemispheres, he contributes to Condé Nast Traveler, Wine Enthusiast, the Los Angeles Times, and Eater. Follow him on Instagram. Follow Resy, too.
Must be 21 years of age or older to consume alcoholic beverages. Please drink responsibly.
