Paradiso

It was a balmy summer afternoon in El Born, Barcelona’s fashionably offbeat neighborhood

- Terry Zarikian

I arrived at 5 p.m. to meet a friend who had special access to Paradiso—the best cocktail bar in the world according to The World’s 50 Best Bars, one of the foremost authorities on the matter. I said to the doorman, “This is tiny, and doesn’t look like a bar?” He smiled and replied, “This is the Pastrami Bar, a front. Paradiso is a speak-easy-style cocktail bar and is hidden.” He then opened an old-fashioned refrigerator door, where I assumed they stored the pastrami for the Rooftop Smokehouse—a gastronomic collective that uses artisan smoking techniques. The mood changed, as I encountered music, laughter and an ebullient atmosphere I wanted to enter.