From PCO to Lair — the Indian speakeasy, fifteen years in

For about a decade between 2012 and 2022, the Indian cocktail bar was the same bar with different lighting. PCO Delhi opened in 2012 — Pass Code Hospitality's Rakshay and Radhika Dhariwal's import of the pre-Prohibition American speakeasy template into Vasant Vihar — and for ten years every serious cocktail room in the country was a variation on it. Phone-booth entrance, leather banquettes, classic cocktails with a story, a passcode you'd been texted.

In 2025 the format has fragmented. Lair in Delhi sits at number eight on Asia's 50 Best Bars — India's highest-ever ranking. Bar Spirit Forward in Bengaluru was named India's Best Bar in January 2026. ZLB23 hides behind the service lift of the Leela Bengaluru in a Kyoto-meets-1920s register. Boilermaker in Goa serves feni and cashew-beer in shot glasses. The Indian speakeasy is no longer one thing.

This is what the format has become.

The origin — PCO and the borrowed template

Rakshay Dhariwal had been a banker in New York and London before returning to India and opening PCO in November 2012, in a basement off Vasant Vihar's main market. The entrance was — and is — a phone booth in a fake delicatessen. You called a number, gave a passcode, the bar bouncer let you in. Inside: dim lighting, exposed brick, classic Manhattan-and-Old-Fashioned-led menu, no music above 60 decibels.

It is, by general industry consensus, India's first speakeasy in the modern sense. Before PCO, India had hotel bars, lounges and discotheques. After PCO, India had a category.

The years 2014 to 2018 produced a small wave of derivatives — A Reverie in Delhi, Toast & Tonic, Yauatcha's bar programmes, a handful of hotel speakeasies — but the template stayed PCO's. The second-wave moment was 2018, when Yangdup Lama (one of India's most-decorated bartenders, Roku Asia Industry Icon 2024) and Minakshi Singh opened Sidecar in Greater Kailash-II, Delhi.

Sidecar took PCO's template and married it to an editorial sensibility. Its menus weren't lists; they were narratives. The current programme, Dear Delhi, organises ten cocktails as neighbourhoods of Delhi, each served with a postcard. Earlier menus included Measure of Substance (Makaibari scotch, eucalyptus honey, B&G ginger). Sidecar became the first Indian bar on Asia's 50 Best Bars in 2020, the first Indian bar on the World's 50 Best Bars in 2021, and has held a place on the Asia extended list every year since.

The third wave — 2023 onwards

Three things changed between 2022 and 2025.

First, the bar of the year stopped being in Delhi. Bengaluru placed five bars in India's top thirty in 2025 — Bar Spirit Forward (#1), Soka (#2), ZLB23, Dali & Gala (#9), and a couple more in the extended list. Delhi placed six. But Bengaluru holds the first and second slots, both opened post-2023. For the first time, the country's bar capital is a city other than Delhi.

Second, Indian spirits and ingredients moved to the centre of the back-bar. Feni, mahua, kokum, mishri cherry, gondhoraj lime, Makaibari tea-infused spirits, cashew beer — every top-ten bar now has at least three Indian ingredients in its signature cocktails. The "imported gin in a coupe" era is closed.

Third, the hotel bar stopped being the enemy. Five years ago "speakeasy" meant "not a hotel bar." In 2025 the two highest-ranked entrance theatres in India — ZLB23 (Leela Bengaluru) and the Library Bar (Leela Delhi) — are both inside five-stars. ITC, Leela, Four Seasons and Taj have all rebuilt their bar programmes around standalone-speakeasy DNA.

The current top-tier: ten bars worth naming

A working set, with a note on what each one does that the others don't.

Lair — Vasant Vihar, Delhi. Anand Singh and Karina Aggarwal's concept, designed by Renesa Architects. Asia's 50 Best Bars 2025: #8. India's highest-ever ranking. Cocktails like The Shopian (whiskey, mishri cherry, vermouth, bitter aperitif — Kashmir homage) and Phoenix (jasmine gin, blanco, peach, lemongrass cordial). The country's reference bar.

Bar Spirit Forward — Lavelle Road, Bengaluru. Arijit Bose's bar, with Rohil Kalita and Pritish Dakhode. Named India's Best Bar 2026 by Spirits Business in January 2026, #37 Asia's 50 Best 2025. Omakase-style counter, single-spirit deep dives, no garnish theatre — the spirit is the protagonist. Opened late 2023.

Soka — Indiranagar, Bengaluru. Yangdup Lama and Minakshi Singh's Bengaluru play. #2 India 2025, #28 Asia 2025. Thirty-eight seats. Omakase journey — 15 cocktails, 15 bites. Native ingredients including jasmine. The Sidecar team's argument that Delhi's template can travel south.

ZLB23 — The Leela Palace, Bengaluru. Maia Design Studio (Shruti Jaipuria, Roshni Ramnane, Archana Mangalore). #31 Asia 2025, Best Hotel Bar India 2025. Hidden behind the working hotel kitchen, accessed via a service lift marked "Z". The bar's address (23) is literal. Brief was "Kyoto speakeasy" but the dominant register is 1920s — burgundy red, heavy woodwork, velvet, chesterfield, Kyoto used as a subtle wallpaper layer. The most cinematic entrance in India.

PCO — Vasant Vihar, Delhi. Still the ur-speakeasy after thirteen years. #11 India 2025. The phone-booth entrance, the passcode-by-SMS, the no-flash-photography house rule. Pass Code Hospitality has expanded to Hoots, Americano, Speak Low — but PCO is still the original.

Sidecar — Greater Kailash-II, Delhi. Yangdup Lama and Minakshi Singh. #62 Asia 2025, #8 India 2025. The bar that defined the narrative-menu format. Dear Delhi, neighbourhoods as cocktails. The seven-year-old standard against which every new Indian bar is benchmarked.

Boilermaker — Anjuna, Goa. Pankaj Balachandran (Countertop India) with Nakul Bhonsle of Great State Ale Works. #30 Asia 2025, Best Bartender India 2025 (Macleigh Rey Fernandes). Pitched as a "five-star dive bar." Feni and cashew-beer pairings. Cocktails like Beyond Your Wits (gondhoraj witbier) and Hard Sun (kokum-infused).

Hideaway — North Goa. #6 India 2025. Goa's first true speakeasy. Tropical low-ABV programme.

Bar Outrigger — Goa. #3 India 2025, Best Bar in Goa, Highest New Entry 2025. Polynesian-tiki revival with Goan spirits — the most under-the-radar bar success of 2025.

The Library Bar — The Leela Palace, New Delhi. Whisky-led classics in a literary room. #16 India 2025. The grand old lady of Delhi hotel bars, now operating in the same competitive set as the standalone speakeasies.

The five trends defining the scene in 2026

01 — The bartender, not the chef, is the new celebrity. Yangdup Lama (Roku Asia Icon 2024). Arijit Bose (Bar Spirit Forward — India's Best Bar). Minakshi Singh (Drinks International's "Breaking Boundaries" feature, 2024). Macleigh Fernandes (Boilermaker — India's Best Bartender 2025). Mayur Marne (Cobbler & Crew, Pune — India's Best Bartender shortlist). Pankaj Balachandran (Countertop/Pebble Street). For the first time in Indian hospitality, a bartender's name on a press release moves bookings.

02 — Indian spirits are on the back-bar at last. Feni's renaissance over the last five years has been the engine. Boilermaker runs the most ambitious feni programme in India. Lair uses Kashmiri Shopian-cherry-vermouth blends. Sidecar sources Makaibari estate scotch and B&G ginger. Soka is experimenting with mahua. ZLB23 uses koji and Japanese miso techniques applied to Indian base spirits. The category that took the longest to mature is also the one that will define Indian bartending internationally.

03 — The narrative menu has replaced the cocktail list. Every serious bar now has a thesis, not a list. Sidecar's neighbourhoods. Lair's geographical homages (Phoenix → China, Shopian → Kashmir). ZLB23's Kyoto-jazz storyline. Boilermaker's "five-star dive bar" frame. PCO's pre-Prohibition orthodoxy. The cocktail menu is now an editorial document with a point of view — and the bars that don't have one read as last decade's bars.

04 — The hidden entrance is a marketing device, not a secret. Modern Indian speakeasies maintain the aesthetics of secrecy — phone-booth doors, rotary-dial codes, walk-through-the-kitchen entries — while running Instagram pages, PR campaigns and Google Maps pins. The genre has become speakeasy 2.0 — anything but secret. This is itself a tension worth interrogating. The entrance theatre is now the marketing.

05 — The economics work — and that's why the boom is real. India's pub-bar-cafe-lounge (PBCL) market was USD 2.8 billion in 2024, projected to USD 5.8 billion by 2033 at ~7.4% CAGR. Cocktail margins (70-85% gross) are ten to twenty points above food. A speakeasy seats fewer people but charges ₹650-1,500 per drink versus ₹350-600 at a casual bar — turning lower volume into higher per-cover revenue. The format is profitable in a way that ₹200-cover gastropubs cannot match. Which is why every serious restaurant group in India — Hunger Inc, Pass Code, Massive Restaurants, Olive Group, the Leela, Taj — is now opening one.

Where this goes next

Three things to watch over the next twenty-four months:

• The first Indian bar in Asia's 50 Best top-five. Lair is at #8; Bar Spirit Forward at #37 but rising. The first Indian bar inside the global top-five will change how international cocktail tourism treats India.
• The first homegrown Indian-spirits cocktail brand. A bar group that builds its own feni / mahua / aged-Indian-rum line, and exports it. The IP is real; the company hasn't been built yet.
• The expansion of the format outside the top six metros. Mayur Marne's Cobbler & Crew in Pune (#19 India 2025), Bar Kin-Rü in Hyderabad (#22), Dali & Gala in Bengaluru — tier-2 cities now have credible cocktail bars at the national list level. The next geographical expansion is the answer to whether the format scales beyond Mumbai-Delhi-Bengaluru-Goa.

The Indian speakeasy is no longer one bar reproduced fifteen times. It is fifteen bars with fifteen theses, each working in a different register, all of them sharing the same architecture — a dim room, a serious drink, and a story you can repeat at the table.

That is more than India had in 2012. By the standards of 2012, it is also more than anyone expected.

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