Mezcal Bar Near Me in Bushwick: El Cortez's Late-Night Tex-Mex Room

Typing 'mezcal bar near me' into your phone at 9pm in Bushwick usually means you want somewhere open now, with a real bar, that won't make you wait an hour. El Cortez, at 17 Ingraham Street, answers that directly: open daily from 4pm to 4am, full bar downstairs and up, patio out back. It's not a specialist agave room, but it is a room with a working bar and a kitchen still firing well past midnight.

Karpo can tell you whether the ground-floor bar at El Cortez is quiet enough for conversation right now, or whether the upstairs DJ set has already taken over — and flag what else on Ingraham Street is still serving.

If you've typed some version of 'mezcal bar near me' into a phone in Bushwick, the room that answers is El Cortez, sitting between Bogart and Morgan on Ingraham Street. It's open every day from 4pm to 4am, which covers early dinner straight through last call without a gap — useful to know if you're solving a right-now problem rather than planning a week ahead.

What's worth setting straight before you go in: this is a full bar built around rum, citrus and tiki-leaning drinks first, not a curated wall of single-village mezcal. There's a case to be made that a Mexican-Southwestern kitchen this size keeps agave spirits on hand, but no current menu confirms a dedicated mezcal list, so the honest move is to ask the bartender directly once you're at the counter rather than assume a deep pour selection sight unseen.

The interior reads like a late-1970s or early-1980s Mexican restaurant and lounge that never got renovated out of its own aesthetic — colorful, maximalist, with a bar on each of its two floors and room for a couple hundred people across the whole space. An old CRT television plays vintage programming somewhere in the room, and paper umbrellas turn up in the drinks as a running visual joke rather than an afterthought.

There's an outdoor patio for drinking once it's dark, and an upstairs level that turns into a DJ-driven dance floor with laser lights later in the night. That upstairs energy is the late-night draw for a lot of regulars, which means the ground-floor bar and patio stay noticeably calmer earlier in the evening — the better bet if you actually want to sit, talk, and taste a drink rather than shout over a set.

The food side splits into what the owners describe as three registers: hot plate, gringo, and Mexican-Mexican, all served from the same kitchen without much ceremony about which is which on the page. Signature dishes include the Cadillac Nachos — housemade tortilla chips carrying refried cranberry beans, jalapeno cheese sauce, citrus sour cream and three separate salsas — alongside a burrito, a rotating Tacos Du Jour, a chimichanga, and a taco salad.

Pricing sits in the affordable range, generally $30 and under for a casual meal, and the bar accepts the standard card set — Amex, Discover, Mastercard, Visa. Worth flagging plainly: the last confirmed menu update online dates to February 2022, so specific dishes, drink names and prices are all fair game to have shifted since, and worth a quick confirm once you're seated.

The cocktail program leans tiki and classic rum-and-citrus rather than agave-forward — a frozen mojito and a piña colada variant called the Commodore, finished with an amaretto float, are the house signatures. That lineage isn't a coincidence: El Cortez comes from the same ownership team behind Williamsburg's Commodore bar, and the drink list carries some of that shared DNA across the two rooms.

None of this rules out a solid mezcal pour or two on the back bar of a Mexican-Southwestern kitchen this size — it's just not something any current listing spells out in detail. The practical move is to order at the bar directly and ask what's on the agave side that night, rather than build a whole visit around a specific bottle you haven't confirmed is still there.

El Cortez isn't bookable through OpenTable's reservation network — the guidance is to contact the restaurant directly if you want to try to lock in a table. Some guests have found staff weren't aware of a booking even after making one, which makes calling ahead a soft guarantee at best. Walking in and ordering straight at the bar tends to be the more dependable route, especially if you're not fussed about a specific table.

Service overall gets rated a touch below food and ambience in the small pool of reviews the place has drawn — an overall 4.3 out of 5, with slower or inconsistent service showing up as the recurring complaint when things get busy. Arriving right at the 4pm opening, or picking a quieter weeknight over a Friday or Saturday, tends to mean faster food and quicker bar service. One account from a Cinco de Mayo Friday described the room as packed to the brim, which tracks: weekend nights and Mexican-holiday dates pull noticeably bigger crowds than a Tuesday.

Ingraham Street sits in the industrial part of Bushwick that runs up close to the Williamsburg line — close enough that at least one major listing files El Cortez's address under Williamsburg despite its Bushwick street address. It's a small detail, but it captures something true about that stretch: warehouse blocks and light-industrial buildings with bars and restaurants slotted between them, and no hard border sign telling you which neighbourhood you've crossed into.

The bar's own hours reinforce which side of that identity it leans toward. Staying open until 4am every night positions El Cortez as part of the area's after-dark, DJ-driven bar scene rather than a daytime dining stop — a place that makes more sense as a stop after 9pm than as a lunch destination.

El Cortez sits at 17 Ingraham Street in Bushwick, between Bogart and Morgan streets, close to the Williamsburg border. It's open daily from 4pm to 4am. Reservations don't run through OpenTable's network — call ahead if you want to try, but walking in and ordering at the bar is generally more reliable, since staff aren't always tied closely to a host stand. Expect a bi-level room: a calmer ground-floor bar and patio earlier in the evening, and an upstairs DJ-and-dance-floor scene that picks up later. Weekends and Mexican holidays run noticeably busier than weeknights. Cards accepted include Amex, Discover, Mastercard and Visa; pricing sits in the affordable, $30-and-under range for food.

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Wondering if the ground-floor bar at El Cortez is calm enough for a slow mezcal-and-nachos night before the upstairs DJ set takes over? Ask Karpo for tonight's read on the room and what's still open nearby on Ingraham Street if you need a backup.