Hacha Dalston

The blue doors on Kingsland Road shut for good on 25 April 2026, seven years to the day after they opened (Time Out).

Why go, before it shut

Hacha opened in April 2019 as London's first agaveria, which is to say the first bar in the city built entirely around the agave plant. Mezcal and tequila, and then sotol and raicilla, which almost nobody else here poured. The back bar held 25 spirits in regular rotation, so the pour changed under you.

The drink was the Mirror Margarita, clarified until it came out see-through, and it did what a house serve is supposed to do: it named the bar. In July 2025, Time Out asked seven of London's drinks-industry figures where they would go for the city's best margarita, and Ryan Chetiyawardana, Mr Lyan of Seed Library and Lyaness, named this one (Time Out).

What killed it was arithmetic rather than trade. Deano Moncrieffe ran Hacha as a two-site business for five years, at Brixton Market for three and a half years and then at the Bermonds Locke hotel by Tower Bridge, and lost that second room in October. His own words on Instagram, quoted by Time Out: "continuing in our current form with only Dalston is no longer sustainable."

Where the drinks went

Hacha took over the downstairs Nocturna Lounge at the Mexican restaurant Ixchel in Chelsea from 18 June to 31 August 2026, with a drinks-events programme and resident DJs. The mirror margaritas went with it, alongside a salted pomegranate version and the "miles away", built from passion fruit-infused mezcal, charred pineapple juice and aperol. Moncrieffe told Time Out the founders are looking for a bigger permanent room: "It's just the end of this particular chapter, but not the end of the story."

What locals & experts say

• Ryan Chetiyawardana, Mr Lyan of Seed Library and Lyaness, picking London's best margarita for Time Out in July 2025: "Dalston agave spirit specialist Hacha was nominated by Mr Lyan." He named somebody else's bar, which is the only kind of pick that counts. ref
• Eloise Feilden, Time Out, April 2026, on what it was: "The bar debuted as the capital's first 'agaveria', pouring mezcal, tequila, soto and raicilla, all spirits made using Mexico's native agave plant, plus a back bar stocked with 25 spirits in regular rotation." ref
• Deano Moncrieffe, founder, on Instagram, quoted by Time Out: "Over the past five years, Hacha has operated as a two-site business, and continuing in our current form with only Dalston is no longer sustainable." ref

Good to know

• Status: closed. 378 Kingsland Road E8 4AA stopped trading on 25 April 2026. This row is kept for the record and for anyone still working from an old list.
• What replaced it in the diary: a summer residency at Ixchel, Chelsea, to 31 August 2026. After that, unannounced.
• Hygiene, historical: the FSA recorded rating 3 at this address on 22 March 2025, with ten points lost on each of hygiene, structure and confidence in management. That is the weakest inspection in this curation slice and it is well above the threshold that would have triggered removal. It attaches to a premises that no longer trades. ref
• Sites: two, both gone. Dalston is this one. The southern sibling ran at Brixton Market for three and a half years, moved into the Bermonds Locke Tower Bridge hotel around February 2025, and was out by October.
• When the new room opens, it gets its own row at its own address. Nothing here transfers to it.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. His saved-places export carries an empty note for this row. The master CSV line "Agave bar; home of the Mirror Margarita" was written by an earlier enrichment pass and described a bar that has since shut, so the row has been corrected rather than quoted.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

listed — Closed, and on the board for the history rather than the drink. Hacha opened on Kingsland Road on 25 April 2019 as London's first agaveria and shut exactly seven years later, on 25 April 2026, when running a one-site version of a two-site business stopped working. Deano Moncrieffe built a back bar of 25 agave spirits in regular rotation, poured sotol and raicilla when almost nobody in the city did, and made the Mirror Margarita, a clarified serve that got its own brand and put the words in every corner of east London in 2019. Mr Lyan named it London's best margarita in a Time Out poll of seven industry figures in July 2025, which is the strongest evidence here and the kind that only comes from a working bartender. The founders are hunting a larger room and ran the summer at Ixchel in Chelsea. When they land somewhere, that address gets its own row and it will not inherit this rung automatically.