Entered through a working plant shop, Pretty Decent is designed to feel less like a bar and more like being invited into someone’s home for a dinner party. The bar itself sits at kitchen counter height, a 14-foot piece of maple with a Rubio finish left looking bare, like a butcher block, with no barrier between the bartenders and the guests seated at it – closer to watching a friend cook than sitting across from staff.

High ceilings and the plant shop’s front windows flood the space with daylight, while greenery from the shop spills through the bar and even into the bathrooms, which are tiled in pale green and wrapped in agave-print wallpaper. Behind the bar, a mismatched tiled backsplash sits below a single shelf holding over 200 heritage Mexican spirits, with a turntable and a wall of vinyl adding to the at-home feel. Artwork throughout comes from the owners’ own trips to Oaxaca and Mexico City.

Hospitality here is built on small, consistent details. Water glasses are kept topped up as a point of pride, guided by an internal mantra: half-full needs filled, empty means they’ve missed. Guests are quizzed gently on flavour preference rather than handed a menu and left to work it out alone, a nod to the fact that many first-time visitors are more used to bourbon than agave spirits. Even the bill comes with a small seasonal treat, such as Reese’s cups at Halloween or candy canes at Christmas.

Drinks are almost entirely built on mezcal, tequila, rum and other distillates from Mexico with a strong lean toward bright, citrus-forward, shaken styles, backed by a solid list of classics for guests who want something more familiar. Every cocktail, whether original or classic, is made to a single fixed build recorded in the team’s own reference book, organised by style rather than alphabetically, so that consistency holds however the drink is ordered. A significant amount of what’s served is made in-house, and the team prepares for roughly one hour for every two hours they’re open.

The spirits list itself, bound in leather from a local maker, doubles as an education in agave, and the team is just as happy walking a curious guest through it page by page as pouring quickly for someone who already knows what they want. That same educational instinct extends outward: staff run regular masterclasses open to other local bartenders, and the team supports The Logoche Water Project, a community-driven initiative which tackles water scarcity in rural Oaxaca by building rainwater capture tanks. 

As the evening wears on, the room’s music shifts with it – softer and more ambient while the plant shop is still open in the afternoon, moving into vinyl chosen to spark nostalgia as the night sets in, old indie rock, golden-age hip hop, Latin jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms, before turning slightly edgier later on.