Maison Artemisia is on the second floor above Le Tachinomi Desu, a small French standing-bar on Tonalá in Roma Norte. The entrance is at the back of the ground-floor restaurant - a narrow wooden staircase, no sign. Upstairs is a single low-lit room with maybe twenty seats, a marble bar, and Mexico City's most considered list of absinthes, vermouths and amari outside the world of Italian cocktail bars. The format is European; the warmth is Mexican.
The bar's signature service is the absinthe drip - a brass fountain on the counter slowly drips iced water over a sugar cube on a slotted spoon, into the glass of absinthe below, while the louche develops. Order one. After that, the move is to ask the bartender to build something around a digestivo you have not tried - a small Italian amaro, a French gentiane, a regional fernet. Maison Artemisia is not a long-evening bar; one slow drink and one short conversation with the bartender is the visit. Allow forty-five minutes.