Bar Berta, on the Plaza Borda, claims to have invented the cocktail that shares its name: tequila with honey, lime, and mineral water, served in a salt-rimmed glass. Whether the story is true or not, it has been serving this drink and variations on it since at least the 1930s, and the position on the plaza directly opposite Santa Prisca's facade makes it one of the better places in Mexico to sit and do nothing for an hour. It is a proper old bar, not a staged one, and the Berta cocktail is worth trying once.
Cafes cluster around the plaza and along the main pedestrian lanes. Coffee in Guerrero can be excellent — the state grows beans at altitude not far from Taxco — but most of the tourist-facing cafes serve indifferent espresso at city prices. Ask for café de olla (coffee brewed with cinnamon and piloncillo in a clay pot) if you want something with local character. Several small coffee shops on the side streets above the market serve good cups and have terraces with views across the hillside — worth finding with a bit of wandering.
The town quiets down early by Mexican standards. Nightlife is modest: a few bars near the university on the edge of town stay open later, but Taxco is not a late-night city. The silver shops close, the day-trippers leave, and the plaza becomes a quieter place by nine in the evening.