So this is another review that has been sitting in my review drafts for, now, about 5 months... so…read morethings could have changed. Certainly, with a place like this, all of the specific *drinks* may well have changed, being that they were all so technical, with so many house or freshly made moving parts, i.e. my favorite kind of nerdy cocktail bar. But presumably they're still making drinks as cool as the were a few months ago.
They don't take reservations, so we just got there right when they opened, which is the way to do it. There were only a couple other people there right at 4 that day, but within half an hour, it was completely full. (Also yeah, Yelp says they open at 5 PM, but they... definitely open at 4.)
Despite being *very* busy, we never had any difficult ordering drinks, nor getting them back quickly, and I ordered a... bunch of drinks (well, with my wife, who despite not normally being a cocktail person, was definitely drinking her share of all of them.) I absolutely loved the detailed descriptions of exactly how each cocktail is made (I learned a new word, enfleurage! In this case, of cardamom through peanut butter), the amount of effort that clearly went *into* all of them (house-made hop distillate, falernum, gin they re-distilled with pickle brine, the enfleurage, to quote, a "labor-intensive perfume extraction process"...), but more importantly, I can't stress enough, all of their cocktails were absolutely *wonderfully* delicious. All quite unique enough to scratch the itch for weird cocktail nerds like me, who don't want to drink classics, but unique concepts no other bar has done - but also all perfectly balanced and quite complex, both the spirit-forward ones (a Vieux Carre with mango chutney and hop extract instead of Benedictine and bitters! A Negroni that's been aged in ex-sherry barrels in a solera system like a sherry!), and the wacky sweet-savory ones (pisco milk punch and fish sauce! Mezcal and ponzu sauce, clarified through Greek yogurt! Citrus, balsamic, fancy honey and pickle gin!) All their drinks absolutely lived up to the hype. I don't know if any of those drinks are still available, but if not, I'm sure equally inventive ones took their place, so either way, I'd definitely make sure to come back if I happened to back in the area instead of halfway across the planet.
We didn't get food here, just drinks - but we absolutely took *full* advantage of the complimentary chips being offered. When we discovered how wonderful their (made in-house) chips were, we kept asking for more. We went through a *bunch* of little plates of chips. Especially as they went *particularly* well with all of the cocktails, again, both spirit-forward and interestingly sweet-savory-funky cocktails, paired really well with craft chips. The drinks already made this place a 5/5, but with the free all-you-want craft chips? That's like a 6 out of 5.
