Alcademics

Category: bars

  • Rickhouse: A First Look

    Yesterday I stopped in to Rickhouse, the new bar by the folks from Bourbon & Branch, Swig, Anu, and the liquor store Cask.

    The bar is located at 246 Kearny Street at the site of the long-time gay bar Ginger's Trois. (I believe Anu was built where Ginger's Too was once located.)  Ginger's was a small space with a sunken bar and a tiny seating area in the back, all with a unique art deco design.

    Rickhouse couldn't be more different. They completely remodeled the space and annexed the old storage room and some unused restrooms in the back. Now you enter on a long vertical room with a bar running down one side. In the back of the front room is a small balcony beneath a newly-installed skylight that apparently gets direct overhead light for just an hour or so per day. The balcony is open on either side, facing the front and back rooms.

    Rickhouse2

    The back room is situated like a "T" to the front room, and can be partitioned off with large sliding wood doors. The bar for this room is on the back left, and it smaller than the one in the front.

    When the space is open, there will be low seats and small tables throughout both rooms and the balcony. However, unlike B&B there will not be reserved seating. (There will be cocktail servers though to take the crush off the front bar.) The furniture is all pretty mobile, so depending on the number of people and the time of the day, they'll move the furniture around to accommodate everyone.

    The walls, ceilings, and floors are all made of wood. I think it's nearly all reclaimed wood- most of it from barrel staves used in layers on the ceiling (similar to the ceiling at Cask), some of it from a construction project next door, and some from a former nunnery where they distilled whiskey during prohibition. Former bourbon barrels are also used as decoration in the space, and the chandeliers are made from the metal bands that bind barrels together. One exposed brick wall opposite the front bar apparently has some of the char left from the 1906 fire.

    Rickhouse1

    The  cocktail menu I've been asked not to say too much about just yet, but it has very little overlap with the drink menu from Bourbon & Branch.

    The bar is not yet open to the public and won't be fully open for about three weeks after they finish final construction touches, then allow a healthy soft-opening period for the bartenders and servers to become familiar with the new menu.

    Rickhouse is looking really, really good.

    Rickhousefront

  • Here is that Drink I was Talking About

    You know how I was blogging about that great new drink that's unavailable because there wasn't enough Hangar One chipotle vodka to put it on the menu?

    Well, they heard the outcry, they delivered more chipotle, and now the Escondido Romano is on the menu at Nopa for all to enjoy as of yesterday. Hooray! Now go order 70 of them so I don't look like a jerk.

    Alcademics: Bringing positive change to drink menus since 2009.

  • Camper’s Clampers Bonus: Plaque Pics

    As a bonus supplement to my story in the SF Chronicle on E Clampus Vitus, here are pictures I took of the historic plaques located around SF. I didn't get a picture of the Anchor Brewing or Molloy's Tavern in Colma, but here are the other four.

    SF Brewing Cos
    Old Ship Saloon PlaqueS
    Hotaling BuildingS
    PiscopunchS

    Bonus: Bummer and Lazarus plaque.

    Bummer and lazarusS

  • Drinking by Degree

    Check out my story in the February issue of San Francisco Magazine. It's about tasting clubs around the city where you earn prizes or a degree by working your way through the menu.

    TresAgavesfull

    I focus on the Tequila Passport program at Tres Agaves, but also mention programs at Tommy's Mexican Restaurant, Forbidden Island, and Barclay's in Oakland.

    Read the story here.

  • Heaven’s Dog Preview

    On Monday I had the chance to check out Heaven's Dog, the new Charles Phan (Slanted Door) restaurant and bar opening on in San Francisco on Friday.

    On closer inspection, bar and restaurant would be a more adequate description of the place. There's a small noodle bar/kitchen on one side- almost an adjacent business connected by the bathroom hallway, and a section of the larger, L-shaped room for seating. The long part of the "L" is the bar, cut out of a beautiful, curving vertical slice of a tree, and there is so much room behind it there were more than eight bartenders working at the same time on Monday night. The small part of the "L" is the seating for the restaurant.

    HeavensDogBarDarkSmall

     

    The cocktail menu consists entirely of Charles H. Baker (author of The Gentleman's Companion) drinks. I forgot to bring home a drink menu but the drinks I tried were largely acidic citrus rather than juicy, and very booze-heavy. One drink is simply dark rum with honey syrup and a twist of lemon stirred over a huge hand-carved chunk of ice. Another drink uses the pineapple gum syrup made by Small Hand Foods for Pisco Punch all over town, but in a different way… that I can't recall exactly but it was my favorite drink of the night.

    HeavensDogIceSmall

    When I last wrote about this bar, I noted the all-star staff. Well, it got even starrier. Erick Castro of Bourbon & Branch will be joining for a couple days a week. Also working one shift will be Erik Ellestad, the blogger making every cocktail in the Savoy Cocktail Book, whom I wrote about in a Chronicle story a while back. 

    That also makes it a four-Eric bar. Erik Adkins, Eric Johnson, Erick Castro, and Erik Ellestad. So when you check out the place, make sure to ask for Eri(c)(k).

  • New Bars and Old New Bars

    Sfbgcover
    San Franciscans should immediately leave work and run screaming to their local newsbox to pick up this week's San Francisco Bay Guardian. Why? Because you'll find me waiting for you inside. In the Scene insert I have two stories. One of them is on some new recommended bottles of booze. The other is on new watering holes that have opened in the city this year.

    I realized that I've written the New Bars story for the past three years. Maybe it will be fun to compare my brilliant observations over the years. Let's find out:

    New Bars Story 2006

    • "At least 15 bar-bars, five wine bars, and five clubs opened in the city, as did a bunch of restaurants that serve great drinks. It takes a strong liver to keep current, further blurring the line between journalism and alcoholism."
    •  "Several bars went from upscale to downscale this year, proving that not every lounge needs to be ultra."
    • "Three more art bars opened in 2006, following the success of all the other art bars in town."
    • "American whiskey bars are big, big, big this year, and now there are three new venues in which you can order a sazerac cocktail or a rye Manhattan."
    • "A large number of new restaurants have such great cocktail programs they cause certain writers to spend inordinate amounts of time and money in them without ever trying the food."
    • "Now that every neighborhood in San Francisco has a wine bar or three, the new venues are starting to specialize."

    New Bars Story 2007

    • "Whereas in previous years the lines between bars and art galleries got blurry, this year it’s hard to categorize venues as bars or restaurants or wine bars or cocktail lounges or nightclubs."
    •  "Most of the new wine bars are not really bars at all, though- they’re either wine retail outlets with tasting bars inside, or they’re small plates restaurants by another name."
    • "Some of the best drinking is to be had in eateries with all those fresh fruits, vegetables, and other ingredients in the kitchen just begging to be muddled into cocktails where they belong."
    • "The line between bar and club blurs ever more when there is DJ and bottle service and they serve light appetizers and are open at 5PM. Clubs are opening earlier for increased happy hour drink sales and are demoting space for the dancefloor; in effect becoming cocktail bars with a club crowd."
    •  "For a while, all the beer and wine-only bars were selling soju and sake cocktails in an attempt to stay trendy. This is still true at restaurants without full liquor licenses, but now we’re seeing more beer-focused venues that build the concept around the brew, not the food."
    • "It seems the least popular type of drinking establishment to open this year is the thing we used to know as a bar, where they don’t serve food (or the food only serves to keep you drinking, like the popcorn machine in Tenderloin bars) and there isn’t a dancefloor or cocktail waitresses or bottle service and there still exists a magic time called happy hour."

    New Bars Story 2008

    •  "Not too long ago I’d come home from a night of barhopping with ringing ears and smelling of cigarettes. Now half the time I get home reeking of braised calamari and elderflower with an earful of soft jazz. Most of the new watering holes to open this year were restaurants and hotel lobbies with extravagant bar programs and cocktail lists."
    • "Now that good drinks are in demand at every new restaurant, bartenders are barhopping from venue to venue."
    • "Though hotel lobby bars have traditionally been places to find traditional drinks, now many of them are promoting innovation and eco-cocktails."
    • "A different grape spirit, pisco, a brandy from Peru or Chile, is showing up on the menu at dozens of the best bars in the city."
    •  "Since sitting quietly and sipping is the new raving until dawn, there isn’t too much point in building new warehouse nightclubs. Instead, a few older spots were freshened up and sometimes renamed."

    Hopefully the full story will go online soon for the not-in-SF readers. In the meantime, check out CitySearch's Top 10 New Bars of 2008– which includes a few of them I missed.

  • San Francisco’s Next All-Star Bar

    I recently spoke with Erik Adkins (Slanted Door, Flora) who is the bar manager of the soon-to-open Charles Phan (Slanted Door's chef/owner) restaurant next to the Soma Grand building on Mission Street. After much wavering on the name (the code name was "Phantom" at one point, get it), they seem to have settled on Heaven's Dog. That's pretty rock and roll.

    Kolddraft-cubeAlso great is the list of bartenders who've signed on to take shifts at the place:

    The restaurant should be opening in early January. Adkins tells me that they'll keep the drink menu at a reasonable 12 or so drinks "focusing more on execution than on unusual recipes." They'll also have an emphasis on quality ice, with a Kold Draft machine for cubes, plus a freezer dedicated just to ice that they'll use to make spears for tall drinks and chunks for some of the rocks drinks.

    Brrr, who's thirsty?

  • A Bar Contest You Don’t Want to Win

    Eater SF hosted a "Douchiest Bar in San Francisco" contest. The winner, unfortunately for them, was Medjool, the rooftop bar in the Mission. Filling out the Top 5 were Matrix Fillmore, Bar None, Americano, and Zeitgeist.

    The comments on the original post are priceless.

    "It's as if the marina suddenly puked up it's best and brightest in the
    fields of self-absorption, douchbaggery and cougardom into one
    consolidated spot… and then poured 1,000 cosmos into the mix."

    Oof.

  • The Craziest New Cocktail Menu in San Francisco

    DOSA Fillmore opens on Friday, but the drink menu for the restaurant has been released. The cocktails were created by Jonny Raglin of Absinthe, and they look insane. I can't wait to try them.

    Batsman
    Martin Miller’s Gin, Darjeeling tea cordial, lemon juice & ginger beer, served over ice with a mint sprig 9

    Bowler
    Marian Farms bio-dynamic Pisco, mango gastrique, “hell flower” tincture, served up with a lime twist 9

    Juhu
    Palm DH Krahn Gin, coconut milk, lime juice, Kaffir lime leaf, bird’s eye chili served up with a spanked curry leaf 10

    Bollywood Hills
    Sub Rosa Saffron Vodka, orgeat syrup, lime juice, allspice dram, served up with pickled mango 10

    Elephant Parade
    No. 209 Gin, pineapple gomme, ginger, cilantro, seltzer water, served long over ice with a pineapple flag 11

    Bengali Gimlet
    Tanqueray Rangpur Gin, ‘curried’ nectar, Kaffir lime leaf and lime juice, served up with a wedge of lime 10

    Laughing Lassi
    Bols Genever, Strauss yogurt, cucumber, grains of paradise, agave nectar, Angostura, served chilled with mint 12

    Faux Swizzle
    El Dorado Rum, St. Germain Elderflower, chicory bitters, served over crushed ice with a sugar-dusted mint sprig 9

    Mood Indigo
    Buffalo Trace Bourbon, jackfruit marmalade, Angostura bitters, chilled, topped with Champagne 10

    Smoked Cup
    Benesin Organic Mezcal, Pimm’s, black cardamon tincture, ginger beer, cucumber & smoked sea salt, over ice 11

  • Oh, Sherry!

    Sherrysmallpage1I haven't seen the print edition yet, but the digital edition of my story in Men's Book (by San Francisco Magazine) is viewable online here.

    The story is about sherry in cocktails. The story mentions drinks on the menu at 15 Romolo, NOPA, and the forthcoming Gitane, but since I wrote it, sherry drinks have been turning up everywhere.

    One of my favorite drinks in San Francisco right now is Joel Baker's "Drink Without a Name #3". It contains Fino or Manzanilla sherry, Chartreuse, and a basil garnish, and was originally created with fresh pears but is on the menu now at Bourbon & Branch with stone fruit instead. (Or at least it was- they recently changed the menu for fall.)

    The print is too small to read these screen shots, so follow the link about to read the story online. It's on Pages 90-91. Sherrysmallpage2