What are your favourite locations to seize a drink? is a query I get requested so much. Naturally, I’ve numerous go-tos that I often advocate. However currently, my sincere reply to that query has not been a cocktail bar in any respect, however a restaurant, or extra precisely, eating places.
For a lot too lengthy, the cocktail applications at eating places have been an afterthought, hardly ever given the identical consideration because the meals menu or wine listing. As such, the drinks have been usually lackluster, disconnected from the idea and infrequently well worth the price ticket. This pondering created a self-fulfilling prophecy: By not investing in a bar workforce and program, the drinks hardly ever matched the standard of the meals, hardly ever obtained accolades and subsequently didn’t appear value growing.
But, the bar—the place diners are invited to have a drink till their desk is prepared—is usually chargeable for a visitor’s first impression of a restaurant. It’s, in different phrases, a elementary a part of the eating expertise. The eating places getting it proper, creating drink applications that rival the most effective cocktail bars on this planet, all acknowledge this.
I now have a rising listing of eating places the place I might counsel you don’t skip the cocktails: In New York, Le Veau d’Or and Libertine come to thoughts; on the other coast, in San Francisco, there’s Quince, with its stunning bespoke bar. Jewel of the South in New Orleans and Magnus on Water in Biddeford, Maine, too, are standouts. These eating places even have one other factor in widespread: They’re not afraid to share the highlight, which could in any other case be reserved for the cooks and somms, with the bar workforce. Right here’s to extra of that in 2025.
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