Wind back 12 months and, you’ll no doubt recall, the steep second wave of corona was receding with a relaunch date for hospitality on the horizon. At the time we saw this more as a ‘grand opening’ mark II than a restart. Everyone had been through so much and the world-at-large was altogether so different it felt more like a new beginning than picking up where we had left off. With that came more challenges than opportunities: would our audience be the same, how had the area changed; people’s habits would have inevitably shifted, what would people value when going out again?

One of the fundamental aspects of service we wanted to shift was to make our offering more about customer satisfaction and listening to what you wanted to drink rather than telling you. That’s why we opted to run an experiment without a menu. Primarily, our motif has always been about products; letting their quality do the heavy lifting. By giving you the choice to order your favourite drink and then having it made with some top-shelf-material proposed an optimal way to endear customer curiosity and pleasure. It also removed a barrier of sometime befuddling literature between bartender and imbiber. How many of you can realistically look at a drinks menu and know what half the ingredients and new fangled techniques deployed even are? “I’ll just have a beer, please” was so often the stock response of a customer who’d spent a moment too long with one of our menus!

Bartending is a simple sport and this method of service has allowed us to really drill down on working up towards what each and every customer really wants - to taste. Out of this, we’ve found new (if less proclaimed) modes of creativity. You liked that no-Campari Negroni? Why don’t we switch out something else for you next drink so you can taste the amaro more? Not a fan of the bourbon in an Old Fashioned? Let’s go with aged tequila in Jack Daniels casks and an agave syrup base to see where we get.

The only limitation on theses endless uncharted territories to explore has been the number of products we can actually stock. But, as we no longer end up repeating the same 6 drinks for 3 months at a time, everything on the back bar moves, the team learn new tricks on every shift and we fastidiously hunt out new products to fill any gaps in the inventory. It is, in all honesty, what a bar is meant to be! Customer comes in, asks for their favourite drink and then is able to choose their own adventure from their with a little guidance from our doting team.

Occasionally, we fall down a rabbit hole and hit absolute gold. This recipe then gets hurriedly scrawled down and passed in hushed reverence between servers shift to shift. One such success story is the Suprette. No-one really wants a punchy served-up martini in peak summer. But everyone really does love a good martini! In trying to get something more diluted and quenching (‘crushable’ in bar-speak) we came up with this. Pisco to build a basecamp around as it’s a little rounder and less jagged than a gin or vodka based pure booze drink; white vermouth over dry for a little more soft fruit and then the gem of every left-out-hang back bar - Becherovka - for tiki-level spice. This Czech spirit is big on cinnamon and nutmeg and - in this bar’s opinion - not heralded nearly enough. Round out with some hopped grapefruit bitters and an olive + brine garnish for dirt and serve over ice!

Recipe and links to buy the ingredients below so you can now try this at home :)

SUPRETTE

Method: stir all ingredients in a mixing tin or glass with lots of ice until frosty and diluted (about 30 seconds or so) and strain over ice

Glass: Old fashioned

Ingredients:

1/2oz / 12.5ml Becherovka

3/4oz / 22.5ml White Vermouth (we use Regal Rogue)

1oz / 25ml Pisco (we use Barsol)

2 or 3 squirts Hopped Grapefruit Bitters (we use Bittermens)

Garnish: With an olive and a few swirls of brine from the jar (try the Jack Rudy ones!)