Category: News

Six new drinks join the list on Tuesday 1 September, and four of the summer ones come off. If you have been meaning to drink the Basil Gimlet again, this is the week.

What is coming in: a fig and oloroso sherry sour, a cinnamon-washed rye that we have been arguing about since June, a very cold Martini variation with celery, and a zero-proof drink built on toasted barley tea that is genuinely good rather than politely tolerated.

The four you already know are not going anywhere. Old Fashioned, Negroni, Smoked Manhattan and Espresso Martini stay on the list year round.

No reservations needed. Tuesday through Saturday, five until two.

Live jazz runs every Friday and Saturday, two sets, starting at nine. There is no cover and no reserved seating for the music. The room holds what it holds, so the later set is usually the easier one to walk into.

The trio format stays the same through September: piano, upright bass, and a rotating third chair. Some weekends that is a saxophone, some weekends a guitar, occasionally a singer.

If you want to know who is on a particular night, ask us on the way in, or check back here. We post the month ahead once it is confirmed.

If you watch the bar for a while you will notice that stirred drinks here take longer than they do in most places. That is deliberate, and it is not showmanship.

A stirred cocktail is really a dilution problem. Spirit, sugar and bitters do not change much once they are in the glass; water does. Somewhere between twenty and thirty percent dilution, a Manhattan stops tasting like strong vermouth and starts tasting like a Manhattan. Get there too fast and the drink is cold but harsh. Get there too slowly and it is watery before it is cold.

So we cut our own ice into large clear cubes, keep the mixing glasses in the freezer, and stir for around thirty seconds rather than ten. The cube gives up water slowly, which means the drink gets very cold before it gets diluted, and then holds that balance in the glass for the twenty minutes you actually spend drinking it.

It is a small thing. It is also the difference between the drink you get on your first visit and the one you remember.