Add It Up: 515 Bar

 Cocktail Correspondent: Weldon Gardner Hunter

Tuesday, May 28: My Strega Sense was tingling after teaching two Tuesday classes, so I decided to Expo line to The 515 Bar (521 Seymour Street, Vancouver). It's on one of the city's most architecturally interesting blocks - Seymour between Dunsmuir and Pender. This is real downtown, baby!

I haven't been to 515 in a couple of months, so there's been a menu change - The Spaghetti Western cocktail which I planned to have has been sent out of town by the Sheriff, but I was told there was just enough Strega left in the bottle to make one last drink. 

Spaghetti Western: Bourbon, Strega, Simple Syrup, Egg White

The drink is emulsified, foamy. It’s balanced. It only comes out at night: something about Bourbon & Strega together in a cocktail makes me imagine an oddly successful blind date between Sam Cooke and Stevie Nicks. There’s no bitter bite, the sips are slightly sweet followed by the herbal, witchy aftertaste of Strega.

Here's a picture of the cocktail back when it was still on the menu, and I had brighter lighting:

The space that the lounge is in used to be known as The Sidebar. At one time, there were two "Sidebars" in Vancouver, the other one being a 70s rec-room that was in Bosman's Motor Hotel on Howe Street. The new moniker for the Seymour Street Sidebar locale is evocative ... notice the digit discrepancy between the name and the actual address. *

The environment of The 515 is stellar. There's about room for 30 people, consisting of a bar (natch), tables and chairs by the windows, and a small raised area with two couches.

Midnight Marauders on heavy rotation when I was there. A dash of Digable Planets, too. The room filled up gradually and the bar staff welcomed everyone warmly as they came in. The bartender was happy to talk about drinks; in fact, when I arrived there was just one other person at the bar and they were having a spirited discussion about spirits. As a cocktail correspondent, this is always a good omen.

The lounge is in a very historic building that once was the Clarence Hotel. It's now the Cambie/Seymour Hostel, and there's an even bigger bar you can enter from the Pender Street frontage, known as Malone's. 

The Clarence Hotel. Zoom in to see a dapper gentleman.

I was also impressed with this saloon door, which a young barback would periodically and mysteriously emerge from:

The featured cocktail on this visit was a Sidecar, which I've imbibed and enjoyed before at 515. So I ordered one. A Sidecar at the old Sidebar seemed right.

Sidecar:  Torres Spanish Brandy, ¾ lemon juice, ¾ Cointreau, a small dash of Simple Syrup

Definitely sour, but the Torres is an interesting sub for the expected Henney or Rémy. It makes me feel like I’m on the Costa Brava (though inland, not right on the ocean, maybe Girona?). With the Cointreau, you have that slightly bitter orange bite – the whole drink is intense, like life was in the 30s and like it is now. 

At the end of my stay, the bartender rewarded me with a digestivo of Fernet-Branca, which is an Italian amaro with myrrh in it. Myrrh! That means it was a Gift of the Magi, the bartender being the wise man who figured a patron who likes Strega will like another herbal and aromatic Italian spirit. It's a rich, dark brown liquid and I sipped at it after I stopped taking notes and my laptop stashed away, but I remember it was minty and strong.

 

Recommendation: become one of the High Numbers to drink at the stylish 515 Bar.

* Further research tells me 515 was the original address of the Clarence

We'll Never Have Paris

Cocktail Correspondent: Eli van der Giessen

It’s Friday afternoon and The Auntie, PhD, texts with a proposal to cut out early. Me and the lady don’t believe in working on Fridays, so we jump at the invitation.

We head to Au Comptoir (2278 W 4th Ave, Vancouver), our local French restaurant, best known for its lunchtime Croque Monsieur sandwiches. Au Comptoir is not kidding around with its Frenchness. The restaurant is staffed exclusively by French boys, all menu substitutions are refused, and they don’t believe gluten allergies exist.

Since The Auntie, PhD, has a gluten allergy we take a seat at the bar for a round of cocktails.

It’s 4:30 p.m., and the cinq à sept rush hasn’t arrived. The room, a mix of old-world wood and new-world hipster flourishes like repurposed Singer sewing tables, is quiet and bathed in indirect afternoon sun.

Our bartender slides us the cocktail list and we try a few drinks.

Moroccan Tease

Ingredients: Beefeater gin, green Chartreuse, fresh lime, mint and cilantro, ginger syrup.

Notes: The Moroccan Tease is a delightful patio drink that reminds you of all the herbs you’d be growing if you weren’t busy exploring cocktail menus. The bright lime and mint flavours lead, followed by hints of the more medicinal gin and chartreuse.

Rating: Would order again.

Let’s try one more….

Paris Sour

Ingredients: St. Remy V.S.O.P, St. Germain, fresh lemon, ginger syrup, egg white, red wine float.

Notes: This cocktail tries to balance the sweet and sour tastes, but there is too much going on for my palate. Visually it’s a stunner. Check out those layers, and how it’s “marked” like an espresso macchiato.

Rating: For people with experienced tastebuds.

A Night At The Palms

 - Cocktail Correspondent: Weldon Gardner Hunter

I once took a Greyhound Bus from Kitchener, Ontario to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I was visiting the great US poet Mike Hauser (author of Advanced Baby Syndrome), and I finagled a poetry reading at Woodland Pattern featuring the two of us, which was attended by precisely one person, whom I had convinced to come to the reading because I was going to perform "authentic Canadian poetry."

The important thing is, during the long Greyhound ride, which was mostly at night, passing through the outskirts of Kalamazoo, with many spectral signs for "The Indiana Dunes" (what an image for a Prairie Canuck!), the movie they were showing on the tiny TVs was Taras Bulba, starring Tony Curtis.

I didn't buy headphones for the movie, but I was spellbound watching the very physical, very expressionist (hammy) performance of Tony Curtis. I didn't need to hear the dialogue to know what was happening when he was on the screen. That man can play "drunk" better than any other actor, at least for a captive Greyhound audience. It may be the best movie I have ever seen, who cares if I never heard a word ...

Anyways, that's the kind of story I tell when I'm bellying up to a bar. I'm ruminating on the stories we tell and the people we meet at cocktail lounges - a big part of the experience you'll have at any gin joint worth its salt rim. Locals, tourists, bartenders who hip you to the underground scene ... you have to be open to whatever conversational vectors are created in your spell at the saloon.

When I was in Victoria in April (see "Wayward Krupnik"), I popped into The Palms, the cocktail/drinks room attached to The Rialto Hotel (1450 Douglas Street, Victoria). Back when I lived in Victoria, as a starving MA English student in the early 2000s, The Rialto was the Douglas Hotel, possibly the most notorious beer parlour in the city, full of lost souls finding friendship and fistfights at one of the last down-and-out boozers in Teatime Toytown. I remember walking down Pandora and peering in to see the "Merry Drinkers" who dotted the cheap barstools. 

(Frans Hals, De vrolijke drinker, 1628-1630, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

Now, the space is elegant, the bar is stocked with liqueurs, and the vibe is upscale but casual. The Victoria cocktail world does not stand on ceremony. While I was at The Palms, on a quiet Wednesday evening in late April, there was just myself at the bar, and the two very new, and very happy-to-be-there bartenders who were glad to sling me a drink, and to get to know each other on their first shift together. If you own the bar, they also were cleaning while conversing. Model employees.

At some point, another solitary middle-aged man appeared at the end of the bar. He appeared to be a Rialto guest. He spoke with the servers, then significantly asked them what I was drinking, which happened to be a "Tofitian Slingshot*":  Gin, Shelter Point Sunshine Liqueur, Benedictine, Lime & Pineapple Juice, Heering Cherry. Fruity and notes of maple, after I had one sip, I knew I was having a second. Luckily, the second came from my soon to be friend at the other end of the bar ...

I suspect he engineered the encounter. He wanted to talk to someone, and he smartly sussed another bearded bloke at the bar would be grateful for a gratis guzzle. He was a tradesman in town for a tradeshow. He'd had a rough day at the gravel convention. We chatted and he mentioned he'd recently lost his Dad. I picked up that I should let him unload some of his burden on me, and the drink was the price of admission. I was happy to help. Even if I didn't know exactly what to say, I tried to channel Tony Curtis in Taras Bulba - the convivial companion. 

We meet all kinds at bars. We should be kind to those at bars. We go to bars for cups of kindness. Be generous, whatever side of the bar you're on.

*I'm guessing, a play on "Tahiti" and "Tofino," both exotic island destinations.

Fire Escapes

 Cocktail Correspondent: Erik Komarnicki 

Wednesday, May 22 – I'm in Milwaukee for work this week. It turns out Milwaukee is a secret cocktail mecca. There are tons of places serving up creative cocktails in a quirky urban setting. It’s just after 6 PM and, today, I’m visiting a local place called Pufferfish: an outdoor tiki bar secreted on the rooftop of a fancy downtown hotel (411 E Mason Street, 6th Floor, Milwaukee) Zaniness and whimsy is on the menu. 

 

It's a weird experience going up to the bar because you go up the elevator of this fancy hotel and then walk down a hallway to a nondescript entrance, which then opens into the willfully tacky tiki bar: Pufferfish. 

 

I walk up to the bartender and say that I like whiskey-based drinks ... like an old-fashioned, but something more novel and fun. The guy responds by saying a bunch of stuff I can't hear over the music, so of course I say: Sure, that sounds great. He mixes the drink in a shaker and then pours it over ice. It’s an orange-colored drink with a lot of ice and a flower in it. Tacky and Tiki – this is the way! Apparently the drink is called Misery Loves Kentucky.

And here's what this cah-rae-zee drink looks like:

I take my drink to an outdoor patio. It’s not all that busy but there’s a good 15 people out here. Interesting choice on the music – very 90s.  Like, snotty ska and pop metal. Could be connected to the recent 90s renaissance. Is the 90s the new 80s ... ? Nevermind ...

This was a no-straw cocktail, so you're sipping out the side of their custom pufferfish glass (which is a great cocktail glass). Overall, the drink looks appealing. There's a lot of ice and the dominant flavours are definitely mango, flavored by the bitters and the salt (a spicy, powered salt). You do taste the bourbon in the drink, but I don't think you'd have to be a whiskey lover to love this cocktail. The Misery Loves Kentucky is a rich, fruity cocktail with a nice amount of booze, salt and bitters to add complexity to the sweetness of the mango juice.

Here’s one thing I love about the States … fire escapes! They’re in tons of cool scenes in American films, and you never see cool exterior fire escapes in Canada. Look at this! Now that’s a fire escape! Extra points to this patio for the fire escape view. 

Okay! Now things are heating up – I just discovered (Internet) that there’s a band called "the Fire Escape" – a psychedelic band from San Francisco back in ’67 made up of “unknown studio musicians”. They have an album and the album is almost all garage covers, like Psychotic Reaction and 96 Tears.

Apparently, some believe that one of the guys in the Fire Escape was Sky Saxon, from the Seeds! As you would suspect, I’m now listening to the Fire Escape and shutting out the 90s rock on the patio (is this Limp Bizkit?). Here’s the song list from the The Fire Escape album:

 

Side one

Psychotic Reaction - 2:50

Talk Talk - 1:50

Love Special Delivery (L.S.D.) - 2:14

The Trip - 1:48

96 Tears - 2:31

 

Side two

Blood Beat - 2:08

Trip Maker - 2:53

Journey's End - 2:39

Pictures and Designs- 2:28

Fortune Teller - 2:15

 

In closing, I would indeed recommend Pufferfish with the crucial caveat that one must bring headphones and listen to The Fire Escape (or else take over the DJ duties, accordingly). Later!

Erik Komarnicki is a musician & composer and one of the hosts of In The Past: Garage Rock Podcast, found at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1456510 

Surrealist Cocktail #2

 

Quoth the Raven

3/4 oz. Forgotten Lore

3/4 oz. Nepenthe

3/4 oz. Balm of Gilead

1/4 oz. Uncertain Rustling of a Purple Curtain

1/4 oz. Bitters perfumed from an unseen censer swung by Seraphim

Serve in a Bust of Pallas, Quaff & Enjoy!

A Day of Mirth and Mirto

 Cocktail Correspondent: Weldon Gardner Hunter 

On Thursday, May 16 - a hockey night in Canada - I decided to look for a quiet spot to have dinner and a drink. That meant, no TVs.  I settled on Fiorino Italian Street Food (212 East Georgia Street, Vancouver). At 6pm, the place was quiet and it didn't start hopping for about an hour, which seemed appropriately Continental. The interior of the restaurant also tallied with my vision of Italy, with a checkerboard floor, sensible, sturdy, modernist-stylish chairs, long tables, and some smaller ones in nooks, for kissing and conspiracies. I'm not sure which Dino Risi film I felt like I was in.

Of course, I sat at the bar. I ordered a delicious plate of Beef Carpaccio and a Mirto Daiquiri (Rum, Mirto liqueur, Bluberry compote, Maraschino liqueur, Lemon Juice, Lemon sugar rim). Mirto is a Sardinian/Corsican liqueur made from the blue-black berries of the myrtle plant. Myrtle is a common bush on the Mediterranean islands of Italy, and I think my GoogleLens has informed me of its presence on some of my Pacific Spirit walks. The Greeks and Romans included myrtle leaves in the garlands worn by heroes and Olympians. 

What a beautiful rosy-violet colour. Take a picture, stare dreamily at the liquid for 5-10 seconds, then drink. Floral & bittersweet. It's not an overpowering fruit flavour, but I like how the blueberry blends in. The lemon sugar rim dusts your digits and you can lap it up to sweeten the herbal aftertaste. I spent a famous 15 minutes slowly sipping, then I spied ...

this lonely Mallard. Regrets, he's had a few. He's waddled each & every highway.* I named him Frank Anatra, Anatra being Italian for duck. I chuckled at my own wit, then told the bartender what I dubbed the duck. He was too busy to chuckle, but he humoured me. 

In the spirit of la dolce vita, I decided to order Strega as an after-dinner digestivo. 

Strega is herbal, sweet, viscous, and it packs a punch. Sip slowly. You'll forget your phone and just enjoy the wave of Italian images that will play in your mind's teatro. For me, that'd be Ermanno Olmi, but Fellini's fine, too.

My revels weren't over, I still had a ticket for my colleague's stand-up performance at China Cloud (524 Main Street, Vancouver). She did a 5-minute set: bits about pencils and pregnancy tests. It was cute and weird. Long story, but at work we have a "Duck Gang," so I wore this:

I had to take it off because it was too humid. There were more chuckles, and the evening was as sociable as a raft of Mallards on Lake Maggiore. But no one's laughed at my Frank Anatra joke yet ...

*joke suggested by Arash Hajbabaee

Surrealist Cocktail #1

Kill Wealthy Dowager*

------

Gin

Creme de Cassis

Lime Juice

1 oz snowmelt from the Jungfrau

Gold Flake

Arsenic

Garnish: a pendant from the lounge's chandelier

* must be made by a devious young protegé

- Weldon Gardner Hunter

Wayward Krupnik

 Is ...

A) an allegorical 19th-Century Russian novel

B) a character in a Tex Avery cartoon

C) a jazz-loving 1950s NYC Beat poet

D) a brand of spiced honey liqueur

This post is about a cocktail you can't get. Not right now, anyways. Now that spring is here, the heavy winter coats & cocktails have been sloughed off of shoulders and menus, and bare skin and sunshine liqueurs are la mode. Back in April, before all this happened, I visited Clive's Classic Lounge (745 Burdett Avenue, Victoria) to try a cute cocktail.

"A Little Birdy Told Me": Wayward Krupnik, Giffard Vanilla, Turmeric Syrup, Whole Egg. 

Fooled you! The answer to my quiz question is "none of the above," because Krupnik is a nalewka, a special category of Polish beverage which is a tincture - a solution of a medicinal substance in an alcoholic solvent (Merriam-Webster). Yummy? Well, yes - the pictured golden tincture is like a spicy eggnog. And look at the glass it comes in. While I sipped my drink, I heard the table next to me stage whisper to the waitress, "What is that he's drinking?" I was the talk of the lounge for a minute. Apparently it isn't ordered all that often (Source: the waitress).

My picture doesn't really capture the cuteness, I know. I should have been more careful to "curate" the foam at the top. Instead of a mama bird regurgitating a wormy meal into baby bird's open maw, here, the glassy fledgling disgorges the contents to you. Isn't it ironic?

You have to drink this cocktail with a straw, and towards the end, it's harder to get at the last few drops of this tasty concoction. You have to angle the straw down into the well of the glass, and then hoover up the dregs. It's delightfully undignified.

Clive's is a titan amidst the lively Victoria cocktail scene. The lounge is in the Chateau Victoria hotel. There's a velvet rope at the entrance, so there is no casual way to enter or exit. You will feel stately. You'll feel welcome. It seems like a serious place, all dark-hued oak furnishings of the old school. It's the kind of place you'd wear an ascot. But the cocktails are whimsical. That, in itself, seems like a perfect balance. 

Even though this birdy has flown away for the season, visit Clive's. No ascots required.

Cocktail Correspondent: Weldon Gardner Hunter

The World & The West End

Cocktail Correspondent: Weldon Gardner Hunter

Monday, May 13, 2024: World Cocktail Day: After work, a visit to Bayside Lounge (1755 Davie Street, Vancouver). Shabby but characterful. I’ve been there only one time before but I remembered the older woman drinking wine at the bar from that one visit in 2021. She has a cane & a cough. The chairs at the bar at Bayside Lounge are mismatched, some of those small, swivelling bar seats, then a dining table chair that seems to come from another place. I’ll admit to a light worry about bedbugs. A rowdy, mostly local clientele, but there must be some tourists in there.

I ordered a Bee’s Knees and it was the best one I ever had. In a classic cocktail glass, which made it look “bigger,” I guess. When I’ve had a Bee’s Knees recently at the Wolf and Hound (3617 West Broadway, Vancouver), they’ve put it in a highball glass which feels “smaller.” With the larger size, it felt like I was a long way from the end of the cocktail with every sip. Oh that honey haze in the glass. You have to drink it though, it’s not a painting. 

The Bayside is a room that has seen better days – but that’s what makes it interesting. It has a 1970s, pre-Expo décor. It’s run down. There’s a circular bar down at the West End of the room, but it’s East of Denman. The view is one of the selling features of the place, but I don’t think the view from the Bayside was at its best on this visit – the sun was bright and most tables had the shades down to protect from the glare. 

The sun was just as loud as the patrons. I decided to leave when it was revealed it was a Trivia night, so no quiet reading of Phil Rickman to be had. Down at English Bay, thousands of non-Saxon sunseekers: the beach had an even shabbier edge than the lounge. Bodybuilder Bitcoin bros, mixed-race age-gap couples, sunset Instagrammers. 

I hurried down Pacific Street and then decided to try Maxine’s (1325 Burrard Street, Vancouver). I planned to have the Cherry Gin Sour, but today the feature cocktail is a Strawberry Rhubarb Gin Sour: Beefeater gin, Giffard Rhubarb Liqueur, Campari, housemade straw/rhub syrup, lemon, egg white. A nice sweet/sour blend – tart, too. A muted red, compared to the Prohibition palette of the Bee’s Knees. 

Now I’m having a Honeybee – the cutest cocktail in Vancouver. In the glass, it looks like lemon meringue.

Jim Beam Black Bourbon, green chartreuse, lemon, honey syrup, Fee Brothers Plum Bitters, Chamomile Honey Foam, Bee Pollen. The pollen is like a beehive garnish. Those plum bitters blend so nice with the honey syrup. I feel like this would be a haiku poet’s favourite cocktail: a humble little bee in the floating world. 

A nice quiet Monday evening at Maxine’s. They always have a good playlist – I’ve heard Orange Juice before here. The atmosphere at Maxine’s is nostalgic. Suitably dark, overhead lights, a nice bar with about 20 seats. Not run down. Well kept. It has two really nice two-seaters near the bar that look out onto Burrard. If I squint just enough, I can feel like I’m in a 70s cocktail lounge, but with modern furniture. Clean and spacious, you could raise your family in the washrooms. Maxine’s is on the eastern border of the West End, so ending the night here is symmetrical. And there’s a bus stop right outside. Over the Burrard Bridge on the #2, the sky looked like a cocktail.