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Slideshow
Bar residency trend gathers pace
Mixologists are like sharks – they need to keep moving forward or they’ll die, creatively speaking at least. To keep themselves entertained, the cream of the crop have been busy creating pop-up versions of their popular bars in achingly cool cities around the globe.
Ago Perrone and Colin Field at the Bar Hemingway pop-up at The Connaught
This trend for temporary residencies is also mushrooming in the restaurant world. As we explored in last month’s issue, maverick chefs such as Noma’s René Redzepi, Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck and Alinea’s Grant Achatz have all recently uprooted their wildly successful Michelin-starred sites and distilled their essence into temporary pop-ups in progressive food cities such as Sydney, Tokyo, Melbourne and Madrid, giving them the chance to get under the skin of a new culture and its cuisine.
Bartenders are taking a similar approach with their pop-ups, embarking on them for the personal challenge and the opportunity to boost their international profile. One of the first mixologists to pioneer the concept was Colin Field, the dapper longtime head bartender of Bar Hemingway at The Ritz Paris.
Rather than by design, his temporary residencies everywhere from New York and Hawaii to Tuscany came about by circumstance when the famous hotel was closed for refurbishment for four years but the owners were so keen to keep him on that they paid his salary for the entire duration of his extended sabbatical.
In April 2014, he sent Londoners into a spin when he brought his Bar Hemingway to The Connaught for a week-long pop-up with the hotel’s head shaker Ago Perrone, which was playfully pitted in the press as something of a battle of the bartenders.
Though written in jest, Field reveals that you have to tread carefully when you rock up for a bartender residency, as mixologists are a proud bunch.
“I was worried about how the bartenders would feel when I walked in, as it can be territorially offensive to have someone else behind your bar. It’s a delicate psychological operation.” Fortunately, Field said that Ago was the perfect professional throughout his London stay.
“The Connaught is his stage, and he was very generous to let me share it with him. It wasn’t a competition – we were both there for a good time and had nothing to prove,” he insists.
Among the most popular cocktails on pour during his tenure was Field’s signature sip, Serendipity, an effervescent marriage of Champagne, Calvados, apple juice, sugar and mint. He believes bartenders are better equipped than chefs to take their shows on the road. “Chefs aren’t necessarily great showmen, whereas bartenders are performing on stage every night,” he says.
“It’s been great to have the opportunity to take Bar Hemingway all over the world and give guests a taste of what we do at The Ritz Paris. Bar residencies have a bright future, but you can’t do it on your own – you need your team to back you up.”
New York speakeasy PDT (short for Please Don’t Tell) was one of the first bars to trailblaze the Inception-like ‘bar within a bar’ concept with pop-up PDTs at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo, Black Pearl in Melbourne, the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong and, most recently, at the Mandarin Oriental in Barcelona, where it enjoyed a month-long residency last September in collaboration with Diageo World Class.
Jim Meehan and Jeff Bell at their PDT pop-up in Barcelona
Dubbed PDT BCN, guests entered the bar via a phone booth in a nod to the entrance of PDT in the East Village, which is hidden behind a vintage phone booth at hot dog joint Crif Dogs. Manning the shakers were PDT founder Jim Meehan, general manager Jeff Bell and bartender Adam Schmidt. In addition to cocktails, guests tucked into hip hot dogs created by leading chefs, from El Celler de Can Roca’s Joan Roca, Albert Adrià of Tickets in Barcelona, Spain’s most famous female chef, Carme Ruscadella, and Peru’s Gastón Acurio.
Rich Woods of Duck & Waffle
Bell says the Hong Kong and Barcelona pop-ups were inspired by René Redzepi’s Noma stint at the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo in early 2015. The venture involved a “significant” investment from Diageo to turn the bars into PDT replicas in exchange for the sole use of Diageo Reserve brands during the duration of the pop-up.
“We wanted to create something bigger than a guest residency in the form of an impactful semi-permanent bar. We built the bar in Hong Kong from scratch and it worked really well, as the space was almost the same size and shape as the original.
“Our Barcelona pop-up at the Banker’s Bar was more interpretive. We blacked out the walls to give it a speakeasy feel,” Bell explains. As Redzepi did with his dishes at his Noma pop-ups in Tokyo and Sydney, the majority of the drinks at both the Hong Kong and Barcelona PDTs were created especially for the residencies using ingredients sourced from the host cities.
Thus, in Barcelona, gin, vermouth, quince, padrón peppers and Sherry all featured in the cocktails, while oolong tea, plum sauce, kumquat, spices and coconut water found their way into the Hong Kong offerings. “We spent a lot of time researching our host cities because we wanted to offer our style of cocktails made with ingredients people were familiar with,” says Bell.
Meehan and Bell toyed with the idea of launching the bar in London but believed it would make a bigger splash in Barcelona as the speakeasy concept has yet to take hold there, making PDT more of an alluring proposition.
While it was a lot of fun to launch, Bell stresses how serious you need to be about a pop-up for it to take off. “You need to put the work in because launching a pop- up requires as much energy as opening a new bar, so you have to really care about it. It’s not about becoming rich or famous, it’s about building your brand and increasing your global recognition.
It’s also a chance to learn about other cultures and cuisines,” says Bell, who reveals the Barcelona bar broke even but didn’t make a profit. As to whether we’re likely to be treated to any future PDT pop-ups, Bell admits he’d find it hard to say no if the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo or Seoul came knocking.
Flying the American flag in London, last June one of New York’s most renowned and revered bars, The Dead Rabbit, popped up in the UK capital for a month at barbecue and seafood shack Big Easy in Canary Wharf. As part of the residency a ‘Rumble in the Tumbler’ menu was created that pitted six cocktails from Dead Rabbit against six created by Big Easy’s Csabi Toth in a battle of the bartenders, with the mixologists working in tandem in their respective uniforms.
Among the Dead Rabbit cocktails on offer were the Pub Thug, made with Bulleit rye, Pierre Ferrand 1840 Cognac, Blandy’s Madeira and cinnamon syrup; and the Oom Pah Pah, a blend of Lillet Rosé, Fortaleza Blanco Tequila, cider brandy, Pamplemousse Rose, hopped grapefruit bitters and Boker’s bitters. Dead Rabbit’s London residency created ripples of excitement among the cocktail cognoscenti, as the Irish tavern, run by Belfast barmen Sean Muldoon and Jack McGarry, was named the World’s Best Bar at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards in New Orleans in 2015.
For Rich Woods, head of drinks development for Duck & Waffle and SushiSamba, a recent pop-up in Hong Kong gave his team the chance to test the waters in a new city before both Duck & Waffle and SushiSamba branch out with sister sites in London this year, in Mayfair and Covent Garden respectively. With the group also considering Hong Kong and Singapore for spin-off concepts, the week-long pop-up at The Ritz Hong Kong was a chance to see if certain cocktails and concepts were embraced or became lost in translation.
Madeline Solo Rapp at the Dead Rabbit pop-up at Big Easy in Canary Wharf
The hotel’s Ozone bar on the 118th floor seemed a natural fit for the pop-up version of one of London’s most beloved high-rise restaurants. Busy at the London original, Woods was only given three days to prep for the project, so rather than lugging high-tech equipment like rotary evaporators on the plane with him, he crossed his fingers and hoped he’d be able to source all the ingredients he needed once he landed in Hong Kong. “I was blown away by The Ritz’s organisation, the accessibility of produce, and the openness of the staff to do something new,” Woods begins.
While he found he was able to source everything locally for his cocktails, somewhat ironically, the ducks needed for the restaurant’s signature duck and waffle dish were imported. Keeping things simple, Woods offered a pared-down menu of five of his most popular cocktails, including his Ristretto Negroni, which is painstakingly dripped through coffee beans for 24 hours; a Foie Gras and Salted Caramel Manhattan; and a vivifying Sugar Snap Pea G&T.
Vasilis Kyritsis of The Clumsies
“Some of the cocktails proved so popular that they’ve kept them on at the bar and have credited us as the creators,” says Woods, who was working as a one-man band during the pop-up, with the help of the Ozone bar staff. Four chefs from Duck & Waffle were flown over for the pop-up and all five staff were given rooms at The Ritz for the duration.
Like PDT’s Jeff Bell, Woods’ motivation was the chance to build brand awareness and gain experience of working in a different city. If he were to have the chance again, Woods says he’d go the whole hog and attempt to faithfully recreate the bar abroad, rather than simply serving signature cocktails, as the interior adds to the impact and ambiance, and enhances the overall experience, though it comes at a significant cost.
One way of keeping costs to a minimum is to host superstar bartenders at your own bar for a short stint – gaining maximum exposure for your bar for next to no money.
Such is the thinking of Brian Calleja, manager of The Bloomsbury Club bar in Fitzrovia, who launched an ambitious Club Residencies project late last year with the aim of bringing some of the world’s top mixologists to his adorable, fairy light-filled bar on Great Russell Street.
For three nights only last November, Athens cocktail institution The Clumsies took over the space. Clumsies co-founder Vasilis Kyritsis was put in charge of the bar, which was decked out with Greek bunting and bespoke artworks to give guests the feeling that they’d been transported to Athens for the night.
Part of The Clumsies grand tour, which took in Paris, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Lebanon, Oslo, New York and Miami, among the cocktails on offer in London were signature sips such as El Draque, a twist on a Mojito made with clarified white rum served with edible mint and apple toothpaste; and the Teardrop, made with masticha, masala-infused Grand Marnier and yogurt powder.
This month the bar welcomed Jess Vida of New York bar BlackTail for a three-night residency that saw it turned into a clandestine Cuban jazz den serving Prohibition-era cocktails and confit rabbit sarnies with dill pickles. Being the little sister to The Dead Rabbit, the pop-up attracted the great and good of the London bartending community.
Calleja hopes to host at least three more bartender residencies over the course of the year. “The residencies are a great opportunity to learn from others and share knowledge with creative thinkers in the industry,” he points out, adding, “It’s interesting for our regular customers and allows us to reach a new audience.”
While these temporary residences run the gamut from fleeting, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stints to month-long stays, one thing is for certain, we’ll be seeing more of them in the future as bartenders develop a desire to flex their muscles in key cocktail cities around the world. And this can only be a good thing for consumers, who get to visit some of the globe’s top drinking dens without leaving the likes of London or Hong Kong.
Duck & Waffle’s Rich Woods believes humans are hard wired to want something more if it’s only available for a short space of time. “People love to go to places with a limited lifespan as it adds to their appeal – it’s the same ‘catch me if you can’ psychology as a sale,” he says, adding, “Temporary residencies are great as you get the best out of a place and are able to enjoy the buzz of a new opening then take a bow like an actor and disappear.”