So funny enough, while I'm a huge fan of craft cocktails, the 10 day California road trip I put…read moretogether for me and my wife last month, had almost none - booze-wise, it was a whole lot of wine, beer and cider, one *very* underwhelming Negroni at an Italian place in Santa Rosa, and this place, the evening of the first day of the trip, a wonderfully elegant but relaxed vibe place with some great drinks that happened to also be around the corner from our airbnb (strongly recommended combo, that.)
Also funny, I almost didn't end up getting to go in - I didn't have any idea they were also a music venue, which clearly they are, because when I got there, around 7 PM that Saturday, the doorman was asking for $10 cover for the band that wasn't even there yet. So, a potential warning to check their schedule if, like me, you're passing through Fresno, looking for a cocktail bar to hang out in, *weren't* there for live music and don't want to pay to get in, whether they have a band that day. Thankfully I convinced them that it was silly to turn away someone planning on ordering several cocktails because there was going to be a band later (they were scheduled to start at 8, but didn't start until 8:30, roughly when I was planning on leaving. I did hear their first song, though - if you *were* here to see a band, the acoustics here are actually also halfway decent as far as bar venues go.) Was rather amused, the doorman warned me as I walked in that it was a 2-drink minimum, I was like... that is literally why I put this on my itinerary, you think I'm not going to order two drinks? Lol.
Anyway, once I got in, it is a great bar. Plenty of seating both at the bar and at tables, and seriously great service (admittedly, they weren't that busy until roughly when I left, but every drink order was taken and executed quite quickly.) Great drinks all around, too. I'm not sure how often they switch up their cocktail list, but I tried:
"Tu Causa" - a wonderfully complex but refreshing bubbly tequila drink on draft.
"Calcifer" - a wonderful mezcal Negroni, with cacao-infused mezcal and raspberry-infused vermouth. Bomb. Very low sweetness, tons of cacao and raspberry. (I also wrote myself a note in the draft, that I want to keep, telling myself that exact combo would be wonderful with a citrus-forward gin, and I should try that at home. Thanks, myself!)
"Hemingway's Party" - only bugged me a tiny bit given the title suggests a Hemingway-style (boozier and less sweet) daiquiri, which this drink, basically an extra-decadent painkiller, was the exact opposite of. It *was* quite possibly the best painkiller-style cocktail I've had, though - rich, sweet, super coconutty. Absolutely excellent.
I was a little sad to learn that the $8 "amaroulette" wheel that had been on the recent menu I found online, had just been discontinued - they still had the wheel, but the bartender was like, yeah, I dunno what to do with it. That said, instead he just gave me a bartender's choice amaro for $8 instead. I hadn't ever had Averna neat, just in cocktails, so that worked well. (Though I was also just a tiny bit put off by the fact that they gave me one of those fake American-style "cocktail" cherries as a garnish. When asked, I was told they'd recently run temporarily out of real cocktail cherries - they should probably have told me that before wasting one of the fake ones, lol. Presumably that is not normally an issue, though.)
Finally, at places like this that always tend to accumulate at least a handful of wacky one-off bottles of spirits you wouldn't normally find - well, I *had* to try something with Doritos vodka (it was stuffed in a corner. The bartender actually tried to dissuade me, lol.) I just *had* to try a martini made with it, and despite trying to dissuade me, it was indeed a perfectly made martini. (Incidentally, my verdict was: works in theory, but also adds too much salt. If you like a traditional dirty martini, which I also find too salty, you very well might like it. Also incidentally, when the bartender who made it asked, cause of course you'd be curious at that point, how I felt about it, and I said I bet it'd work the best if you turned it into a bloody mary-tini by shaking it with a little bloody mary mix... I wasn't actually expecting him to do it, which he did? I was also right. That combo is bomb. Didn't even charge extra for the update. Seriously great bartenders.)
Anyway yeah. Would definitely recommend this place if you're in Fresno and looking for a place with quality, pretty reasonably priced cocktails. (Not *cheap*, but definitely cheaper than SoCal!)
