Located a floor under Astor, veiled in thick velvet curtains is one of São Paulo's most stylish bars - SubAstor. The bar is very well decorated with hints of speakeasy inspirations, a beautifully lit bar balcony and comfortable seating arrangements. With decent ambience music and perfectly lit settings, the bar as all the makings of a winner but however when it comes to the drinks, it falls a tad bit short, especially if you have been drinking at some of the fantastic bars in São Paulo like Boca de Ouro & Frank.
Recently the winner of the best drinks menu and under the supervision of an italian bartender, Fabio LaPietra, SubAstor is focussed to serving a stylish, albeit "lighter' & a more tropical version of drinks. They have a cube with around 24 drinks, all drinks on the cube priced at R$ 29 (as of 19/11/2015) most of which are house versions of the famous classics. I tried 2 drinks from the cube - Kentucky-Tivo (Bourbon based drink) and Ceará Vs. 007 (house version of Vesper) - the Kentucky-Tivo was beautiful to look at but a bit boring to drink with bourbon almost missing, the Ceará Vs. 007 was much better and definitely made up for the Kentucky-Tivo dullness. Just to try, I ordered a Manhattan with Woodford Reserve (they charge R$ 40 for this) and it was good, not excellent but it was good.
SubAstir is a cool bar, a bar where you can hang out with friends who aren't so familiar with cocktails, you can bring a date here (get in early, if you want to sit) - however the popularity of the place leads it to getting overcrowded especially Thu-Fri-Sat and the due to overcrowding service tends to get a bit slow. Fabio is a great bartender but he is faced with a full house almost every evening and it gets difficult for him to make/supervise the bar 100%.
I would recommend SubAstor to newbies, for dates, for a 'lighter' bar experience. read more