Staff Blog
PRESCRIPTION GLASSES: Apothecary Bar + Lounge
Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 1:34 pm
posted by Drew Lazor
categories Bite This
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In the first week of April, we pow-wowed with some of the principles behind Apothecary Bar + Lounge — Bruno Pouget, URBANSPACEDEVELOPMENT's Sam Shaaban, and consulting mixologists Paul Tanguay and Tad Carducci, aka the Tippling Bros. — for a feature in our upcoming DISH supplement. (For those who don't know, DISH is our annual full-color food/drink/dining magazine. It's got content galore — more on this soon.)
Though you'll have to wait until next Thursday, May 8, to check out the story, we figured we'd wet your whistle with a few shots of the "bespoke cocktail lab," opening any day now at the corner of 13th and Drury. Jump!
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
Here are a few shots of the cozy one-man bar on Apothecary's second floor. Topped with creamy white marble and surrounded by comfortable (and local) Emeco stools, this bar will be used for private receptions and, eventually, cocktailing classes. (The rest of this floor features plush suede seating and access to the open-air roof deck.) In general, the space has an extremely clean and — dare we say — "green" type of feel, an approach Sam Shaaban jokingly refers to as "maximum minimalism."
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
A couple views of the huge banquette on the ground floor — handsome marble and hardwood again down here. Who else is digging that one green chair touch?
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Tools of the trade at the ground-floor bar. On the left — just a few of the sciencetastic measuring implements Apothecary's bartenders will use to whip up drinks. (Designed by the Tippling Bros., the cocktail menu is presented in two parts: classics and "elixirs," or more modern, avant incantations mixed up with health benefits in mind.) On the right, a glass of Kold-Draft ice cubes — these jawns freeze 40 percent colder than your typical ice cube, basically eliminating melting/dilution in your drink. This'll be the first Kold-Draft machine in Philly. (Take a closer look at that absinthe spoon and you'll notice one of the straining slots is in the shape of the Apothecary cross logo. )
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
Dapper Tad Carducci, one half of the Tippling Bros., cracking an egg to whip up a old-fashioned foam. These dudes kill it and know more about cocktails than you know about your own medical history. Jersey-bred Carducci holds numerous beverage certificates and has won a bunch of cocktailing competitions; his partner, Quebec native Paul Tanguay, is a leading sake expert and formerly worked as corporate beverage manager for SushiSamba. They joined forces in June 2007. The Bros have done all sorts of consulting projects, but designing Apothecary's cocktail menu has been one of their most ambitious projects to date. (Doesn't Tad's outfit kinda remind you of Shia LaBoeuf's get-up in the underrated The Greatest Game Ever Played?)
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| Photo | Drew Lazor |
Some drink and small-plate samplage. The drink is the "Clever Club," a play on the Clover Club, a classic cocktail that actually originated at the Bellevue Hotel here in Philly back in the day. The version combines dry gin, fresh lemon juice, raspberry syrup and the aforementioned egg white foam with gingko extract. (The gents for whom the cocktail was named considered themselves salon-caliber thinkers, and gingko purportedly helps with mental acuity, so there you go.) The eats have been designed by James Beard nominee Steven Cameron of Bruno Pouget's Jersey Shore restaurant Blue. Here, we've got "The Big Pills" — simple olive oil tuna salad wrapped in bite-size crepes and served with olives and a dijon mayo. The menu looks tasty indeed, but remember that the drinks are the real star at Apothecary — the bartenders will be roaming around tending to tables, just like servers.
Wait…I thought that was Shia…damn you, Drewcifer.
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