The bar that isn’t

Mint Julep Arancia at 312 Chicago

With handcrafted-cocktail culture seemingly here for the long pour, it’s time to separate the artisans from the posers. Anybody can slap together a list of pre-Prohibition cocktails, and most people can infuse vodka with fruit. But weeding out the nuanced tipples from the saccharine sups means seeking out the serious mixologists. Increasingly, it means looking not at bars, but at restaurants.

“The advantage [at a restaurant] is that you can be more creative, daring,” says Alison Fisher, general manager of 312 Chicago (136 N LaSalle St). Fisher oversees the cocktail list at both 312 and at Encore (171 W Randolph St), a martini bar. The restaurant’s patrons are more open to a cocktail crafted with seasonal ingredients or housemade syrups, she says. Plus, because they’re usually taking their time with a drink, nursing it while looking over a menu, they’re also more “willing to wait” for one that takes longer to make.

If restaurant patrons are more open to good cocktails than bar patrons are, they’re being rewarded for their curiosity. Restaurants are at an advantage when it comes to ingredients, because bartenders can raid the kitchen for stuff that’s seasonal, elusive or otherwise uncommon. At Vie (4471 Lawn Ave, Western Springs), a sous chef made a jam out of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout. But it went unused in the food, so bar manager Mike Page snagged it and uses it in his Manhattan. “You see all these great ingredients and you get ideas,” Page says. Likewise, bartenders get to play chef in those kitchens. Custom House (500 S Dearborn St) mixologist Tim Lacey makes a tonic in that restaurant’s kitchen, the cocktail list at Vermilion (10 W Hubbard St) utilizes kitchen spices like cardamom and coriander, and the bartenders at Moto (945 W Fulton Mkt) put out cocktails that look as much like science experiments as the food does.

Sometimes it’s not that the bartenders are playing chef, but the other way around. Last summer, 312’s pastry chef created a weekly localvore cocktail (something she will likely play with again this summer, Fisher says), and the kitchen at mk (868 N Franklin St) has a station expressively for use by cocktailians. Often these chefs bring a different perspective to the drinks—they look at them as one would look at building an entrée—thus taking the cocktails in new directions.

Whatever the reason restaurant cocktails are taking off, it’s working. “As a trend right now, I’m seeing more people drink in general,” Fisher says. She reasons the lousy economy has something to do with it. But surely the quality of the drinks isn’t hurting.

MORE RESTAURANTS WITH KILLER COCKTAILS Sepia 123 N Jefferson St, Nacional 27 325 W Huron St, The Silver Palm 768 N Milwaukee Ave, L2O 2300 N Lincoln Park West, The Bristol 2152 N Damen Ave, Eve 840 N Wabash Ave, The Drawing Room at Le Passage 937 N Rush St

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