At the artsy Saint Kate hotel downtown, even the cocktails will get in on the act
The cocktails are bound to be theatrical at the coming-soon Saint Kate, the arts-themed hotel downtown.
Saint Kate, which opens at Kilbourn Avenue and Water Street on June 4, tapped the team behind Lost Whale bar to dream up cocktails with an artistic bent, including some with tableside preparation and a bit of razzle-dazzle. (There will be fire.)
Daniel Beres and Tripper Duval, who created drinks for their own bar in Bay View that were topped with edible pictures or served in a Jolly Good soda can, have been busy creating drinks for the hotel’s venues.
Those venues include the Bar, off the hotel lobby; Aria, the all-day cafe; Giggly, the second-floor Champagne and wine bar, all announced in early April; and TDR, or The Dark Room, a speakeasy and reservations-only steakhouse and tasting-menu restaurant that the hotel revealed more recently.
The 26-seat TDR is due to open a little later than the other venues, on June 18.
Another restaurant, the casual Proof, will serve Neapolitan-style pizzas and have beer and wine in cans selected by food and beverage director Brent Hockenberry and his team. Hockenberry takes the view that creative drinks and food “add to the experience and tie everything together” at the arts hotel.
The hotel will have four gallery spaces open to the public that will have rotating exhibitions, and it will have live performances on stages.
On the hotel’s second floor at Giggly, Champagnes and other sparkling wines will be sold by the glass and by the bottle. Beyond that, the bar will have some of everything: beer, cocktails incorporating sparkling wine, nonalcoholic drinks, snacks and desserts.
One drink, the Champagne for My Campaign ($12), is “a big fire show,” Duval said: cherries and sugar are brûléed with a torch, and sparkling wine is poured over it all to make a Champagne cocktail. “It’s kind of a lighthearted experience,” he said.
The Bar on the first floor will have a drinks list that’s half variations on classic and half “Let’s let Trip and Dan get weird with it,” Beres said.
One spin on a classic will be a star fruit Collins ($13), a carbonated cocktail on draft built with Bombay Sapphire gin, fresh lemon juice, Bittercube’s Jamaican Nos. 1 and 2 bitters and sweettart star fruit. (The Bar will have two draft lines for cocktails, one with carbonation and one without.)
And then there’s Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire ($14). It will mix mezcal and joven tequila with spicy Ancho Reyes verde liqueur, fresh lemon juice, house coriander syrup, chile-cocoa-coffee bitters and Appley Brut, a Champagne-method sparkling hard cider from AeppelTreow Winery & Distillery in Burlington. The long drink is garnished with a cilantro bouquet and freeze-dried corn.
The Bar will have shareable drinks, too. It will have the tiki classic Mai Tai for two called Our Tai ($22; standard solo Mai Tai, $12).
Beres and Duval have an interest in
Bar centro, 804 E. Center St., serves wines by the glass, beer, cocktails and coffee along with snacks, soup and desserts. It’s next door to the Italian restaurant centro.
sustainability and take a waste-notwant-not approach to cocktail making. So the perfectly good tops of strawberries that are cut off before the berry is used to garnish a plate might get a second life as strawberry syrup for a drink.
For diners and imbibers planning a trip in June to the Marcus-owned hotel at 139 E. Kilbourn Ave., the former site of the InterContinental, here are the hours for the restaurants:
Proof, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily; Aria, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, with breakfast served until 11 a.m.; TDR, 5 to 10 p.m. daily.
Closing times for the bars might vary. Opening hours are: Giggly, noon daily; the Bar, coffee service starting 6 a.m. Monday to Friday and 7 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, and bar service starting 11 a.m. daily.
Bar Centro opens in Riverwest
the sibling to Italian restaurant in Riverwest, now is open, serving wines, local beers and cocktails, along with meat and cheese boards, snacks and desserts.
Bar centro is at 804 E. Center St.; the sister restaurant is next door, at 808 E. Center St.
The bar has a deep selection of amaro, the bittersweet Italian herbal liqueur that comes in many varieties and often is drunk after dinner.
Bar centro typically will have 30 to 40 different kinds of amari, co-owner Peg Karpfinger said, and they’re used in many of the bar’s cocktails and in spritzers. (The amari also can be ordered straight up or on the rocks for sipping.)
One such cocktail is the Calypso: Appleton Estate aged rum, Rucolino arugula-based amaro, Dolin Blanc vermouth, Jamaican bitters and grapefruit peel ($10).
Besides sweets for dessert, bar centro has dessert cocktails including gelato-based drinks.
Karpfinger and Patrick Moore, her husband and the bar’s co-owner, wanted to open the bar in part to give the restaurant’s patrons a place to wait for a table on busy nights with a drink and a snack, such as olives or spiced nuts.
They also thought it would fill a niche in Riverwest as a place to drop in for a glass of wine.
With items such as soup and desserts on the menu, customers could stop in for a light supper at the bar, as well.
Besides alcoholic beverages, bar centro will pour tea, coffee and espresso and serve soft drinks such as Mexican Coke and Wisco Pop.
The six to eight New and Old World wines are sold by the glass. The bar’s wine list will change a bit more often than the restaurant’s, Karpfinger said.
The bar made its public debut Wednesday. Karpfinger said in 2017 when plans for the bar first became public that it was inspired by a Spanish bar she and Moore had visited. As with the restaurant, they wanted to give the bar an Old World feel. Moore did much of the remodeling work himself.
The bar seats about 50 customers — about a dozen at the horseshoe-shaped bar, more than two dozen at tables for two, a few more at a couple of high-top tables, and six at a corner booth with a round table.
Bar centro opens at 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; closing times vary. Happy hour is 4 to 6 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday (half off food and glasses of wine, among other deals).
Prices for food are $6 for snacks, $8 for soup with bread, $8 for desserts such as almond cake, and $14 and $19 for cheese plates and cheese and charcuterie plates.
Karpfinger said the couple’s next project likely will be expanding the restaurant’s backyard deck to the lot behind the bar. Outdoor seating for the bar itself will be at tables on the sidewalk.
Contact Carol Deptolla at carol.dep tolla@jrn.com or (414) 224-2841, or contact her through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook.
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