Cheers to the 2016 Chronicle Bar Stars
How our 2016 class is shaking up the Bay Area cocktail scene.
They share their favorite dive bars and pet peeves, plus serve up a special cocktail recipe.
For too long bartenders were seen as little more than boozy wish-granting genies. Walk into any bar anywhere in the world and you’d expect to order the cocktail you always had, made with the liquor brand you always drank. And you demanded it be the same, every time. The only burden of cocktail creativity was in concealment, a medium for alcohol sneak attacks to conjure social lubrication. Tasting the spirit — or not feeling it — was seen as artifice.
The last vestiges of this ideology remain at neighborhood bars and dive bars, and they cast an undeniable charm. As more of those ancient establishments — and the old mystics who run them — disappear from the Bay Area, they are getting their due respect. Such bars’ focus is entirely on the customer, offering accessibility and respite from the world. They serve as covers, therapy, escapes, living rooms, clubhouses, matchmakers and neutral territory.
Many of these credos are slowly filtering back into modern bars, and are evident in our 2016 class of Chronicle Bar Stars.
This is a time when anything goes behind the bar, from cultural cross-pollination at places like Mourad and Penrose to the expansion of the classically defined role of bartenders to include gin sommeliers or nomadic bar consultants.
Yet in the Bay Area bar industry, there is a movement to simplify rather than mystify, and the parlor tricks have faded to reveal the kind of real magic commanded by our bartenders: finesse, studied flavor combinations, and an air of simplicity that belies a depth of creativity and knowledge. But they’ll still make you a vodka-soda. This evolution is happening everywhere, making now one of the easiest times to get a good drink most anywhere. Best of all, the importance of getting what you want — although usually with better ingredients and spirits — is back.