A bright idea for Hayes Valley
To understand Anina, the new bar on Hayes Street, consider first its owners’ adjacent bar, Brass Tacks.
Brass Tacks has always been something of a Hayes Valley anomaly. Though perched at the neighborhood’s prow, crowning Patricia’s Green, the bar is not upscale enough, not expensive enough, to be its tony district’s flagship.
At nearby bars like Smuggler’s Cove, the Riddler, the Linden Room or Absinthe, you’re not getting a seat, but at Brass Tacks there’s somehow always space. Though it’s got a short list of simple, spirit-forward cocktails, for many folks Brass Tacks is fundamentally a spot for ordering beer in a can.
Turns out that Brass Tacks,
which opened four years ago, was never meant to stand on its own. This year, owners Matt Conway, Anthony Healy-London and Josh McAdam are launching two more bars: Anina and an as-yet-unnamed project on 24th Street, in the former Jack’s Cocktails space.
Anina is like the blonder, peppier younger sibling of the brooding, mumbling Brass Tacks. But there’s still a family resemblance. And their shared core elements — simplicity, service, accessibility — become clearest when considered together.
Superficially, the two bars have little else in common, except a landlord: Brass Tacks is profoundly dark, Anina bright and airy. Brass Tacks is unadorned, bare-walled; Anina’s walls are plastered in a loud, floral mural. Brass Tacks comes alive late at night, and sells more whiskey than anything else; Anina is a place for day drinking, with a large patio and a drink menu nearly devoid of dark spirits.
But both practice a cocktail style that is aggressively unfussy, delivered by bartenders of unusually high caliber. And Anina, though more stylized in both drinks and design, shows that you don’t have to keep the walls bare in order to keep it simple.
Anina’s cocktail menu, excluding wine and beer, has five sections, three of which deal in low-proof libations. First, a section of Sherry and vermouth ($8-$9) — a condensed, rotating selection of the extensive stock the bar keeps. Next, aperitivos ($10), including a revival of the Knife in the Water, which Brass Tacks devotees will recognize from the first bar’s opening menu: a Millennial-pink concoction of manzanilla Sherry, Dolin Blanc and the gentian liqueur Salers that tastes much greater than the sum of its parts. Then a section of spritzes ($12), including a St. Germain-based version whose floral element is enhanced by lemongrass, and an Aperol spritz riff whose bitterness is made more flavorful by grapefruit and lemon.
You might not even get to the higher-ABV stuff, so easygoing and agreeable are these drinks. You might not want to, anyway, if you’re pacing yourself over an entire afternoon on Anina’s sunny patio. Then again, the picnic tables may demand one of the fruity, fizzy, citrusy punch bowls ($55).
The bar’s visual aesthetic feels very 2017, recalling the teal-toned geometrics of Tawla and the floral wallpaper of Leo’s Oyster Bar. Those walls are the work of Argentine muralist Lucila Dominguez, whom designer Sayre Ziskin (she’s also behind Bernal Heights bar Holy Water) found on Instagram. An idiosyncratic hodgepodge of sketches and paintings — all depicting women — decorate the end of the room.
Just as Brass Tacks’ dark, simple drinks reflect its physical space, so do Anina’s. In form and content alike, it’s light, bright, easy on the liver. In fact, Conway says Dominguez’s mural shaped the drinks: “Her paintings are a big part of the identity of the bar.”
The Lucila ($12), named for the artist, is Anina’s most popular drink. Created by bartender Nehil Nazzal, it mixes mezcal with pineapple gum and the red grapefruit liqueur Pamplemousse rosé, a deft balance of smoky, sweet and bitter.
If this all sounds too spritzy for you and you just want some whiskey, well, you should go to Brass Tacks. Barring that, you should order Anina’s Brigadier cocktail ($12). I was skeptical of combining Calvados with pommeau de Normandie (i.e. apple juice mixed with Calvados) but the pommeau adds an element of brightness and a touch of sweetness to the earthy apple brandy, whose flavors are deepened by Cardamaro and amontillado Sherry, both nutty and lightly oxidative. It’s a great nightcap.
Neither Brass Tacks nor Anina serves food, though chefs have been popping up in Anina’s patio — Richie Nakano serving fried chicken sandwiches, for instance, and Vannessa Gonzalez offering Mexican-Basque fare.
Conway, Healy-London and McAdam hope to have their third bar, at the corner of 24th and Utah streets, open by September. No details yet on what that much-larger bar will be like, but they’ve added a fourth partner to the mix: David Ruiz, responsible for the venerable cocktail menu at Padrecito.
That 24th Street corridor is a neighborhood in a different sort of flux — with a completely different set of questions around development and identity — than Hayes Valley, which rests comfortably with its cadre of boutiques and bistros. Conway, Healy-London and McAdam’s third bar will surely be an anomaly in that area, too. Just what sort remains to be seen.
Anina is like the blonder, peppier younger sibling of the brooding, mumbling Brass Tacks. But there’s still a family resemblance.