Welcome to Watson’s, where less is very much more.
WELCOME TO THE LATEST THING: WHERE LESS IS VERY MUCH MORE
Tonight, very late tonight, already one of those never-going- toend nights, a coterie of fired- up bohemian revellers are en route from some au courant downtown brasserie to that cocktail bar that everybody’s been talking about lately, the one that serves antique prohibitionera drinks in tiny glasses — only where was it again, and what was it called?
So labyrinthine, these Toronto streets! Our revellers are about ready to give up on their quest. But then they’re headed down Spadina, past Queen, and one of them suggests hooking a left on Richmond, toward John, and suddenly — what’s this? Just there, beside a dentist’s office and a dry cleaner’s, that awesome gleaming citadel, that oasis of every forsaken city street, that metropolitan mecca: a new bar!
Inside: high- top tables and blue- leather stools and dart boards and a pinball machine and flat- screen televisions and bottles of scotch and bourbon and tequila on thick slabs of unfinished wood.
“Welcome to Watson’s,” a flourish of chalkboard graffiti is there to say.
And not bad, not bad at all — rather inviting, this new bar seems, styled in blacks and browns and blues but well- lit, the end result somewhere between an upscale pub and a modern trattoria. Our revellers secure a high-top near the centre of the room. The barman leaves his post behind the counter and approaches to take their order. What will it be?
An excellent question! Well, what does Watson’s have on tap? Nothing at all, the barman replies. Nothing at all? Nothing at all! Well, what sort of cocktail specialties does Watson’s offer? Might there be a list of house cocktails to peruse? No, there is not. No $15 prohibition-era marvels. No pioneering innovations in the field of mixology. No sidecars or mint juleps or pisco sours.
You can have straight liquor or a bottle of beer. Possibly an old-fashioned or a martini. Unusual, but alright, fine, let’s enjoy a round of gin and tonics. Coming right up, the barman replies. Oh! And one more thing. What’s on the menu at Watson’s? Isn’t it obvious? Nothing at all!
Opening a bar has long been a laborious endeavour, needless to say — and opening a fashionable bar doubly so. How can anyone hope to remain au fait with the trends? You’ve got to have a chef who isn’t merely competent, but pliable, too, and willing to accord with seasonal vogues. You’ve got to have a bar manager who knows when saffron sazeracs are out and tobacco boulevardiers are in.
And the beer! Those kegs don’t change themselves, and these days it hardly seems enough to keep Steam Whistle and Amsterdam on hand, you’ve got to stock all those modern niche microbrews, too.
That’s not to mention the rotating cask ales and nitrous draughts expected by the outspokenly “discerning.”
Do you think those albacore tuna ceviche sharing plates and buttered- popcorn brandy libations are just dreamed up?
It’s a full- time job, satisfying le bon ton. But nothing at all — genius!
Here’s an i dea really out there on the bleeding edge of drinking and dining in this country, the sort of thing that reconfigures the expectations of drinkers and diners in a fundamental and irrevocable way. That’s what’s really brilliant about it, the way they’ve made an omission seem like an emblem of style.
The benighted clientele of Watson’s may be upset about the absence of grilled cauliflower tapas or a $ 20 lavender collins — but only in the way that a rube might complain about a lack of kahlua mudslides or plastic menus. Fancy cocktails? Draft beer? Food? This isn’t 2015, my dear. At Watson’s, as tout le monde knows, it’s only bar rail and bottles. If you want a meal with your mixed drink, try, I don’t know, East Side Mario’s. Certainly not here.
And anyway, the omissions have practical advantages. They save the management a fortune, for one thing. Clarice, one of the bar’s co-owners, explained to me that a kitchen can be a real sink, so to speak: It hogs the real es- tate and demands to be spotless and requires a full staff of trained professionals and the near-constant replenishment of perishables, whether or not any of the people at the bar actually care to eat anything.
Same goes for kegs of beer and all the costly infrastructure and maintenance they need to keep working. All the management is paying for night after night at Watson’s is the liquor and beer they’re selling and the electricity bills for the lights and pinball.
So our revellers, mystified though they may be, soon come to enjoy the fruits of the latest fashion — namely $5 pours, and top-shelf for not much more, and even a tequila like Clase Azul, positively bank- breaking anywhere else in the city, just $ 14 for a glassful. Such generosity! Which is a virtue distinctive to this trend, surely.
The arrival of new fads and crazes, in the world of alcohol and haute cuisine especially, herald the most unwelcome escalations in price, because restauranteurs know that if it makes us feel au courant we’ll pay for it, even if that means, say, lining up for 90 minutes to spend more than the hourly minimum wage on a gaudy ice cream.
Fashion hurts, after all. What a relief that for once what’s in vogue is liable to save one money. Out with the menus, the taps, the kitchens! Welcome to the latest thing: nothing at all. Watson’s Bar, 388 Richmond Street West, Toronto.