You have such a history and story to tell. Have you ever thought of a biography "life behind bars"
6 months ago | 21
RIP Varnish and RIP Sasha. There was nothing else like it in LA when it opened, it truly started the slow build towards a craft cocktail revolution (and many bars along the way that wanted to look fancy and charge trumped up prices for mediocrity). The secret door, sitting room only, table service only, the live piano…. It opened my eyes to a whole new world of cocktails and hospitality. I’m not in LA anymore, who’s carrying the torch these days?
6 months ago
| 1
Probably difficult to keep a steady customer base when you have to charge $30+ per cocktail. This is actually what motivated me to start watching this channel and others.
6 months ago | 0
Dang! I’ll be in LA next week (from Australia) and the Varnish was on my ‘must-go cocktail bar’ list :|
6 months ago
| 1
Just had this conversation with my director yesterday (made the switch to the hotel industry) about the future of the bar industry. We’re easily approaching the end of the craft cocktail renaissance boom that we’ve seen in recent years. People are returning to simplicity and realizing they don’t want to pay $18-$30 for a cocktail with crazy syrups and infusion techniques with average liquor. They just want to relax with a beer or wine, maybe an old fashioned or margarita sprinkled in the mix. The pricing and pretentiousness running through the bar scene currently is scaring people off. Long live the cash only dive bars serving beer and shot combos for <$10 with bartenders not acting like they invented electricity every time they mix a drink.
6 months ago | 0
What was the bittersweet part? That Sasha is gone? Anyway, one LA bar that was on my bucket list was the Foxfire Room, which was featured in the film Magnolia. William H Macy’s character has a crush on the bartender. It’s located in Valley Village and I finally went out to see it many years ago. It was everything I’d hoped for
6 months ago | 1
The Educated Barfly
Last night was bitter sweet. We all gathered at The Varnish Bar in Downtown LA to pay our respects to one of, if not THE bar which put drinking in LA on the map. The Varnish was opened by Eric Alperin, Cedd Moses and the late Sasha Petraske in 2008. It was the west coast outpost of the Milk & Honey bar program started by Petraske eight years prior. I had the incredible honor of working in close proximity to some of the finest bartenders in the country and learned so so much from them. If you want to read a fantastic article on the importance of the Varnish, our good friend wrote a piece for Food & Wine.
You can find it here: www.foodandwine.com/the-varnish-cocktail-bar-closi…
It was sweet to be around some of the homies from back in the day who all came back to pay respects. I think I'd love to dive into a larger conversation around LA bars and the challenges of staying open post pandemic or make some content around it in the near future.
6 months ago | [YT] | 248