When the news broke that, come the ides of March, Chicago would welcome its first-ever gin-focused cocktail bar—Logan Square’s Scofflaw—it was like the shot (of Malort) heard round the world: at long last, we might narrow the embarrassing gap between us and the competing bicoastal metropolises that, for various reasons, have always preceded us in just about everything on our plates and in our glasses, from gastropubs to consumption of Fernet-Branca. Coupled with the news that Logan Square–by–way–of–Las Vegas drink darling Paul McGee was leaving the Whistler to partner with the Brothers Melman to open a tiki bar in vodka-drenched River North, for a minute there, it looked like 2012 was going to be the year to toast Chicago’s bar scene proper. At long last, we had arrived . . . approximately five years behind New York and San Francisco.
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Think back to the spring of 2007. We’re talking PVH (Pre-Violet Hour). Do you remember what Wicker Park was like before that sanctuary of expertly mixed spirits opened its unmarked door? Do you remember what Chicago was like? To get a decent Tom Collins, one had to dictate the recipe to a bartender. Failing that, there was the Matchbox. And while there is still very good reason to visit the Matchbox, it’s a bit unsettling to recall a time when just one bar—in possession of just over a dozen bar stools—had the know-how to quench the thirst of the cocktail aficionados among us. (It should be noted in early 2007 we had Weegee’s Lounge, as well, but barely knew where it was and, even if we did, seldom dared to venture that far west.)
Our naivete fueled an overnight success. “Perfect. Just perfect,” gushed one of the Violet Hour’s first Yelp reviews, posted days after its opening. “Winner—we have a winner,” exclaimed another. Of course, nothing edible or drinkable is universally embraced. One disgruntled Yelper deemed it the “WORST BAR EVER,” having been denied admittance that autumn, by which time the Violet Hour’s speakeasy facade was no longer a secret. (For the record, that particular reviewer was reportedly saved by “a guy across the street at Pontiac” who offered “free pot and drinks” just to leave the Violet Hour’s line. “He was embarrassed for all of Chicago,” yelped the Yelper, “as he should have been.”)
New York’s first gin-centric joint, Madam Geneva, opened in 2008. It’s a dreamy little lounge hidden behind a false door in the back of a restaurant, and boasts a modest hoard of London dry gin and Dutch genever alike, which are shaken and stirred into a cocktail list that’s exclusively gin-based. In 2010 that city welcomed a traditional Dutch restaurant, Vandaag, whose beverage menu is even more obscure: there are no basic London drys (e.g., Tanqueray, Bombay etc.)—only genevers and aquavit. If you want, say, a tequila cocktail, your best bet is to saunter down the street to Mayahuel, which serves that and only that. Bathtub Gin, which opened last fall, is a bit more forgiving: eight cocktails are gin-based, six others are not. Newest is Brooklyn’s the Shanty, the majority of whose drinks are based in gin distilled in-house by the New York Distilling Company. Three of its seven cocktails are gin-free, but as the New York Times‘ Steven Stern aptly put it, “ordering one feels a little bit like getting the salmon at Peter Luger.”
The answer: You lose the opportunity to be exclusively gin; you lose the opportunity to be exclusively anything. You lose the opportunity to take Chicago’s cocktail scene somewhere it’s never been: beyond city limits.
