"First of all, I am not trying to steal business from Three Dots and a Dash [laughs]," said Mike Ryan, head bartender at Hotel Palomar's Sable Kitchen & Bar.
He's referring to his new pop-up tiki bar, which debuts this Friday and Saturday on Hotel Palomar's State Street patio.
"We've been doing tiki stuff at Sable for a while, probably three years now," Ryan said. "It's something that I've always been fascinated with and wanted to try my hand at."
The opening menu of $14 tiki cocktails includes three classic recipes-Eastern Sour, a bourbon-based Trader Vic's creation; a rum-based hurricane; and Montego Bay, a rum-based Don the Beachcomber creation-as well as two original cocktails-Isle of View (light rum, coconut, falernum, lime) and Hot to Trot (aged cachaca, mango, lemon juice, curacao). Drinks will be served in plastic tiki glasses that guests can take home.
The cash-only bar, open from 6 p.m. to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, will be completely seperate from Sable, meaning no Sable drinks will be available on the patio and the outdoor drinks will not be available inside. Seating for approximately 25 people includes couches, chairs and tables.
The bar will be called Cocktails in Motion, indicating that the theme will not stay tiki forever. Ryan intends to rotate themes every few months and hinted at a Madrid-style gin tonic bar for later in the summer.
While Ryan clearly has a fondness for the history and complexity of tiki culture, he intends this pop-up bar to be totally casual.
"In keeping with everything we do at Sable, we're taking the flavors and the drinks really, really seriously, but we're not taking ourselves seriously. It's a silly pop-up bar outside."
kbernot@tribune.com