Where to Drink Now: The New Cocktailian's Guide

COMME ÇA

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The Varnish

118 E. 6th St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Category: Bars and Clubs

Region: Downtown

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More About

• Cedd Moses
• Edison
• Eric Alperin
• Main Dish Recipes
• Liquor and Spirits

Chef David Myers is one of those annoying overachievers your mom always hoped you would be, the kind of guy who goes through intensive SEAL training where most of us would just join a gym, sets up an exquisite bakery instead of buying in bread, opens a pizza parlor instead of settling for the Angeli number on his speed dial. Nobody’s tasting menus are as elaborate as the ones he prepares at Sona. When he decided to stick something homey on the lunch menu at his brasserie Comme Ça, he came up with not just a cheeseburger but the cheeseburger, the Midwestern-inflected patty to which all others aspire.

So when he set up the bar at Comme Ça, it became inevitably a cocktailian dreamland, a place as chef-driven as the rest of his empire. (I seem to remember that at one point, possibly around the time Myers was collaborating with famously demanding sushi chef Kazunori Nozawa, a customer was allowed to specify what spirit she might enjoy in a cocktail, but not what might be done to it.) For most of the restaurant’s life, the menu of bar chef Joel Black was limited to four drinks, chief among them Milk and Honey’s famous Scotch-based fresh-lemon, fresh-ginger and honey cocktail, Penicillin, though also including a kind of bramble that might constitute the one permissible non-breakfast use of blackberry compote. (Milk and Honey’s Sam Ross, the inventor of the drink, came up with the first drinks menu at the restaurant.) The bar menu recently expanded to a whopping 18 drinks, including a very creditable Manhattan, but you are still probably better off just giving Black carte blanche. 8479 Melrose Ave., L.A., (323) 782-1178.

COPA D’ORO

At Copa d’Oro, the ubiquitous Vincenzo Marianella — is working the locavore groove: Patrons at the bar, run in conjunction with Buddha’s Belly owner Jonathan Chu, are invited to select from a list of spirits, fresh herbs and produce bought at the farmers market around the corner, and Marianella and his team improvise a cocktail on the spot. Tangerine, sage and Right Gin? Bell pepper, kumquat and Sazerac Rye? No problem. The drinks menu includes a selection of cocktails invented by Marianella’s friends and mentors from bars in London and around the United States, as well as some of his own greatest hits: the Apple One, his Smoke of Scotland made with 110 proof Laphroaig cask-strength single malt, and his infamous Sour Kraut, a gin sour flavored with almost homeopathic doses of marmalade and Dijon mustard, which are completely imperceptible until somebody tells you what they are. 217 Broadway, Santa Monica, (310) 576-3030.

THE DOHENY

The Doheny is the sanctum sanctorum of cocktail culture in Los Angeles at the moment, a luxurious bunker, incongruously located at the rear of a downtown parking garage, dedicated to the art of cocktails without compromise. The filigree on the mirrors was painted by Shepard Fairey; the men’s room is papered with old stock certificates; and general manager Steve Livigni, who manages to mash up laconic dude-in-a-band style with the gaslit workingman’s hauteur of the 1890s, is quick to show newcomers through the glassed-in Art Deco patio built for the pleasure of Edward L. Doheny, indirectly the inspiration for the Daniel Day-Lewis character in There Will Be Blood, and whose politically connected oil company was more or less the Halliburton of the 1920s. Where other ambitious bars in town display 300 bottles of tequila or whiskey, the Doheny’s exquisitely curated stash may be no larger than that at your neighborhood bar; where other bars of this stature pride themselves on encyclopedic cocktail menus, the list at Doheny takes up but a few slim pages of large type, much of which is dedicated to the details of the bar’s elaborate tableside absinthe service. Where it is appropriate, drinks are poured over custom chunks of ice the size of Louisville Slugger handles, which resist melting with the tenacity of the polar ice caps.

As at any Cedd Moses–run bar, you can find a decent roster of nearly forgotten classic cocktails — Blue Blazer, French 75, Clover Leaf, Blood and Sand — but most of the drinks are concocted by the staff. And if you should happen to come on an evening that the KoGi taco truck is parked out back, you may run into Korean-themed cocktails that lead bartender Daniel Nelson willed into being just a few minutes before opening time. If you haven’t chased a plate of KoGi blood sausage with a Sesame Song, a drink whose ingredients include vodka, black sesame seeds, red corn silk and ruddy Korean chile powder, you really should. The Doheny is famous for its exclusivity — on one level, it operates as a fantastically expensive private club, and it is kept intentionally uncrowded — but the door is occasionally cracked open for events, including KoGi appearances, and if you are truly serious about cocktails, it’s not much harder to get into than, say, the Magic Castle. 714 W. Olympic Blvd., downtown.