Experimental Cocktail Club
Nico de Soto writes the list in this red-lacquered basement under a Flatiron wine bar, and the novelties on it run on clarification, carbonation and lacto-fermentation.
Why go
De Soto started with this group as head bartender at Experimental Cocktail Club in Paris, then ran their Chinatown room in London and their first New York room on the Lower East Side, and he has since opened Mace in New York, Danico in Paris and Wacky Wombat in London (the group's own page). That first New York room closed in 2018 and this one opened north of it, underneath the group's own Flatiron wine bar. The techniques the list is built on are no longer exotic: PUNCH describes clarification and force-carbonation as standard kit at top-tier bars, credited to Dave Arnold's decade of work downtown (PUNCH). What is being tested here is whether the group can use them well. Dorothée Meilichzon designed the room, and the thing you see from the stairs is a white lacquer piano.
Order this / avoid
- Order: one of the novelties. The house names the Old Cuban, the St Germain des Prés and the Kota Ternate as its classics if you want the safer half.
- Avoid: heading for the old Lower East Side address. That room is gone.
What locals & experts say
- The group, on de Soto's brief: he
designs Experimental Cocktail Club's beverage menus, featuring classics such as Old Cuban, St Germain des Prés, and Kota Ternate, alongside surprising novelties using clarification, carbonation and lacto-fermentation.
1 - I have not found a review of this room by anyone. What is above is the bar's own account.
Good to know
- Timing: it opens in the early evening, every day, and runs latest at the end of the week. A pianist plays later on, after the quieter start.
- Booking: book it. The downstairs holds around sixty and the entrance is a side-street basement under the wine bar.
Verdict
could-visit — Go on a weeknight and order the strangest thing on the list. One drink tells you whether the technique is doing anything.