Still O.G..

Still O.G.

Original Gravity's beer taps are gone and the room pours draft cocktails now, with a speakeasy called Alter Ego behind a gatekeeper at the back.

Why go

Dan Phan says why he changed it, and he says it plainly: The whole craft beer industry became very over-saturated.1 So the craft beer bar he opened at 66 South First became a vinyl room with cocktails on tap, and a second bar hides behind it. The front is built as an audio room first: $100,000 of custom speakers, a studio-grade Pioneer RT-909 tape deck, and $77,000 of acoustic paneling rippling across the ceiling.1

That decision reaches the drinks list. Since we have DJs doing vinyl sets, we don't have any shakers here, Elias Kassner told San José Spotlight, it would ruin the ambience.1 So the front bar pours mostly draft cocktails, named after records in rotation. Shakers are allowed in Alter Ego, where the plates get finer: a Passard Egg foamed with crispy chorizo and served in the shell, milk bread with shiso fumi and salty house butter. The kitchen also kept some of the old O.G. food and added robata skewers.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Come Sail Away, on tap. Nikka Coffey Gin with yuzu, passionfruit, Aperol, lemon and ginger ale.1
• Order: the crab garlic noodles to share, then a King Trumpet mushroom skewer off the robata. That is Eliason's own steer.1
• Order: in Alter Ego, the Shiso Fumi milk bread.1
• Avoid: the beer list you remember. It is not there.
• Avoid: the 20-year-old Double Eagle unless you mean it. $400 an ounce.1

What locals & experts say

• San José Spotlight, Robert Eliason: Still O.G.'s bar, with its on-tap cocktails, wood paneled walls, cubby holes packed with records, DJ booth and state of the art sound system, has a warm, inviting hipster feel.1
• George Lahlouh, co-owner: We reached to try to be creative.1

Good to know

• The name: the sign said Original Gravity Public House for a decade. Same address, same owners.2
• Same operators: Paper Plane and MINIBOSS, both downtown.1

Verdict

could-visit — Everything solid here describes a room, and nothing describes a plate. Eliason profiles the bar without rating a single dish, so a reader gets a menu and no judgment on it. What carries the rung is the operators: Dan Phan and George Lahlouh have kept Paper Plane and MINIBOSS running downtown, and they gutted a working business when they could have coasted on it. Operators with that record are worth betting on once.