The hotel bar of ultra-luxe Jackalope Hotel is just as quirky, fancy and exciting as the hotel itself.
The space is funky and fresh, with an electric-blue pool table and busts with their faces shorn off. Behind the bar are giant glass jars, a nod to the alchemical theme of the entire hotel. Alchemy is the process of turning common materials into precious or priceless ones (the prime example being lead into gold), and Flaggerdoot turns individual spirits into cocktails that are very precious indeed.
The bartenders responsible for this magical transformation are bar manager Tioni Naslund and Nic Train. They change things up regularly, making sure the menu is always surprising, fresh and exciting. Every cocktail they invent has a story, and this creative pair make perfectly balanced, beautiful drinks to suit all palates.
The winter 2018 menu includes the surprising and hard-to-place Weekends Away, which blends surprising ingredients like Monkey Shoulder whisky, beetroot, chocolate, honey, lemon, tarragon, pepper and dill. The result is a perfect balance of sweet and zesty, herby and earthy. It's an absolute ripper, as is the very different Lost in Tokyo. A much lighter cocktail, this one includes Zubrowka, sake, seaweed, cucumber, wasabi, lemon and ginger beer. It even comes with a little plastic fish, like the kind that comes filled with soy sauce in takeaway sushi joints, filled with nori-infused sake. It's fresh, zesty, saline and just about perfect.
From 4pm on Saturdays, the bar is only open to guests of the hotel or the hatted Doot Doot Doot restaurant. At all other times you can – and should – pull up a stool at the bar and let Naslund and Train work their magic.