Against everyone's better judgement a bartender at Swing Wine Bar in Olympia, Washington has created an unholy cold weather cocktail that sounds like something out of a Paula Deen fever dream. The concoction takes the a shot of Fernet Branca — the unofficial aperitif of San Francisco — and infuses it with spiced butter to create, you guessed it: hot buttered Fernet. more ›

B Restaurant & Bar has been a bright cocktail oasis in Old Oakland for quite a few years now. They've got a new cocktail menu these days, and the concoction below is one of the highlights — a mixture of tequila, sage, lime, and habanero shrub, making it kind of an herbacious, spicy margarita. more ›

Over in Oakland, chef-restaurateur Daniel Patterson has just opened a fourth new restaurant, after just recently opening Plum Bar next to his one-year-old Plum at Webster and Broadway (he also owns the Michelin two-star Coi in North Beach). Haven is a New American bistro of sorts with an emphasis shared dishes, and the chef is the talented Kim Alter, who won some raves for a brief stint earlier this year at Plate Shop in Sausalito. more ›

So, check it out: There's a new restaurant in central SoMa, directly across Mission Street from the 9th Circuit, and it's called AQ (1085 Mission Street between 6th and 7th). They're taking the frequently heard "seasonal" thing to an extreme, swapping out decoration (lighting, bar top, foliage on several 'trees' in the space), glassware, the whole food menu, and even the servers' uniforms as each season changes. But just this week they launched their cocktail program, from the mind of bar manager Tim Zohn, and we already have a favorite beverage on the tight, ten-drink list. more ›

What better time of year to do a little hotel-bar drinking around Union Square than December, right? It's about the only place in the city that feels truly Christmas-y, if you ask us, and the hotel lobbies are all decked out with enormous trees, and gingerbread structures, and whathaveyou. So we checked back in at the newly revamped Starlight Room, atop the Sir Francis Drake, and found this delicious new punch on the menu that's perfect for the season. Bar manager Joel Teitelbaum infuses his own apple-cinnamon gin, and adds a few more fall-wintery-spicy things to create a deliciously balanced little drink. more ›

Over in Oakland an exciting new cocktail option is opening tonight: Plum Bar (2214 Broadway), from the minds of chef Daniel Patterson and bar star Scott Beattie (Artisanal Cocktails). The place is right next door to Plum, the casual restaurant Patterson opened over a year ago. more ›

Not that we have any right to complain (it's been over five years since we last blacked out at this fine music venue), but Polk Street rock 'n' roll/hustler staple Kimo's (1351 Polk) is on the market, and its future doesn't look good. more ›

What do you know! There is such a thing as a piña colada that isn't thick with Coco Lopez, clocking in at 1000 calories and sickly sweet! Brooke Arthur, who's created drinks and tended bar at two of the city's more high-profile establishments, Range and Prospect, has just started work as the bar manager at Charles Phan's new Wo Hing General Store -- a Chinese concept in what was once the original Slanted Door space, at 584 Valencia Street. more ›

Opening tonight in Hayes Valley is a new wine bar/cocktail bar/cafe/book exchange called Two Sisters Bar & Books (579 Hayes Street). The sisters in question, partners in the business with one of their husbands, modeled the concept on "an incredible bookstore in Krakow; a quintessential coffeehouse in Vienna; a neighborhood bar in Paris; the young, urban, do-it-yourself restaurant scene in Brooklyn; and our Northern California roots." And the vibe is very Europe-meets-Brooklyn, with a tight small plates menu of comforting California food, and a cocktail list which is -- of necessity because they're waiting on a full liquor license -- all vermouth- and beer-based at the moment. more ›

Yes, we're getting a bit of what we consider summer this weekend. It won't be hot, but it will be nice. Drink it up while you can, kids, and while doing so, drink up! One appropriate tipple would be this drink, the Endless Summer, on the menu currently at Plate Shop in Sausalito -- where the food side is being covered by former 1550 Hyde guys Peter Erickson and Kent Liggett. more ›

Closing out SF Cocktail Week on Sunday was a party over in Alameda at the St. George distillery, in celebration of the release of their three new gins which we mentioned vis a vis our last SFist Drink. The gins are so good and noteworthy, that they get another mention here with what was our favorite cocktail of the bunch at Sunday's party (which was also a mini competition of sorts for a bevy of East Bay bartenders, all challenged with creating a drink with one of the three gins). more ›

St. George Spirits, the Alameda-based distillery best known for Hangar One vodka and a very expensive but very delicious absinthe, has just come out with three distinctive new gins. SFist had a chance to taste them at a Cocktail Week preview event a few weeks back, and we can report that they rock, and they aren't like any gins you know. Though juniper is generally the dominant botanical flavor in most gins, it plays more of a background role in each of these. (You can taste them for yourself at St. George's closing event of Cocktail Week, next Sunday, September 25.) more ›

San Francisco loves a little tipple here and there (as if you hadn't noticed). And since we've ridden out this fancy cocktail movement until reaching a critical mass of artisan shakers and perfect-ice-cultivators, it makes sense that we'd celebrate that strong livered culture with a whole week of sloshy events. Thus: next week, from September 19th - 25th, the Barbary Coast Conservancy of the American Cocktail hosts the fifth annual San Francisco Cocktail Week which involves a lot of post-secondary cocktail education and a slew of cocktail friendly dinners. more ›

Trace just opened over at the W Hotel on Third Street, replacing XYZ and bringing some new design cred to the space -- it was designed by acclaimed residential architect Stanley Saitowitz, who used as his inspiration an Ambrose Bierce poem that describes San Francisco as "a point on a map of fog." more ›

Harry Denton's Starlight Room reopens at the top of the Sir Francis Drake after a brief renovation next Tuesday, and for this week's Friday cocktail we bring you a new creation from newly hired bar manager Joel Teitelbaum, most recently of Zero Zero fame. more ›

MUSIC/ART:The Mission Cultural Center for the Arts presents Talking Art and Music with Pete Escovedo, in which Escovedo will talk about his esteemed musical career and his lifelong interest in the visual arts with radio personality Sterling James (often heard on KBLX). (6 p.m., Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission Street) more ›

Last week marked the opening of a new watering hole in the Tenderloin named after Jasper O'Farrell himself, called Jasper's Corner Tap and Kitchen (the former Ponzu at Taylor and O'Farrell). Among the new bars that could easily have been in contention for one of our top ten favorite $10 cocktail spots, this is definitely one, and bar manager Kevin Diedrich hails most recently from Burritt Room, where he created a great cocktail program and sophisticated vibe. more ›

As you know, we here at SFist enjoy a stiff drink, and quite often we enjoy the kind of stiff drink that involves some heavy muddling and straining, esoteric tinctures, and housemade bitters. No, we're not cocktail geeks or snobs exactly, but a decade or so in this town has a way of raising your standards. more ›

You may have heard about this vaguely (but not explicitly) Muppet-themed bar that just opened in Mission, in the old Baobab space at 19th. It's called Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. They have late-night, drunk-friendly food options, Fernet on tap, and a cocktail menu with a growing signature list. Bar manager Mark DeVito today shares with us his favorite of the bunch, the eponymously named Mayhem. And yes, it does have Fernet in it. Just a touch. more ›

Some of the best drinks are the simplest, and while the artisanal cocktail thing has tended to leave vodka drinking to the amateurs, the fact remains that it's an easy way to to turn a few fresh ingredients into a cocktail, without the addition of too many extra flavors. What's that you say? You like layers of complexity in every cocktail? Yeah, well, sometimes we just want a vodka lemonade, alright? more ›

Just open this week at 1 Yerba Buena Lane (that alleyway next to the Four Season between 3rd and 4th, on Market) is Bluestem Brasserie. It's a big, airy space with a great upstairs terrace, overlooking Market Street. In addition to their lunch and dinner menus, the place has a growing cocktail program form bar manager Matthew Michel-Cleeve. more ›

Since it's now, surprisingly, already Memorial Day weekend, you might as well celebrate the passage of time and the dawn of summer with this twist on a traditional English country summer refresher: the Pimm's Cup. The version at Range, created by bar manager Jeff Lyon, features the addition of a ginger snap liqueur for added spice notes, but it's just as refreshing as the original, long beloved classic. Try this and a bevy of other inspired, market-fresh drinks at one of our favorite restaurant bars in town. more ›

Alex Smith, bar manager at Gitane (6 Claude Lane), created this drink to usher in the summer months with a whiff of Europe. It's kind of a twist on a Negroni, with the addition of lemon, mint, and sweet Maraschino liqueur. In place of the vermout in this case we have rich, oxidized, almost savory Oloroso sherry adding an extra level of complexity to the drink. In place of the ginger marmalade we'd recommend substituting a homemade ginger syrup, which you could make by steeping half a cup of fresh chopped ginger in simple syrup (boil 1 cup sugar with one cup water til evaporated, and simmer with ginger for 20 minutes before leaving to cool and steep overnight). more ›

Ah summer. What is it, really? Kate Bolton, bartender at Michael Mina, created this bright and refreshing drink to celebrate the season that takes a long time to arrive in our fair city. It mixes some sweet apple flavors with the herbal notes of gin and a floral touch of violet liqueur. Simple, elegant, and strong enough even for a guy to like, sans flower garnish. more ›

It's kinda summer, everybody! And even though it's not as hot as it was on Wednesday, we're still in a springy/summery mood. Thus our choice of cocktail this week is a seasonal choice and perfect for a balmy night. This punch, created by Zero Zero bar manager Joel Tietelbaum, strike a nice balance between sweet, tart, boozy, and bitter, and we can think of nothing we'd rather drink while lying in the grass somewhere, or at an outdoor party on one of many (hopefully) sunny days to come. more ›

Embarcadero restaurant Lafitte (on Pier 5) celebrates one year in business this month, and chef Russell Jackson remains steadfastly dedicated to his ingredients, his craft, and newly revamped brasserie menu — all, as he puts it, "with a soupçon of insanity thrown in." The place has excellent drinks, and this week we feature one on their current menu, The Strange Love, named in honor of the great film, Dr. Strangelove. It's the bomb. more ›

We love ourselves a good bitter-but-balanced cocktail, and we came across a doozy recently at the Hideout — the awesome, cocktail-nerdy bar within a bar in the back of Dalva on 16th. It's called Nobody's Dirty Business, and even though it's not on the current menu they'll still make it for you. As bartender and creator of the drink Jason Guarnieri Larsen tells SFist, it all came about because of his love of Cynar. "I have loved Cynar since the moment I first tasted it and always try to build new drinks around it. So pretty much anything new comes my way, I'm going to pair it with the stuff, and sometimes I get lucky!" He further explains that Hideout manager Todd Smith named the drink after a Mississippi John Hurt song. It's made with Batavia Arrack (an Indonesian sugarcane and fermented red rice liquor), Cynar (an artichoke-based amaro), Luxardo Maraschino (a Marasca cherry based liqueur), Bonal (a Gentiane-Quina Aperitif Wine), fresh lime juice. and topped with Prosecco. "We all know original is hard to come by these days so I like to make it easy on myself and strive for a 'personal original,'" says Larsen, but we're pretty sure this counts as original-original. Update: And such is the way in the cocktail sphere, but Portland bartender Jordan Gray reached out to point out some similarities between this drink and one he created called The Original Dirty Liver, which doesn't have the Prosecco. more ›

Have you heard about Wilson & Wilson? It's the new reservation-only, bar-within-a-bar at Bourbon & Branch where you can have an even more exclusive, more haute cocktail experience than is even available at B&B these days, now that everyone and their broker knows about it. The deal is this: two bartenders from B&B decided to create an experience where customers could interact more with bartenders, and create a list of cocktails -- including a $30, three-course prix fixe option -- with special ingredients and tinctures you won't find just anywhere, so that the cocktail geek might truly have a chance to geek out and get drunk all at once. If you go for the three-course thing, you choose from a monthly changing list of aperitifs, "mains," and digestifs, and you'll get to sample a bunch of flavor combinations you might not have thought possible before -- leather, tobacco, and cinammon, anyone? more ›

Up at Long Bar in Pac Heights (2298 Fillmore), new owner Reza Esmaili is preparing for a big change. The bar star took over the place last summer, with ultimate plans to give the place a makeover and at the very least class up the cocktail menu. He started by updating the menu, with the help of pal and Top Chef alum Erik Hopfinger, and soon the place will have a totally new menu, concept and name (TBA). As soon as basketball season is over, that is. Esmaili will be closing the place temporarily after the first week in April, after March Madness is over and the Final Four have duked it out. Then a few weeks later it will be reborn as a new bar-restaurant, after some cosmetic changes. more ›

Sausalito's newest restaurant, Plate Shop, is a cute little gem of a place with excellent, modern food, good wines by the glass -- including a nightly, $6, "inoffensive" white and red house special — and some good cocktails to boot. Below, we have the recipe for the Shipyard Mule, a riff on the classic Moscow Mule which bar manager Chris Burgeson reminds us was instrumental in popularizing vodka in this country. (See the story here -- basically, before this cocktail took off in the 1940s and 50s, gin was really the only clear spirit around in the U.S.) more ›