Much lauded bar-restaurant Bar Agricole is reopening this week, after some pandemic-related delays, within the base of the tower at 1550 Mission Street — 30 months after we first heard information in regards to the transfer. And the place has recruited a proficient chef in Nick Balla, who’s been largely away from the SF scene for a number of years.
Yes, the James Beard Award-winning Bar Agricole is lastly returning as of Wednesday, August 3, however with a twist — the cocktail-focused spot is not going to have the standard entrance bar setup that it used to have, not less than for now. There is not even a bar in any respect within the opening format — only a heart island in what’s being known as the “tasting room,” the place a workers of 4 is answerable for making drinks, taking orders, and operating meals to the 34-seat eating room.
As Eater reviews, this island is tricked out with an insulated ice field that can home the blocks and shafts of ice to relax mixology grasp Thad Vogler’s pared-down, classic-inspired cocktails — and perhaps we should not be talking of those as Vogler’s drinks, per se, anymore. While the Ti’ Punch is again on the menu — taken from the easy Caribbean recipe of sugar syrup, rhum agricole, and a squeeze of lime — the drink menu was refined by committee, with bartender Craig Lane and the opposite workers members all having to unanimously agree on every drink’s inclusion.
Vogler, like different restaurateurs have in current months, has re-conceived Bar Agricole as a sociocracy — as the web site now explains, this mannequin “creates scaffolding and roles that support our values of transparency, effectiveness, and equity that gives every team member a voice in shaping the business.” He’s pursuing B Corp standing, and can in the end be sharing the restaurant-bar’s revenue and loss statements publicly.
Some of this alteration stems from the scenario Vogler says he discovered himself in in 2020, because the pandemic hit and as his bar companies have been already beneath main monetary pressure. As he wrote in Punch journal final yr, “I thought I could change how the bar business worked and the way people drank—more thoughtfully, more intentionally. In hopes of converting the masses, I sold spirits at a painfully thin margin that could not accommodate the debt of opening a business, which gave way to the classic mistake of growing too soon in an attempt to create an economy of scale.”
Vogler opened Trou Normand within the final decade, his second cocktail-centric restaurant additional downtown, targeted on brandy and charcuterie, and that was adopted by a West Indian rum bar known as Obispo, which had already closed for retooling with the pandemic hit. Vogler and a companion additionally opened the swanky Nommo on Rincon Hill in early 2019. All three of these companies shut down completely in mid-2020, and as Vogler writes, by the top, “Everyone was mad at me: employees, landlords, partners, vendors, investors, architects, the general contractor, the insurance broker, the IRS.”
In final 2020, Vogler and his companies have been hit with wage-theft lawsuits and lawsuits from unpaid distributors — and among the wage-theft claims dated again to 2015, because the Chronicle earlier reported.
By final yr, Vogler had vowed that if and when Bar Agricole returned, it will be a extra equitable office.
To that finish, whereas that is now only a single location, Bar Agricole is not only a cocktail bar and restaurant. As he’d earlier talked about earlier than the pandemic even rolled in, Vogler is launching a single-origin spirits model, and the brand new area at 1540 Mission Street will home the retail area and achievement heart for the spirits firm as nicely — with an eight-seat bar in that area that can finally function overflow area for the restaurant at evening, however won’t be in use when the restaurant opens for reservations solely this week.
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Vogler plans to launch the corporate with an inventory of 9 Bar Agricole-branded spirits this fall, although it is unclear how the retail side will work — or if there can be a daytime tasting room setup alongside the traces of St. George Spirits in Alameda. (Vogler hinted final yr that one spirit he’ll be promoting is a seasonal gin collaboration with St. George.)
The kitchen on the new Bar Agricole is being run by Balla, who beforehand received accolades at Bar Tartine — which closed in late 2016 — and chef Will Napoli, who had labored at Bar Agricole’s previous incarnation on eleventh Street.
The new menu consists of some very Bar Tartine-sounding dishes like eggplant with sesame ricotta and paprika; and halibut with inexperienced strawberries and preserved lemon. There can also be a broccoli raab flatbread with farmer’s cheese and cashew salsa verde, and a dish of grilled rooster with inexperienced olive-shishito pepper salsa.
The glossy, minimalist, wood-paneled area was designed by Seth Boor, and seems to be a really Zen oasis off of busy Mission Street.
Bar Agricole 2.0 debuts Wednesday, and reservations are actually out there right here.
Bar Agricole – 1540 Mission Street at South Van Ness – Open Tuesday to Saturday, 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.