Normally, at golden hour on a beautiful summer evening, a restaurant’s patio would tempt me. But not at ROLi, a new “modern European” spot at Chapel and Olive, where the windows showed me things were even prettier inside.
The bar, a magnet that happens to be shaped like a magnet, is more than pretty. It’s showstopping, an amphitheater built from thick cloudy stone streaked with acid green vapor, its form mirrored above by a literal mirror canopy and echoed around by a row of velvet suit-blue and dress shoe-brown chairs.
As I tried one of them on along the bar’s lower curve, I heard the diners next to me raving about another looker: the Strawberry Letter ($15), a “gin bowl” made with strawberry-infused gin, rhubarb liqueur, sparkling wine and tonic. So I started there. Aromas from a spiky haircut of mint and the lusciously natural-smelling strawberry gin were extremely inviting. The palate was more challenging, with the quinine from the tonic biting too hard around each sip. The middle, though, was glorious—sweet, bright, breezy—and fortunately, those bitter bookends dissolved as the ice melted down, taking all my qualms with them. Next time, I’ll let the drink sit for five or 10 before tucking in.
I turned next to the advice of my bartender, Mason Rosenbaum, who recommended the King Calypso ($15). Served in a lowball with a glow-ball of imported ice and made from a dizzy of stirred ingredients—roasted Japanese tea-infused five-year rum, a separate sipping rum, oloroso sherry, banana liqueur, demerara syrup and lime bitters—it’s a “seasonal” offering I hope gets a promotion to permanent. The nose gave me lime and brown sugar, and the palate had me thinking of flan, bananas foster and Werther’s candy. Yet, out of many ingredients and reminding of many things, it produced exactly one sublime flavor encompassing them all, a supremely unified dessert in a glass.
Daring fate to top perfection, I returned to Rosenbaum for another suggestion, which is when he asked a question all barflies dream to hear: Did I want something on the menu… or off? Choosing “off,” as one must, led me to my first 20th Century ($15), a shaken cocktail of gin, Lillet Blanc, white crème de cacao and lemon juice. Served in a chilled coupe, the nose was like lemon Italian ice, with a richer, more savory note that I couldn’t be sure wasn’t coming off my neighbors’ latest dinner course. On the palate, the crème de cacao added body and contrast, while the Lillet Blanc deep-tissue-massaged the lemon. Rosenbaum called it a “classic” cocktail, albeit one I’d never heard of and which, he conceded, drinkers have largely forgotten. That’s too bad, seeing as it was totally delicious.
I can’t, from my cocktail night, speak to the food at ROLi, though the fact that the dining room was full in August at 8 p.m. on a Monday is its own recommendation. But I can say that the drinks alone were a feast.
Written and photographed by Dan Mims. Image 1 features the King Calypso. Image 2 features the Strawberry Letter. Image 3 features the 20th Century.
