LEAH RUMACK
From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Saturday, Dec. 22, 2007 12:00AM EST Last updated on Saturday, Mar. 14, 2009 1:41AM EDT
Reposado Bar & Lounge
138 Ossington Ave., Toronto
416-532-6474
Ossington Avenue between Dundas and Queen is fast becoming the go-to zone for tipsy downtown hipsters of all ages.
And while grungy twentysomethings are busy face-planting into the furniture down the street at Sweaty Betty's, Reposado Bar & Lounge is the place where the grown-up artists, musicians, filmies and scribes in the neighbourhood can go without hearing the dreaded phrase, "Facebook me!"
Like a groovy little box transplanted from the Lower East Side, Reposado is dark, sexy, jovial and, oh yes, features 34 different kinds of tequila.
"We just love tequila," explains co-owner Sandy Macfadyen (his wife, Catherine, a prop stylist, is the bar's other half) about their sudden yen to go into the bar business. "We go to Mexico every year and not many places carry good tequila over here."
Reposado isn't the joint for your first-year dorm tequila - though they have that too.
Instead, try a shot of Don Julio Real ($42), organic tequilas ($9 and up) or throw back some Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia ($22). Converts behind the bar can edify you about the precise differences - the aging, the herbs, the flavours of caramel, chocolate and coffee! Or try a Plata Martini ($10) - made from tequila, you say? - concocted with superpremium silver tequila.
A selection of wines, bubbly and beer round out the drinkin', and a small tapas menu offsets the quick stumble into one's cups tequila famously elicits.
"So many people's first experiences with tequila weren't good," Macfadyen says with a smile. "We're here to change all that."
Plata Martini
1½ ounces of silver Tres Generaciones tequila
½ ounce Noilly Pratt
1 slice fired orange rind
Shake tequila and Noilly Pratt with ice. Pour into a martini glass. Pinch orange rind and light with a match. Drop rind into glass.
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