Most cocktail bars are run by bartenders. True Laurel is run by a restaurant, and once you know that, everything about the drinks list makes sense. It is the bar project of the team behind Lazy Bear, the Mission tasting-menu restaurant, and it uses fine-dining kitchen technique — fermenting, clarifying, infusing, and putting things to use that a normal bar would throw away — in service of drinks that are still, in the end, drinks you want two of.
True Laurel's list turns over constantly because it is built from whatever the kitchen has, so the drink somebody recommended to you may already be gone. Ask Karpo what is pouring in the Mission tonight.
Why the drinks taste unusual
The operating idea is that a bar attached to a serious kitchen has access to ingredients and processes that a standalone bar does not. Off-cuts, trim, husks, shells and stems that would otherwise be waste become syrups, infusions and cordials. Techniques borrowed from the kitchen — clarification, fat-washing, controlled fermentation — turn up in drinks where you would not normally meet them.
The result is a list where the ingredients read strangely and the drinks taste balanced. That is the important part. A lot of technically ambitious bars produce things that are interesting to think about and unpleasant to finish. This is not one of those; the ambition is in the construction and the goal is still a good drink.
How to order from a list you do not understand
The list is written for people who are willing to be surprised, which means a fair number of ingredients on it will be unfamiliar. The efficient approach is to ignore the ingredients and read the shape: tell the bartender a base spirit and whether you want it sharp, bitter, rich or refreshing, and let them route you. The staff here are unusually good at that and are not precious about it.
If you want a benchmark rather than an adventure, ask for a classic. A bar operating at this level will make a very good martini or daiquiri, and ordering one is a legitimate way to measure the room before committing to something with three ingredients you have never heard of.
The food is not an afterthought
This is the second thing that separates it from a normal cocktail bar. The bar snacks come out of a real kitchen and are worth ordering as a meal rather than as ballast — small, sharp, salty things designed to be eaten alongside drinks rather than to fill you up, and executed with the same care as the drinks. It is entirely reasonable to treat True Laurel as dinner if dinner means five or six small plates and three cocktails.
That also changes the calculus on timing. A bar you can eat properly at is a better early-evening destination than a late-night one, and the room genuinely works from about six.
The happy hour question
Bars of this type run early-evening offers that change, and they are the single best-value way into a room where the full-price drinks are priced like the labour that goes into them. The practical advice is to check what the current offer is and what hours it covers before you go, because it is exactly the sort of thing that shifts with the seasons and is not worth guessing at. If there is one running, arriving at the start of it and staying through is the correct move.
The other value note: the drinks here are strong and complex, and three is a real evening. This is not a bar where you are buying rounds at pace.
What it is competing with
It is worth placing this bar against the Mission's other options, because the neighbourhood has a lot of them and they are not interchangeable. There are dive bars that are cheap and loud and exactly what they say. There are cocktail bars built around a dim room and a moustache. True Laurel is a third thing: technically ambitious, brightly lit, and attached to a kitchen, which means it is the one to pick when you want the drinks to be genuinely interesting and you also want to eat.
The corollary is that it is not the right choice for a cheap round with six people or for a dark corner. Matching the bar to the night is most of the skill in drinking in this city, and this one is for a table of two to four who are paying attention.
The room
The space is on Alabama Street in the Mission, set slightly off the busiest strips, and it is bright and green and modern rather than dark and speakeasy-ish — a deliberate rejection of the dim-and-leathery cocktail bar template. There is a proper bar to sit at, which is where you want to be, and tables for groups. It gets loud when full but never oppressive.
Because it is a block or two off Valencia and Mission, it does not catch the same volume of foot traffic, which means walking in is genuinely possible at hours when the bars on the main strips have queues. The walk from 24th Street BART is about ten minutes through a residential stretch, and from the 16th Street side it is a similar distance through a busier one — either is pleasant and both are a great deal less trouble than trying to park a car within three blocks of here on a Friday.
Practical notes
True Laurel is on Alabama Street in the Mission, San Francisco, and comes from the team behind the Michelin-starred Lazy Bear. The drinks use kitchen technique and kitchen by-products, so the list changes often and the ingredients read unfamiliar — describe the shape of drink you want and let the bartender route you, or order a classic as a benchmark. The bar food is genuinely good and enough to make a meal of. Early-evening offers change, so check what is currently running before you arrive. Sit at the bar. It is a couple of blocks off the main Mission strips, which makes walking in easier than at comparable rooms nearby.
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know whether the bar has seats right now, what the current early-evening offer is and what is on the list this week? Ask Karpo for a live read on the Mission, the best hour to walk over, and a nearby backup if it is already full.
