The Speak-Easy Making Speak Easy
Apotheke.
Translation: Pharmacy
I have never associated drinking with health, let alone associate it with any medicinal properties. Drinking was a skill I learnt aged fifteen; a technique in persuading the shop assistant you were really eighteen, the tactical choice of chaser to balance the cheap vodka and getting wasted as quickly as possible. Drinking was one way to have a good time with your friends, a provider of some liquid confidence to kiss a boy, and a way to forget. As a result of years of teenage drinking, I now realise that I have never actually enjoyed alcohol. It was simply something I associated with getting drunk. Alcohol was something I did, not something I drank.
Last March, my close school friend from London was desperate to try a new destination spot, Apotheke.
“Soph, it’s meant to be really different you know, like an experience.”
Driving through downtown LA, I was sceptical. A bar is a bar. Just another place to find a mojito with so much brown sugar that it gets stuck in my straw.
But, Apotheke is most certainly a destination space. Located next to a railway amidst some gravel car parks and exposed brick, one does not stumble upon it. You have to know. Which is why, when we turned up one month after opening, I was shocked to see it packed.
The evening was a successful one. I was not drunk for starters, nor was I hungover the day after. The whole thing felt curated: the music, the lighting, even the smell. And there were no cosmopolitans, G+Ts or vodka cranberries in sight. Instead, drinks sounded more like something I would find in a yoga retreat – except less green powder and more obscure liquids. I left perplexed. I drank and enjoyed it. I drank and didn’t wake up hating myself.
Fast forward a year, I was yet to find an experience to match that unanticipated night. So, being the opportunist that I am, I emailed Luiz Tuazon, Apotheke’s Experience Director to find out just why I couldn’t replicate it.
“You wouldn’t just walk up the street and be like there it is,” Luiz tells me as we sip on a funky pink cocktail on the patio of the space. “People come to find us, we don’t tailor to other people.”
Apotheke may not tailor towards its clientele, but it’s certainly a tailored experience. Walking into the sister bar of Apotheke New York which opened a decade before it’s LA counterpart, I am met with a strong smell of something that I can’t quite put my finger on. I try weaning information about its origin out of the staff, but like everything in the club space, it’s extremely private and made exclusively for them.
From the lighting to the carefully curated music each night, including a live jazz band on Tuesdays and day parties on Sundays, Apotheke prides itself on being an all-encompassing experience. Sipping on a vodka-based cocktail infused with charcoal in house, I got speaking with Nick, the creator of the diverse and ever-changing drinks menu.
“The base of all the drinks on the menu is experience,” Nick tells me. “From the Cleveland sage which reminds me of the trails near my childhood house to the herbs that we grow at our on-site garden, each ingredient has a purpose and a memory.”
Each ingredient also has to be seasonal, which explains the rotating menu with ingredients ranging from mizute to beets.
We also talked about the health benefits of alcohol, something I am incredibly sceptical about. As we move onto our second drink, Nick describes how, traditionally, alcohol was used to extract the natural properties from herbs and how original bitters were in fact a cure for stomach ailments. I stopped him mid-sentence, making the seemingly obvious point that alcohol has an incredible amount of calories.
Nick makes no effort to shut me down. “I’m not saying these drinks are healthy, but they are healthier.” Indeed, each drink has a medicinal property and has greater power to absorb the benefits of the ingredients than tea. Luiz agreed. “The hangover is the result of too much alcohol and that’s on the person,” he chimed in.
As I moved onto my third drink containing an odd foam with a chickpea-esque consistency (sounds gross but it was heavenly), I was little tipsy but had found new clarity about drinking. I have always been unapologetically pretentious about my food -- always the one to find the hottest brunch spots or to scour out the rarest powder to add to my smoothies -- but bar culture has always been a step behind food. It is only now that the public are considering what they are drinking as much as what is on their plate. It’s an exciting time to watch organic go into the glass and to watch a culture gradually shift. Apotheke may be one of the first to venture into this new world of adult beverages but it certainly won’t be the last.
By Sophia Parvizi-Wayne
Duke Student, leader of national campaign on mental health, Cross Country All-ACC, fashion alchemist, Huffington Post writer, and all-around world-runner
Photography by Alexandra Davis
Special thanks to the Apotheke LA team for sharing their hypnotizing hideaway.
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