SALOONS | Chris Barnett
Barely 48 hours after seasoned drinkmeister Reza Esmaili took over the helm of the listing and listless Long Bar and Bistro on the corner of Fillmore and Clay on June 29, he started shaking up the joint.
He whacked one to four bucks off most of the drink and food prices, hired a tall, sultry bartender named Doc and started opening on Monday nights and at noon for lunch on the weekends. He kept the kitchen fired up an extra hour — until 11 p.m. — from Thursday through Saturday for late night noshers. He stripped the shades off a row of upper windows to let in more daylight. And Esmaili was just warming up.
Slimming down the menu, he jettisoned a number of dishes, including the $27 grilled Angus New York steak and folded in replacements such as fresh Oregon bay shrimp with yellow corn cakes in a lime aoli sauce for $13. Other recent debuts include spaghetti and meatballs, $12, and tortilla soup, $6. More traditional menu offerings will be added soon, such as a chicken pot pie and a Cobb salad.
A serious cocktailian, Esmaili was trailblazing at the late but edgy Gordon’s House of Fine Eats with fresh juices, robust flavors, aromatic additives and classic cocktails. Already he’s upgraded the Long Bar’s pours and potables with rare, small batch and super premium whiskies, tequilas, gins, rums and vodkas. And he still cut the drink prices. All domestic beers are a dollar cheaper at $4 each, and Speakeasy Big Daddy is now on draft. He’s also fiddling with the notion of having fresh dry and rose vermouth on tap.
More changes are rolling around in his brain. He wants to add a nightly happy hour and essentially create two bars under one roof. “Up front, we’re all high tables and bar stools and the scene is livelier,” he says. “But in the back, we’ll have more intimate seating for conversation.”
Meantime, the dark, woody decor will be lightened up with some new and brighter colors of paint, but the virtual forest of Honduran mahogany will remain untouched.
Esmaili, who’s 36 and has spent 22 of those years working in the city’s food and drink emporiums, seems to live and breathe the Long Bar. He lives two blocks away and claims to sleep only four hours a night. The rest of the time he’s in his new saloon, schmoozing with customers, tinkering with the menu, redesigning and refining the space in his mind. He’s wants tall green plants inside and has already added more comfortable tables and chairs outside.
“I want to make it more approachable, more hospitable,” he says.
Esmaili kept the entire staff that worked with the Long Bar’s former owner, Alan Walsh. And Andre Lavallier, a personable bartender who’s logged a year behind the plank, sounds happy with the leadership change. “Reza’s enthusiastic,” he says. “He’s a man with a plan.”
INSIDE SCOOP: A bar star takes on Fillmore
EARLIER: A clubby spot for locals
Filed under: Food, Drink & Lodging