Bar none Bar none

The best cocktails in the land

Tel Aviv's Imperial Craft Bar is rated No. 17 in 50 Best Bars competition

By Jessica Steinberg
  • Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
 13 October 2015, 4:13 pm
A view of the small, intimate bar at Imperial Craft Bar, now listed at 17th in The World's Top 50 Bars (Courtesy Imperial Craft)

Need a drink? Who doesn’t? Grab a cocktail at Tel Aviv’s Imperial Craft Bar, which just placed 17th on the World’s 50 Best Bars Awards 2015 held last week in London, and was the highest new entry on the list.

The three Israeli bartenders who own it have always striven to make their cocktails into an art form and to offer a good guest experience, said co-owner Bar Shira.

And yes, that is his real name.

“Yep, Bar the bartender, it’s been funny from the first day we started,” said Shira.

He and his two partners, Gilad Livnat and Dror Alterovich, have created more than 120 new aperitifs, working with various syrups and ingredients to forge flavors common to their Asian, Colonial-inspired kitchen.

Some recent favorites have included the Colonel Mustard, an unusual combination of gin, Campari, orange liqueur, pink grapefruit and a mustard and cinnamon syrup. Or the Spicy India, another gin-based cocktail with orange and herb spirits, egg white and almonds mixed with classic Indian spices of cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and dark chocolate, a kind of gin-based Chai masala, said Shira.

In order to be tested and ranked in The World’s 50 Best Bars 2015, the bar must be open for business and have been visited in the past two years by members of the panel of 412 bartenders. The panel members can’t have any financial interest in the bars being selected. They choose the five favorite bars they’ve visited in the last two years.

Imperial Craft, said Shira, is a small, intimate place with room for just 30 customers, and is situated in the Imperial Hotel on HaYarkon Street in Tel Aviv, a small lodge owned by the family of one of the partners.

The three bartenders also own La Otra, the Mexican and Caribbean-inspired restaurant at the hotel, and will be opening Imperial Red, a wine and spirits bar at the Cramim Resort & Spa outside Jerusalem later this year.

Imperial Craft is so small, however, that after being asked numerous times to handle the bartending for weddings and parties, the owners started a new project, the Imperial Bottle service. They create miniature bottles of branded cocktails, and can provide up to 400 for an event, at a cost of NIS 23 to NIS 35 ($5.99 to $9) per bottle.

Imperial Craft Bar, 66 Hayarkon Street, Tel Aviv, open from 6 p.m. until the last customer. For reservations, call 054-476-4464.

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