District, the wine bar near 3rd and Townsend in SoMa, just opened a second location in Old Oakland that features not just wine but a 40-bottle whiskey list. And today, on the eve of the Kentucky Derby (yes, we also know it's the eve of Cinco de Mayo, but hopefully you all know how to make a margarita) we bring you District's twist on the classic mint julep, the Derby cocktail of choice. more ›

The drinks are kind of the star over at six-month-old Wo Hing General Store in the Mission, though many have said some nice things about the food (it's good mind you, but we love those drinks!). And today brings with it the first update to bar star Brooke Arthur's cocktail menu, which includes a couple of new full-strength concoctions, as well as a list of four brand new, lower alcohol spritzers that are a perfect alternative to beer or wine when it's time to eat. more ›

New Fifth Floor bar manager Brian Means has just unveiled an entirely new and rather extensive cocktail list at the tucked-away bar inside the Palomar Hotel. (See all the details over here at Alcademics.) There's plenty of kitchen magic happening with some of these drinks — tinctures and gastriques and such that you may not want to try at home, and are perhaps best tasted at the bar. more ›

Recently reopened down in Pacifica is Moonraker restaurant, which was indeed named for the 1979 James Bond film, was closed for many years before brothers Shawn and Gary McNamara came along to revive it late last year. more ›

Tonight, Terry Zwigoff in the house at S.F. Art Institute, images of San Francisco's past on the screen at CounterPULSE, and cocktails made with ingredients from the farmers market at the Ferry Building. more ›

If you haven't heard, Zero Zero is a good place for drinks, and food. Not only are the pizzas solid and the small plates excellent, they make a mean, well balanced cocktail. One brown-liquor concoction on the current menu (all of which is pretty interesting) is called the Park City. It's a rye-based drink that comes out a golden color with the addition of ginger liqueur and a little bitter hit from Cynar (an artichoke-based aperitif from Italy that you should really get to know if you haven't). more ›

The Page has been a neighborhood staple at the crux of Divisadero and the Lower Haight since around the same time both neighborhoods started their well-publicized turnarounds. While the lovely neon sign out front proclaims that they'll proudly serve you a cocktail, the bar's clientele tends to be more of the beer and whiskey variety — and it's obvious the management knows this, judging by their well-curated list of each. For Beer Week the bar recently tapped a keg of hard-to-find Pliny the Younger, but our go-to order is a sample of whatever's pouring for the rotating Whiskey of the Month. For February, it has been a nice oaky bourbon, but it may be a smokey Scotch or a straight rye — anything in the whiskey family is fair game here, but it's always priced to move at $5. more ›

The Financial District's noted restaurant of glitz and glamour, Quince, just concocted several new cocktails to coincide with Oscar season. (Pst, the Academy Awards fall on Sunday, February 26th.) Most of the drinks sound irresistible like the Chinatown Collins (a gin and lime brew) or the Casablanca Cobbler (with quince-infused cognac, lemon, Meyer lemon tincture and sparkling wine). Yet a couple brews, based off of Two Women and Papillon, are unusual cinema choices for festive cocktails. (The former film is about a mother and daughter's brutal gang-rape by Moroccan soldiers; the latter involves Dustin Hoffman famously shoving something up his butt.) more ›

Against everyone's better judgement a bartender at Swing Wine Bar in Olympia, Washington has created an unholy cold weather cocktail that sounds like something out of a Paula Deen fever dream. The concoction takes the a shot of Fernet Branca — the unofficial aperitif of San Francisco — and infuses it with spiced butter to create, you guessed it: hot buttered Fernet. more ›

B Restaurant & Bar has been a bright cocktail oasis in Old Oakland for quite a few years now. They've got a new cocktail menu these days, and the concoction below is one of the highlights — a mixture of tequila, sage, lime, and habanero shrub, making it kind of an herbacious, spicy margarita. more ›

Over in Oakland, chef-restaurateur Daniel Patterson has just opened a fourth new restaurant, after just recently opening Plum Bar next to his one-year-old Plum at Webster and Broadway (he also owns the Michelin two-star Coi in North Beach). Haven is a New American bistro of sorts with an emphasis shared dishes, and the chef is the talented Kim Alter, who won some raves for a brief stint earlier this year at Plate Shop in Sausalito. more ›

So, check it out: There's a new restaurant in central SoMa, directly across Mission Street from the 9th Circuit, and it's called AQ (1085 Mission Street between 6th and 7th). They're taking the frequently heard "seasonal" thing to an extreme, swapping out decoration (lighting, bar top, foliage on several 'trees' in the space), glassware, the whole food menu, and even the servers' uniforms as each season changes. But just this week they launched their cocktail program, from the mind of bar manager Tim Zohn, and we already have a favorite beverage on the tight, ten-drink list. more ›

What better time of year to do a little hotel-bar drinking around Union Square than December, right? It's about the only place in the city that feels truly Christmas-y, if you ask us, and the hotel lobbies are all decked out with enormous trees, and gingerbread structures, and whathaveyou. So we checked back in at the newly revamped Starlight Room, atop the Sir Francis Drake, and found this delicious new punch on the menu that's perfect for the season. Bar manager Joel Teitelbaum infuses his own apple-cinnamon gin, and adds a few more fall-wintery-spicy things to create a deliciously balanced little drink. more ›

Over in Oakland an exciting new cocktail option is opening tonight: Plum Bar (2214 Broadway), from the minds of chef Daniel Patterson and bar star Scott Beattie (Artisanal Cocktails). The place is right next door to Plum, the casual restaurant Patterson opened over a year ago. more ›

Not that we have any right to complain (it's been over five years since we last blacked out at this fine music venue), but Polk Street rock 'n' roll/hustler staple Kimo's (1351 Polk) is on the market, and its future doesn't look good. more ›

What do you know! There is such a thing as a piña colada that isn't thick with Coco Lopez, clocking in at 1000 calories and sickly sweet! Brooke Arthur, who's created drinks and tended bar at two of the city's more high-profile establishments, Range and Prospect, has just started work as the bar manager at Charles Phan's new Wo Hing General Store -- a Chinese concept in what was once the original Slanted Door space, at 584 Valencia Street. more ›

Opening tonight in Hayes Valley is a new wine bar/cocktail bar/cafe/book exchange called Two Sisters Bar & Books (579 Hayes Street). The sisters in question, partners in the business with one of their husbands, modeled the concept on "an incredible bookstore in Krakow; a quintessential coffeehouse in Vienna; a neighborhood bar in Paris; the young, urban, do-it-yourself restaurant scene in Brooklyn; and our Northern California roots." And the vibe is very Europe-meets-Brooklyn, with a tight small plates menu of comforting California food, and a cocktail list which is -- of necessity because they're waiting on a full liquor license -- all vermouth- and beer-based at the moment. more ›

Yes, we're getting a bit of what we consider summer this weekend. It won't be hot, but it will be nice. Drink it up while you can, kids, and while doing so, drink up! One appropriate tipple would be this drink, the Endless Summer, on the menu currently at Plate Shop in Sausalito -- where the food side is being covered by former 1550 Hyde guys Peter Erickson and Kent Liggett. more ›

Closing out SF Cocktail Week on Sunday was a party over in Alameda at the St. George distillery, in celebration of the release of their three new gins which we mentioned vis a vis our last SFist Drink. The gins are so good and noteworthy, that they get another mention here with what was our favorite cocktail of the bunch at Sunday's party (which was also a mini competition of sorts for a bevy of East Bay bartenders, all challenged with creating a drink with one of the three gins). more ›

St. George Spirits, the Alameda-based distillery best known for Hangar One vodka and a very expensive but very delicious absinthe, has just come out with three distinctive new gins. SFist had a chance to taste them at a Cocktail Week preview event a few weeks back, and we can report that they rock, and they aren't like any gins you know. Though juniper is generally the dominant botanical flavor in most gins, it plays more of a background role in each of these. (You can taste them for yourself at St. George's closing event of Cocktail Week, next Sunday, September 25.) more ›

San Francisco loves a little tipple here and there (as if you hadn't noticed). And since we've ridden out this fancy cocktail movement until reaching a critical mass of artisan shakers and perfect-ice-cultivators, it makes sense that we'd celebrate that strong livered culture with a whole week of sloshy events. Thus: next week, from September 19th - 25th, the Barbary Coast Conservancy of the American Cocktail hosts the fifth annual San Francisco Cocktail Week which involves a lot of post-secondary cocktail education and a slew of cocktail friendly dinners. more ›

Trace just opened over at the W Hotel on Third Street, replacing XYZ and bringing some new design cred to the space -- it was designed by acclaimed residential architect Stanley Saitowitz, who used as his inspiration an Ambrose Bierce poem that describes San Francisco as "a point on a map of fog." more ›

Harry Denton's Starlight Room reopens at the top of the Sir Francis Drake after a brief renovation next Tuesday, and for this week's Friday cocktail we bring you a new creation from newly hired bar manager Joel Teitelbaum, most recently of Zero Zero fame. more ›

MUSIC/ART:The Mission Cultural Center for the Arts presents Talking Art and Music with Pete Escovedo, in which Escovedo will talk about his esteemed musical career and his lifelong interest in the visual arts with radio personality Sterling James (often heard on KBLX). (6 p.m., Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission Street) more ›

Last week marked the opening of a new watering hole in the Tenderloin named after Jasper O'Farrell himself, called Jasper's Corner Tap and Kitchen (the former Ponzu at Taylor and O'Farrell). Among the new bars that could easily have been in contention for one of our top ten favorite $10 cocktail spots, this is definitely one, and bar manager Kevin Diedrich hails most recently from Burritt Room, where he created a great cocktail program and sophisticated vibe. more ›

As you know, we here at SFist enjoy a stiff drink, and quite often we enjoy the kind of stiff drink that involves some heavy muddling and straining, esoteric tinctures, and housemade bitters. No, we're not cocktail geeks or snobs exactly, but a decade or so in this town has a way of raising your standards. more ›

You may have heard about this vaguely (but not explicitly) Muppet-themed bar that just opened in Mission, in the old Baobab space at 19th. It's called Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. They have late-night, drunk-friendly food options, Fernet on tap, and a cocktail menu with a growing signature list. Bar manager Mark DeVito today shares with us his favorite of the bunch, the eponymously named Mayhem. And yes, it does have Fernet in it. Just a touch. more ›

Some of the best drinks are the simplest, and while the artisanal cocktail thing has tended to leave vodka drinking to the amateurs, the fact remains that it's an easy way to to turn a few fresh ingredients into a cocktail, without the addition of too many extra flavors. What's that you say? You like layers of complexity in every cocktail? Yeah, well, sometimes we just want a vodka lemonade, alright? more ›

Just open this week at 1 Yerba Buena Lane (that alleyway next to the Four Season between 3rd and 4th, on Market) is Bluestem Brasserie. It's a big, airy space with a great upstairs terrace, overlooking Market Street. In addition to their lunch and dinner menus, the place has a growing cocktail program form bar manager Matthew Michel-Cleeve. more ›

Since it's now, surprisingly, already Memorial Day weekend, you might as well celebrate the passage of time and the dawn of summer with this twist on a traditional English country summer refresher: the Pimm's Cup. The version at Range, created by bar manager Jeff Lyon, features the addition of a ginger snap liqueur for added spice notes, but it's just as refreshing as the original, long beloved classic. Try this and a bevy of other inspired, market-fresh drinks at one of our favorite restaurant bars in town. more ›