Changemakers
Change Makers
A Look at Local Cocktail Culture
BY LAURA OAKLEY
PHOTOS MICHELLE DOUCETTE
The entire restaurant industry–and its customers–continue to be swept up in the momentum of cocktail excellence.
Just over a decade ago, something at Halifax’s bars and restaurants began to shift. A handful of local bartenders started pushing the boundaries on knowledge, expertise, and ingredients when mastering the classics and creating new cocktails. The energy ushered in a new era of what cocktail culture in Halifax looked like. The explosion of local distillers, craft breweries and wineries over that same period—plus an expansion of the products available to order from around the globe—has given our bar teams the most fun ocean playground to experiment with and perfect their craft. There’s never been a better time to order a cocktail in Halifax.
GOING BACK TO HALIFAX’S BURGEONING COCKTAIL SCENE
Jeffrey Van Horne and Matthew Boyle met behind the bar at The Bicycle Thief on the Halifax waterfront in its early days. Van Horne started there when it opened in 2011, a high-profile destination serving upwards of 300 people per night. “I think that was a time where we were able to carve a name for ourselves because we were making craft cocktails at a very high volume and bringing it to the masses,” says Van Horne. The cocktail list had fresh, homemade ingredients—something most diners in Halifax hadn’t seen before.
As for Boyle, he did the classic fake it ‘till you make it move to end up behind the bar at The Bicycle Thief. “I went down on a Saturday and met with Stephanie [Bertossi] and told her I could bartend, which I couldn't,” says Boyle. He started that very evening. “I got in the way. And shortly thereafter was sent home by [Van Horne] and told to come back Monday morning,” says Boyle. “Monday morning he started to teach me the fundamentals and that was really inspirational for me to see and think—wow, there's so much more to this than I thought.”
Through those formative years at The Bicycle Thief, creating elevated cocktails became the number one goal. During that same period, Jenner Cormier was making a name for himself behind the bar at The Middle Spoon and Noble, and Shane Beehan was earning a following at Field Guide. Both Van Horne and Beehan would later move on to bartending at Lot Six, which became a top cocktail destination immediately after opening in 2015, primarily due to the two bartenders’ followings. Halifax was now a city where you could trail your favourite bartender.
Jeff Van Horne and Matt Boyle - Dear Friend Bar
THE CLEVER BARKEEP CATERING SERVICES OPEN UP SHOP
After a stint in Ottawa, Boyle returned to Halifax looking for a way to bartend while balancing his home life with a partner who worked nine-to-five. So, he and Van Horne started The Clever Barkeep in 2016, a private, upscale cocktail and bar service for special events, weddings and the like. “I thought about a way to create a life that included hospitality without necessarily working until the wee hours of the morning,” says Boyle. “[Van Horne] was getting hit up a lot to do events for corporations or birthday parties.
I tagged along one time. We were working at a corporation's umpteenth birthday serving a signature cocktail. We were looking around the room and realized this could be something.” The two worked tirelessly to build the business—just the two of them, no other staff, for years. “We went to trade shows, went to wedding shows, tried to meet as many food caterers as we could to tell them we exist,” says Boyle.
After running the Clever Barkeep out of their own homes for three years, it became clear that the business needed its own space. “I had four chest freezers in my basement that wasn't even five feet tall, and we would keep ice in there for all of our events,” says Van Horne. “We finally realized that we needed to bite the bullet and get a brick-and-mortar space. In August 2019, we leased the space where Dear Friend is now, and that was going to be our headquarters.” Initially, the space was supposed to be for event prep and special events, but the pair quickly realized if they were paying for all this overhead, they should just open a bar. And so Dear Friend, a cocktail bar offering small plates, came to be on July 4, 2020.
CANNED COCKTAILS
“The canned cocktails came out of COVID,” says Van Horne. After being forced to shut down multiple times during lockdowns, the pair were desperate to get their cocktails into the hands of their customers. “We couldn't do what we had been working towards for so long. We had lost a sense of our purpose,” says Van Horne. “To start a business that could protect against [lockdowns] and was more product-based was natural for us.” And so The Clever Barkeep canned cocktails were born, once again from hands-on hard work.
“We taught ourselves about carbonation and cans. We got our hands on a hand sealer. We manually sealed all of our cans. We got our designer to make all the logos,” says Boyle. “We did everything by hand.” Van Horne and Boyle made the canned cocktails to order at their Portland Street location. The restrictions at the time meant customers had to order food, but that didn’t stop them from growing a decent customer base. So they thought: let’s do this on a larger scale.
The duo spent a couple of years recipe testing to ensure the quality of larger batches; then, they partnered with Propeller Brewing for their first run. Now, they’re working with Good Robot Brewing, which operates a state-of-the-art production facility in nearby Elmsdale. The Clever Barkeep brand has three canned products currently on the market: pineapple mojito, Paloma and cucumber rickey.
Lingjie Xue - Dear Friend Bar
PASSING IT ON TO THE NEXT GENERATION
With lockdowns and restrictions behind them, Van Horne, Boyle and their team at Dear Friend have settled into running a successful cocktail bar. “The support that we show to one another and our teachings here has allowed us to create bartenders that are going on to winning cocktail competitions and keep challenging us to be better,” says Van Horne. He is behind the bar one night per week but focuses on passing on the knowledge and reins to the up-and-coming bartenders. “In order for the cocktail culture and Halifax to be what it is now, you have to be able to share the information and pass on the things that we've all learned.”
Ben Westlake - Kyo Kitchen & Bar
HALIFAX HIGHLIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION
In downtown Halifax, Kyo Kitchen & Bar executes an outstanding cocktail program driven by lesser-known Japanese spirits. Japanese rice vodka, cherry blossom gin and yuzu feature in the cocktails at Kyo, alongside the extensive Japanese whisky and sake collections. Assistant manager and bartender Emily Naccarato says their cocktail list stands out because the team is encouraged to draw on personal interests to develop their ideas. “Myself and the other bartender, Ben, are currently going through some Japanese video games—Sonic, Nintendo—and looking at what kind of cocktails we can make from that,” says Naccarato. “For Mario, we might take Japanese and Italian and fuse the two to create something unique.”
“It’s a team environment when we change our cocktail list, which we do about three times a year,” says Naccarato. “Everybody who works here and even the kitchen staff has the opportunity to pitch ideas or experiment with different liquors. Everybody will sit down and they’ll present their cocktail almost like a cocktail competition.”
Keegan McGregor - Highwayman
At Spanish-inspired Highwayman Restaurant & Bar in downtown Halifax, bar manager Keegan McGregor works with his team to offer eight classic cocktails and create a dozen original drinks for each drink list. “We strive on consistency and quality to help teach the palate, to help customers understand what a good drink is, what something should taste like,” says McGregor. For the unique creations, “I might have a very simple riff on a classic drink or some of them we might need help with,” says McGregor. “It’s very much a team environment. We can all learn from one another.”
To stay on top of industry trends, McGregor says they follow what friends and colleagues in the bar scene across Canada are up to, attend conferences, and participate in cocktail competitions. “This year at Tales of the Cocktail, ourselves, Dear Friend, Bar Kismet, and Ostrich Club, we're all nominated for best international restaurant and bar,” says McGregor. “Halifax is making that list, which is huge, because for years we were always overshadowed by Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, and now we're finally getting the recognition.”
Kendra Hofrichter - Junction Sixteen
FARM-TO-GLASS IN THE ANNAPOLIS VALLEY
Founders House Dining in Annapolis Royal is a fine dining destination offering an ever-changing seven-course tasting menu driven by stunning locally-grown produce, farms and other suppliers. When approaching the cocktail program, Brent Goertzen, maître d', says there is "a mentality of Nova Scotia first, then Canada, then North America, then the world." First and foremost, they seek out the best locally-produced spirits and build from there. The program follows the seasons, too, so the cocktail list is updated every six to eight weeks.
“We're very much about foraging. The team and I went out two weeks ago to harvest sea asparagus on the salt flats below my house,” says Goertzen. “And we pickled those as a garnish for our Caesar.” The team can do these kinds of activities seasonally, keeping up an innovative, surprising, delicious cocktail list that matches the food menu’s hyper-local farm-to-table theme.
For those who can’t make it to the Annapolis Valley, you can find the talented bartenders from Founder’s House and other restaurants mentioned on this list at Curated’s Halifax Cocktail Festival on Jan. 20, 2024.
