“A neighborhood bar, that’s exactly what we want to be,” says Ryan Fitzgerald, managing partner of San Francisco’s ABV. “It’s a place where you go to be comfortable.” And that comfort can include great cocktails, he adds.
Courtesy ABV
ABV opened as a bar and restaurant in 2014, the brainchild of Fitzgerald, Todd Smith, and Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud, all three veterans of the Bay area bar scene with experience that intersects like a Venn diagram of hospitality. Reichborn-Kjennerud is the longtime proprietor of Dalva, and he and Smith also were behind The Hideout, a bar-within-a-bar in the back of Dalva. Smith was the founding bartender at speakeasy-style bar Bourbon & Branch, where Fitzgerald tended bar, following a stint as bar manager at Beretta.
“Bourbon & Branch had its time and place, suspenders and mustaches and all that hoity-toity speakeasy shtick,” recalls Fitzgerald. “We said, it’s not sustainable. It was a gimmick. Why can’t you just get a good Manhattan at every bar?”
That sentiment became the guiding light for ABV—a casual space with good food, good drinks, and good service, plus “a chill vibe, with no pretentiousness.”
That aesthetic comes through. The bar spans the length of the narrow space, making ABV’s focal point clear (if the name, a synonym for alcohol strength, didn’t already make it apparent). Food arrives on a metal tray without silverware, and the drink menu is organized by spirit, if it’s needed at all. There are no cocktail servers, just bartenders, who circulate throughout the room and also serve the drinks while offering recommendations based on guests’ preferences.
“We wanted everyone, even at the tables or at the parklet, to have the bartender experience, explaining the spirits [and] what’s in the drink,” says Fitzgerald.
One aspect of ABV that has evolved is the tiny 16-seat space upstairs, dubbed Overproof. The original concept was a bar that was completely redesigned every three months, with new food, drinks, and decor. After cycling through iterations as a rum bar, a whiskey bar with Japanese food, a mezcal bar, and a Spanish sherry and gin bar, the concept ended.
Courtesy ABV
“It was super awesome for those who went to it,” says Fitzgerald. “It was ambitious and super fun—and also way too much work.” Shortly before the pandemic, Overproof was briefly reborn as a high-end oyster bar. “It even had some silverware,” he says. “It was fancier, a little nicer.” However, the format didn’t return after pandemic shutdowns, and is currently used as a private event space.
ABV’s drink menu is organized by spirits, intended to make it easy for guests to home in on cocktails or straight pours they might like. The drinks are straightforward constructs, to speed service. “Simplicity is the key word in regard to our cocktails,” says Fitzgerald. “We don’t batch any of our drinks….We keep them simple so they come out fast. Four [or] five ingredients at the most, fewer if we can.”
Case in point: the Gin and Celery, made with gin, Fever-Tree tonic, gomme syrup, and housemade celery bitters. The secret ingredient? A pinch of salt at the bottom of the glass. “As you drink it, it gets saltier and saltier, and you want to order another one right away.”
Today, the bar is still going strong, and racking up accolades. What surprises Fitzgerald most is how little the bar has changed over the years.
“There was a time before we opened when Erik, Todd and I sat down and asked, are we really going to ask bartenders to wait tables? Are we really going to not have silverware? It seemed pie in the sky,” recalls Fitzgerald. “But now, nine years later we’re still doing the same and it’s working really, really well.”
