Photo: Heami Lee
Arnold’s most recent project, Bar Contra, a collaboration with chefs Fabián von Hauske Valtierra and Jeremiah Stone, opened its doors this summer. The cocktail menu feels like both a culmination and refinement of Arnold’s approach. The drinks that appear on his menu inventively leverage the tools and ingredients he popularized behind the bar, like centrifuges and carbonation rigs alongside additives like acid powders and glycerin—but against a cocktail landscape rampant with overengineered, tech-driven drinks, his intentional approach feels refreshingly straightforward. The Sagittarius B2, for instance, a cosmic concoction of rum, raspberries and orgeat, features nothing more than those three elements, bolstered by characteristically Dave Arnold methods: fruit juice clarified with enzymes and a centrifuge and orgeat clarified with a 5-ton hydraulic press—the only way to clarify it enough to work in this particular drink.
We checked in with Arnold to hear how Bar Contra differs from his past projects, how he thinks the cocktail landscape has changed in the last decade and whether anything is really new in the bar world anymore.