Center City has a new cutting-edge cocktail bar
Two partners from Fishtown’s Next of Kin took over the longtime Tria space at 12th and Spruce
Static!, the follow-up bar from the owners of Fishtown cocktail lounge Next of Kin, opened Tuesday in the former Tria space in Washington Square West. A moody, dark wood-paneled space illuminated by large paper globe lanterns, the 35-seat bar is an even slicker cousin to its Fishtown counterpart and brings to Center City cocktails concocted by some of the nerdiest, most process-driven bartenders in Philly.
Kyle Darrow and John Grubb, two of the partners behind Next of Kin, signed the lease on the 12th and Spruce spot in June.
The menu is divided into four styles of cocktails — shaken down, shaken up, stirred down, and stirred up — plus non-alcoholic options, wine, and local beers. All cocktails range from $15 to $17. There is almost no food, save for a sweet and spicy nut mix, olives, and soft pretzels from Center City Pretzel, served with whole-grain mustard. “We aren’t chefs,” Darrow said in an interview earlier this year, forecasting the light-snack menu.
Static! operates independently of Next of Kin, but there are echoes of its sensibilities, said Darrow, who has stayed mostly hands-off in the development of the new menu.
General manager Jared Ridgeway is the mind behind the cocktails here. There are more balanced riffs on familiar classics, and just a few directly transplanted from Next of Kin, such as their Clover Club and Smoke and Barrels, which blends rye whiskey, mezcal, amaro, and cherries. Ridgeway’s amaretto sour also updates a classic. “If you put 2 full ounces of amaretto in a drink, it’s overwhelmingly sweet,” Ridgeway said. “The whole point of cocktails is a fine balance, so I learned a little sneaky trick from [Oyster House bartender] Resa [Mueller] to put a little reposado tequila in to balance the sweetness of the Lazzaroni amaretto.”
There are also cocktails entirely unique to Static! “Top of the World is a nice little seasonal play on incorporating apples, but with miso cream on top,” said Ridgeway. “It’s like an Irish cream topper where you get velvety silky foam on top versus a whipped cream.” The result has no perceptible bubbles and floats above a tart, bright, light-bodied cocktail.
Static!’s bartenders may not be chefs, but they’re performing no small amount of kitchen prep. Like Next of Kin’s signature cocktails, the components behind the bar here are extremely labor-intensive. The miso cream is made from whipping yellow miso with simple syrup and heavy cream. Similarly, Static!’s appletini involves infusing vodka in-house. “We’re really highlighting key ingredients, doing them a bit more justice,” said Ridgeway.
The layout of the former wine bar remains the same, with a long bar and elevated loft with table seating. Most of the construction involved updating the plumbing, building out a back bar, and making the space conducive for an operation heavily dependent on ice.
Why the name — and the punctuation? “Static!” refers to the “good, positive, and palpable energy transitioning between people and a human interaction,” said Darrow. “It’s also about the static on the TV screen and that physical disruption of digital space.” The punctuation removes the stasis from “static.”
The opening comes on the heels of Next of Kin’s high-profile September pop-up in Paris at the cocktail bar Mesures, which was attended by both French locals and “a dozen regulars from Philly who made the trip,” said Darrow.
Static!, 1137 Spruce St., instagram.com/static_phl. Hours: 4 p.m. to midnight Monday through Wednesday, 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday.