Retro Week: Olde Bar Is Starting Brunch This Weekend

The Olde Bar at Bookbinders | Photo by Grace Dickinson

UPDATE: It looks like the new cocktail list (referenced below) is being pushed back a week or so while the crew tinkers with them. Look for them starting next weekend–or sometime thereabout.

What with its storied history, snapper soup and gin-heavy cocktail list, Olde Bar has already earned itself a place in our Retro Week coverage. But we just found out that they’re going to be launching a brunch program this weekend (and have put out a new spring cocktail list), so we just had to bring the place back into the conversation again.

Brunch at Olde Bar will be a weekends-only affair, running from 11am to 3pm on Saturdays and Sundays. The kitchen will then close for an hour, re-set for dinner service, and open back up again at 4pm for happy hour. For those of you who just can’t tear yourselves away? The bar and the raw bar will remain open to see you through that single quiet hour between brunch and dinner. Lucky you.

The brunch menu looks like this:

And those spring cocktails? There are a bunch of them, all as literarily named as their predecessors, and all carrying with them an air of the classic, the old fashioned and, in most cases, the well-built. There’s a re-built Rusty Nail called Crowns On A Black Horse and made with Cutty Sark, Punt e Mes, drambuie, bitters and a bit of Luxardo maraschino; something named Jersey Pickin’s with Old Overholt, port, blueberry syrup, lemon, allspice and a sparkling wine topper; and something else called a Pepper Pot that combines vodka, port, ginger beer and lime juice with black peppercorn syrup into one of those drinks that could either be wonderful or terrible, all depending on the hand of the bartender doing the mixing.

The cocktail list goes on for more than a page. And then there’s the punches. And the shooters, served with an oyster, and then another whole list of classic cocktails which is basically a greatest-hits collection from any bartender’s bible. In terms of places to drink in Philly if you’re serious about your drinking, Olde Bar is climbing the ranks. And personally, I’m looking forward to taking the new list for a spin.

Olde Bar at Bookbinders [f8b8z]