Fruitful and multiple
What is it about exposed brick walls at bars? You could prop up a few taps and a pyramid of spirits against the collapsed husk of a wall in a desolate field and it would still end up being the coolest spot in the neighborhood.
Things are quite a bit more refined than that at Circle: Plates and Lounge, the new restaurant and bar in the South End's annex on the other side of Mass. Ave. The room is finished with striking red cloth bar stools and banquettes, exposed blue and red light bulbs, and a Spanish tile and smooth teakwood bar. It's the type of pleasing surface you'll want to run your hands over all night, and how often can you say that about a city bar?
The elaborate, far-reaching, and expertly designed cocktail menu, featuring a wide variety of fresh muddled fruits and labor-intensive mixes is the real draw, though.
The Blackberry Rum Runner (above, fresh blackberries muddled with Bacardi rum, banana liqueur, pineapple and orange juice, Sprite, $10) is emblematic of Circle's embrace of natural fruit ingredients. With its buoyant, pulpy consistency, the banana mellowed the tartness of the blackberries, and made this a seamless blend of unusual fruit partners. Meanwhile, The Dowry (mashed cherries, blueberries, and lime, Patrón tequila, maraschino liqueur, $10), an Impressionist painting in a glass, has so much flavor cascading through it that it will probably ruin the experience of drinking tequila with boring old lime forever.
Speaking of bold colors, the Tiger Rouge (cachaça, limoncello, Chambord, pineapple and lemon juice, raspberries, basil, dash of balsamic, $10) zings with a color rarely seen in cocktails. It's a romantic, deep pink of the sort we imagine unicorns dancing on at their magic weddings (OK, maybe we drank it too fast). But its taste was even more interesting, falling somewhere between a dinner salad - with the influence of the basil and balsamic - and a brunch fruit salad. Sounds unusual, but it works.
And that's just the beginning. Most of the time we struggle to find three or four drinks on a given list to spotlight. But at Circle the problem was narrowing it down from two dozen or so. We're going to have to go back 10 more times to try them all.
LUKE O'NEIL
Circle: Plates and Lounge,
604 Columbus Ave., Boston.
617-247-2537.
www.circleplatesandlounge.com
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