Williams & Graham, Denver

How can you not love a place with a cocktail named “Java the Nut”?

My favorite place we went during my Denver trip was definitely Williams & Graham, a speakeasy-type cocktail place.

We went on Saturday just after 5pm (I’ve learned my lesson about these first-come-first-served cocktail places!) and stepped into a small sort of waiting area, with a desk and shelf-lined walls stocked with old books, Williams & Graham-branded rocks glasses, and various cocktail ephemera.  After checking in, we waited for a few moments while the room quickly filled up with more hopeful guests…

…And then the hostess pulled back one of the bookcases to reveal a secret passageway that led to the bar itself.

We were greeted at the end of the hall with introductions all around, and led to our cozy booth – everyone we met was wonderfully welcoming and personable, and knowledgable too!  (The servers are also bartenders, who have developed many of the original drinks.)

I decided on the Fig on a Stick to start – it’s a blend of fig-infused Cognac, Dry Curaçao, lemon, demerara syrup, and egg whites that provide body and a creamy texture.  The fig provides subtle sweetness, perfectly balanced against the Cognac.

My sister had the charmingly named My Pear Lady, with gin and pear brandy, and her husband (the other D in our lives) had the Blackberry Sage Smash, which sounded fruity but turned out to be brown, stirred, and manly.

The menus are tucked into what look like classic leather-bound books, like The Great Gatsby or A Farewell to Arms, and broken into sections by spirit.  We stuck mostly to the front sections, which listed Williams & Graham’s original cocktails and their surprisingly extensive food offerings.

Since we were making an evening out of it, we sampled plenty of dishes – starting with beer nuts, deviled eggs, and fries drizzled with sweet and tangy malt vinegar gastrique. Then we moved on to buffalo frog legs served with a carrot and celery sticks, and our main courses: onion soup for my sister, steak haché for D (basically a hamburger), and lamb bourguignon for me.

The food is sometimes an afterthought at places like this, but definitely not here.

We tried a few other drinks – a classic Old Fashioned, a Calvados and cider concoction called Nickel Bag o’ Funk (which, as I later learned, is a pot expression – very fitting in Colorado where it’s been legalized, I suppose!), and a pineapple cardamom soda for my sister.

For dessert, I had to order the aforementioned Java the Nut – a combination of coffee, macadamia nut liqueur, and Fernet, topped with coconut cream and mint.  It’s genius. More places need to make coffee cocktails!

The beauty of having cocktails and supper on the early side is that we were home by 730pm, plenty of time to relax and watch a movie and get a good night’s sleep, which we needed for our trip to Breckenridge the next day!  Stay tuned…