Starlight Room Shines Again in San Francisco
A Classic San Francisco Cocktail Lounge Reopens, Honoring the Drinking History of Its City.
The Sir Francis Drake Hotel opened at the corner of Powell and Sutter Streets in San Francisco in October 1928. The 26-story building was erected at a cost of $5 million. It survived the Great Depression and became a favorite of celebrities. Once Prohibition was repealed in 1933, dining and drinking establishments began to open in the hotel, including the Persian Room and, starting in the 1940s, the Starlight Roof—as it was then called—on the 21st floor. During the postwar era, the hotel was a famous center of nightlife activity.
The hotel changed hands many times over the ensuing years and had fallen on hard times in the early 1990s when visionary hotelier Bill Kimpton took it over and renovated it to the tune of $9 million.
During the early years of its rebirth, the Starlight Room (its new name) was managed by David O’Malley, and hosted by Harry Denton, a quirky local beloved master of ceremonies. Its head barman, meanwhile, was Tony Abou-Ganim, a former actor who was then well on his way to a legendary bartending career as one of the architects of the cocktail revival. While at the Starlight, he invented the modern classic cocktail the Cable Car, a Sidecar-riff created at a time when few people drank the original Sidecar. Among the future star bartenders who worked at the Starlight were Marco Dionysos and Thomas Waugh.
Here’s what I wrote about The Starlight Room in my book A Proper Drink (2016):
The Starlight was a throwback, in its way the Rainbow Room of San Francisco. A rooftop lounge atop the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, it had been built in 1928, but had fallen from grace when Kimpton Hotels, [David] O’Malley’s employer, bought it in 1994. It was revamped and unveiled two years later as Harry Denton’s Starlight Room. Like the Rainbow Room, the Starlight Room helped to put bartenders and their cocktail creations on an elegant pedestal, with the intended message being that both belonged there.
The Drake closed in early 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It changed hands again in 2021 when it was bought by the Connecticut-based Northview Hotel Group. In 2022, it was renamed the Beacon Grand, due to Drake’s involvement in the slave trade.
The Starlight Room was also rebranded. It is now called simply Starlite.
Scott Baird, a longstanding figure in the San Francisco cocktail universe (he has run or owned such iconic watering holes at 15 Romolo and Trick Dog), never worked at the Starlight Room, but he drank there plenty of times.
“It was pretty legendary in terms of the goings-on there,” he said. “The hottest place in San Francisco.”
The people at the Beacon Grand initially approached Leo Robitschek (Nomad) about running the bar program. He declined and recommended Baird, who happily signed on.
“It’s kind of a heavy crown of responsibility putting that place back in existence,” said Baird. “It had a lot of memories in a lot of people’s hearts. My parents used to go there. I think my grandparents used to go. I know my wife’s parents used to go.”
The bar's renovation was done by Alice Crumeyrolle, and features the expected lush banquettes and glass chandeliers. The food is from celebrated D.C. chef Johnny Spero. As for the drinks, Baird chose to veer away from what he thought the world expected from him and instead lean into something more fitting to the historic room.
“I really wanted to write a menu that was much more classically inspired,” he said. “I feel like I’ve done all that fun culinary stuff I did at Trick Dog and I think people expect that to be my style. I honestly don’t think that’s what people want right now. I think that the drinking culture is shifting back to where it was in 2007, when we first left the pages of basic cocktail books and sort of stepped a little outside the boundaries of classic recipes. I think that’s more in line with what this space is.”
With every drink on the 15-item list of original cocktails, Baird pays homage to either cocktail history, San Francisco history or both. There is a Pisco Punch, one of the cocktails most associated with the city’s drinking past. The tequila-based Baghdad by the Bay bears the nickname legendary San Francisco columnist Herb Caen (a Starlight regular) gave the city. There’s even a nod to Baird’s own bartending past in the Pimm’s Cup, which is taken directly from the famous version long served at 15 Romolo.
Of course, there is a new spin on the Cable Car, which had ranked as the de facto house drink at the Starlight Room since the 1990s. The original was made with Captain Morgan’s spiced rum. That would not do for Baird when there are so many better spiced rums on the market now. He uses Don Q spiced rum, which Baird noted is made in the same distillery where Captain Morgan was made in the 1990s.
“I was thinking of all the ways I could spruce it up and modernize it,” said Baird, running me through the list of the drink’s ingredients and their meanings. “That translated into things I associated with San Francisco history. The Mommenpop blood orange aperitif, because of the history of San Francisco: Barbary Coast, being wild, blood, etc. Chinese 5-spice syrup—we have oldest, biggest Chinatown in America. Lemon, because lemon. On the rim, freshly ground Mexican cinnamon and organic sugar; there you’ve got being a part of Mexico originally, you’ve got the Gold Rush. And finally, the coup de grâce was to make the fog which is scented with elements that you would find in Muir Woods—some redwood, Scotch pine, a little bit of cypress and bay leaf. All that’s in there. You can pour that fog into that big Pinot balloon glass from the 1970s and its sits in the glass as you pour it tableside. It’s fun.”
Baird said he was told by Marco Dionysos that Harry Denton insisted there be at least three creamy cocktails on the menu at all times. Baird has obeyed that rule. One of that trio is the house Grasshopper. But Baird had to overcome some personal hurdles, because he doesn’t really like Grasshoppers. He finds them heavy and rarely finishes one. His answer was the Strawberry Grasshopper.
“My first thought was to clarify it and immediately get some of that richness and thickness out of it, and a way to get the acid in it,” he said. “Mint, chocolate, strawberry, they all love each other. So, unsweetened Monin strawberry puree and a little bit a lemon. What else could give it a tiny bit of distinction? So there’s a tiny bit of Agricole rum and then aged Don Q and the Bordiga red bitter. It all really comes together. In some ways I was throwing the kitchen sink at this thing, all trusting that these flavor combinations—that previously have homes in drinks I’ve made or pastry or food—that they kind of fit. I put it all in, cleared it up, tasted it; everyone was kind of shocked. My wife said, ‘This is one of the better drinks you’ve made since I’ve known you.’ It’s a banger, as we like to say.”
The drink called A Man You Don’t Meet Everyday is an homage to Daniel Hyatt, who ran the Alembic bar in the aughts and was one of the leading forces in the early days of the city’s cocktail renaissance. Hyatt died young in 2018.
“I couldn’t even talk about the drink in the staff meetings,” said Baird. “I had to just step away. I get misty every time I talk about him. It was a last-minute addition. I thought, ‘What would Daniel do?’ I was just thinking about him a lot in regards of the history of San Francicso and the impact he had on a lot of bartenders. It all happened really, really naturally. His drinks were never from left field. You just had to have a lot of knowledge to see how he connected the dots.”
The resultant nightcap-like cocktail included Irish whiskey fat-washed with brown Irish butter, banana liqueur, Sherry, Fred Gerbis amaro 16, nocino walnut liqueur, salt and “Guinness foam.”
For a cocktail historian like myself, however, the most eye-catching attraction on the list is the Espresso Breakfast Martini. This is obviously a mashup between two London-born modern classics, the Espresso Martini (invented by Dick Bradsell in the 1980s) and the Breakfast Martini (featuring orange marmalade, and invented by Salvatore Calabrese in the 1990s). My first thought was: how had no one thought of this idea before now?
“It’s really obvious, right?” agreed Baird. “It’s really just the simple idea that orange and coffee are going to go great together. And then, with either vanilla vodka or tequila as the other option [customers can choose either spirit as their base], all those flavors go great together. And I dropped in a little cacao because it made sense to me. They are all things that you would find in any good patisserie in Europe.”
And now you can find them on the 21st floor of a 95-year-old hotel in San Francisco.
The current best seller at the Starlite, however, is another London invention, the Porn Star Martini. During the 20 days the bar was open in March, 1,100 of them were sold.
It was yet another sign to Baird—a man whose work in the aughts helped to banish the louche cocktails of the 1990s—that that decade was back in terms of drinking culture.
“Those 1990s Martinis that are not really Martinis, they’re kind of back,” he said. “The amount of Lemon Drops we’re making is kinda blowing my mind.”
Odds and Ends…
Grand Army has extended its popular happy hour. It will now run from 5 to 7 p.m.… Maui’s Dog House in North Wildwood, NJ, has opened for business for its 25th season slinging some of South Jersey’s best frankfurters… Red Hook Tavern, the popular Brooklyn restaurant, is opening a place in Sag Harbor, Long Island. It will be called, natch, Sag Harbor Tavern. They will share a space with the local American Legion. Opening is late May… Tony Milici, the well-liked bartender at Rolo’s in Queens, has left Hellbender Nighttime Cafe, the new Ridgewood bar he recently helped open… The landmark Papaya King hot dog stand at 86th Street and Third Avenue will soon fall victim to the wrecking ball. It is being demolished to make room for a new condo high rise… Laurel, the new bakery from the people behind Oxalis and Place de Fete, has opened for business on the Brooklyn corner of Kane and Columbia Streets… Industry City, the Brooklyn retail complex, is launched an IC-wide happy hour, with all resident bars taking part, including Standard Wormwood, Bitter Monk, Oldies, Brooklyn Kura and Fort Hamilton. Hours are… The Baltimore Orioles has debuted a gargantuan new stadium hot dog. Called the Warehouse Dog, it is a 12-inch hot dog with horseradish-infused brick sauce, pit beer queso fundido, pickled pico and onions on a pretzel bun. It costs $23, which isn’t so bad when you consider that’s about what you pay for a regular dog at Yankee Stadium… The James Beard Foundation’s Platform series of talks will host Nik Sharma and Helen Rosner on April 21 for “A Veg-Table Earth Day.” Tickets are $45… Bartender Lindsay Matteson, formerly of Barnacle in Seattle, has taken the job of beverage director at Hell or High Water in Louisville… At the Weatherup bars in Brooklyn and Tribeca, from 5-7 p.m. Saturdays, you can order a carafe of Martinis or Manhattans for $35.
Oooh, there are so many San Francisco places that I still want to visit, this is at the top of the list! ✨💫
Great news! Also, I love the idea of the community happy hour at IC.