Welcome to Swig City, where we point you toward don’t-miss cocktails at some of the best bars, restaurants and clubs in the city. Cheers!
“You want a shot of Fernet?”
A friend of many years, visiting San Francisco for the first time in a long time, asked me this Tuesday night at the Powerhouse, an LGBTQ+ bar in the South of Market. I was already nursing an IPA, and I didn’t especially want to mix the beer’s dank hops with the mentholated musk of an amaro, the specific category of bitter, herbaceous, stomach-settling digestif to which Fernet belongs.
But I said yes, because I wanted to welcome my friend back to the city. Fernet — specifically, Fernet-Branca — holds a special place in the boozy hearts of many San Franciscans, almost as strongly associated with the city’s drinking culture as the Sazerac is with New Orleans. (It traces to the 1800s and was thought to have medicinal, stomach-settling properties.)
There are, however, more exciting expressions of amari out there — more than 150, to be precise, distilled from all kinds of base spirits. And now, once again, we have an exalted temple of amari in the form of Divisadero Street’s Bar 821, which reopened four months ago after a long, Covid-borne hiatus.
Picking things up again, co-owner Khaled Dajani said, was harder than opening the first time.
“When you reopen, you don’t have the old staff, so you think you might disappoint people,” he noted. “But people are loving it, and we keep expanding the list of amari.”
Bar 821 is slightly quirky, beginning with the entrance: You have to ring the doorbell and wait to be let in. Once inside the elegant room, which has space for only around 20 people, you’re greeted by two walls lined with dozens of bottles. With its tufted leather seating and dark, punched-tin ceiling, the bar feels right for an adventurous date, one where bartenders help patrons experience this underappreciated liqueur, probing the limits of the human appetite for bitterness.
“A lot of people think of Fernet-Branca like it’s the only product,” Dajani said. “But San Franciscans are very sophisticated drinkers, more advanced than anywhere in the world. And part of the fun is the education.”
Dajani and his team offer amari flights, whether “bartender’s choice” (four pours for $38) or rigorous explorations of vintage bottles from the world over (four for $110). Customers can try the small-batch Botanika Angelica, a vodka-based amaro from Poland that’s as light-colored as a Japanese whisky, or Elisir Novasalus, which is derived from dry Marsala wine in the Italian Alps and stands among the very bitterest amari in the world. At about 16% alcohol by volume, it’s half as boozy as Fernet; it also lacks any semblance of sweetness. I am glad I tasted it and may never do so again.
Outside of amari proper, Bar 821 created a $20 “choose your journey” cocktail list, from which patrons select their favorite style of drink (fizzy, refreshing or spirit-forward), flavor profile (floral, fruity, herbaceous or bitter) and spirit of choice. The bartenders add house-made tinctures and syrups. “We threw it onto the customer to be the bartender, and we’re the hands,” Dajani said.
Surrender to those hands and you may learn that, technically, not every bitter is an amaro. Underberg, the German digestif recognizable for its tiny, paper-wrapped bottles, is a separate category of liqueur called a “bonnekamp.” So what about Fernet — is it simply too cliche, too basic, for Bar 821 to consider stocking? No way.
“We have 25 to 30 Fernets,” Dajani said. “I have been having stomach issues, so I’ve been drinking Fernet all week.”
🔗 Bar 821
📍 821 Divisadero St.