Welcome to Swig City, highlighting can’t-miss cocktails at the best bars, restaurants and clubs in the city.
Cityscape, the cocktail bar on the uppermost floor of the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, has reopened after a four-month renovation — and it’s ready to reclaim its place as the loftiest and most glamorous bar in town.
Of all the sky-scraping spots to get a drink, none can match its elevation 46 floors above Taylor and Eddy streets, or — maybe more important — lack of visual obstructions. Equinox, the revolving restaurant that’s open only to hotel guests at the Hyatt Regency, is a measly 20 stories up, while Starlite at the Beacon Grand is on the 21st floor. The View Lounge in the Marriott Marquis comes closest, but it’s only on Floor 39. (Once upon a time, the 52-story skyscraper at 555 California St. had a top-floor restaurant called the Carnelian Room, but it closed in 2009.)
In any case, none of those places can claim Cityscape’s 360-degree views. Up there, City Hall’s rotunda seems practically underfoot, and even the Pacific looks within reach.
As befits the sky-high location, the names of the cocktails are astronomical or astrological. They’re designed — and priced — to be celebratory. Several run toward the sweet side, such as the $20 Strawberry Skies (blanco tequila, strawberry malt, and seltzer) and $22 Rising Sign (Champagne, vanilla, and passion fruit). Fans of more spirit-forward drinks can enjoy the thoroughly stiff $22 Nightfall (mezcal, scotch, Poppy amaro, and lemon-honey) or the amped-up Manhattan that is the $22 Midheaven (aged rum, rye, and sweet vermouth).
But the real fun is in the liter-size drinks, like the Galileo Highball, an $80 mix of gin and citrus-ginger soda that serves up to five people. And for a more elaborate solo venture, there’s the highbrow-kitschy Stardust, a $25 Champagne-and-sherry concoction made with lemon oleo syrup, yellow Chartreuse, and edible gold, served DIY-style in a footed “chambong” capable of sitting upright on a table.
It’s a full bar, of course, in case the urge to order a classic martini proves irresistible. And there’s plenty of Champagne, plus extra-romantic corners in case it’s time to pop the question. “We’ve had an awful lot of proposals up here,” said Cindy Ramesh, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing.
Cityscape’s elegance doesn’t come just from the romance of the sun setting into a fogbank, or even the hyper-’80s vibes given off by the pink granite and faux palm fronds. The real stunners are the five Art Deco panels that the renovation uncovered, each featuring a stylized Greek goddess.
“We’re calling them the Celestial Sisters,” said Ramesh. Veteran hotel employees confirm that the panels were brought in from a demolished theater in the 1960s, when the space that’s now Cityscape was a steakhouse called Henry’s. At some point, though, they were covered up. “We’ve done a ton of research and weren’t able to pinpoint exactly which theater,” Ramesh added. “Everybody thinks it was the Fox Theater, but we haven’t proved it. So we say, ‘Legend has it …’”
Those five deities — Selena, Astrea, Eos, Aurora, and Nyx — are magnificent sentinels, as wonderful a find for San Francisco as the proscenium arch that the Castro Theatre’s restoration work revealed this spring. Featuring symbols of the moon, dawn, the northern lights, and so forth, the panels are capped by chandeliers dredged from what Ramesh termed “the dungeon” of the hotel. “It’s what we call our chandelier graveyard,” she said.
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