This cocktail bar wants to be No. 1 in the city — and maybe the world

Welcome to Swig City, highlighting can’t-miss cocktails at the best bars, restaurants and clubs in the city.

Timofei Osipenko of Russian Hill’s three-year-old Bar Iris harbors the highest ambition a bar manager can have: landing a spot on the World’s 50 Best Bars list. It’s an exclusive club. Only four U.S. bars made the 2024 cut, and all four are in New York. The only San Francisco entrant in the top 100, Union Square’s Pacific Cocktail Haven, clocked in at No. 88. 

To get to the top 50, Osipenko isn’t afraid to rile people up. “The goal is to be the best cocktail bar in the city,” he said. “And the way you do that is by making people upset. So we started getting rid of all the things people feel comfortable with.” 

That meant brushing aside many liquors that aren’t Japanese in provenance, as Bar Iris is unapologetically focused there. 

Osipenko just rolled out a new menu, and all the gins behind the stick are now Japanese. All the vodkas too. And, if Japan starts producing enough of it, all the rum may eventually be Japanese as well. This retooling has resulted in some of San Francisco’s most complex cocktails, many with 10 or more ingredients. Take the $27 Akadama, which plays like a Manhattan’s first cousin once removed. Named for the wine producer that created Japan’s first nude poster, a depiction of a 1920s opera singer, it combines Suntory Hibiki blended whisky with various obscure vermouths and amari, plus port wine from Kopke, the world’s oldest producer. Cranberry-red, it’s spirited and sweet, served atop a white ceramic hand with its fingers outstretched — like a coquettish soprano getting her picture taken. 

Then there’s the $19 “Not a Martini,” which looks like the traditional cocktail, right down to the olive. Except it doesn’t contain any ingredients you’d find in a classic martini. It’s built from a trio of Mexican spirits, mezcal, raicilla, and sotol. Layered into those are Mukada nigori sake, the Italian liqueurs Lu Mare and Dell’alpe Kapriol, and sake lees (a fermentation product) from Den Sake in Oakland. The result is one of the most umami-forward drinks I’ve ever had. And oh yeah, that “olive”? It’s a snap pea, with a pleasing pillowy texture.

For customers down for adventure but not conversant in, say, the distilled potato-and-green-tea liquor known as Chiran tea chu, Bar Iris designed a hexagonal graphic system for its menu. This “codex” plots each drink’s flavor profile based on six criteria: spirit, umami, acid, fruit, bitter, and sweet. A little geeky? You bet. But helpful? Most definitely. The cocktail menu is, after all, a comprehensive, 20-page booklet. 

Cocktail-world ambitions aside, Bar Iris is also a proper restaurant, as chef-owner David Yoshimura helms the Michelin-starred Nisei next door. The food menu is populated by sandos and high-end bar bites, like temaki (sushi hand-rolls) or a yakitori flight of three grilled meats. There’s a five-course omakase menu at one end and a big bowl of chicken karaage with fermented chili aioli at the other. 

That side of the equation is pure comfort and satisfaction, but Bar Iris puts its own stamp on even the simplest, silliest cocktails. Take the Midori sour, a far cry from the sickly-sweet atrocity you may remember from the 20th century. For his variation, Osipenko adds egg white and lemon, plus an Icelandic aquavit for texture and Japanese togarashi for spice. “Our biggest problem is that we take ourselves very seriously,” he said. “And, when we joke, we take it a little too seriously too.”