Still think Downtown is dead? Not at this bar it isn’t

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

I can’t remember the last time a random woman in her 20s bought me a tequila shot, but it happened Saturday afternoon at Zoë, a cocktail bar and restaurant on Howard Street on the border of South of Market and the East Cut.

Before I could feebly protest that I don’t generally want shots at 5:15 p.m., she was telling me how she just finished nursing school, I was congratulating her, and then it was down the hatch. She asked me nothing about myself, and I didn’t get her name. We slammed the shot glasses on the bar, and she returned to party with her friends. I made silent, did-that-really-happen eye contact with the bartender, and burst out laughing.

That isn’t out of the ordinary at the lively, uproarious Zoë, where the vibes are strong enough to challenge the conventional wisdom that downtown San Francisco is a depopulated wasteland full of dust and tumbleweeds. On the south side of Howard Street between First and Second, in the former Kate O’Brien’s — whose vertical neon sign is still illuminated, four-leaf clover and all — Zoë is a near-perpetual party.

Food and drink options are extensive, with cocktails running the gamut from high-falutin mixology to the kind of thing you’d throw back on the Lido Deck of a cruise ship. Start out elegant with a No Regrets ($16), a riff on the St. Germain margarita, made with 21 Seeds cucumber jalapeño tequila, elderflower liqueur, mint, agave, and lime.

Or dive into a Poseidon ($17), with Casamigos Cristalino tequila, curaçao, pineapple, agave, and lemon — which looks suspiciously like an Adiós, Motherfucker, because of its Kool Aid-blue hue but doesn’t come anywhere near the ultra-high-octane bite. My spicy favorite was right down the middle: the Adonis ($16), which combines Unión mezcal, Lillet, chile verde liqueur, agave, and lime, plus a Tajín rim — another fun spin on a margarita. 

Strictly speaking, Zoë is not a new bar, just an ever-evolving one. “We’ve been open for a year and a few months,” owner Kevin Velotta said, “but our menu completely changed. It’s modern Mexican now.”  That means enchiladas and burrito bowls with mahi mahi or Impossible meat, plus a “pretty aggressive” weekday lunch special that includes dollar tacos — and, gasp, dollar beers — from noon to 2 p.m. There’s karaoke on Thursdays, and a DJ spins several other nights of the week. Owing to the giant kitchen, it has also become an event space, frequently hosting 25th and 30th birthday parties. (Also, while it’s pronounced “ZO-ee,” enough people say “zo” that Velotta is giving up on correcting them.)

Tinkering has been necessary to help the bar achieve critical mass, Velotta added. “This isn’t the Marina, where people are just walking around, and they can just walk in. But when it goes off, it goes off.” 

The holiday season has given Zoë a shot in the arm. I walked in one night to find the bar closed for a party and came back the next night to find it open to all — yet even more crowded. People in Santa hats clinked glasses under the twin TVs set to crackling Yule logs as the kitchen ferried out nicely breaded wings, heaps of nachos, and crispy quesabirria with broth. Nobody bought me a shot, but nobody had to, because I had a drink in my hand the whole time.