A downtown cocktail bar is bringing classy back

For all the effort to make downtown San Francisco come alive with noise and energy, at least one place is banking on the opposite idea.

The maverick is RM 212, a lounge on the border of the Financial District and Chinatown where the ceiling is punched tin, the walls are exposed brick, and the soundtrack is jazz on a low volume. Co-owner Ricky Chan is looking to create an atmosphere conducive to after-work chitchat over classic cocktails. A compact space with a handful of tables and chairs on a low-key block of Sacramento Street, it’s the least raucous, most grown-up bar in the neighborhood — possibly the city.

Chan is keenly aware of how a venue’s ambience influences the way patrons drink. So he and his brother Patrick, a co-owner and the house mixologist, wanted to steer the ship in a particular direction. “We don’t play sports on TV,” Chan said. “We want conversation, not people who are here to hit on my bartenders.”

Strictly speaking, RM 212 has been around for eight years, as a sake-and-soju bar with Ricky as the chef. But last September, he bought a full liquor license, stepped out of the kitchen, and switched formats to a proper cocktail bar, giving Patrick a chance to show off his talents. The brothers’ personalities could not be more different. The elder Ricky is emphatic and effusive; Patrick is a man of few words.

RM 212’s drink menu comprises little but the classics — at least a few of which might otherwise be fading into obscurity, like a sweet-tart Tradewinds (invented during the 1970s tiki craze) or the apricot-forward Slope. Dubbed the “Park Slope” at RM 212, it’s an ode to the Chan brothers’ native New York, where the drink was developed. Some, like the coffee-and-orange Revolver or the orgeat-and-lemon Little Boots, could have been teleported from the Tonga Room in 1965. Others, like appley Pink Lady or the daiquiri-like Hemingway, evoke Key West in 1925. There’s even a take on the Vesper, that gin-and-vodka concoction that feels like a martini ordered a martini. All of the above are priced between $16 and $18.

Among the best is La Louisiane, a heady mix of rye, Cocchi Americano, Bénédictine, and absinthe, plus both Peychaud’s and Angostura bitters. You can’t squeeze more of New Orleans into a glass than that, and while that combination of ingredients may sound as though it’ll take the top of your head off, the resulting rust-orange drink is balanced and effortlessly smooth.

Patrick Chan is one of those bartenders who thinks of ice in a fourth-dimensional way, conceiving his drinks in terms of how the melting cube will change them as patrons sip. As a rule, he loves using bitters, which he likens to salting food. “I wouldn’t say it’s a secret weapon, but it tames the sweetness,” he said.

A large collection of tequilas and bourbons — favorites of the bar’s regulars, so RM 212 stocked up — sits above the bar, but cocktails are the focal point. This is by design. Ricky Chan is noticing that younger generations don’t drink as much, so he’s doubling down on efforts to attract an older crowd,” he said. “Once High Noon, White Claw, and Truly broke out, we really knew we were going for a downfall.” Hence cocktails that date from the early 20th century more than the early 21st.

Chan is bullish on Mayor Daniel Lurie’s attempts to bring people back downtown — and, more importantly, back to their offices downtown. But if the wider neighborhood’s economic fortunes can’t be revived, there’s always an alternative at RM 212 in the form of a cocktail: the Corpse Reviver No. 2.