A new cocktail bar opens today in Clinton Hill. It’s built around produce and restaurant scraps — applying the same ethos to drinks that defines a certain subset of restaurants that lean into the seasons. Golden Ratio, from Redwood Hospitality, behind places like the temporarily closed Oxalis, Cafe Mado, and Laurel Bakery, sits at 216 1/2 Greene Avenue, at Grand Avenue, a short stretch away from sibling restaurant, Place des Fêtes.
The name nods to the 1:1:2 formula — one part sour, one part sweet, two parts spirit — that keeps a cocktail balanced. The team is also tapping their inner nerd by referencing the Greek φ (phi), the mathematical “golden ratio” of 1.618 that shows up everywhere from seashell spirals and tree branches to famous paintings and city skylines. The same harmony that shapes the natural world is what they’re chasing in the glass.
“Cocktail bars work with alcohol that never goes bad, and therefore, you can have the same cocktails in Singapore and New York and London,” says Piper Kristensen, the bar’s beverage director and managing partner alongside Steve Wong. “It doesn’t really showcase the same local ingredients, quality, sense of place, and sense of time that a seasonal restaurant does.”
With that in mind, the crew has put together a menu of 32 drinks — 16 with alcohol and similar riffs on 16 without: They’re created using distillates created from greenmarket produce, foraged ingredients, and byproducts from the group’s other restaurants. Leftover bread from Laurel Bakery becomes a bread distillate; citrus peels from Place des Fêtes get turned into an aromatic. The spirits are produced in collaboration with Acid Spirits, a nearby local distillery, allowing the bar to turn around seasonal batches in about a week, faster than a conventional distillery timeline.
Take the Fir cocktail ($21, $16). For the spirited version, Brooklyn’s Acid Spirits pulverizes fresh fir needles in neutral alcohol, then distills them into a clear, aromatic spirit that forms the base of a martini-style drink with clarified grapefruit. For the boozeless version, Kristensen simmers the needles into a piney syrup, pairs it with a nonalcoholic distillate made from leftover grapefruit peels from the restaurants, and turns the whole thing into a soda. Same tree, two completely different drinks.
The food menu from culinary director Daniel Martignon is small and highlights vegetables, with a few meat and fish options. There will be a smoked sunchoke profiterole ($11), crispy hake ($24), and a hasselback potato that’s already been stealing the show on Instagram posted by friends-and-family ($9).
Golden Ratio’s 50-seat space is broken into zones: lounge seating up front, a six-seat bar, dining tables, an eight-top booth, and a communal counter-height table in back with standing room. More than half the space is held for walk-ins. Reservations are available on Resy.
“We want it to be fun,” Wong says. “Thoughtful drinks don’t have to go hand in hand with silence.”