Sylvarum Cocktail Bar
Alicante
Two ways to drink here. Both worth your time.
The Menu
The first is the menu: house creations built over months, plus every classic made the way classics should be, which is still the only honest test of a bar. Ask for the Eden, Angostura rum with red apple and vanilla, and you'll understand why people come back for a drink they could name.
Custom Drinks
The second is the reason people bring their friends. Put the menu down and you get four questions instead. What do you drink? Sweet or dry? Citrus, fruity, herbal? Do you actually like bitter, or are you just being polite? Answer those, and the bartender turns around and starts building, no recipe anywhere in sight. Two minutes later there's a glass in front of you that didn't exist when you sat down. Nobody else in this bar is drinking it. Nobody else ever will.
Most people end up doing both, in that order.
The Room
And then the room. Stone walls split open, moss coming through the cracks, ivy falling from above, light buried low so the place runs deeper than it should. At the back, leather chesterfields wedged into the rock. Evenings disappear in there.
Sylvarum, Latin, 'of the forests'. You'll have worked that out before anyone tells you.
Calle Bailén 17, Alicante. From 6pm.
