The Libertine Liquor Bar

The vibe here is very hip and the drinks are reminiscent of the Violet Door in Chicago.  the handcrafted cocktails are spot-on and the staff are very knowledgeable about all the concoctions.  The bacon flight is a must-have.  I've never had lamb bacon before, but it was a pleasant surprise.  The only thing keeping me from giving it 5 stars is the hostess.  My friend & I purposely went early one evening to make sure we could get in.  My reservation was lost, which isn't that big of a deal when a place isn't busy (or so I thought)  We were the ONLY people in the place at the time and the hostess copped an attitude and said, 'let me see if anything is available'.  Really?  We are the only people there and would have gladly sat at the bar.  She walked away and took her time coming back, declared that "I guess something is available' and seated us.  Bear in mind when we left 1.5 hours later the place wasn't even half full, so I highly doubt that we were taking someones reserved table.  Outside of her snobby attitude, the place was fabulous.

Come for the drinks, skip the food.

A group of us met here for dinner. We had made reservations ahead of time, so were seated right away. The staff were pleasant and engaging, and greeted us right away.

The cocktails all sounded delicious. I ordered the Pisco Sour, which was pretty good. One of our party received (despite not ordering) "Josh's mescal drink," which wasn't on the menu, but was delicious.

We got the bacon flight, deviled eggs, and cheese plate for appetizers. Entrees - everyone ended up getting either the steak culotte or the salmon burger with duck fat fries.

The pros: again, the servers were pleasant. Service was relatively slow, which I think was probably due to the speed of the bar and kitchen -- but they came around and refilled our waters and checked on us periodically. The cocktails were delicious. I don't think they were quite as good as the Ball and Biscuit, but nonetheless, they werer worth the money. The deviled eggs were fantastic. The steak was good (I tried a bite of my friend's); the salmon burger was also pretty good - very salty and garlicky and served on a toasted-crisp pretzel roll.

The cons: The bacon flight was quite tasty, and apparently it included 3 types of bacon. There were approximately 8 strips, some of which were smallish, and they were all mixed together in one goblet. For $11, I would have liked to know which was which.

The duck fat fries tasted like regular fries; they were also room-temperature, as though they'd been sitting out.

They were out of a lot of things. The reason my fellow reveler received an off-menu mescal drink was because they were out of cherries for the drink she actually ordered. They were also out of ketchup (odd) and replaced it with black pepper aioli, which frankly wasn't that great - tasted like plain mayonnaise with a little pepper mixed in.

The weirdest thing was that when we ordered the cheese plate, we were told that it included Roquefort blue, some kind of Brie-like cheese (I've forgotten the name), and Manchego - all sounded great. But when it came out, there was no Manchego; it was run-of-the-mill Colby Jack instead. I asked about it after a few minutes, since no one explained (and Manchego is one of my favorite cheeses) and was told by our server that "we ran out, so they just replaced it with whatever we had back there." (This quote was verbatim.) This was the most disappointing part of the trip, as a $15 cheese plate should include the described cheeses and should not include what tasted plain old Kraft Colby Jack. That being said, they did offer to bring out more of the other 2 cheeses after I inquired about the Manchego (although they didn't bring any more bread, so we had to ask for that too), and they did not charge us for the additional cheeses. I appreciated this customer service.

Overall, it was a lovely evening with friends, despite the problems with substitutions and outages. I understand that things do run out at restaurants; however, my recommendation as a customer would be to advise ahead of time if items are out of stock rather than making sub-par substitutions.

Pros: Great location downtown, interesting drink menu
Cons: Poor service at times

My sweetie and I popped in here for a nightcap after celebrating our anniversary.  The place wasn't too busy for a Thursday night which I appreciated.  We sidled up the bar and were served waters while we perused the drink menu.  They had a bunch of tasty sounding cocktails, but I stuck with a glass of wine.  They had a good selection of wine by the glass.  My boyfriend ordered a cocktail, and though the name escapes me right now, he enjoyed it as well.

We just wanted the one drink, and we waited for 15 minutes without a bartender bringing a bill when we were finished.  He had plenty of time to chat up some guy who was tweeting about the place, but kind of left us hanging.  I just guesstimated the amount of the bill, left cash and walked out.  It wasn't busy enough to justify not even checking up on two people who had empty glasses sitting in front of them.

All in all:  I'll be sure to give this place another chance.