We’ve seen it happen over and over during the past year and a half: As one establishment's door closes, another opens.
Such was the case at the U.R.B. (Urban Research Brewery), the consumer feedback–based, two–beer barrel pilot brewery and pizza joint operated by Urban Chestnut Brewing Co. Following a pandemic-induced desire to consolidate, Urban Chestnut moved the U.R.B. operation into its flagship brewery, headquartered across the street, where their killer pizza is now on the menu.
Courtesy Patrick Divine
Enter Tony Saputo, a local master of mixology who's best known for stints at Eclipse, Layla, Atomic Cowboy, The Benevolent King, and Firecracker Pizza, where he was known for beer-forward cocktails. More recently, Saputo served as beverage director for Consips, the company that owns The Midwestern, Start Bar, and Wheelhouse. In the three years before the pandemic, Saputo "pretty much lived on Spruce Street,” he says. During the pandemic, some self-imposed quarantining provided him the time and impetus to finally do something on his own, he says.
Courtesy @WeEatStuff
Saputo enlisted the help and services of Meredith Barry, one of the city’s most impassioned, talented mixologists. Barry was the inaugural beverage director at the Angad Arts Hotel (including Grand Tavern by David Burke) before taking the reins at Gerard Craft’s Taste and working on other projects with Niche Food Group, including the creation of La Verita Distilleria, a bottled line of small-batch amaros, liqueurs, and nonalcoholic cordials, a pandemic-induced project she remains involved in. "Since aging is required, some days I get to taste successes, other days, it's back to the drawing board," Barry says.
When Saputo and Barry realized that The U.R.B. space was available, negotiations began on the 3,500-square-foot property at 4501 Manchester, which had been home to Joyia's Tapas for several years and two other restaurants (Crostini and Mia Rosa) briefly before that.
Photo by George Mahe
A lease was signed in early July, and soon thereafter black-and-white images of a duck-billed platypus appeared in the covered-over windows, offering a glimpse—albeit a head-scratching one—of what was to come.
The three-bay space will be called Playtpus, a name that Saputo admits he agonized and obsessed over. “Eventually, I got to the point where I had to stop overthinking it, stop trying so hard,” he says. “So there’s this fun, goofy, experimental L.A. band named Mr. Bungle that has a song called Platypus, and for some equally goofy reason, that random name clicked for me. But I’ve always been a try this kind of guy, so it fits my personality.”
The concept behind Platypus is simple: A chalkboard listing five cocktails rotates frequently. “No long, complicated menus,” Saputo says. ”You know, nothing that forces a customer to have to think too much, because we’ve all been there."
Despite the apparent restraint, the cocktails will “be well thought-out and all will have personal stories behind them from the person who created them,” which also removes any pretense from the equation, Saputo says.
"When we create a cocktail, there’s a massive meaning to the drink: the name, the spirits—everything has a connection to us and to the people we serve it to," Barry adds. "The entire team will know the story. If we focus on all that, we think it will resonate."
On the other hand, they know there are people "who don’t care about all that and just want a vodka/soda or a cheap beer and a shot," Barry says. "Because we’ve been in this for so long, we don’t want to be beholden to anything. We understand you can be chained by your own creativity. Obviously, I love cocktails, but sometimes I just want something simple, too."
In a departure from the norm, Saputo and Barry are hiring a staff with no prior bartending experience. As Saputo previously told SLM, after being named beverage director at The Midwestern in 2019, he values the opportunity to mentor colleagues and share the creative process—a sentiment that Barry can appreciate. "Mentorship is so important to me," Barry says. "Being able to shape and grow someone from another industry who is lucky enough to have that hospitality gene—if even a small percentage of those people are inspired to go further and run programs themselves, we’ll feel fulfilled. It’s not an easy task that we’ve taken on, but it’s a task we are both driven to do and are passionate about." Saputo adds, "There was—and still is—a gap between the experienced bartenders out there and the up-and-comers. We’ve already found some of the latter and are excited to bring them on board.”
So Platypus will serve as a ‘bartender incubator’ of sorts; Saputo and Barry designed the drink menu with that in mind. “The only thing we might even disagree on is the house margarita recipe,” Saputo quips. “We might have to have two of them.”
Most cocktails will be hand-made to order, for both authenticity and training purposes. “If we’re doing a fun variation on a sour that has, like, five touches, the bartender will do that,” Saputo says. If it’s a classic, the bartender must be trained to do that, because “those requests get made every day in every bar. But if it’s a tiki drink with eight steps, well, something like that might be batched.” Saputo sees the roster of drinks eventually becoming a book, complete with anecdotes and little-known factoids that he and Barry have picked up over the past 20 years.
Over the years, Saputo has played in several bands (most recently Alan Smithee) and says he’s as big a fan of music as he is of crafting cocktails. The playlist at Platypus will be a paean to his past—the music that inspired him to get into music—from the familiar Blue Oyster Cult to AC/DC to The Stooges to such longstanding groups as Turbonegro and more modern ones like The Black Pumas, he says. “The same Top 40, pop-based playlist can currently be heard in 50 different bars,” he adds. “And some of it is, like, Oh, man, that was a brutal three and a half minutes. Our list will be more curated—and carefully curated. That means a lot to me, to the staff, and, hopefully, to the guests."
Physically, the building's footprint remains the same. In the front room is a small U-shaped bar with space for 10 stools and two more accessible seats. The rooms will see a mix of high-top, low top, and lounge seating, and there’s a 1,000-square-foot, 40-seat shared patio in back that Saputo says "no one knows is even there." Expect to see a few arcade games, “but that doesn’t mean [arcade bar],” Saputo says.
A riser stage is being built in the third bay, which will be "small event driven," from DJs and live indie acts to a revival of the podcast he used to host. “Our goal is to bring in DJs who are actual musicians, like me. People who are more song selectors than super-creative DJs,” he says.
The exposed brick walls will see chotchkes from Saputo's most recent band and souvenirs from bars where he used to work, such as The Creepy Crawl, but the most significant design element will be the mural from Killer Napkins, a company known for its oversized murals. The one planned for Platypus will cover the bar wall and bleed onto the ceiling. (We won’t spoil the surprise, but we will say that both a platypus and a case of 4 Hands City Wide beer are represented.)
At press time, the food component is still in development, says Saputo. A chef will operate it as a separate business, he says, and bar fare will be offered, allowing him to narrow his focus to drink creation, mentoring, and music.
Courtesy Monkey Shoulder
Saputo hopes to open Platypus in mid- to late September and serve into the wee hours seven nights a week. In the meantime, he and Barry will host a series of pop-ups, beginning with a three-cocktail satellite bar outside of the former Monocle on August 28 to commemorate the World Naked Bike Ride, which takes place that night in The Grove. On hand will be The Monkey Mixer, a riff on a cement truck, with a 2,400-gallon rotating cocktail shaker instead of a rotating drum. The rig, owned by Monkey Shoulder, creator of the famed blended malt Scotch whisky, has been known to dispense such cocktails as the Mixed Up Monkey down its chute. All the action begins at 6 p.m.
As it turns out, The Monkey Mixer is an apt metaphor for Saputo and Barry. “We’re serious about what we do, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously,” Saputo says, “because in the end, we’re just slinging drinks.”
