APOTHECARY PROPRIETORS BRANCH OUT

When pals Max Levy and Leon Lee used to meet for a drink after work, finding a suitable cocktail bar always proved difficult. Beijing simply did not have any freestanding, New York-style drinking joints that featured carefully crafted cocktails and a comfort food menu.

Instead of continuing to moan about the scarcity of decent elbow-bending spots, Levy and Lee decided to take a pragmatic approach, which is how Apothecary Cocktails and Dining came into being. Each drink at the Mad Men-styleSanlitun cocktail lounge is prepared with tender, loving care – even the ice gets the same detailed attention; it takes two days to make in a complex process that involves freezing the water slowly, to avoid trapped air inside, which means the cubes melt gradually when sitting in a glass of bourbon.

Apothecary recently celebrated its two year anniversary at its Nali Patio location, and is frequented by expats and locals alike. The pair has now turned their formidable talents to another area where they consider the current choices to be underwhelming. Levy and Lee are opening a factory out in the art enclave of Caochangdi, where they will make smoked hams, meats and breads. The soon-to-open facility will also incorporate a bakery and small coffee shop — Radio —and act as a training school, where Apothecary staff will learn service skills and basic food preparation techniques. The pair also has ambitions to open other bars and restaurants in Beijing and have branded their hospitality operations under the name Okra.

Says Lee: “We plan to be here for a while and we want to grow our business, we want to do the job well, and to do that, you have to have people power and build enough of a strong backend to support what you want to do. That is why we decided to have a training school as part of the Caochangdi operation.

“We want to open small places and do them well. We have been offered large places, grand lavish rooms, but that is not who we are – there was too much pomp and circumstance. We are focusing on places that are intimate, fun and sophisticated. Something that reflects our age.”

The initial success of Apothecary prompted the pair to open an outpost in Shanghai last year, which enjoyed a successful run, but Lee and Levy recently divested themselves of all involvement, deciding instead to focus their energies on building their brand in the capital city. A name change to the Shanghai venue is in the offing – and in the interim period the pair sent out notices making it clear they are no longer involved with the bar.

The Beijing-directed focus will allow them to concentrate on expanding the menu at Apothecary, and there are plans in the works for a Sunday-brunch format later in the year.

The pair — Lee is 39, Levy 33 — have a wealth of experience in the hospitality trade. Lee in particular is something of a modern-day Renaissance Man with an eclectic array of personal and professional skills: he is an accomplished guitarist, flautist and chef who has worked as music promoter, marketing executive, publicist, NGO employee, art-festival curator, journalist and translator.

He met Levy, who most recently worked as chef at Bei, the highly rated North Asian restaurant in the Opposite House hotel, some three years ago, through mutual friends. It was not long before they decided to pool their talents.

During his four years working at Bei, innovative chef Levy became a Beijing foodie favorite, regularly picking up Best Restaurant awards from local lifestyle magazines.

“The challenge of taking an idea of North Asian cuisine from a phrase on paper to a menu, then to a successful restaurant, has indeed been challenging and eye opening to what is possible here in Beijing,” says Levy.

“Winning awards and recognition has been a significant part of my career the last few years. It is also a humbling experience and shows me that I need to work harder and try to pass on as much as I can to my current and future staff.”

The menu Levy has draw up for the Radio coffee shop is hardly the kind of experimental, fine-dining fare that Bei became renowned for. Among the dishes on offer will be Bacon Matzo Ball Soup, Challah Grilled Cheese, Spicy Tomato Soup, Chicken Fried Steak and Caesar Salad.

But Levy is unlikely to turn his back totally on boundary-pushing gourmet fare. There are plans for guest chefs to do stints in the Caochangdi kitchen, a prospect that will no doubt delight Beijing’s foodies.

Artisanal breads, smoked meats, bacon and sausages will be produced in the factory: the plan is to introduce a selection of the foods on the Apothecary menu and, later, make them available for retail sales.

Says Levy: “Our main focus is to make things for our outlets and build in the consistency. When we opened Apothecary, we wanted to do it in house and we have done a pretty decent job of keeping it consistent.”

It is clear that the pair complement each other and equally obvious that they have ambitious plans for the Beijing bar and restaurant scene, figuring that the time is right for two men with talent, a vision and the requisite stamina to branch out on their own. For Levy in particular, leaving the Opposite House has meant stepping a way from a position where he was highly respected, well remunerated and provided with health insurance and paid holidays.

Lee’s eclectic career has endowed him with more experience in the precarious world of the self-employed. During his early working years in San Francisco, the versatile Lee regularly worked back-to-back shifts – as a chef and as a musician.

He adds: “Max and I have found a good working rapport because we have both worked in a bunch of restaurants and bars. We have both been part of an opening — or, in some cases, a closing — so we understand what it takes to open a place from the concept to the design to financials and how places get built.

“We are sensitive to things like how high the chairs are, how comfortable the bars stools should be, what the lighting should be like. What we aim to do is to come up with the concepts, work on the numbers, the finance, getting the design and making sure kitchen and bar have all their stuff, and managing and operating. We do the whole thing, and not many people can say that.”

At the Sanlitun drinking spot, preparation of drinks is taken with a degree of seriousness — fanaticism, even — that is seldom seen elsewhere, let alone in a smallish Beijing bar. The bitters that accompany the cocktails are all hand made, hence the name Apothecary, a venue where, in days gone by, people would request an herbal potion that was mixed on the spot. It took Levy and Lee a little while to realize that while bitters are very much a western-cocktail phenomenon, all the herbs they needed to make the liquor-accompaniment were available right here in China.

“The only bitters available were Angosturas so we set out to make our own bitters. In fact it was while talking to a Chinese doctor we realized it was possible to get the raw ingredients and do it ourselves,” says Levy. “We were determined not to compromise, to make sure that the cocktails were genuine. We even mixed the tonic ourselves, but people complained they didn’t like it, as they are so used to commercial, canned tonics, especially the Europeans as they like their gin and tonic really light. Finally we decided to call it Indian tonic and gin!”

The drinks list at Apothecary is, needless to say, a carefully curated selection of classics, as interpreted by Levy and Lee. The description of each offering contains a wittily written backgrounder on how the concoction came into being. The iconic Martini, for example, has a particularly detailed section on the correct proportions; this is not the place to come for the gimmicky variations served by modern ‘mixologists’.

The dining menu is based around pub-style food, with strong emphasis on the distinctive New Orleans cuisine of Levy’s home town; blackened snapper, Creole rooster and dried oyster stew and gumbo are among the popular items. It is radically different to the cuisine Levy created in his time as head chef at Bei where the most popular dishes were Kimchi and Bean-crusted Fish Head, Pickled Black Sesame Eel and Cucumber, and Miso and Manuka Honey Foie Gras.

Most people who dined there were amazed that authentic and sophisticated Asian cuisine could be created by a chef who is clearly not from this neck of the woods. The odd guest was known to carpingly suggest that he could not possibly produce the real Asian deal, an easy way, one suspects, of winding up the generally unflappable, low-key Levy. “Beijing people did not have a problem, they are more open-minded,” he says. “It tended to be other people.”