Kyara, Barcelona’s most avant-garde cocktail bar
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The first thing to note about Kyara, the “postmodern cocktail bar” at Barcelona’s new SLS hotel, is that it smells good: as soon as I step from the lift I’m wreathed in an exotic mix of labdanum, cedarwood, Mexican copal, white musk, neroli and oud. Fragrance is the theme here: “Kyara” is ancient Japanese for the highest grade of oud. Everything from the staff’s perfumer-style workwear jackets to the cocktail ingredients tips its hat to olfactory art.
Kyara is the vision of cocktail super-couple Alex Kratena and Monica Berg, the bartending duo behind London’s Tayēr & Elementary bar. Kratena and Berg have worked with the cream of food, fashion and design; between them, they’ve won an almost indecent haul of awards. So why choose a 471-bedroom, five-star hotel in Barcelona’s Port Forum district – a place better known for its marinas, beaches and hosting the Primavera Festival than its food and drink scene – for their next venture?
“It has an up-and-coming spirit – there are a lot of start-ups, creatives and innovators setting up here,” says Berg. Kratena has felt an affinity with Barcelona ever since doing a stage early on in his career at Tickets – the now closed tapas bar belonging to former El Bulli chef Ferran Adrià and his brother Albert. “We love working with local ingredients,” he says, “and when it comes to produce, Barcelona is a paradise.”
Kyara’s long, low bar feels contemporary, with interiors that contrast soft teal and taupe furnishings with smooth planes of brushed steel. The playlist is hip-hop and trap. Sunshine-filled by day but den-like by night, it’s for people who like to party.
All the distillates used in Kyara’s drinks are produced by Robertet, a Grasse-based company that has been supplying the perfume industry with high-grade natural essences for 175 years. “Cocktails are increasingly the fine fragrances of the flavour world – so we’re super-excited to be working in this area,” says Mark Bailey, Robertet’s flavour division director. Each guest begins with a palate-cleanser of scented, iced water in a tiny frozen cocktail glass – mine is laced with neroli, giving it the luminous florality of bitter orange flowers, and petitgrain, an essential oil derived from the bitter orange’s twigs and leaves, which is more woody and green.
Then it’s on to the cocktail list proper, which groups 27 scent-inspired classic cocktails under eight fragrance “accords”: chypre, leather, floral, citrus, woody, amber, aromatic and fruity. From the citrus list I taste a yuzu-kosho and sansho Negroni, and a bergamot Margarita on the rocks. Dark spirit drinks include a Manhattan with tonka, coffee and myrrh, and a black walnut and leather-scented armagnac cocktail served on a block of ice. Lighter and less boozy is a sparkling patchouli and rose highball; and an Adonis – a sherry- and vermouth-based apertif-style classic – with vetiver and a tobacco accord.
For hot days, there’s a frozen white peach Margarita scented with cedarwood. The slushy-style frozen Carajillo (a boozy iced coffee popular in Latin America) is also wickedly good.
Berg and Kratena like to champion local distillers. A sakura champagne cocktail showcases local Ginraw Cherry Blossom gin. There’s also a twist on a chypre Gimlet that marries Corpen gin from the nearby Poblenou neighbourhood with lime and a chypre accord of labdanum, oakmoss, bergamot and pink pepper.
The hero of the piece is the Martini, served from a test-kitchen-style “compounding room” in the centre of the space. Guests attending the private experience can taste and sniff from among 30 different distillates and accords and then be matched with their ideal Martini. I’m paired up with a recipe that sees Mert Alas’s Seventy One gin layered with oud and sandalwood, and served at the table with a spritz of green mandarin and tuberose from an atomiser – it is delicious.
The flavours in these drinks may be complex, but the presentation is simple and crisp. Garnishes are minimal, but work hard: a neroli and lemon verbena Mojito comes topped with a Gordal olive stuffed with a micro-bouquet of salty fingers (a coastal succulent) and fresh mint, which you eat all once, releasing a burst of marine freshness.
“For me, the postmodern bar is all about blending beautiful, unconventional products into classic drinks,” says Kratena. “But it’s one that doesn’t bother you with science-y stuff – it’s most of all about fun.”
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