Blackbird Ordinary - A Bar Review
I'm starting to cheat a bit now -- strictly speaking, this bar is not devoted to whiskey. It's a well-known cocktail bar in Brickell, which is Miami's financial district or downtown area. It also has a hell of a fun happy hour. Hence, our presence there on a Friday, and this review.
Atmosphere and Service: Low-key, grunge, adult fun -- the best parts of arrested development are the focus of this bar. There are board games, classic music blasting over the speakers (70s through 2000s), and everyone's dressed like they walked off the set of a Nirvana video. The place looks like where rock bands go to play before they strike it big. Of course, that also means it's the place where you get to befriend the rockers before they're too famous.
The service is great here. During their 2-for-1 happy hour, they hand out poker chips as tokens that you can exchange for your second drink free. During my visit, I got a second drink, but the tender didn't take the chip away. The next drink I ordered, the bartender tried to take the chip for payment, but I let him know that I'd already gotten my second drink. He thanked me for letting him know, and then 30 seconds later came back and said the drink was on the house! It's the third time we've been here, but that sort of kindness will ensure that we're regulars here.
Selection: For a bar that doesn't self-identify as a whiskey bar, Blackbird Ordinary has a pretty broad selection. The bar had 11 scotches, with an emphasis on the big names like Glenfiddich and Glenlivet. The owner or manager is clearly a fan of Highland Park, because all three mainline expressions (the 12-year old, the 15, and the lauded 18) are available. It also has both Hakushu and Yamazaki 12, which are getting harder and harder to find in the wild, for fans of Japanese whiskey. Bourbons and ryes are also well-represented on the shelves, with 18 of the former and and 8 of the latter. Very respectable choices overall; not the most bottles, but curated with good taste.
Rare Bottles: It's a little unusual to see Highland Park 18 in a bar, but there it is. The bar manager also must be a huge fan of Diageo's Orphan Barrel series, as Blackbird Ordinary has three of that series' releases: Barterhouse, Lost Prophet, and Rhetoric, all 20-plus year old bourbons. They'll also cost you quite dearly, however; Barterhouse is $35 a pour!
Value: Blackbird Ordinary's 2-for-1 happy hour (for drinks up to $16 a pop) is a tremendous bargain. Although not primarily geared toward whiskey, the bar has some gorgeous and well-balanced cocktails. They even have a gallery featuring each one, and I can confirm that the Woodpecker (a mix between an Old Fashioned and a whiskey soda) and the Pony Show (another Old Fashioned variant), their two whiskey-based cocktails, are both spectacular.
Several of the whiskies fall within the 2-for-1 happy hour as well, so just ask the bartenders! On the scotch side, it was mainly the blends that were eligible, but a greater variety of bourbons qualified (Woodford Reserve, High West Prairie, and Willett Pot Still, all of which I review here).
The one quirk is that the menu lists their bottles of whiskey only as a per-bottle price (see above). The per-pour price, however, does not correspond to those prices at all. For instance, Willett Pot Still and Barterhouse are only $25 apart as bottles, but a single drink of the former is $15, while the latter is $35.
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I'm going to save you a bad pun on the name, but this place truly is extraordinary. In Brickell, it's my favorite watering hole, and a welcome oasis from the highly priced drinks and trying-too-hard atmosphere of a lot of the bars around here.