Room 901 - A Bar Review

We just spent New Year's weekend in St. Petersburg, Florida, and had a chance to try two great whiskey bars there. It's funny, sometimes it's the bars in the smaller cities or towns that will amaze you with the quality and variety of their offerings. And, as an added bonus, prices typically are better that what you'll find in a major city!

Atmosphere and Service: Room 901 has a very creative, intellectual, old world vibe to it, mixed with contemporary U.S. hipsterdom. The coolest thing about the bar is the innovative repurposing behind the decoration. The bar itself is an old library card catalog, with most of the bottles sitting along the bottom, but with higher-end bottles set up on small shelves that have been pulled out of the catalog. It's a unique presentation, and complements several other quirky touches. Chemists' beakers hold water that guests may pour for themselves. One entire wall of the bar is decorated with opened books fixed to the walls, so that the overall effect is a mass of flipped-open white pages. On the one hand, it looks pretty cool. On the other hand, I could see it coming off as pretentious or trying too hard to some. Looking up, you'll see another of these touches: the lights hanging from the ceiling of the bar actually are table lamps hung upside down. Since we came during the holiday season, the bar had a great big Christmas tree put up right next to the door.

The bartenders here are friendly, and service is great. We chatted with one of them for a bit about whiskey, and he commented that the best part of working at a bar like Room 901 is that he gets to try a lot of different whiskies. Hearing that made me think I need to get a part-time gig at one of these bars when I retire!

Selection: If you look on Yelp, you'll see a few menu pages from this bar, with the one from its opening looking a lot shorter than a more recent one from fall 2017. I'm happy to report that the list looks like it's grown a little longer since then, and the bar's selection probably is bigger than what was on the menu (for one thing, I saw a few bottles of Old Forester on the bar that weren't reflected in the menu).

This isn't one of those iconic, best-in-the-U.S. whiskey bars that prides itself on an endless, Bible-sized menu with hundreds of different expressions. But as a relatively new bar, it's off to a great start. This bar has 35-40 bourbons and ryes, a handful of Japanese and Irish whiskies, around 12-15 scotches, and fairly robust lists of tequilas, gins, and vodkas as well.

Rare Bottles: This bar has quite a few rare expressions, which is impressive for a new establishment. Room 901 has a deep bench of Whistlepigs, including the most recent limited edition release, Boss Hog Black Prince, a $500 bottle that's going here for something like $38 or $39 an ounce. For bourbon lovers, the four standout bottles I saw on the list were George T. Stagg, Four Roses Al Young 50th Anniversary, and Four Roses 2016 and 2017 Limited Edition Small Batch. Any of those bourbons is a true "highlight of the night" drink. There were also some relatively uncommon whiskies from across the pond, like Macallan Edition No. 2, Rare Cask, and Teeling's recently released 24-year old.

Value: Overall, the prices at this bar are very fair, with the best values coming in the middle of the spectrum. The other thing I love about this bar, from a value perspective, is that they serve true 2-ounce pours, which means that the prices are even more reasonable than they first appear. To give an example, I got a dram of 1792 Full Proof for $10 or $11, which is a great price.

At the higher end, the value-for-money becomes more hit and miss, but that's understandable given that bars like this can't always acquire their hard-to-find bottles at cost. Even these guys have to pay secondary markups some of the time. I found the best value was Four Roses 2016 Limited Edition Small Batch, which came in at $18 for a 2-ounce pour. On the other hand, 2017's version of the same bourbon cost more, $23, which is somewhat unusual (typically earlier versions of a limited release are priced higher considering that they become harder to find over time). Similarly, Four Roses Al Young was $28, while a 2017 George T. Stagg was $30 or more for a pour of a smaller size (1.25 ounce, if I recall correctly). I love Stagg, but I passed at that price, and was vindicated: just two nights later, at Mandarin Hide (review forthcoming), we got drams of the same bottle for $16!

***

Room 901 is an up and coming new whiskey bar in St. Petersburg and is a must-try if you find yourself in the Tampa-St. Pete area. It's already quite popular, with a good crowd on the Friday night before New Year's, and I bet it''ll become even more bustling as more people learn about it.

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