Dark, sleek and glamorous, the Cloakroom Bar in Montreal is an intimate, award-winning speakeasy founded in 2015 by bartender Andrew Whibley in the city’s Golden Square Mile. Hidden inside the men’s tailor and barber shop Maison Cloakroom, and with only 25 seats, this bar might be small but it offers an incredible range of drinks for guests to experience, including 50 handcrafted tinctures and 200 curated bottles of vintage spirits.

Turning the traditional cocktail ordering experience on its head, Cloakroom Bar doesn’t offer a menu for guests to peruse, but instead makes drinks based on their flavour preferences, using a serious arsenal of homemade liqueurs, amari, the aforementioned tinctures and Rotovap distilled ingredients.

This approach fosters direct and meaningful interaction between the skilled bartender team and its guests, and offers drinkers a properly personalised experience which not only makes them feel special but also highlights the knowledge of the Cloakroom Bar team. Non-drinkers need not worry: the team can provide teetotal guests with the same personalised experience and has over 10 housemade non-alcoholic ingredients at their fingertips, including amaro, vermouth, and tinctures.

Described as ‘classic, minimalist but cutting edge’ the cocktail builds that the team work with are based on classics that they have evolved with modern techniques like clarification, distillation, infusion and more – all while keeping flavour as a priority.

For anyone wondering how the bartenders are able to work so well off-menu, rest assured that rigorous training emphasises balance, precision, and guest connection. Those classic templates are combined with the bar’s internal systems of acid, sugar, dilution, and aroma to create a successful serve, along with housemade and cut ice too. Service staff are also educated on the bar’s extensive spirits library and regular sessions on technique, tasting, historical context and new ingredient development keep the team on their toes. New recruits shadow shifts and undergo a serious onboarding process to get them up to scratch.