It was big news in the global bar trade when Alex Kratena stepped down from his role running the Artesian bar at The Langham a few years back: he had just seen the bar named as the number one bar in the world on the World’s 50 Best Bars for the fourth year in a row.
Since then, there’s been much speculation about what he would do next. Kratena told Australian Bartender back in that he’d been doing a few things behind the scenes: “I’m heading up P(our), and we have a small consulting company with Simone [Caporale] and Monica [Berg] called Taxonomy, and to be honest for the last two and a half years we’ve been spending most of our time working behind the scenes and on projects which will slowly come up very soon. It’s exciting and a little frustrating. I promise it’s going to be good,” he said.
Well, UK bar trade magazine, CLASS, reported in recent days just what it is that Kratena is up to: not one, but two bars, and an experimental workspace.
Kratena also featured on our Creators List in 2016, nominated as one of 40 of the world’s most influential and creative bar personalities, and has previously picked up the title of International Bartender of the Year at Tales of the Cocktail in 2012, so the expectations for this new bar will be high.
The new concept, from Kratena and his partner Monica Berg (herself an award-winning and high-flying bartender) will open in the UK spring next year in London.
As to the concept, it features two bars: one, called Elementary, is an all day dining and drinking space in which they’ll serve simpler drinks and eats. Here you’ll sit around the bar, and if you’re drinking cocktails, they’re going to be ‘taptails’, drinks built for speed of service.
Elementary will lead on to the next space, a more experimental bar in which they’ll push the boundaries on “what’s inside the glass and on the plate” called Tayer.
There’s also a space for education and creative experimentation behind Tayer, called Outthink.
The official details are still a little vague at the moment — though we recommend reading the CLASS magazine piece here for an in-depth idea of what to expect — but one thing is for certain: the eyes of the bar world will be on Kratena and Berg when the open the doors in 2019.