To Your Health: This New Sanlitun TCM Cocktail Bar Will Cure All of Your Ails
Herbal's cocktails bring a whole new meaning to the old toast “To your health.” Yes, raising a glass at this new Sanlitun cocktail bar just might raise your life expectancy thanks to its TCM ingredients. At the very least, Herbal's East-meets-West concoctions should perk you up and soothe your aches (with the added bonus of a strong, inebriating buzz).
Founded by Ah Jian (a Sanlitun Dirty Bar Street vet known for managing 2F and Shooters, along with co-founding Groovy Schiller’s) and his cohort at the recently launched CBD whisky bar Straight Spirit, Glenn Schuitman (who co-owned and operated Pop-Up Beijing before that), this splendid new Xindong Lu venue sprung to life on Mar 28. To help with teh science side of operations, Schuitman, an ardent devotee of Chinese medicine for his personal wellbeing, has recruited Dr. Chen Shu, an alumnus of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Science. It will be Chen's job to stop by the venue on a regular basis in order to give consultations and prescribe tonics customized to each visitor’s needs. The doctor has also coordinated with Ah Jian to give the co-owners' cocktails health benefits for more casual customers who want to stop in for a general boost to their systems.
For now, two medicinal cocktails are on offer: the first is the RMB 70 “healing tonic” made with gin, bee pollen, lily sugar, pear, and a TCM herb called henbane used to ease a variety of aches and pains, while the second is simply called "calming liquid" and consists of coca leaf liqueur, gin, basil, green grapes, lime, green tea, and a prunella herbaceous plant used to treat cuts and inflammation (read more about that here). The menu will be rounded out with many more equally ailing cocktails in the coming weeks once soft opening wraps up.
As for now, Herbal also acts as a showcase for Schuitman’s renowned flair for decor, and those who frequented Pop-Up before its sudden closure last year will no doubt thoroughly enjoy these aged trappings. The new bar is outfitted with late-1800's furniture like hardwood tables and chairs (the latter boasting vintage upholstery), along with gothic-like chandelier light fixtures and statues behind the bar. At the end of the bar sits two Chinese stone statutes that Schuitman says are 180 years old. Clearly, his factory and antique contacts from his Pop-Up days have served him well.
Unlike Straight Spirit, which has the feel of a later era, Schuitman says he strived for a colonial vibe this go around, but not in the pejorative sense of the word. As Schuitman explains, it’s “meant to evoke a Western perspective on how Chinese medicine can be beneficial. It’s also an effort to reclaim that colonial period so that Chinese people can have pride in its past, and have pride in its traditional medicine.”
Clearly, Ah Jian and Schuitman (pictured at top second and fourth from the right, respectively, with some of their staff members behind Herbal's bar) also have their eyes set on an innovative future, slinging drinks with a worldly ethos that runs deeper than flavor. While this is by no means Beijing’s first bar to make use of Chinese herbs in its drinks, Ah Jian and Schuitman hope that Dr. Chen Shu’s consultation can help the cocktails at Herbal stand out as a unique new offering that, as Schuitman puts it: “goes beyond a gimmick.”
We’ll need to stop by a few more times to see just how effective those healing concoctions are. But the low prices and ambitious concept, along with the prime location and time capsule-esque furnishing, all make Herbal a bold new addition to Beijing’s bar scene, one that holds plenty of promise.
Herbal
Daily, 6pm-2am during soft-opening, 10am-2am after. Shoukaibojun South District Building, 41-021, 12 Xindong Lu, Chaoyang District (next to XL Bar and Grill, around the corner from Heaven Supermarket)
More stories by this author here.
Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
Twitter: @MulKyle
Instagram: mullin.kyle
Photos: Kyle Mullin, 戚海燕
