Thunderbolt: LA
1263 W Temple St, Echo Park, Los Angeles CA
The Place: A super fun cocktail bar with easy breezy SoCal vibes that happens to also have been named “The Best Bar in the West” the last three years running. NBD.
The Time: Sunday March 30, 4:45pm. I landed this morning in LA, and I’m here for 48 hours for a book event I’m doing tomorrow (did you guys know that my book SPIRITED WOMEN is out in the world!?!?!! Buy it now!!). Taking a quick trip across the country for one event is really only possible thanks to awesome friends who offered to house and drive me everywhere. I’m crashing with one of my best friends from college and he’s now an acting coach, so he needs to do a few sessions with clients before we grab dinner at Night + Market. Because I’ve been up since 3:30am EST, I don’t give a flying fuck what time it is in my current location and I am ready for a drink! Thunderbolt has been recommended to me by friends and the spirits-industry-internet. It’s not far from my friend’s place in Silverlake, so it’s a no-brainer.
The menu and the Jackfruit Thunderbolt
The Vibe: Tropical and beachy without feeling too theme-y. It’s big and pretty empty, so I have my choice of seats at the bar. The color story (lol) is millennial pink and forest green, and there’s a terrazzo bar top (what is it with LA and terrazzo?). There’s a vague Southern theme happening–a play on the Southern in “Southern California,” perchance?—with biscuits, a “bless your heart” mosaic, and a huge madeira selection. The playlist is on point, and there’s an excellent easy-going vibe to this bar, exactly what you want on a Sunday afternoon.
The Bartender: Frank is so nice and so friendly. He literally talks me through every single cocktail on the menu when I ask him what he likes, which is a level of service that goes above and beyond, even if it’s a little excessive. Nikki is another bartender who’s wearing the coolest overalls. There are at least three other people working who I don’t interact with much, but everyone seems so lovely and happy and chill. It’s simple math, folks: a happy bar staff = a happy bar.
The Drank: It’s a huge menu printed almost like a zine. Their manifesto of sorts at the start claims that they’re technique-focused without any of the pretension, and they “leave the fussy glassware and garnishes to the influencers.” My kinda place! The cocktails are separated into categories like “flavor concentration” and “dilution substitution,” with a little description of the techniques used before diving into the cocktails themselves. The menu and ethos reminds me a lot of Panda & Sons, a bar in Edinburgh that’s been highly influential in the world of cocktail bars. Like Panda, the bulk of the work is done on the back end, so you’re not waiting 15 minutes for a cocktail and everything looks like just a normal-ass drink but is super flavorful and innovative. I’m very on board with this bar trend.
After Frank talks me through nearly 20 drinks, I end up going with the first one on the menu, the Jackfruit Thunderbolt. A Thunderbolt is an obscure classic cocktail that I hadn’t heard of before, made with rum and a whole peach, but the folks here are using jackfruit instead. It’s very yummy, although there’s not a ton of jackfruit flavor, but what does jackfruit actually taste like anyway?
I could have had six more of these Pastelitos
My next drink is the Pastelito, an insane coconut milk punch meant to taste like a guava-cheese-danish. It rules. Thank god we have dinner reservations because otherwise I’d be here the whole night trying every cocktail.
Was I Hit On?: I spend most of my time at Thunderbolt hanging with Nick, a local regular who sits down a seat away from me right after I arrive. He’s known Frank since childhood, is a SoCal native, and plays in a band. We talk a lot about food, and he gives me many LA recs even though I’m only here until Tuesday morning. When I tell him I don’t eat meat, he sheepishly says, “coolcoolcool wish you had said that before I talked your ear off about Filipino barbecue.” Similarly, after I reveal that I am ~*industry*~, Frank says he’s also embarrassed because he talked a fellow bartender through literally every cocktail. But I’m like, “no Frank your service was 10/10, no notes.” Is making men embarrassed like this considered flirting? Maybe!
Should You Drink Here Alone?: Absolutely. If I was a local, I’d be here a lot. The drinks are delicious, the staff is amazing, the vibe is super relaxed. Thunderbolt just might be lightning in a bottle.