cocktails at Monarch

Down here, the lights are low and the shaker is already moving. Monarch’s bar sits at the heart of our speakeasy-style lounge beneath Kendall Square, and its cocktail list is short on purpose: a handful of drinks, each one obsessed over, none of them ordinary. These aren’t cocktails you order. They’re cocktails you meet.

the list, loosely described

We’d rather you discover than skim, so consider this a whisper instead of a menu: espresso crowned with toasted coconut foam, bourbon and rye conspiring with apple bitters, gin gone tropical with mango and turmeric or set gently fizzing with cardamom and rhubarb, rum tangled up with passionfruit and tonka bean, and a negroni washed in olive oil and cacao butter that regulars talk about the way other people talk about art. Then there’s the Bastard of the Week: one rotating creation, never announced, never repeated on schedule. Asking for it is half the ritual. Drinking it is the other half.

zero proof, wine, and a proper pint

The rest of the bar gets no less imagination. Spirit-free creations arrive in proper glassware with proper pride (black sesame and koji, elderflower and white pepper on a delicate sparkle), wines wander from Sicilian volcanic slopes to grower Champagne by the taste, the glass, or the bottle, and local drafts round things out. A great night down here has never required a proof (except proof of ID, of course).