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Portland, Maine
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Mind Eraser Mondays, when the bar’s signature take on the drink, featuring Maine’s beloved Allen’s Coffee Flavored Brandy, is available for $5 all night.
Wharf Street, a narrow alleyway in Portland, Maine, is lined with cobblestones and lit at night by tall iron lampposts. Squint, and you might feel like you’ve stepped back in time. But a neon “cocktails” sign in the window of Room for Improvement suggests something wholly new. Opened in April by veteran bartender Arvid Brown (founding bar manager at Crispy Gai and Baharat) and business partner Nick Coffin, the self-proclaimed “halfway decent bar” pairs serious cocktails with a resolutely unserious atmosphere. The bar’s irreverent ethos marks a deliberate departure from the reigning aesthetic of the sleek, lab-like cocktail bar. But beneath the divey front, the same rigor and attention to detail can be found in the menu of familiar classics—Negroni, Old-Fashioned, Cosmopolitan. As the name of the bar suggests,
Typical of the bar’s approach, there’s more than meets the eye with this coconut foam-topped take on the Espresso Martini.
Room for Improvement offers composed shots in every color of the rainbow.
“Cranpari” cordial adds a bittersweet edge to the house Cosmo.
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MAKE IT
Built on a rum base in lieu of vodka, with an unexpected banana twist and salted coconut foam, the bar’s take on the modern classic gives the decadent drink a tropical edge.
Room for Improvement's Espresso Martini
MAKE IT
True to the bar’s ethos of reconsidering the classics, the Nuclear Daiquiri—one of three drinks on the dedicated Daiquiri menu—subs in génépy for the expected Chartreuse.
Room for Improvement's Nuclear Daiquiri
RECIPE
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each menu item has been thoughtfully improved upon within an existing blueprint, with a “cranpari” cordial that brings added zip to the house Cosmo and salted coconut foam lending a tropical edge to the Espresso Martini; cocktails are served alongside Portland-made draft beer, shots in every color of the rainbow and red snapper hot dogs. In a space that feels like it’s been there for decades, Room for Improvement channels all the studied perfectionism of the cocktail multiverse into an IDGAF package, with drinks that prove that they secretly do.
But beneath the divey front, the same rigor and attention to detail can be found in the menu of familiar classics—Negroni, Old-Fashioned, Cosmopolitan. As the name of the bar suggests, each menu item has been thoughtfully improved upon within an existing blueprint, with a “cranpari” cordial that brings added zip to the house Cosmo and salted coconut foam lending a tropical edge to the Espresso Martini; cocktails are served alongside Portland-made draft beer, shots in every color of the rainbow and red snapper hot dogs. In a space that feels like it’s been there for decades, Room for Improvement channels all the studied perfectionism of the cocktail multiverse into an IDGAF package, with drinks that prove that they secretly do.
RECIPE