On its face, the upcoming Cocktail Test Kitchen at 359 W 54th St. will function as a welcoming local haunt. But below the surface, the Hell’s Kitchen spot will be a multi-faceted beverage industry woodshed.
Co-owners Brad Nugent and Patrick Wert are industry veterans with their own consulting firm, Innovative Beverage Solutions. Along with partner Alex Kurland, the drink experts seized on a 400-square-foot space in Hell’s Kitchen for an innovative concept that will be part bar, bar R&D lab, and part content studio when it opens this fall.
“We saw an opportunity in the market, specifically Hell’s Kitchen, for a little jewel box cocktail bar,” Nugent recently told What Now New York. “The ‘micro-bar’ is a very interesting concept because you can keep costs down, and therefore you can keep the prices down.”
Above all else, CTK will offer expertly made drinks: A standard martini will be made with freezer-kept gin or vodka, to prevent the dilution that happens with room-temperature spirits. That drink can also be a mini martini, Nugent said, noting a current trend for the little tipple.
A small food menu will offer simple, yet thoughtful, bar snacks. Nugent mused about pizza bagels that would be made with fresh bagels and ingredients, heated in a high-powered Turbochef oven.
“Do you want it plain? Do you want pepperoni? Do you want supreme?” Nugent asked, rhetorically. “I think that there’s some nostalgia there with pizza bagels, and some cheeky fun vibes.”
In addition to being a corner bar, CTK will let the partners experiment and pressure-test drinks for their consulting business. One section of the will be specifically dedicated to drinks in development.
“It gives us an operation to kind of R&D, and pressure test interesting cocktails,” Nugent explained. “From the consulting standpoint, we will have the ability to engage with an operator — and not just hand them a list of cocktails with recipes — but to also say to them, ‘Hey, all of these drinks have been pressure tested against our bar.’
“We stand behind them. Our guests really like them. These are all the bulletproof specs of how to build them in an actual bar environment.”
But the concept behind CTK isn’t strictly the craft of cocktails.
Nugent said there’s a growing need for studio spaces that digital creators can rent for content creation. Outside of service hours, CTK will be a rentable, content-ready backdrop for beverage influencers and brand ambassadors to film social content and promotional materials.
“We imagine being able to engage with either local bartenders or people, restaurant professionals that are looking to build their brand and use our space to film content in there during the day,” Nugent said.
Impressively thought out, the upcoming Cocktail Test Kitchen is a bit of a test in its own right. It just might be the small, pressure-tested bar concept of the future.
