Cocktails for Tourists: 6 San Francisco Places You Can Sip

Almost 17 million tourists climbed San Francisco’s hills last year, shooting enough photos to fill every existing Instagram feed with dawn-filtered images of Coit Tower, cute Victorians, and that zigzag street choked with creeping cars. When tourists go to San Francisco, doing all that climbing and shooting, naturally they get thirsty. The enterprising gents behind Trick Dog bar in the city’s Mission District came up with a way to lure those thirsty visitors: the Tourist Menu. The Bon Vivants, as they’re known (founding members Scott Baird and Josh Harris; Jason Henton is their Trick Dog partner), designed 13 cocktails around San Francisco landmarks (see the poster below, designed by Jack W. Schneider). Inspiration sites range from the wind-swept Cliff House overlooking the Pacific (tequila, chamomile wine, chocolate, Velvet Falernum) to the colorful Castro Theatre in the heart of the city (Scotch, Gran Classico, Lillet, sloe gin, dandelion). Trick Dog shared six of the 13 with us; we sent photographer Gene Lee to shoot them. Honestly, unless you happen to have horseradish tincture or raspberry-thyme syrup in your bar pantry, the recipes are more inspirational than practical, like armchair travel, only with a mezcal-and-pineapple-syrup cocktail on the table next to your chair. Trick Dog’s Tourist Menu is on through the end of 2014.

Alcatraz Island is frigid, and the wind howls through the desolate former penitentiary, but you can see where the guards’ wives used to have their little garden. Trick Dog’s Alcatraz cocktail is likewise ponderous and wind-swept, with a homey sort of longing. It combines bourbon with apple syrup and tinctures of lavender, kombu, and horseradish, and its enormous hand-hewn ice cube is a worthy representation of the Rock.

Text by John Birdsall; photos by Gene Lee