First Look: Sassafras, Southern Sipping in Hollywood

Sassy Sassafras

By Lesley Balla

When it comes to Sassafras, the new cocktail bar from the 1933 Group, the beauty is in the details. Every nook and cranny of the multiroom space has wacky knickknacks, antique lamps, mirrors, apothecary bottles of tinctures and powders and other odd stuff, all collected by designer Bobby Green and crew. Beyond strands of moss hanging from the rafters or the taxidermy, antique furniture and various portraits, the whole place looks like an old plantation house. In fact, it was an old house, or at least parts of it, which Green had taken apart and shipped here from Savannah. If you can imagine sitting on a rocker on a big Antebellum front porch and sipping some heady Southern bourbon brew, this is the place for you.

Sassafras is the most ambitious project to date for the group, which also owns Thirsty Crow, Bigfoot Lodge, Oldfield's and La Cuevita, and its first foray into Hollywood. Along with the look, the cocktails have a sepia-toned Southern slant, from the Sassafras Royale, a rye-based drink with housemade sarsaparilla, or the Toasted Pecan Julep, a rum and brandy take on the classic julep. There's an array of housemade ginger beers that you can choose from for mules, and spin the wheel in the back to pay what you will for one of those drinks. Those bottles slowly moving over the bartender's head in the front bar? Those are barrel-aged cocktails - Manhattan, Sazerac and the like - on a vintage dry cleaner's rack. Ooh-wee. Take a look around in the first-peek slideshow below. Sassafras opens to the public on Friday, September 14 (1233 Vine St.; 323-467-2800).