His 65-person capacity room is slow to turn over, and would-be patrons wait hours to duck through the fake bookcase.Īlong with his business partners, the 46-year-old Kenyon, a veteran bartender from a long line of New Jersey bartenders, will next month open a new venture, The Occidental. Last weekend, at a competition in New Orleans, Williams & Graham was named the Best American Cocktail Bar at the 2015 Spirited Awards.īut even as Kenyon has built an international reputation for his bar, with a strong flow of locals, tourists and celebrity loyalists like Dave Chappelle, it has become increasingly clear that he needs to expand. New York Times cocktail writer Robert Simonson similarly tweeted that Kenyon's Bartender of the Year win at last year's Spirited Awards was the biggest thing ever to happen to Denver's cocktail scene. Outside of coastal cities and Chicago, no interior-American bar has ever won the coveted Drinks International award. "Part of what we love is that this place is a suspended reality. "You probably didn't even know we had a window," said co-owner Sean Kenyon as he unhooked a wood panel, disguised with a framed painting, to reveal a shaft of sunlight. Now the team behind Williams & Graham, which last year was named one of the world's 50 best bars by Drinks International, is ready to peel back another layer. Syrups are made in-house, daily, and drinks such as the Blackberry Sage Smash and Sloe Summer pay tribute to the season. Intimidatingly perfect Old Fashioneds and Manhattans sell briskly. Nor has Williams & Graham's old-school hospitality, which has built a loyal following with amiable, serene service and a drink list that balances classics with flavorful mixology. The neo-speakeasy gimmick, while trendy when the bar opened in 2011, has (incredibly) not lost an ounce of its allure. With no TVs or digital glare, casually dressed professionals come there to drink and talk, not see and be seen. Despite the naked incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling, the place emanates a dreamlike warmth and elegance. Stamped tin ceilings loom over the long, red-walled room, which is lined on one side by high-backed booths and on the other by a densely-packed bar with arched shelves. Shortly thereafter, the bookcase creaks open to reveal, to no one's surprise but nearly everyone's delight, a dimly lit, wood-paneled bar. If you're one of the lucky few with a nightly reservation-and not one of the 1,500 craft-cocktail lovers on the bar's weekly, three-hour wait list-the host will pass a piece of paper with your name on it through a tiny door in the wall. At Williams & Graham, on the corner of 32nd Avenue and Tejon Street in Denver's fast-growing Lower Highland neighborhood, everyone must confront the first layer of secrecy: a small but convincing bookstore.
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