How to Survive a Seven-Drink Tasting Menu Without Blacking Out

Lazy Bear bar manager Nicolas Torres and I are sitting in the communal fine dining restaurant's cabin-chic loft, where in just 30 minutes, dinner guests will gather for cocktail hour before embarking on a tasting menu of 14-plus courses (a number that varies "depending on day and time").

The loft features camping trinkets, a framed copy of Cigar Aficionado magazine starring Tom Selleck, and a lot of hunter's plaid.

"It feels like you're at a house party," Torres tells me about the Lazy Bear concept. "The focus of the design is to feel like a living room—a very rich kinky-guy lodge living room."

What strikes me most about Lazy Bear is not the decor—it's the beverage pairing.

"A typical pairing includes five or six wines, as well as a few other drinks which could be cocktails, punches, spirits, sake, or beer," the Lazy Bear website reads.

Can guests manage to throw back six, seven, or eight drinks without passing out on the beautifully set communal table?

The night kicks off in the loft with a complimentary glass of aperitif-style punch that rotates about every two weeks. Tonight, it's Carte De Blanche Rum, dry vermouth, lemon juice, fresh basil, and prosecco.

"It's a straightforward, nice, spritz-y sort of punch." Torres says. "The punch, I realize, it's the first thing they're putting in their mouths. It's gotta be refreshing, it's gotta be something everybody's going to enjoy."

For guests that opt for the wine pairing, cocktail hour is typically rounded out with a glass of Champagne after the punch.

"There are a lot of people who will get the wine pairing later on when they're downstairs, so they've already had two to three cocktails up here," Torres says. "You can tell when people have done cocktails up front and then go down to the pairing. They tend to be the rowdier group, which is something I guess we somewhat promote."

He adds, "We are fine dining, but we have lively music playing—it varies a lot. You get some yellers, and shouters, and hooters and hollers."

I don't blame people for hitting the cocktail list hard from the get-go, but one would be remiss to ignore the bounty of Torres' seasonally influenced menu just to avoid blacking out at dinner.

The drinks, even when they appear to be simple, are painstakingly laborious to make. Many of the ingredients are house-made, maybe even cooked sous vide or thrown into a centrifuge before they get served in vintage glassware.

"I spend most of my time in the kitchen, to be honest," Torres says.

Take the Nocino Shooter. It's equal parts nocino, cold brew, and palo cortado sherry, topped with a cardamom cream. Sounds easy enough, except that the cold brew is house-made and so is the nocino, which is also fortified with rum.

The Peach Pit 94110, which Torres calls a "terrible reference" to the show Beverly Hills, 90210, combines equal parts auslese riesling, fino sherry, bourbon, house-made créme de pêche, and Campari. That créme de pêche came to be because peaches are in season, so of course Lazy Bear needed to make its own peach liqueur.

"This is sort of my style of drink. It's really light-bodied, it's delicate, but it's still pretty much all alcohol," Torres says. "It's not a low-ABV drink."

So how can guests survive a night drinking at Lazy Bear?

"Know yourself and your limitations," Lazy Bear beverage director Zach Pace says. "There's a difference between 'totally drunk' and 'happily sated.'"

Pace tells me that the majority of guests will go with a beverage pairing, and clarifies that the wine pours are about two ounces each (versus a standard five-ounce serving, thank god). His choice of wines also leans in favor of your liver.

"I am an avowed Francophile, and fan of European wines in general, so the wines we end up serving quite often have a lower alcohol content than their New World counterparts, which certainly helps."

Most patrons typically finish all of their drinks over the course of the three-hour dining experience. Whether or not a guest finishes all of his or her drinks may come down to peer pressure. I ask Torres if the communal atmosphere inspires people to drink more.

"Absolutely, definitely," Torres says. "Everybody eats together, everybody talks together, everybody sort of drinks at the same speed."

He adds, "I think there's something about the pace here that makes it different from a lot of fine dining establishments. Obviously it's a communal dinner. But it's not just supposed to be communal—it's supposed to be a dinner party."

Guests start to arrive and are ushered upstairs to the loft for cocktail hour, and so the party begins.