#WHATS AMF DRINK LICENSE#

Legally speaking, a nearly finished drink still counts as the full, original amount of liquor, so at Copper Common, they will clear off your first drink before pouring you another. On top of that, the state will not let you have two drinks in front of you if they have the same base spirit or add up to more than 2.5 ounces. 'What's more difficult than anything else,' says Segrave-Daly, 'is explaining to someone why he can't get a double scotch, even though the person next to him has a scotch cocktail that's twice the size of a neat scotch.' You just can't have two servings of the same spirit, and the 2.5 ounce limit means there's no way to serve a 'double' even if you could. Theoretically, you can order an ounce-and-a-half of bourbon with a one-ounce chase of something else. 'I can't pour you two-and-half ounces of bourbon, but I can make you a bourbon cocktail with an ounce and a half of bourbon and an ounce of something else.' 'The one thing I always try to explain to our guests is, 'If you're looking for a stiff drink, you need to go after a cocktail, not just something neat to sip on,'' says Copper Common beverage director/bar manager Maureen Segrave-Daly. But in a cocktail, you can use 2.5 ounces of spirit in total, as long as the other ounce comes from a secondary spirit. Whether it's served neat, on the rocks, or in a cocktail, hard liquor is restricted to a 1.5-ounce serving. But here are some of the ways in which cocktails in Utah are unlike cocktails anywhere else: The debut of Copper Common - and the likes of Bar-X (part-owned by Modern Family actor Ty Burrell and his brother Duncan), Finca, and the Rest - have given Salt Lake a craft cocktail scene just like any other major city. In its place came Copper Common, which opened in March of 2014.

#WHATS AMF DRINK LICENSE#

When a full-service club license became available, they decided Plum Alley would be no more (it may eventually return at another location).

All restaurant bartenders are required to keep and make the drinks behind this partition, lest sober (or underage) customers should accidentally catch a glimpse of rye.īut despite Plum Alley's local popularity and BA nod, Lowder and his staff never forgot their original concept. With a restaurant license, Plum Alley could still serve liquor, beer, and wine, but only if 70 percent of its revenue came from food, and only with the only-in-Utah restriction known as 'the Zion Curtain,' which is a sort of dressing screen for alcoholic beverages. 'Utah’s limits on alcohol put into cocktails makes it difficult to make them of satisfying quality.' So, as Lowder told Eater in early 2013, he turned the space into an Asian-influenced restaurant. But halfway through construction, Utah's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control announced that they were out of 'club licenses,' full-service licenses which are based on population estimates (there's one for every 7,280 residents, which adds up to a current total of 382 for the entire state). Lowder's dream for the space was a craft cocktail bar: a place for Copper Onion guests to have a drink while waiting for a table, or for just anyone to have a drink, period, without being required to get food. The story behind Plum Alley's closing is actually the story of Plum Alley's opening. 'Because we've got non-drinkers making all these laws, and then a healthy amount of them also involved in enforcement, there's not a lot of consistency to the laws as they're actually enacted,' says Lowder. Sixty-two percent of Utah's residents are members of the teetotaling Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the will of that majority exerts itself repeatedly through the state's alcoholic beverage statutes.Īlthough strides have been made recently, Utah still has some of the country's quirkiest and most restrictive regulations, including its infamous ( if perhaps overblown) restriction on beers that are more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight. No, not the actual spot - a prominent corner next to Lowder's flagship establishment, the Copper Onion - but, rather, the fact that it's in Salt Lake City.

Why would the owner of a popular restaurant that made the 2012 Bon Appetit Top 50 decide to close it just a year-and-a-half later? In the case of Ryan Lowder and Plum Alley, the answer lies in three familiar words: location, location, location.

Whats amf drink