Art School. It connotes asymmetrical haircuts, billows of smoke (cloves on the campus of RISD if you’re Gen X, Parliaments at CalArts if you’re Millennial, vaping on TikTok if you’re now), and more-than-a tinge of shame in knowing that your record collection only has Bowie and definitely no Alice Coltrane.
It’s that elusive arm’s length from cool that turns most of us into connoisseurs, critics, and appreciators. But, Botanica, the new hybrid bar-gallery-restaurant from Be Saha Hospitality in the Art Produce complex in North Park, schools us all on what it means to be artistic.
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Megan Jane Burgess
Be Saha Hospitality have forged their way from Old Town (with Mezcal bar Tahona) to University Heights (creating the Absinthe-focused, French holiday in Wormwood) with a passion to support underdog spirits and create community from them. They hope to do the same in North Park with Botanica, flaunting gin and genever-based cocktails with pintxos-style, global cuisine from Michelin pedigreed chefs, and—you guessed it—art.
With digital frames hanging over lime green, velvet-lined banquettes, Botanica will be a gallery for the ephemeral joys of dining, as well as a literal gallery for physical and digital NFT (non-fungible token) art, where guests can purchase the art they see. This will be the first of its kind in San Diego.
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Megan Jane Burgess
Be Saha founder, Amar Harrag, emphasizes that “we are also at the beginning of what NFTs are, and we believe that there is a strong opportunity for their applications when it comes to building communities.” Think of it less as a bar or restaurant, and more as an homage to artistry in all forms: culinary, liquid, digital, and fine. Or, as Harrag puts it, “Botanica is meant to be a place where visual and experiential art meet.”
Led by an all-female leadership team, Botanica is fronted by general manager Ariana Sadre with beverage director Marina Ferreira, Addison alumna Tiffany Tran as kitchen manager and Be Saha culinary director Janina Garay, each an artist in their own genre.
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Megan Jane Burgess
Curated by Sadre and Ferreira, who co-own a bar education business called RoseWater Cocktail Co., the cocktail program will encourage the juniper-curious to broaden their palates. “Genever is cool because it is more between a gin and a whiskey. So, it’s going to have that maltiness, but it’s also going to have that juniper focus. The whole idea is to expand our minds on what we think is normal and classic and regular,” says Ferreira. Interpretation is everything.
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Megan Jane Burgess
The menu will feature 13 cocktails, each based on works of art, varying from canonical artists, like Van Gogh and Dalí to locals and lesser-knowns (think un-Euro-centric). The core of the menu will be interpretations of four classics: a negroni, a martini, a French 75/Spritz variation, and the stalwart gin and tonic—“but it’s going to be a genever branch-off,” Ferreira adds. Eight cocktails will be seasonally inspired and feature a variety of spirits.
“We’ll have one with mezcal and whiskey and tequila—everything else, as well. So, we’re welcoming everybody because that’s really, again, community-focusing,” Ferreira reminds us. The 13th cocktail will be constantly changing and devoted to one of Art Produce’s rotating artists-in-residence.
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Megan Jane Burgess
The link to Art Produce is a big one. They will be co-hosting events like NFT drops, chef dinners, and cocktail-art pairings in the community garden. The garden also plays a role in the menu, as chefs are harvesting from it for the pinxtos served.
The food menu is a canvas just as broad as the cocktails, but in miniaturized form. The menu features 10 savory items that chef Janina Garay likens to “a little bit bigger than a canapé with, obviously, super high-end techniques.” These will be produced by chef Tiffany Tran, who had unwittingly been training for Botanica during her tenure at Addison as the number two canapé chef.
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Megan Jane Burgess
“With all the pintxos, there are a lot of techniques involved in the flavor. And, for the flavors, we’re going around the world,” Garay explains, referencing Hawaii, Asia, France, and Mexico, to name a few.
To showcase the variety, Botanica will have an omakase menu, where your chefs will select either four or six pinxtos to compliment your cocktail excursion. Highlights of the menu include a Trumpet Mushroom Musubi and a Crab Roll with gin-pickled vanilla grapes, sunflowers and curly scallions. Chef Tran expands on her flavors, “my philosophy of food is the Japanese Style: everything is an element. So, once you take a bite, it’s the perfect bite.” A bite, an opus, it’s the same thing at Botanica.
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Megan Jane Burgess
So, what is Botanica’s medium? Ingenuity. From its NFT platform donating proceeds to Create Purpose, a 501c3 nonprofit providing educational programs to orphanages in Mexico, to their ambitious wine, vermouth, and non-alcoholic programs and fine-dining in one-bite, expect precision, creativity, and inclusivity.
“From our cocktail program to our creative small plates, we want our guests to arrive with an open mind and to leave Botanica having experienced something new and different,” says Harrag.
Botanica will have a soft opening on Tuesday, October 23, with limited reservations available via Resy only (no walk-ins). Botanica officially opens to the public on Thursday, October 27 for both reservations and walk-ins.
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