BIG ROOMS HAVE THEIR CHALLENGES, but it takes special talent to manage one as small as XXX, a subterranean speakeasy set in an old Victorian house, below the Dutch-Indo Little Sister restaurant. With 20 seats and almost no standing room, this groovy homage to the underground cocktail joints along the canals of Amsterdam is about as small as it gets.
As such, the team tries, within reason, to “curate” the clientele, something that bar manager Robin James Wynne says they have little choice but to do. The neighbouring King Street West district is so raucous and the bar so intimate that a party of three or four spilling out of a nearby nightclub could ruin the mood for everyone.
Which would be a shame, given that XXX nearly always has a lively, friendly vibe, thanks to show-stopping cocktails by Stevie Stewart and Alex Lakusta and the perfect underground-jazzy mix of mid-’90s East Coast hip hop, contemporary Europop and ’70s Lagos disco.
Despite the informal house rules and tough admittance policies (no reservations; restaurant patrons are invited down), XXX is far from pretentious. Those that know Wynne, who also manages the restaurant’s bar program, know why. A veteran on the scene, he’s famous for his proletarian love of bacon and rum. And as a thoroughly generous and enthusiastic host, he smoothly balances exclusivity with “keeping it real” in this tiny cavern full of bright spirits and good feels.
—Christine Sismondo
Photos: Rick O’Brien
XXX
