San Francisco’s New Burritt Room

? Kristin Donnelly
The Kerouac Cocktail.

On a recent trip to San Francisco, my fiancé and I mapped out a cocktail crawl. On the list: the whiskey-focused Rickhouse, Michael Mina’s Clock Bar and the brand new, much-buzzed-about Comstock Saloon. Our first stop, however, was the two-week-old Burritt Room in the new Crescent Hotel, where Kevin Diedrich (a veteran of Bourbon & Branch, PDT and Clover Club) designed the drinks. We loved the red velvet bar stools, the spooky white piano and the exposed brick walls, dimly lit by chandeliers. The perfectly balanced Kerouac Cocktail, a mixture of reposado tequila, Aperol, Cointreau and grapefruit and lemon juices was a great way to start the night—but we became so enamored with Diedrich and his cocktail list (each drink is only $10, and the descriptions are written up like old-fashioned recipes) that our crawl came to a standstill as we ordered more drinks.