John Ennis and Nick Thomas from Graffiti Spirits Group want to bring back Old Skool bar experiences, blended with Adam Taylor’s New Skool drinks. Hamish Smith is at their new digs MDNT to see how they’re doing it.

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Few would disagree that bartenders became less eyes up, more eyes down as their creations – not the vibe – became the focus. It worked – boy did it work – as the country in the 2010s became inculcated in cocktail culture in a way never seen before.

Indeed, customers caring about the contents of their cocktail represented a true paradigm shift in British drinking – and we may now be entering another. The modern guest still cares what’s in their glass, but they probably care more about what they’re doing while they’re drinking it.

Graffiti Spirits Group’s John Ennis and Nick Thomas recognise the moment. GSG (also owned by Matt Farrell) has launched just about every kind of venue in Liverpool and Manchester, from high-end restaurant (Nord), to market hall dining (Duke Street Market) to coffee shops (eight Bold Streets and counting) to dive bars (Salt Dog Slims) to speakeasies (81) and table-service cocktail bars (Manolo). Ennis – an OG of TGI Fridays bartending in the 2000s – wants the cocktail bars of the future to be more bar and less “cocktail canteen”.

“Nick and I are from a time when it wasn't called a cocktail culture,” says Ennis. “It was bar culture – a combination of atmosphere, energy, personality and drinks. Places where you go and meet strangers and things escalate.”

But how do you bring back that old-fashioned night out to a new generation of bar goers, who are happy to nurse a low/no cocktail and call it a night at 9pm? First of all, you don’t headline with the drinks. “I don't think taking drinks too seriously is going to help the industry in the future,” says Ennis. “The young generation coming into cocktail bars now, they need to see that drinking isn’t the serious thing that costs them £20 a drink. They need to feel the energy and realise what bars can be, what bars used to be and what a night out can be. They need to realise how mum met dad, because we’re losing that energy.”

But Ennis and Thomas also recognise that one trend never fully replaces another. The future – as they see it – is not a lurch but a middle ground of old and new skool. They want to bring back those carefree halcyon days, when the bartender orchestrated a packed, energy-filled room, where random acts of craziness occurred, but they don’t want the carefree drinks.

No, as much as Ennis and Thomas don’t believe a bar is meditation on cocktails, they very much care about the drinks. How else would you explain the fact they are experienced bartenders with a deep knowledge of classics – as evidenced by Manolo – yet still chose to enlist one of Manchester’s pre-eminent new-guard drinksmiths. Adam Taylor – he, presciently perhaps, of Halcyon Project fame, has joined to head up the group’s drinks development. “Why not have both?” asks Thomas. “We want to have a bar with atmosphere and be at the forefront of drinks.”

MDNT

That bar, you’ll have seen from the photo, is called MDNT, a disemvoweling of Midnight (that’s without vowels, not bowels). Whichever way you choose to pronounce it, if you’re reading this, it now should be open.

More important than how you say it, is how to find it. Not in a speakeasy way – though not not in a speakeasy way either. This place borrows a little from some of the best thematic hooks from the bar world’s back catalogue. You must first secure a booking with the host by text – a system borrowed from the likes of Death & Co in New York and something they’ve operated with success at their Liverpool speakeasy 81. Once you are in receipt of the code, you enter it into a nondescript door in their dive bar Salt Dog Slims.

“If you’ve ever been to Salt Dogs on a weekend, it’s packed and people are loose,” says Thomas. “The contrast from the dive bar to a door with a code, a private walkway and a décor change – that change is very immediate. We wanted to focus on the guest’s journey – the shock of the change, the mystique and juxtaposition around the entrance.”

This reframing of the mind and mood is the first step in atmosphere creation, the pair believe. The idea of a night out needs that kind of preparation. In fact, MDNT won’t be open Monday-Wednesday – it’s not a casual stop-off drink early mid-week, it’s a destination meant for the looser end of the week, when guests might stay late – some until 3am closing. When everything’s right at a bar, leaving is hard enough, but here guests face the added hurdle of leaving two bars. Salt Dog Slims upstairs has a 4am finish.

Once inside, MDNT aims to retain the high energy of its sister bar but dial up the sophistication – from bottled beers and games of pool to cocktails and a DJ. It’s intended to have vertical drinking, but there’s also a long, modern bar you can sit at and interact with the bartenders. Equally, interaction with the drinks can be as straightforward as drinking them. “We’re taking our drinks seriously so the guests don’t have to,” says Ennis.

High energy doesn’t happen all at once, you have to build it slowly – a bar should evolve as the night grows old, says Ennis. At the start, MDNT’s bar will have more of a role in the vibe, fading into the background as the atmosphere grows around it. “There’s a chef’s table element to the bar and early on we very much want guests to interact with the bartender and see exactly what’s going on behind the bar,” says Ennis. “But by 10pm the DJ will start and we’ll probably take away a couple of bar stools, leaving some standing room, dancing – that kind of vibe. We’re taking away the stiff barriers. No one who sits down all night recalls it as a ‘great night out’.”

In that sense, MDNT is two philosophies and two nights in one. It’s a middle ground of old and new, serious and unserious and high and even higher energy. From a purely economic position, it removes the need for guests to move on, to seek a gear shift – if all goes to plan, that’ll happen here without you noticing.

The drinks

The cocktail menu here is not a top-down approach with a preconceived concept funnelling down to names, ingredients and stories – it’s more about taking a classic, picking it apart, working out how to do it better or take it in another direction. “There are 24 drinks on the menu – roughly 50-50 classics and originals,” says Taylor. “The kind of drinks that make people in the bar say: ‘I want one of those’.

“Cocktails don’t have to be techy or made from far-flung ingredients – they can be fun,” says Taylor. And after months of drinks development, he’s not expecting to relaunch the menu any time soon. “I think people need to get away from this idea of changing menus for the sake of changing menus,” says Taylor. “The amount of places you go to where they become synonymous with a particular drink, and then it’s gone. There will be some drinks at MDNT that will never come off the menu.”

The big bet for one of those drinks is the Double Parked Porn Star which comes with a miniature bottle of champagne. “A lot of bars won’t put a Pornstar Martini on the menu because they think people will just order that and nothing else, whereas our mindset was like, OK, how can we take the Pornstar Martini, elevate it and make it more fun.” The other cocktail they’re backing to be a mainstay is their Garibaldi, made with a centrifugal juicer to order. “You’ve got this super-fresh, ridiculously fluffy orange juice”. Add in your Campari and “secret sauce” and you’ve got what Taylor thinks will be “the best Garibaldi you’ve ever had”.

But the drinks Taylor is most proud of are those featured (left) – Nitro Negroni, Faz Mangoes, Oaxacan Nightcrawler and Jimmy Gimlet. Time will tell which works best at MDNT as the energy builds towards and beyond the midnight hour.

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Adam Taylor takes us through four of MDNT's new drinks...

Nitro Negroni:

Bombay Sapphire, Martini Rubino, Campari, coconut water

My girlfriend’s favourite drink is a Negroni, so naturally it fell to me to make the best one possible. To me where the classic falls down is its lack of mouthfeel and texture. Ours is switched with coconut water and nitro carbonated, settles like a Guinness and retains that creamy mouthfeel. Sometimes it is worth trying to reinvent the wheel.

Faz Mangoes:

H by Hine, olorosso sherry, mango skin

A juicy little highball jokingly named after one of our directors. Cognac has long been my favourite spirit and I take any opportunity to present it in approachable ways to people. The clarified mayo skin soda brings a beautiful green brightness to the whole affair.

Oaxacan Nightcrawler:

Ilegal reposado, beetroot, lime, pineapple

An evolution of one of the most popular drinks from another bar in our portfolio. Beetroot shrub and acid-adjusted pineapple foam give this drink a huge amount of depth and complexity. It’s the kind of simplistic yet visually striking drink that MDNT will be built upon.

Jimmy Gimlet:

Boatyard gin, woodruff, kiwi, yuzu ponzu

One of the most simplistic classics elevated by the use of complex technique, we use milk powder to dry-brine kiwis to extract enzymes and create a wildly flavourful clarified cordial. Added to the new woodruff liqueur from close friend and GB Wizard winner Ashley Haines, this is the best Gimlet you’ll ever try.