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Ordinary Gets A Miracle On Chapel Street

Lucy Gellman | December 12th, 2018

Ordinary Gets A Miracle On Chapel Street

Downtown  |  Economic Development  |  Food & Drink  |  Arts, Culture & Community

 

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Ordinary Co-Founder Tim Cabral. Lucy Gellman Photos. 

There’s tinsel growing like ivy over the bar at Ordinary. Strings of rainbow lights blink out in unfamiliar greens, yellows and reds nearby. The windows look like they’re snow-kissed, glowing white and gold with a tiny tree in the window. And somewhere back near the fireplace, it appears that a reindeer has thrown up enough joy and good cheer to last through New Year’s Day.

For the month of December, Ordinary New Haven has turned into Miracle, a kitschy cocktail bar and Christmas pop-up in the middle of Chapel Street, meant to conjure holiday magic in even the darkest of months. Gone is the clean, prohibition-era cool that usually defines the bar, replaced with mugs bearing Santa’s jolly mustachioed face, tumblers with tiny sleigh decals, and tiny koala bears wearing red-and-white Santa Hats as they climb the stems of cocktail glasses.

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It is kitsch of the highest order, at arguably the kitschiest time of year. And for co-owner Tim Cabral, it’s also a boozy rite of passage—Ordinary is one of some 80 bars in the world, and only two in Connecticut, to participate in the event. After beginning Nov. 27, Miracle at Ordinary continues through Dec. 31. In the state, the other participating bar is Highland Brass Co. in Waterbury, Conn.

“It’s a big honor to be asked to be part of it, because it’s its own thing,” Cabral said in an interview at the bar last week, mixing the bourbon, gingerbread syrup, Elemakule Tiki Bitters, whole egg and nutmeg that go into a Gingerbread Flip. “It works in our space. I’m very proud to be doing it.”

Miracle first started four years ago at a New York City cocktail bar called Mace, with no stated goal of growing in future years. At the time, owner Greg Boehm was still building out the bar, and opened a seasonal pop-up called “Miracle On Ninth Street.” People started flocking to it, intrigued then delighted by the idea. The following year, it began to catch on in other cities, a whole Miracle team forming to design a menu

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Now, the pop-up comes with specific, holiday-themed drinkware and 12 signature cocktails, including the “Jingle Balls Nog” (cognac, Pedro Ximenez Sherry, brown butter, cinnamon, cherry, vanilla, almond milk, cream, sugar, egg and nutmeg), “Koala-La La La, La La La La” (gin, pine, dry vermouth, lime, eucalyptus syrup and orange bitters), and “Snowball Old Fashioned (butterscotch rye, spiced Demerara, Wormwood bitters and orange zest).

When the Miracle team approached Cabral about participating this year, he recalled saying yes almost instantly. It’s not that he is fond of Christmas festivities, he said—Cabral grew up in New Haven not particularly enjoying the holiday. He still associates Christmastimes of his youth with the fact that he was working by age 12. But the honor was too exciting to pass up.

After signing onto Miracle, he picked up the phone and enlisted Kyle Zimmerman, a friend he had made on the Kentucky Bourbon trail years earlier. He made a total of five trips out to buy furry, glittering tinsel, Christmas lights, tiny trees, and other holiday decor, realizing after each one that “I thought I had so much, and it was never enough!” And the day before Miracle began, he and staff spent the day decorating, turning into a winter wonderland

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New Haven Independent reporter Markeshia Ricks, a friend of Rawls-Ivy's (and this reporter's!) and a fan of the bar. 

Somewhere along the way, it seems that he’s started to believe in the magic too. Yes—it’s kind of like taking a wrong turn into Frankenmuth, the little Michigan town where it is Christmas all year long. But at its best, it also channels Europe's warmly lit Christmas markets, where visitors can ward off the biting cold with steaming mugs of mulled wine, spiced nuts and hot Kartoffelpuffer that burst with onion when you first bite into them.

On a recent Friday, the bar was hopping, Christmasy cocktails mingling with beer on tap as the bar filled up just after 5 p.m. Sitting at the bar across from Cabral and Zimmerman, Inner-City News Editor Babz Rawls-Ivy worked through her first “Run Run Rudolph” (Prosecco, gin, mulled wine puree, lemon, cane syrup) with a Doodle Burger on a bed of lettuce.

“I don’t see any Black Santas,” she told Cabral, who she affectionately refers to as her “bar husband.”

“We’re working on it!” he said.

“It sets the tone for the holidays,” she later added. “Good friends and good food over great cocktails makes the season bright.”