Drink With Us
A Drink for Every Taste
Quality Without Compromise
Customers often ask us ‘what’s your favourite cocktail / wine / beer?’ For us, it depends what time of day it is, what the occasion is, and what mood we’re in!
There’s so many amazing varieties of drinks to be had which can hit the spot in different ways at different times, and that’s part of the ethos we had when setting up the bar. Our aim was to become an institution on the Wirral for the highest quality drinks.
We’re not trying to appeal to any age category – we’re here for everyone with a discerning palate, looking for quality. We didn’t want to specialise in just one drink’s category – we specialise in them all – as all good bars should – beers, wines & cocktails.
More Than a Bar
Something for Everyone
You, as a customer should be able to go out as a group of friends / family / on a date / solo – and be able to have a banging cocktail, a CAMRA award-winning cask ale, a glass of velvety Pinot Noir, or a perfect flat white – all at the same time, in the same venue. And that’s what we do.
When we took on the building back in 2004, it was in need of some serious TLC, but we only had 50k to spend which even then was nowhere near enough. So being bartenders at heart, and inspired by watching Tom Cruise in ‘Cocktail’ too many times as teenagers, we blew 35k of our budget on pretty much nothing the customer could see – the under bar!
Built for Great Service
Where It All Began
The original horseshoe shape of the bar we loved & kept – it really helps create the atmosphere and encourages engagement between customers and the team alike. It’s also a great people watching spot from any bar stool!
So in went 3 custom designed drinks ‘stations’ of stainless steel double skinned insulated ice wells, speed rails, glass shelves, drop fridges, stainless steel ‘Osborne’ bottle fridges. We clad the back bar & the bar top in stainless steel. Hoshizaki ice machines in the cellar. No expense was spared on the kit. It was beautiful (behind the bar anyway!)
This left us with no money to do much else (other than pimp the ladies toilets and buy a Bose sound system!) so we painstakingly peeled the lead piping off the windows ourselves, slapped some paint on the walls and bought some second hand couches & wobbly tables and we were good to go (don’t worry we’ve evolved since then!)
The OBK Way
The People Make the Difference
Lots of venues have a token ‘cocktail’ list nowadays, however, not many in our opinion are ‘cocktail bars’. After visiting some of the best and most famous cocktail bars in the world; ‘PDT’ & ‘Employees Only’ in New York, ‘Milk & Honey’ and ‘The American Bar’ at the Savoy in London, ‘The Long Bar’ at Raffles Hotel in Singapore, we realised, and to shamelessly paraphrase Walt – you can build the most beautiful bar in the world, but it’s the bartenders who make the magic happen.
If you’ve been fully bar trained at OBK and passed your final bar test, we’re confident & proud to say you could work behind any high-end cocktail bar or 5-star hotel bar in the world without feeling you’re in above your head – which many of our past team have gone on to do. It’s a laborious task for them but it’s not just for the notoriety, they do get a little OBK pin badge at the end of it!
Experts by Passion
Knowledge in Every Pour
On top of our in-house training, many of our team have passed external qualifications including WSET Awards in wine (to level 2 & 3) & beer (to level 1 & 2).
Passionate About Wine
We’re passionate about wine nowadays and hoping to start our WSET Diploma this year. All of the wines we stock are blind tasted against competitors before getting on the list, so you can have confidence in our choices (just try our SA Old Vine Chenin Blanc or biodynamic Vinho Verde if you want your mind blown).
It’s a laborious task for them but it’s not just for the notoriety, they do get a little OBK pin badge at the end of it!
Beer Done Properly
All management have passed cellar & cask management courses, and we are regularly featured in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide. We focus on local cask ales from microbreweries such as Brimstage, Peerless & Love Lane Brewery, along with ‘craft’ (hate that word) kegs such as Titanic Stout, Vedett Extra White, and Pardal.
We don’t do mainstream.
See you in there soon
If you’ve read this far well done! We need to walk the dog now, but what we’ve rambled on about and tried to get across, is that we take our drinks and bartenders seriously, and we’ll always do our best to make sure you have a perfect drink & a great time with us.
The OBK Team x
What they say
