Discover Harrogate's New Hidden Cocktail Bar
Creative cocktails, relaxed table service and speakeasy vibes - what's not to love about Over & Above?
Tell us about your background.
I’ve been in the drinks industry pretty much my whole adult life. I started off in Edinburgh working in cocktail bars at the age of 18 while I was at university. I loved it so much that after my degree I decided to work full time at it. I moved into a global brand ambassador role for a beer company in Edinburgh called Innis & Gunn, travelling around America and Europe sharing their story and doing tastings.
Then I went back to uni for another year to do a masters degree in brewing and distilling – it was like Hogwarts for alcohol. I still wanted to be involved in cocktails so I moved down to London to work for Sipsmith which was a brand I loved. That was probably where I learned the most. I took that that knowledge and realised that there was a gap in the market at Harrogate. My parents live here so I always come back and a business opportunity came up.
What can guests expect at Over & Above?
It’s a mix between a neighbourhood bar and high-end service. Everything we do is table service so that’s slightly more formal, but it’s actually still really relaxed and friendly. You come in, you get looked after, and you get free water and a snack as soon as you sit down. The menu is quite fun – a lot of the drinks are familiar drinks which have gone over and above, with something a bit quirky to it. There’s no signage at all – it’s all very speakeasy vibes. The reason we have that name is we’re literally over and above two floors, but also I hope the drinks and service go over and above what people would expect.
Talk us through the menu.
The idea is to keep the drinks as familiar as possible but introduce quite advanced techniques. We didn’t want to alienate anyone – Harrogate has not had a bar that offers drinks in this style before so we didn’t want to go too crazy at first. The clarified colada is a great example. We’ve taken the flavours of a piña colada but created a clarified milk punch around it. We have a blend of three rums; we use a Venezuelan rum which is really nice, creamy and sweet which is what you’d expect from a piña colada, a coconut rum because we need to bring the coconut flavour in, and an over-proofed rum to give it a bit of an alcoholic kick. We then use a rum-based lime liqueur which fits really nicely with the theme of the drink.
We add some pineapple juice and lime juice and pour that into milk so it curdles. It sounds mental but it’s delicious! We then use a nut bag or cheese cloth and as soon as it starts to run clear you now have a bed of those curds and what it’s doing is stripping the colour out of the alcohol. The whole drink is passed through those curds – it usually takes 12 hours overnight. When you come in the next day it’s clear and it has all the big tropical rum flavours of the piña colada. We serve that on a block ice which is also clarified too so the drink is nice and see through, and it has a little strawberry yoghurt sphere which sits on top.
What has been a bestseller?
Our margaritas! Again a very familiar drink, we serve ours more similar to a Tommy’s margarita which is on the rocks. We do that on a block ice as well, but then instead of a salt rim we do salt air which sits on top of the drink. It’s a mixture of salt, water and an emulsifying agent, and we blitz that together with a hand whisk before a shift. We have an aquarium pump that we pop in the bottom and whenever someone orders a margarita we turn that on, it pushes oxygen through the liquid and it creates a sort of bubble bath. It’s so light, silky and salty, and you pop that on top of the drink so you still have the salt rim effect.
What has the response been like since opening?
It’s been insane. From the minute we opened until the minute we closed at 1am we were turning people away and every single table was full, which is the best thing we could have asked for.
Do you have any plans for the future of Over & Above?
We are hoping to expand into doing some events as well. I think because of my role with Sipsmith and the network I built there, we’ve got friends in lots of very good bars across the UK – we’re hoping to bring them here and they can go through the menu for a takeover.
