At Republique, brash bar manager Erik Lund has applied lessons learned from mentor Julian Cox to create a balanced cocktail menu centering on APERITIF, TRADITION, and MARKET to complement Walter Manzke’s California-influenced French cuisine.

During a recent dinner, I trusted Lund’s take on the market by ordering a Celery ($14) cocktail featuring tequila, celery syrup, Serrano chile and a celery salt rim, served in an Old Fashioned glass and poured over a single rock. Lund takes what’s great about Cel-Rey soda – crisp, vegetal refreshment – and strikes the glass with a chile thunderbolt and salted rim that adds still more strokes of celery, in the form of ground seeds. Celery hasn’t been this much fun since busting out the ants on a log during elementary school recess.