Bad news, guys. I wasted three years of my life not going to Bar Bayonne when I could’ve been. I can never get them back. I can only start compensating today for the deleterious loss.
At 14th and Jefferson, L’Oursin has been the kissy darling of Seattle’s food writers since opening in 2016, and I’d assumed that if you’ve seen it, you’ve seen its sister, Bar Bayonne. But they are sisters, not twins. While L’Oursin is bright and blonde with lemony walls and wooden accents, looking like a sunflower in bloom, sultry Bayonne is all scarlet and turquoise and chrome, with metal band posters and neon trim. Still French, it imparts a moody Iberian flavor to L’Oursin’s Breton sailor-shirt vibe.
I finally make it to Bar Bayonne on a sunny Thursday afternoon. There are fresh flowers on the bar and jazz on the aux. It’s hard to choose from the impeccable cocktail list, so bartender Lana helpfully steers me toward her fave. “It’s a really unique drink,” she says, “made with Roquefort-flavored liqueur.”
Wait. As in the cheese?
The Cheesy Marty arrives in a snifter, whisper-light and screamingly cold, garnished with a fat piparra-and-blue-cheese-stuffed olive. The drink is placid and clear, if slightly clouded from the chill. A few polka dots of olive oil quiver on the surface.
It tastes powerfully of blue cheese. There’s a briny seashell thing happening between the fino sherry and the smoky mezcal, and a whiff of honeysuckle sweetness, too, all locking together flawlessly. It’s very weird to drink cold clear cheese juice, but I want another one the second it’s gone. As the French say about delicious things: “C’est le petit Jesus en culotte de velours” (This is little [baby] Jesus in his velvet underwear).
It’s a simple recipe using extraordinary ingredients. G. E. Massenez is an Alsatian distillery that specializes in eaux-de-vie, and their Liqueur de Roquefort is straight-up just Roquefort cheese macerated in neutral alcohol. The fino sherry is from Gutiérrez Colosía in Spain, with notes of pear and chamomile, and the mezcal’s a caramelly Oaxaca joven (aged) espadin made by Rayu. Polish distillery Gruven made the crisp, smooth, small-batch potato vodka.
L’Oursin/Bayonne co-owner Zac Overman says the drink wrote itself once he discovered that Roquefort liqueur. “We brought a bottle of that in,” he says, “just to try it—it is intensely cheesy—and realized we had to [use it to] do a martini with a blue cheese olive. And then we wanted to make it as savory and dirty as possible without actually using any olive brine, which is where the sherry and mezcal came in.”
How hedonistically sensible. Why make a hamburger when you could make a cheeseburger.
I realize I’m mortifyingly late, but Bar Bayonne’s spectacular, and there’s no excuse for never having been. I knew this when I drank this cocktail, and again hours later, wolfing down the magnificent jambon-beurre I’d taken to go. This is an essential—no, a crucial Seattle bar. I can’t wait to make up for lost time.
