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Remy Savage opens Bordeaux bar
After opening London’s A Bar with Shapes for a Name in 2021, Remy Savage has cut the ribbon on his first outpost in Bordeaux, France.
Savage, who is also the co-founder of Paris-based Bar Nouveau, has opened the new Bordeaux site with his business partner Paul Lougrat.
Like his acclaimed London venue, the Bordeaux venue is called A Bar with Shapes for a Name – or Un Bar avec des Formes pour Nom in French, as it is titled on Instagram – but Savage cannot (yet) use emojis for the name.
Similar to his other bars, it is also based on an art movement: Bauhaus. In that sense it’s the same in concept as London or like ‘an elderly sister, but inherently Bordelais [of Bordeaux] from the material to the guests’, Savage wrote on his Instagram page.
“About two-and-a-half years ago, we decided to take on the project, under the idea of ‘okay Bauhaus, but with a real Bordeaux vibe to it’,” he told The Spirits Business of its earliest planning.
“Even though it’s got that the same people behind it, so Paul and myself, the architect, the type of materials…. Everything is local to Bordeaux. We are starting with the ambition of everything kind of mirroring London. But eventually, the idea is to see how the environment impacts the things that we do, the way people drink, and all this kind of stuff. So it’s a fun little project, because we are requesting everything that we are doing in London but here in Bordeaux, and then we see how it evolves.”
As those involved in the Bauhaus school of art, following the Second World War, wanted to be international, fleeing Germany to other countries, Savage notes that “the idea was for everyone to know and recognise the bar beyond the language they speak or the alphabet they read”.
He and Lougrat opened A Bar with Shapes for a Name in London in 2021 based on the principle of creating bar different projects based on different art movements. Savage then opened Bar Nouveau, based on the Art Nouveau movement, with Hadrien and Sara Moudoulaud, and Marc Puzzuoli, in Paris last summer.
Functionalist bar under the umbrella of Bauhaus
For Bordeaux, the spot Savage found is a space that an old co-worker of Lougrat was set to give away, across from a prominent Bauhaus-style firestation building on 17 Quai des Salinières – named La caserne de la Benauge, designed by Claude Ferret in 1954 to implement functionalism into the city’s fire department – which Savage says was a sign that he and Lougrat should look into it.
Of choosing Bordeaux, Savage called the city “very beautiful” and a good fit for his art movement-inspired bar idea: “We just had to because people in Bordeaux may not understand the Bauhaus heritage of the city. The connection between art, culture and the way people live is what we are mostly interested in.”
Additionally, the city has a developing cocktail scene, with fellow bars like Symbiose leading the way. “I’m from a different side of France [Lyon], which is a bit more rough. Bordeaux is very safe and pretty”, Savage said. “Post-Covid, a lot of Parisiens also went to Bordeaux. So there’s a lot of these wealthy, you know 35- to 45-year-old people with a bit of disposable income. There’s a lot of interest in it historically today, as well. It’s been a very bourgeois, wealthy city for a long time. And where there’s money, people like to drink cocktails… I guess.”
The menu will be identical to what Savage and Lougrat do in London, drink for drink; cocktails made from only 20 bottles of blind-tasted spirits, divided between classics and house libations such as the kazimir (a fat-washed creation inspired by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich that’s made with vodka, absinthe and peach yoghurt).
“For us, in the first few months we wanted to bring together the same idea for customers in London and Bordeaux,” Savage explained. “It was a fun thing as well to introduce ourselves to the Bordeaux market. We ask people to say out of 10 Tequilas, can you pick the best? Even if it’s the same idea as London, it’s the people in Bordeaux choosing this time. The terroir of people is actually going to make the bar eventually go in a completely different direction.
“The ambition is very similar because functionalism and minimalism are a bit of it, but it’s bound to be different.”
Savage adds that for one week every month, either he or Lougrat will be present in Bordeaux (Savage divides the rest of his schedule travelling between his other bars and projects).
For the future, he hopes to open more bars in the art movement vein: abstract in Lyon and futurism in Milan are two that he already has his eyes on.
In other recent additions to the bar world, Ti’ Punch Rum Bar opened in Madrid, Zum Barbarossa and Muse opened in London, and New York City’s Eleven Madison Park welcomed Clemente.
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