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How France meets Canada at Bar Pompette
Toronto’s Bar Pompette is leading by example in Canada’s cocktail scene – we spoke to co-founder Hugo Togni for the lowdown.
The bar operation of Toronto’s popular Pompette bistro, since opening in 2021, Bar Pompette has grown to be not just one of the best bars in Toronto or Canada, but in North America and the world. This year, it earned its second consecutive nomination at the Spirited Awards, and in 2023, it was one of the bars to watch in The Spirits Business’ Global Bar Report.
Despite its location in Little Italy, the bar takes on a French inflection, mirroring a Parisian café, with co-founder and general manager Hugo Togni hailing from the country’s Alsace region. You might find live jazz on some days, and the interior features a marble bartop and classic walnut-coloured bistro-style seats.
Togni and the team, however, are not trying to emulate an operation from France. “I like to mention that the most French thing about the bar is probably us, rather than anything else,” he says. “Often when you leave France and visit places that are supposed to be French, they are less authentic than they want to be. The idea here is us trying to bring a little bit of our culture, through our background and knowledge of hospitality, to somewhere else.”
Togni has a fine-dining background, with cheffing stints in Michelin-starred kitchens; accordingly, a lot of drinks incorporate infusions and cooking techniques using high-tech equipment like rotary evaporators. Based on appearances, the cocktails at Bar Pompette seem simple, but from a technical standpoint, they are less so.
Some of the bar’s more famous inventions are the Nitro Colada, served on tap and made with pineapple juice clarified by way of a centrifuge and then blended with coconut oil-washed rum; the Cornichon, a Martini-esque cocktail made with dill pickle distillate; and 11am in Marseille, made with egg white, roasted almond orgeat and a beeswax-infused pastis as its base spirit.
Even though 11am in Marseille is a main signature, Togni says it is not the most popular serve because its “flavours are not for everyone” – those being anise and liquorice – however, for anyone into pastis, “it’s a done deal”.
While many of today’s bars can get caught up in cocktail science, Togni makes sure that at Bar Pompette, all of this takes place out of sight – unless a customer wants to know about it, and then he’ll happily take guests downstairs to the basement for a tour of the cocktail kitchen. “We call it a lab, to be honest,” he says.
Of the culinary focus, he adds: “I use these techniques to create drinks and go through the different steps, but this is not something we put in front of the customers. Before anything, we are a bar and it’s important to me that we remain so.” In this sense, the bar caters to both cocktail connoisseurs and more casual visitors who aren’t as bothered about the process behind the drinks.
Togni adds: “We want to be somewhere you can go and feel comfortable chatting over drinks, while not having to listen to a 30-minute speech about the making of the drink. If people ask, we’re happy to go into details, but only then. Sometimes people just want to drink the drink, enjoy it with friends – we’re here for that, first and foremost.”
French influences
Regarding the menu, he says: “We are trying to be faithful to one ingredient, and try to extract the best out of it. We take Canadian ingredients – Canadian terroir and that way of working – and try to get the best out of that.
“That might be the most French thing: always putting the products and the terroir first.”
In general, Pompette’s signature is a style of drink rather than a singular serve, he says. “We take a drink and match that to the season, the produce, the way we can work with farmers – we don’t have specific recipes we follow all year round.”
As you’d expect, French spirits are given a stage – Togni employs the likes of Cognac and Armagnac in cocktails, as well as liqueurs like Grand Marnier and Chartreuse. In Canada, brandy is also very big, which makes Togni happy because “in France, it’s complicated to sell brandy and brandy-based liqueurs like Grand Marnier. It makes me sad because we’re the country that produces it. It’s such a massive part of our patrimony and terroir, and what we love to do in France.”
While brandy is doing well in North America, he acknowledges it is “not always consumed the right way” – but that is where he and the team at Pompette can help.
He explains: “This is also our work, being able to say: ‘I want to put three Cognac-based cocktails on the menu’. I’ve never had any issue with someone telling me: ‘But this has Cognac – I don’t really like Cognac’.
“I love Cognac and brandy, and grew up with them. People here are really open to it and very eager to try – they don’t have this idea of it being your grandfather’s kind of drink, which many people have in France. Flavour-wise, they’re amazing, and it’s nice to work with that and see it appreciated.”
Weaving his French heritage into his bartending approach is something Togni also highlighted in his recent work for Grand Marnier, in an episode of the brand’s The Grand Encounter: Behind the Bar series, where he made a cocktail with ‘unexpected combinations’: Grand Marnier, Tequila infused with butter and Canadian maple syrup.
He explains: “With Grand Marnier, I wanted to talk about how to make something that comes from our place but matches the rest of the world – matching Paris, or France, with the world. How can we match them by creating an encounter, but not creating a clash? And that’s by using both countries at their best.”
Neighbourhood bar
Even if it has all the fancy tricks of modern mixology and the machinery to go with it, Bar Pompette sees itself as an approachable neighbourhood bar where the real focus is on its guests. “We are a neighbourhood spot: we opened as a neighbourhood spot, and we remain a neighbourhood spot,” says Togni.
“You can come for a beer, you can come for a glass of wine. But it used to be that beer and wine were maybe 30% of our sales – now they’re down to 5%.”
High-quality cocktails are important but, for Togni, they aren’t the be-all and end-all: “We’re not here just to say we’re making good cocktails. I don’t think that good cocktails make a great bar.
“Good cocktails make a great experience. But a great bar is made by every single detail and by making people feel welcome. If you happen to be around in the neighbourhood, and you want to sit down at the bar and also check out a couple of the pilsners we have on tap, then I’m the happiest person in the world to welcome you at the bar. It all matters.”
As for that neighbourhood, Togni says the community in Toronto is one of the best: “It’s absolutely amazing. We’ve had many people come from foreign countries because of guest shifts and masterclasses from bars around the world. Everyone who comes here is impressed by how strong our community is.”
Bar Pompette is part of a growing bar scene in the city, which Togni welcomes. “The scene has changed and is shifting in a different way, he says, citing Civil Liberties as a local favourite, as well as Mother, which he says is similar to Nightjar or Oriole in London in its vibe.
While a growing scene is great for business, Togni is wary of those simply looking for the next big thing: “People love to discover the new thing, to experience new flavours, but not all of them were interested in knowing more about it.
“We don’t want people to come just because we have awards and there’s an expectation to love what we serve. Sometimes people like things because the internet tells them to, but we want people to figure out flavours and what they really like.”
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