Tapping creativity at the Underdog Inn

THE uninitiated might assume that cocktails on tap are necessarily simple concoctions, pared down to suit their mode of delivery. Underdog Inn’s selection – with ingredients ranging from honey ginger and whey to roasted chicory and butternut cream – should swiftly banish this assumption.

A board behind the bar lists 12 draught cocktails, ready to be released from a gleaming array of taps below. The taps themselves are in line with Underdog Inn’s multilayered concept: an Irish tavern in New York City “invaded by the street”, as bar manager Lee Rosli puts it.

Opened last November, the back-alley space off Gemmill Lane retains the graffitied wooden walls of the previous tenant, a burger bar – but adds framed black-and-white photographs and prints of 1980s NYC artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.