He first opened Wildair in 2015 alongside his Co-Owner, Jeremiah Stone. Wildair was, and still is, an ahead-of-its-time wine bar that serves dishes like deboned and stuffed chicken wings with blue cheese and sausage, and a savory eclair filled with Cantabrian anchovy and Challerhocker cheese. It’s now somewhat of an institution in the neighborhood, and a spectacular place for a first date. Over the years, Valtierra and Stone have been written about, awarded, opened more concepts, and even published a cookbook. But, quietly, in 2023, they decided to overhaul their fine dining concept, Contra, and turn it into a bar.
As with everything Valtierra does, this bar turned out to be anything but ordinary. For one, they have a centrifuge. But they don’t take themselves or their patrons too seriously. They serve creative cocktails with names like Professor Plum and Fantasy Island, and frozen popcorn served over caramel. In my opinion, it’s one of the best cocktail bars in the city. We spoke to Valtierra about the reason for the switch, the inspiration behind the bar, and the importance of low ABV beverages on Bar Contra‘s menu.
Me and my partner Jeremiah were just getting a little exhausted from the entire — fine dining, post Covid — life dilemma. We were really hit hard and doing the best we could but I think timing was off with everyone recovering. At the same time we really wanted to push cocktails as much as we did a wine list and that’s when a conversation with our long time friend Dave Arnold started.
We wanted to create a neighborhood bar that hopefully you didn’t see anywhere else. Also a place that wasn’t a “bar” bar where it’s all standing up and just a little bit more hectic. We wanted to create a place where you could sit down, have fun, and feel taken care of.
We all met around 20 years ago at the French culinary institute. I used to work for Dave and have always admired him. We’ve all been friends and it kind of feels like we come from the same universe.
Dave has a company called Booker and Dax named after his kids. He makes a lot of kitchen equipment and one of those is the spinzall, which is a centrifuge. Most of our drinks are clarified, and even if they don’t end up clear, we clarify them because we want the clean base to start with. We also use a lot of acid adjusting different fruits, making stable orgeats and making stable dairy-based syrups. It’s worth it for us. A lot of it happens backstage and that kind of goes hand in hand with wanting to be a neighborhood place with amazing world class drinks. We do the work but it should seem like a straightforward and fun bar. We use a lot of expensive ingredients so it’s also worth it to do them justice.
Everyone has a different one! Mine is the guavatas, and it’s a lovely take on a guava martini. The other one is the green bean bullshit which is a no ABV drink that’s made with juiced green beans, pomegranate juice and is infused with rhubarb root and marigold. It drinks like a Negroni because of the bitterness.
SALTAIR for sure, it’s a take on one of Dave’s old cocktails called the Corsair. It’s like a salty plum margarita with a little beer. Honestly it’s such a great representation of the bar. It’s a bit familiar, but just different enough.
We sell a good amount of low ABV and no ABV drinks. They might be even more important for us than the alcoholic ones, because we are always trying to add more and find a balance. We wanted to make sure people who don’t drink can come and have the same experience as someone who is drinking. Even if you are someone who drinks, maybe you’d get a third drink that has no alcohol just to try something fun that won’t take you over the edge. We also change them constantly, so there’s always options, like the carbonated amaro. We change the amaro every other week and make a carbonated cocktail with it.
We wanted it to be a departure from what Contra was but keeping the roots of it, by making things that still require skill and are a bit different. I suppose we wanted to strip away some of the pretentiousness of how it’s presented to our guests. It was important for us to create a menu where if you came for one drink, you could have a snack. But if you wanted to have the full experience, you could build yourself a nice dinner with a few dishes that are made with interesting and fun techniques.
