Bar Review: Revolucion Cocktail 2

By Virginia Werner

Bigger and better than ever, Revolucion's second, significantly larger location, what we will henceforth refer to as Revolucion 2, has arrived to Jing'an to the great delight of a community of bright-eyed expats looking to grab a drink (or three) without having to worry about the Yongkang 10pm curfew. All the more relevant given recent news that a sizable chunk of bars on the street may be closing...

Like Revolucion 1.0, parent company The Urban Bar has stuck with the tropical theme, with parrots adorning the walls and brightly colored grates covering the ceiling. A red neon sign on the wall reads, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here!" Thanks for the heads up.

There were as many as six people working the long bar backlit by a truly impressive number of bottles, but only a few of them seemed to be actually making drinks. The rest were just standing around, while a few tried to do some tricks with the bottles. Working hard or hardly working?
This area of Jing'an isn't known for its drinking culture, but nevertheless business is booming and we struggled to find a seat. When we did find one at the bar, we were pleased to discover imbedded USB ports that you can plug your cable directly into. Now that's just next level considerate.

Currently a short soft opening menu is place, though wait staff told us that a longer, "very complicated" grand opening one is in the works and will be out soon, and is presumably what all those bottle tricks were for. In the meantime, we sat down, juiced up our phones and got started on of their signature cocktails.

The Revolucion Cocktail (RMB80) comes in a funky cup with rum, rosemary, apple, passion fruit and sugar. You know if 'sugar' is an actual listed ingredient then it's going to be pretty damn sweet, and this candy-like libation was no exception.
Less sweet is the G&G (RMB70), made with gin, grapefruit syrup and tonic. Both refreshing and easy on the eyes, we couldn't taste a lot of alcohol in this, which might be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it.
The Garden Mule (RMB70) sees gin, mint, angostura bitters, sugar syrup, lime juice and ginger beer all served in a cute little flowerpot. This was by far our favorite of the night – not too sweet, with a little kick of spice and oh-so-delicious. Here's a photo of it placed on the floor... because the floor has these awesome tiles that we were really feelin' at the time.
Overall we're fans of this devilishly hip watering hole, which succeeds in transporting the same good-time Cuban vibes of the Yongkang Lu original to Jing'an. We're looking forward to seeing what the new menu brings to the table, but will be staying away from the sweeter drinks.

Price: cocktails RMB65-90
Who's going: expats
Good for: cocktails, casual drinking, dates, small-medium groups

Revolucion Cocktail 2, 98 Yanping Lu,  by Xinzha Lu.

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