Let the needle drop.<\/p>\n
Easy Tiger HiFi Lounge, a new listening lounge and cocktail bar from local entrepreneur Matt Kaye and his partners, debuts next week in St. Petersburg\u2019s EDGE District.<\/p>\n
The spot opens Thursday, April 16, at 915 First Ave. N., just two doors down from The Bends, another bar Kaye and his partners opened in 2012.<\/p>\n
Three years in the making, the Easy Tiger team has outfitted the spot with a state-of-the-art audio system, a sleek interior and an intriguing roster of creative and globally inspired cocktails.<\/p>\n
We stopped by the spot this week to scope out the space and menu. Here\u2019s what to expect.<\/p>\n
The team<\/p>\n
Kaye is partnering in the venture with his wife Victoria Kaye, Craig Dragoonis and Chris Stone. The group opened The Bends together almost 14 years ago.<\/p>\n
Kaye and Stone, a designer and builder, also helped design and build Slim Charmer and Wild Child, which Kaye and local chef Rob Reinsmith run in the Grand Central District.<\/p>\n
Kaye and Stone are St. Petersburg locals and longtime friends who grew up skateboarding together. Dragoonis and Kaye met as teenagers through skateboarding, too.<\/p>\n
Wild Child beverage director Chris Trull runs the beverage program at Easy Tiger, and he and the team have created a menu that is playful and refined. Ben Finkelstein, who has worked at Bar Mezzo and Sonder Social Club, will lead the bar, Kaye said.<\/p>\n
The drinks<\/p>\n
Of the cocktail menu, Trull said they are \u201ctrying to get as many world influences\u201d in the drinks as possible to \u201cmatch the eclectic music scene.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI want the cocktails to match the playfulness of the music vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trull and the team are offering technique-driven cocktails that aren\u2019t too fussy. Think: house-made tinctures and bitters, fat washing, alternative acids and some fermentation.<\/p>\n
In their version of an Incredible Hulk cocktail, the traditionally equal-parts Hpnotiq liqueur and Hennessey Cognac drink gets an update with Midori and force carbonation. Trull described it as tropical with tangerine, lemon and the Japanese melon flavor of Midori.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do I make an Incredible Hulk taste like a Hi-C Ecto-Cooler?\u201d Trull said.<\/p>\n
Kaye said one of his favorite drinks is the Lavish Habits, Trull\u2019s riff on a Pornstar Martini, traditionally a passionfruit- and vanilla vodka-based martini served with a side of sparkling wine. Easy Tiger\u2019s cocktail is named for a Freddie Gibbs and The Alchemist song.<\/p>\n
In Easy Tiger\u2019s version, you can expect \u201cmarshmallow Arette Reposado, passionfruit, Prosecco acid, clarified\u201d and passionfruit caviar, Trull said.<\/p>\n
Easy Tiger\u2019s old fashioned features house-made Okinawan black sugar syrup mixed with Old Forrester 100 Proof Bourbon, barrel-aged bitters and a toasted barley tincture.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe definitely are okay with swinging for the fences a little bit and taking chances with this beverage program,\u201d Kaye said.<\/p>\n
The space and the music<\/p>\n
With sleek, comfortable booths, moody lighting and a top-of-the-line sound system \u2014 including Klipsch Heritage speakers including two Cornwalls hooked to a McIntosh amplifier \u2014 the lounge is designed with music and socializing in mind. The Cornwalls are recessed into soft pillars, bookending the bar and mirrored backsplash elegantly.<\/p>\n
Curved soft corners and lines dominate the oblong, high-ceilinged room. The marble bar is colored throughout with wispy swaths of calcite and serpentine. The walls and ceiling are reinforced for sound.<\/p>\n
Kaye described Easy Tiger as having design elements of Art Deco and Brutalism.<\/p>\n
Kaye purchased the building almost three years ago from renowned architect and St. Petersburg native Sanford Goldman. Goldman studied under Frank Lloyd Wright and was like a \u201cgrandfather\u201d figure to Kaye and his partners before he died in 2023, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really took a chance on us,\u201d Kaye said. One of the last things Goldman did was sell the building to the local group, in the hopes its history could be preserved in the face of new development.<\/p>\n
DJ Casper, a local DJ and veteran of the scene, is the music director at Easy Tiger. Casper will bring in DJs every night the bar is open, which will be Thursday through Sunday for now. The space is wired for analog and digital sound, with a DJ booth in the back. DJs will be curated from outside the city, state and maybe even the country, Kaye said.<\/p>\n
Kaye doesn\u2019t see Easy Tiger as a dance club but understands that people may want to vibe and dance, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce a place opens up, it becomes alive, and then the community tells you what they want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let the needle drop. Easy Tiger HiFi Lounge, a new listening lounge and cocktail bar from local entrepreneur…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[101742,101741,596,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-225370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-cocktail-bar","tag-easy-tiger-lounge","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}