STRAIT talking

Let's start at the very beginning. When did you first get the idea to create the Strait and Narrow?

We got the idea having worked in the licensed trade for about 20 years, we wanted to create a venue for ourselves and we wanted it to be something quite special. So it would have been 2010 / 2011 when we first came up with the idea and started planning it.

The Strait has quite a unique style. Can you tell me about that?

The style of The Strait is basically everything that we like and things that we find funny, and we want it to come across that it's an independent bar so if you come in, not only are you going to get really good drinks, really good quality of service and really cool stuff, but also that it’s independent. It is designed and run and operated by people and you're going to have a fun time in here. So we take the drinks seriously and then the rest of the stuff we don't take quite as seriously.

Would you say you have any major influences in things that have helped create that style?

Yeah there's strong influences of 90s hip-hop and breakbeat, that's a big spine that runs through it. Then there's Bruges in Belgium, some of the bar is based on the bars you find in Bruges, some of it is based on classic cocktail bars from maybe the 60s, 70s and then there's things that we think are fun or entertaining. We also tried to get a Balearic vibe in there having spent some of the time planning and designing the bar in Ibzia.

There's a couple of famous faces that pop up time and time again in everything that you do. Who are they? And why do they always appear?

One thing we've always tried to do with the bar is make it kind of timeless. We're not a bar that jumps on trends or gimmicks. So where you see a lot of bars will take people who are popular now, maybe these days it's people on TikTok or Instagram or that kind of thing. We will just be a bit subversive and so we'll pick celebrities who are not really in the public consciousness and certainly maybe not very cool. And we seem to have settled on William Shatner and Sigourney Weaver. We're big fans of the Alien films and also big fans of Star Trek and T.J Hooker which is a great TV show. And we're also a big fan of William Shatner's unusual acting style. Again, it's just the tip of the hat to show that we're being silly and a bit subversive. It's supposed to be a thinly veiled comment on celebrity culture and how it gets adopted for commercial reasons. When we opened we had NWA lyrics on the wall, where people would have inspirational quotes and we had Express Yourself by NWA. But then the problem with that is an NWA film came out in about 2015 and so it made us look like we were trying to do something current so we changed it to Ain't No Half Steppin’ by Big Daddy Kane, who we're also big fans of and he's played here. So that was a good fit.

Today there are 120 different beers, hundreds of spirits, wine, shots and a GTA themed cocktail menu. Is it not really difficult offering so many drinks and how do you decide what makes the cut?

The short answer is yeah, it's super difficult. But in a way, it is quite easy for us because we are massive fans of good drinks. So we're always looking for really good drinks and fun things and quality things that people are doing. Everything begins and ends with taste, but there are a few criteria that we always adopt and it has to taste good, the brand has to have integrity behind it and ideally the branding needs to be dope as well. They always say you don't try to be a master of all things, but we feel as though we can be. And we're fortunate that we've got a very dedicated and professional team so we can actually land this concept. So whilst we have the ability, the knowledge and the experience to do it, why not?

Tell me about the Strait Exchange.

I don't really like talking about 2020, but it came out of COVID times. It seems wild now to think that we weren't allowed to, mix groups and go and sit at another table that we hadn't come in with. And I was talking to a friend of mine called Andrew Wittich, who owns Buzbee’s Tonics, and I couldn't really work out how The Strait was going to work with table service. And he said it almost needs to be like a bar in Soho called Kasper's in the 90s that had a phone on every table. And as he was telling me, I Googled it and thought that's how we get open. So we found an old school telephone engineer who would come and fit a hardwired landline hotel network into the bar. So people could ring a table with their friends and not break Boris Johnson's rules and we wouldn't get in trouble. And it actually bizarrely made the operational running of a bar a lot easier because that was a tough time to run a bar. And when people would say, why can't I go and sit with my friends? We would say, just phone them from these phones! When COVID finished, we took it out and everybody wanted it to come back. So we had some more robust phones made. And yeah, it's been a fun part of what we do. So now you can sit and ring up and people do it to just tell jokes, play pranks, flirt, just muck about and it just adds another dimension to what we do. And we've even got one hidden in the grandfather clock. So it's a laugh.

What would you say is The Strait and Narrow’s Greatest Achievement?

I think there's a few. One that stands out for us is being the first bar to do Ask for Angela, which is now in it’s 10th year. That's a real landmark when we got involved with something that changed the industry. The scheme was created by Hayley Crawford and it's basically a code word for you to say to a member of staff if you're having trouble or feel uneasy on a night out and you need to discreteetly ask for a bit of help, but you don't want to push a real big panic button. Ten years later it's been turned into a charity which I am now one of the Trustees of. It makes everybody's night out safer, it makes the venue safe, it makes the venue run properly and also sends a message out to anyone who has got intentions that are not particularly great, that there is a mechanism in place for the alerts to be raised and also a mechanism in place for you to be caught and face consequences of that.

Winning Best City Bar at the Great British Pub Awards (The Pub Oscars) was a real moment where it felt like we legitimised all the hard work and also being shortlisted in the Top 50 Cocktail Bars for Best Bar Team, that was a great thing.

And finally, to anyone who hasn't been to the Strait before, tell us what to expect from a typical Day / Night here in the Strait.

It's a good bar to go to any time, you still get the same level of service at 5:30 on a Monday evening as you do at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night. All the bar team are super pro. You come in and it's a fun place to be, it's comfy, the lighting's right, the music's right, the beats just kick along in the background and we've got hundreds of Beers from Continental Beers to Sour Beers, a really fun, really big cocktail menu. This one's based on Grand Theft Auto. It's the second one we've done and this one's very Lincoln centric. One thing that we do is collab with local independent businesses for ingredients and ideas. So there's a lot of Lincoln ingredients and Lincoln business inspiration there, which is really cool. We do all the classics as well and all the crowd pleasing cocktails. We've probably got the biggest collection of spirits in the north of England. And it's always a good fun vibe. It's a safe environment. It's a fun environment. People we get in the venue really get on board with what we're doing. So whether you come on a weeknight for a quieter drink or you come towards the middle or the end of the week when things get more lively, it’s a great place to be. People drinking all kinds of different things and having a lot of fun, getting on, interacting just like a bar should be.

Jez

“My drink of choice changes all the time but more often than not, I'm drinking a Negroni. Kingston Negroni is my kind of thing at the moment. So A Negroni but instead of gin, we're switching in an Overproof Rum like Plantation OFTD - that's my drink at the moment.”