There is a great scene in Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye” when detective Philip Marlowe goes into a bar in the late afternoon to have a drink in memory of an old friend. The bar is dark and cool. It’s not yet cocktail hour, so it’s quiet and subdued. It’s the perfect place and time to savor a well-made cocktail.
The Amigo Room at the Ace Hotel had that vibe. There was a certain studied seediness about it; it was a pretty decent attempt at a dive-bar-in-the-desert without being too obvious. Though it might be packed on weekend nights, it was the perfect place to swerve into off 111 at 5-ish on a summer afternoon. Patrons could sip slowly on a tooth-achingly cold gin and tonic while staring at nothing and waiting for the worst heat of the day to wear itself out.
Of course, it caused some concern (and alarm) when word got out this spring that the Amigo Room was undergoing a makeover. It’s not that South Palm Springs is devoid of decent cocktail lounges. There’s the not-so-secret Seymour’s at Mr. Lyons and Counter Reformation at the Parker, plus my favorite cave-like hideaway – the bar at Sol y Sombra at The Paloma Resort in Cathedral City. Would the Amigo Room become a dreaded “fern bar” – a term my friends and I applied to neighborhood bars in the Bay Area when they underwent yuppification and were marked by newly hung greenery? Thankfully, this is not so. Yes, the seediness has been banished, but that might not be such a bad thing.
“It’s a clear 180,” says manager Ken Hoffman, who greets me as we take our places around a small table. It’s already laden with appetizers from the new bar menu and a few of the beverage manager’s newest concoctions. “It doesn’t have the black walls of the old dive bar, but I think it still has a little of the speakeasy feel. It’s a little bit lighter and brighter, though we keep the lights dimmed to keep the intimacy of the old Amigo Room. It just got to be time to liven it up and change things.”
Like a lot of folks, many of my habits, pleasures, and spontaneous social interactions were curtailed or ceased during the pandemic. Bar-hopping was one of them. I realized I hadn’t haunted the Amigo Room since 2019. It was like running into an old friend and realizing it had been so long since we’d seen each other, we’d both gone gray. But, the new Amigo Room is anything but gray.
The furniture, wood accents, and mirrors in the bar give the place a mid-century modern/contemporary feeling without being slavish to the paradigm. The room’s walls are covered with paintings by award-winning abstract/modernist artist Lynda Keeler, who painted a series of what struck me as vintage Beatnik art. You’d think that a bar that upgraded to a new level of hipness might feel exclusionary, but it doesn’t have that vibe at all. It’s not like you’ll feel out of place if you don’t arrive in a vintage bowling shirt and a straw Frank Sinatra-style fedora hat tilted back on your man bun. Hoffman says the democratic feel of the bar was important to them in the re-design stage.
“I know there’s a big of a sticker shock for people when they first see something that is so different than it used to be, but we have done everything we can to maintain the vibe and environment,” Hoffman says. “It’s still a place that, whether you’re 20 or 40 or older, is … comfortable for everybody.” He is particularly excited to kick off the Amigo Room’s summer DJ series. Music will be made in the bar and piped out to the pool area – which is also undergoing renovations, along with the Ace’s diner, King’s Highway.
I can attest to some definite upgrades in the bar food offerings. The loaded deviled eggs with bacon, scallion, and cheddar were a tasty remedy to take the edge off any second cocktail. And the slider-like pequeño burgers – made with Wagyu beef – have no right to be that delicious. The jalapeño poppers with bacon and cream cheese are addictive; you could lose a finger reaching for the last one.
Hoffman ordered a nice twist on the traditional Pimm’s cup. The addition of ginger beer gave it a nice kick. He admitted that the Corn & Oil 1880 Bermuda has a slightly off-putting name, but the cocktail – made with Bacardi 8-year-old rum, Velvet Falernum, lime, cacao bitters, and coconut foam – was sublime. My favorite of the evening (I swear it was my last drink, before calling an Uber) was The Antidote – made with Ilegal Mezcal, passionfruit, grapefruit, cinnamon, and Red Bull Watermelon. It was deadly.
Who says you can’t make new old friends?
