Good for a Few

Waltzing through the Plaza District, you’ll find no shortage of bars and restaurants and boutiques full of hip and youthful high-energy vibrations. At the easternmost end of the district, you’ll see the renowned New State Burgers, and might be curious about its neighbor in the building. It appears through the glass storefront to be bookstore, with a large shelf lined like a library.

When you walk in, there is a thick velvet curtain that draws a Wizard of Oz sense of mystery. Peeling it open and stepping inside, there is a small, dimly lit bar with murals echoing those of Bemelmans Bar on NYC’s Upper East Side, pulling you into another time and place.

That place is Good For a Few, a cocktail bar that feels familiar but different. It’s run by New State Burgers co-owners Tyler Maune and Jordan Harris and the bar’s director of operations Charlie Alvarado, formerly of The Jones Assembly, and they have created a unique oasis.

Good For a Few is a small and intimate bar that feels adult, in the sense that you can go on a romantic or friend date and carry on a quiet conversation while enjoying unique cocktails and snacks (or an onion burger from New State, if you so choose).

“Our goal is not to plaster ‘BAR’ across our front entrance. There is something tactile about passing through these velvet curtains. There’s little touches people will remember,” Charlie remarks.

One of those touches is to try to entice their guests toward things they normally would not think to try.

“We’ve been passionate about leading people into their new favorite. A cocktail, a new ingredient to you, something you wouldn’t have selected for yourself that was thoughtfully added to the menu,” Jordan says.

The backbar is stacked with spirits and aperitifs that can tend toward the uncommon. “We want to teach our clientele to have certain expectations when they come in here. We have nothing against espresso martinis, but there’s 300 other bars in town that can make them. We want to be the disruptors in the scene,” Charlie insists. Their goal is not to be pretentious; rather to ask guests to take a leap and try something new. Those new cocktails often include local ingredients like edible flowers and herbs from Tesa Linville of Sabou, sorbet from Farm to Table OKC, and even crickets from Panadería La Lomita de Oaxaca.

Good For a Few will still make your favorite classic cocktails and comfort drinks, but the goal is to slide people out of their boxes a bit. The bar offers a rotating “Good For a Few Handshake” cocktail, which is essentially a dealer’s choice from the bartender. You don’t know what is in it, they plead the fifth on it—but if you trust them, you might be pleased.

“We start from one of two places when we create drinks,” Charlie explains. “It’s either ‘What if?’ and the other is ‘How can we put this experience in a glass?’” Sometimes those approaches result in blending a whole key lime pie from Plaza’s Pie Junkie and using its essence in a cocktail, or contemplating what cocktail Willy Wonka would create if he was from Oaxaca, Mexico.

There is still beer, and if you wanna get weird with it, Good For a Few offers a Spaghett, which is a beer cocktail using a Stonecloud Brewing Company pilsner with Aperol and lemon juice. It’s a perfect summer refresher that is essentially a Negroni riff with beer.

Regardless of what you want to imbibe, it is the kind of intimate space where you can sit at a small table with a few loved ones and not have to worry about raucous noise or fights breaking out. The curtains keep it dark, and it feels like you’ve been transported elsewhere.

“Our goal is to be a place where you can carry a conversation. It may not be your first night on the town, you’re not trying to do it all in one night,” Jordan says. The bar closes at midnight, so nobody is getting too under the table. It’s a place for responsible drinkers who want to avoid the party bars and simply have an Old Fashioned or two.

Next time you are wandering the Plaza District in the evening, stop in, grab a book from the library, ask the bartender to surprise you with a random drink, and enjoy the peaceful environment Good For a Few offers.

> Good For a Few, 1705 NW 16th St., Suite B, Oklahoma City, goodforafew.com