Sample Is a Cocktail Bar Built For Sound

The team behind The Coldroom, El Pequeño, Bisou Bisou and Bar Bello has built its reputation on cocktails. Their next bar is the first one where the drinks come second.

Sample, found beneath a 1863 greystone hosuing the boutique Arcadia hotel in Old Montreal, is built around a serious analog sound system, a starting collection of 150 records, and a polite request at the door to keep your phone in your pocket.

The sound system was there first. The building's owner, looking for something to do with his basement storage space, handed a Montreal DJ and art director a budget spent on building a room around music: four speakers, a McIntosh MC275 amplifier as the centrepiece, and studio-level acoustics. Then he called Kevin Demers to figure out what it should become. Demers walked Jama Joachim, a five-year veteran of the group who'd bartended and managed at Coldroom, down the stairs and asked him what he saw. He saw music, and people getting together around it. They hit play on Sample.

An acoustic cocktail bar, if you will

Joachim is careful about the term ‘listening bar’. Sample is a cocktail bar first, he says, because that's what the group does and what it's known for. But the focus tilts toward what's playing.

"We're not just going to serve you a cocktail. We're going to ask you to be here with us," he says, to enjoy a vinyl collection is curated by Montreal artist SIMBO that leans into soul, jazz, funk, disco and new soul. Guest curators also come in to spin on Fridays and Saturdays.

As for the phone thing, it’s merely an ask, not a rule; there's no coat check or confiscation for devices. Joachim points to the Japanese jazz kissa as a core inspiration, with one caveat: those rooms run on silence, and this is Montreal.

"I cannot ask people to not speak in the bar. That will not work," he says. "Asking them to keep the phone away is already a big step." He's heard every version of the skepticism, including from his own partners, and he's clear-eyed about it.