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.
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