Daddy Marmalades, SLTN’s newly-crowned Cocktail Bar of the Year, was never actually envisaged as a cocktail bar at all.
Owners Mari Chierchia and Kim Toft originally saw the Glasgow venue as more of a general neighbourhood bar, with cocktails part of the offer but the business selling ‘a shit-ton of beer’.
The bar, opened in late 2022, was the second venture for Kim and Mari. They had previously operated a bar in Glasgow’s southside called Gulp, which opened in 2019 and closed the following year during the pandemic.
In the first venue Kim, who had bartending experience in Scotland as well as Ireland, looked after the drinks with Mari, who comes from a restaurateur family and previously ran her own Italian takeaway, handling the food.
By 2022, with lockdowns a thing of the past, the pair were keen to open another bar.
“My hobby is going online and looking at premises that are shut or going up for rent. I enjoy doing it,” Mari told SLTN.
“I was doing my wee hobby and I saw this place and I said to Kim ‘can we go see this place?’ and she was like ‘no’. I had already booked an appointment.
“We came in and I could see the potential, even although it was bad in here.”
Bad, according to Kim, was an understatement.
“I was like, ‘that’ll never work as a bar’,” recalled Kim.
“And then I came and saw it and I thought ‘well, it’s all we can afford. So we’ll make it work’. Because we both needed a job.
“I really didn’t think this would work. I was so disgusted when we came to see it. That took a lot of imagination. But I was really against it.
“But I eat my words now.”
The second time around things went a little differently, with Gulp now effectively having served as a training run.
“That’s why Gulp was good,” said Kim. “In the end, it was a lesson. We got to open a bar for the first time and make all the mistakes. We did so many stupid things. Then we started again and it was way better.”
The original plan was to have Kim focus on drinks again, with Mari reprising her role as chef.
However, with the bar getting busier and Kim’s cocktails proving popular with the customers Mari – who had never so much as pulled a pint – was left with no choice but to move front of house.
“I was like ‘I’ll stay in my kitchen forever’ and she’s like ‘no, you need to come out of the kitchen and into the bar’,” said Mari.
“I hated it at the start. Behind the bar I had a cheat sheet. Even for something like a Margarita. I was like ‘this isn’t my thing. I don’t understand this. Why are we shaking lime and ice? I just don’t get it’. She taught me all the basics of bartending.
“Then in the December, a few months after opening, she was like ‘right, the cheat sheet’s coming away’. I was like ‘you can’t do that to me at Christmas!’ That’s when I really started learning, because I didn’t have that to depend on.
“She was like ‘sink or swim. I don’t care. But you’re not having your cheat sheet’.”
Needless to say, Mari swam, steadily building her bartending and mixology skills and falling in love with the job in the process.
“She was quite easy to teach, said Kim. “Because it’s easy when someone understands balance. It’s difficult to teach someone to understand balance. Mari can balance anything. I can’t be taking credit for that and that is the hardest thing to teach. She already had a developed palate. Easy.”
Mari grew from preparing drinks to creating them, to having drinks included on the menu. In 2024 she was named SLTN Mixologist of the Year, with Kim also a finalist.
As the pair have continued to build their knowledge and skills, the drinks have become more adventurous and also more collaborative. Most of the cocktails served at the bar now are the product of both owners, not one or the other.
They have a fairly well established creative process.
Mari explained: “Sometimes we’ll sit – she’ll sit on the freezer, I’ll sit on the fridge and we’ll just bounce ideas. If we’re sitting in here and have a mental block we’ll go through the back, she’ll sit on one freezer, I’ll sit on one fridge, and we will just go back and forward with ideas, even if they’re ridiculous.
“If we’re ever stuck, just send the both of us into one of those wee rooms with fridges and freezers just to go back and forward with each other. That’s how we come up with our drinks. There’s no fancy setting or anything like that. It’s through the back, in a tiny space, shouting ideas at each other.”
And the creativity has been helped by a gradual shift in attitudes within the bartender community, which Kim said has traditionally been ‘a little bit gate-keepy’ with regard to new or advanced cocktail techniques. “Look at Iain (McPherson, owner of Panda & Sons in Edinburgh),” said Kim.
“Every single thing Iain does, he makes sure everyone has access to that so they can find out how he did it so they can replicate it. I remember Iain put something out about switching and young bartenders were coming in going ‘I’m switching this, I’m switching that’. They were switching absolutely everything. But it was great because it was this really complicated thing that they had access to but weren’t doing because of (older attitudes).
“We need a lot more of that. It’s great it’s going in that direction, but the more the better.”
