Award-winning Toronto bar launches daring new cocktail menu

An award-winning bar team has debuted a menu honouring the very fabric of Toronto’s history. 

Civil Works, a stylish bar connected to the Waterworks Foodhall, is another high-end haunt from the powers behind one of Toronto’s most esteemed cocktail bars, Civil Liberties. 

The location, which evokes a different vibe than its predecessor up on Bloor, made a huge splash last year, as it won the 2025 Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award for its groundbreaking cocktail program dubbed ‘A Manual for Laying Pipe.’

With the top accolade in the international bar scene under their belt — built by paying homage to the Waterworks building — the team at Civil Works have decided to make lightning strike twice with their newest program, ‘On Cutting Rug.’

“This menu, I think I can safely say, is the best expression of what we do here. Last year’s drinks were great and were recognized as such, but these drinks, I would argue, are some of the best in the country,” Nick Kennedy, senior executive barback at Team Civil, told yourcitywithIN.com.

[On Cutting Rug’s menu, courtesy Team Civil]

Both the previous menu and its current iteration are the result of both Kennedy’s dedication to historical research and bar manager Elise Hanson’s borderline-alchemy behind the bar. 

Paying homage to the Garment District, a storied landscape of Toronto’s past, every cocktail in On Cutting Rug follows the bouncing ball of the district’s history.

To drive this point home, the menu itself is printed on different textile materials, which resonate with different sensations and flavour profiles, for example, ‘Refressing’ (Polyester), ‘Stiff’ (Satin), and ‘Wet and Naked’ (100% Cotton), to name a handful. 

“It was a real technical challenge, especially for a design feature, to have a leather-bound menu with all of these fabrics. It’s all affordable textiles that reflect the businesses that were in this area,” says Kennedy. “For us, we want all of our cocktails to tell a story, so they all reflect a certain point in history— we are incredibly proud of their translation.” 

A few of the 15 cocktails found in the ‘On Cutting Rug’ menu include: 

• Wedding Ward (1817): Dry sake, aromatized wines, concord grape, jasmine flower and bay leaf, CO₂
• Spin and Weave (1906): El Gobernador pisco, Siete Misterios mezcal, gentian, chica morada, lime & absinthe
• Needle/Thread (1934): Beefeater gin, dry vermouth, pineapple, smoked sweet onion and black pepper oil

[The Needle and Thread, courtesy Team Civil]

“It starts in 1787 and then ends at 1950, so if you read the writing paired with each item, you get a historical snapshot, all celebrating the diversity of Toronto. It is labour movements, it is civil rights movements, and it is wars; we condense it, then find the right profile, glassware — the works,” says Kennedy. 

While Kennedy does the historical heavy lifting, having spent upward of 60 hours pouring (no pun intended) over dense municipal documents, the magic that actually happens per coupe, mug or martini glass comes from bar manager Elise Hanson.

“We were almost working backwards. For me, it was about having a multitude of different textures to play with, so bubbles, something creamy, something frothy, we even have a cocktail, ‘The Rag Trade,’ that comes with a yuzu and Sichuan pepper loli-pop, so it has that tingling sensation on the tip of your tongue,” Hanson told yourcitywithIN.com. 

[Hanson with the Rag Trade, courtesy Team Civil]

As for making this program feel genuine in a city that loves its gimmicks, Hanson was confident in her ability to ensure that every cocktail — while pushing a boundary —would not come across as something relegated to TikTok or Instagram, and would remain something to be tasted and experienced. 

“Cocktails can be really serious, even sometimes intimidating, and it’s important to me to make all that science and technique happen on the backend, so it presents as something fairly simple,” says Hanson. “You’re going to take your photo, sure, that moment is really important to people nowadays, but it has to taste good.”

Hanson further detailed that palettes amongst bargoers are rapidly evolving, making the new menu a perfect playground to tinker without worrying about going too far or not far enough. 

[The Trapper’s Flask, courtesy Team Civil]

As a result, the first page displayed on the menu features what Hanson describes as a ‘flavour map,’ where guests can look at the spectrum of options in rotation and land perfectly on where their preferences line up. 

While not identical in execution, it echoes aspects of Civil Liberties proper, as that location famously features no menu and relies on the bartender’s knowledge (and what they are told by the patron) to nail the perfect cocktail. 

“A guest should always be able to ask us, without looking at the menu, what they should have. Naturally, not everything is going to be for everyone; there are some risky options in there for sure, like a cocktail built on pineapple and onion notes. But, it’s about being able to identify what the guests want — especially the riskier ones,” says Hanson. 

Naturally, the months-spanning creative process did involve Hanson having to kill a few darlings, as the original menu featured 21 cocktails; however, she did indicate that those on the cutting room floor may return in some incarnation. 

[The Needle and Thread, courtesy Team Civil]

On Cutting Rug is set to remain as the touchstone menu at Civil Works for the next 16 months, according to Kennedy, with the program’s current momentum only lending further excitement as to where the team will go next. 

When asked where they would like to pay homage to in the future, Hanson said Kensington Market would be her go-to choice, as it always seemed like such a big and expansive place in her days growing up in small-town Ontario, while Kennedy thinks Cabbagetown and its rich immigrant history would be a no-brainer.

While the next menu is a long way off, the team at Civil Works get to take a breather from making their vision come to life, and now gets to enjoy pouring some one-of-a-kind drinks to the public, while also maybe enjoying a stiff one to themselves once they clock out, with Hanson stating, “We’re just so proud to show this off, it took a tremendous amount of work, I don’t know why we were so crazy to think we could try and pull this off, but we did.”

[Headline photo, courtesy Team Civil]