Nectar x Dalí's: Our First Bar Takeover, and Why It Is Happening in Zurich

Update, October 2026: I wrote this article in August, before any of it had happened. On Wednesday 30 September, Panos and I took over Dalí's Bar in Zurich, and it was everything I hoped it would be. I have kept the story of how it came about below, rewritten now that it is behind us, and put the story of the night itself in a separate piece: Nectar x Dalí's Recap: What Our First Bar Takeover in Zurich Was Really Like.

On Wednesday 30 September 2026, Panos and I left Broughton Street for one night. Nectar took over Dalí's Bar in Zurich. It was our first bar takeover, and the first time we had ever taken our cocktails outside Edinburgh.

Most announcements about a night like this tell you what is on the menu and when to turn up. I would rather tell you why it happened, because the reasons are the part nobody could have guessed from the outside. It was not a marketing plan that came out of a spreadsheet. It started with a friendship, and it ended with a room full of people I have known for most of my life, drinking drinks we had made for them.

Alfred, and the friendship behind it

Alfred is the owner of Dalí's Zurich, and we grew up together in the city. Secondary school, and the particular kind of friendship that forms when you are young and slightly reckless. The kind that feels permanent while it is happening.

Then, as it does, life moved us in different directions. Our twenties took us down different paths, and the friendship settled into something quieter. We were still friends, but we were no longer people who saw each other every week.

What brought us back together is the part I still find a little funny. At almost the same time, without planning it together, we both decided to open a bar. I built Nectar in Edinburgh. Alfred built Dalí's in Zurich. Two friends from the same city, making the same unlikely decision in two different countries.

Once we realised that, a bar takeover became the most natural reason in the world to do something about it. It meant we could reunite a group of childhood friends who had not been in the same room for years, and it meant we did not need an excuse beyond the work itself.

What Dalí's is like

Dalí's sits on Meinrad-Lienert-Strasse in Zurich's Kreis 3. People who have been describe it as a living room, bookshelf wall included, and it is known for good cocktails and attentive service. That mattered to me more than I expected. A takeover is a favour from the host, and the host is the one who has to live with the evening afterwards. You want to land in a bar with its own standards, not an empty room where you can do whatever you like.

It also meant I had a second job on the night, which I will come back to in the recap. I was not just there to show Zurich what Nectar does. I was there to make sure Dalí's guests still got the Dalí's experience they came for.

Why it had to be Zurich

Zurich is my home. I left it to build something in Edinburgh, and the people who know me best from before Nectar are still there. I wanted to show them what I had been building since I left, and I wanted to do it properly, with a bar and a team behind me rather than just a story told over a drink.

If you want the longer version of how I ended up in Edinburgh in the first place, it is in The Story Behind Nectar and in Founder Spotlight: Chris. The takeover is the first chapter where the two places finally meet.

What a bar takeover actually is

The short version is that a bar takeover is when a bar from one city visits a host bar in another and runs the night. Our bartenders, our drinks and our story, in someone else's room. The host gets a new reason for guests to come through the door. The visitors get a new audience. Guests get a night they could not have had anywhere else.

I have written the long version separately, including how takeovers work behind the scenes and where they go wrong, in What Is a Bar Takeover? The only thing worth adding here is that ours was a little unusual, because the host and the guest were old friends.

How the night came together

Nobody wakes up and decides to take over a bar in another country on a whim. Before anything else, we had to agree a date with Alfred and decide what we would actually pour. A takeover only works if the drinks are worth travelling for, so we did not plan to bring the Nectar menu with us. We planned to create drinks specifically for Zurich, limited in number, built around the brands that were backing the night.

That is a very different kind of preparation to a normal week behind our own bar. At Nectar we know our ingredients, our fridge and our team. In someone else's bar, you are packing your whole way of working into bags and trusting it to travel. I will tell you in the recap how we handled that. For now, the point is that the planning started weeks before anyone ordered a drink.

The three brands behind the night

A night like this does not happen on goodwill alone. Three brands backed the evening, and each one earned its place in the room.

Bumbu Rum. Bumbu is the spirit that took Nectar to a national competition final in our first year, which is the kind of thing you do not forget. The name comes from a blend of rum, herbs and spices known as Bumbu in the Caribbean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the brand draws its inspiration from that tradition. Bumbu Original is made in Barbados. Bumbu XO is a blend of aged rums, matured in American bourbon barrels and finished in sherry casks, so between them you have two very different characters to build with. If you want to know how a drink like that goes from idea to competition, How I Build a Cocktail for a Competition walks through my process.

The Deacon. The Deacon is a blended Scotch whisky made from Islay and Speyside single malts, and it sits somewhere between smoke and sweetness. The name comes from the Scots word for a master tradesman, someone adept and proficient at their craft, and the whisky is a nod to skilled people in every trade. Craft is a good theme for a night between two friends who each went off and built a bar. It was also our way of bringing a very specific piece of Scotland into a bar in Zurich. If you want to know how we think about the job itself, What Great Hospitality Means to Us at Nectar is the place to start.

Thomas Henry. Thomas Henry is a German mixer brand, founded in 2010, and named after the British pharmacist who in 1773 was one of the first people to manufacture carbonated water. They make tonics, sodas and lemonades designed for cocktails rather than borrowed from the supermarket aisle, and their Mystic Mango and cherry blossom sodas both ended up in our drinks on the night. A good mixer is the quiet part of a cocktail. When it is right, nobody notices it. When it is wrong, everybody does.

What we made for the night

We did not bring the Nectar menu. Everything we served was created for the evening, and every drink was limited, so when one ran out the bar went back to Dalí's regular service. There were four drinks in the end: the Summer Memories, the Bumbu Sunset, the Gardeners Salad, and a Greek Mountain Tea infusion of The Deacon with rose bitters and cherry blossom soda. The full breakdown of each one is in the recap.

How it turned out

I will not spoil the recap, but the short answer is that it worked. I went into the night wanting two things that can pull against each other. I wanted Dalí's to keep the standard its guests expect, and I wanted to bring our own flair as well. Both happened. I came back to Edinburgh with a clear sense that the takeover format suits what we do, and with at least one drink that might end up on our own menu.

It was also the second time in a short stretch that Nectar left Broughton Street, after our first private cocktail pop up in Edinburgh. A bar that spends all its time in one room can start to believe the room is the whole story. Leaving it, even for one night, reminds you that what you built travels.

Come and see us on home ground

The takeover was one night, but the bar behind it is open every week on Broughton Street. If you want to taste what Nectar is like on its own ground, with the team that went to Zurich behind the bar, book a table at Nectar Bar and tell us you read about the takeover. We will happily tell you the story properly, in person, with a drink in your hand.

Tuesday to Thursday: 5pm to 11pm Friday: 5pm to 1am Saturday: 12pm to 1am Sunday: 5pm to 11pm Monday: Closed