It’s about to get electric at Vancouver Chinatown’s sultry hotspot Meo as the team prepares to welcome LA’s Thunderbolt for an epic, one-night-only bar takeover on Wednesday, November 20, 2024. While Thunderbolt slings its distinctive, signature cocktails, guests can feast on an exclusive, good ol’ fashioned cookout (an ode to Thunderbolt’s Southern roots) by Basta Barbecue’s Alden Ong. Tickets are available now via Tock.
“We are excited to host our first-ever bar takeover with one of North America’s top 10 cocktail bars, Thunderbolt,” says TannisLing, who operates Meo and award-winning sister restaurants Bao Bei and Kissa Tanto together with chefs Joël Watanabe and Alain Chow. “Thunderbolt, like Meo, is also a neighbourhood spot, located in Echo Park, near LA’s Historic Filipinotown and downtown LA. Their drinks are inventive, technique-driven, and very approachable. They also serve Southern-inspired dishes, and so to celebrate their visit, we thought it would be fun to invite chef Alden Ong from Basta Barbecue to create the ultimate cookout pairing, Chinatown-style.”
Tickets, available via Tock, are $88++ per person, which includes two cocktails by Thunderbolt and a full feast with dishes from Basta Barbecue like Texas-style char siu pork ribs and smoked soy chicken, as well as suckling pig with all the fixins’. Guests can also order more drinks and food, such as a smoked hiramasa crudo, as the night unfolds.
Since opening in 2019, Thunderbolt has taken the cocktail community by storm in the past five years, achieving much-deserved accolades, including #8 on North America’s 50 Best Bars 2024, #64 on The World’s 100 Best Bars 2024, and named The Best Bar in West USA three years running, in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
On their drinks, Thunderbolt writes, “Our beverage program uses a ton of tech and innovation to make cocktails more sustainable, more efficient, more consistent, and most importantly, more delicious.”
For more information about Thunderbolt, please visit www.thunderboltla.com.