Veneto Tapa Lounge and Veneto Café at the Rialto Hotel will close January 1 for extensive renovations. The popular cocktail lounge opened in 2009 at 1450 Douglas Street across from Victoria's City Hall.  Citified.ca

The Rialto Hotel’s Veneto Tapa Lounge and Café Veneto will close January 1st for a months-long renovation and interior redesign, Citified has learned.

Opened in 2009 following an extensive heritage restoration of the aged Douglas Hotel at Pandora Avenue and Douglas Street across from Victoria’s City Hall, Rialto’s Veneto Tapa Lounge established itself as the city’s top destination for cocktail mixology connoisseurs while its adjacent café became a go-to meeting place for politicians and municipal bureaucrats.

“After nearly a decade of operations we’ve decided to completely redefine the Veneto spaces,” says bartender Brian Newham, who will switch gears come 2018 to oversee the hotel’s press relations and marketing.

“The entire bar, café and restaurant areas will be transformed as we reposition the Veneto bar closer to Pandora Avenue, move the café and restaurant to where the existing bar is located and entirely modernize the ground floor. Once done, it’s going to be quite something.”

Newham, with his jovial presence and encyclopedic knowledge of libation recipes, says Veneto’s last night in its present form will be a party for the books on a date hard to forget.

“New Year’s Eve is our last night of operations until we re-open some time in the spring, so yeah, it’ll be a good time, for sure.”

On the opposite end of downtown in the Hilton DoubleTree Hotel the newly-opened Foxtrot Tango Whiskey Bar, home to Victoria’s most expensive cocktail , may not fare as well come the New Year.

Operators announced on Saturday the bar was facing “complicated circumstances” and could close within the week.

“It is possible that this is the last week for [Foxtrot Tango Whiskey] to operate before being closed long before it's time,” read a statement on the bar’s Facebook page.

Bar manager, mixologist and Foxtrot Tango Whiskey co-owner Shawn Soole, known for his involvement with local food scene start-ups that include Little Jumbo, Clive’s Classic Lounge, OLO and the re-opened Cafe Mexico, had few words to describe the bar’s potential last night of operations just a day following the earlier announcement.

“Done,” Soole wrote when asked if the bar had closed for the night or closed for keeps. As of December 13 the bar remained closed despite no formal announcement issued by staff or owners.

With Foxtrot's potentially imminent closure Soole won’t be without a project for long, however. Announced last week was Soole’s involvement in the development of Sizzling Tandoor’s libations menu. The Indian food restaurant chain is currently renovating its Johnson Street space and has two additional locations at Uptown Shopping Centre and on the West Shore. With Soole's involvement, patrons will have the option of ordering from a drink menu crafted with the restaurant's fare in mind. C

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