From Mexico With Love

Behold the impassioned, informed and irresistible reincarnation of DeadFall Cantina by The Compound Collective, the team behind the runaway success of Barbary Coast.

- INDRAN PARAMASIVAM

AS I SIT ACROSS from her at the bar, Celia Schoonraad hands me a drink, from which I take a slight first sip. The next is longer, deeper, more intentional, and stops time for a while. In a flash, I'm reminded of a line David Foster Wallace wrote that memorialised an epiphany he had after witnessing Roger Federer's luminous performance at the 2005 U.S. Open:

"Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty."

At this new iteration of DeadFall, I have front row seats to the realisation that even if cocktail making does not necessarily aspire to the loftiness of Beauty, it most definitely serves as a head-turning form of it.

Especially if it's a Buttered Paloma.

The drink belongs to a roster of drinks that bow at the altar of agave and lead the palate into vast and varied vistas of discovery and sumptuousness. Every sip from this payload honours the literal and figurative facelift the stalwart trio of Schoonraad, Michael Callahan, and Roman Foltán have bestowed upon the newly unveiled space. No longer is DeadFall the foundation atop which Barbary Coast, Boat Quay's epicentre of buzz and after-hours revels beckons - it's a cantina, a portal into heady, flawless and ingeniously forged edible and drinkable charms, Mexico-facing but world-destined.

A glow, in amber-tinged hues of green and gold, falls over the bar at all times. The source of this are the 72 bottles of agave spirits that cannot be found anywhere else in Singapore. For this and reasons you can see, taste and feel, DeadFall is a haven for a particular and powerfully resonant slice of culture.

In Agave We Trust

Before I absorb the result of their wandwave, I ask Schoonraad and Callahan about the essence of their magic: why agave?