By Behind frosted windows, colorful Christmas lights illuminate the Ordinarie Tavern. Chains of paper snowflakes and tree ornaments hang from the ceiling as classic Christmas tunes play over the crowded bar.
The Ordinarie tavern serves food and alcohol year-round in Long Beach, but once a year, it becomes an immersive Christmas experience called Miracle Cocktail Bar.
Miracle is a company and pop-up bar with a chain of locations that appear around the world, including Canada and England. These pop-ups appear on an annual basis, at Christmas time.
Ordinarie owner Christy Caldwell said that the original Miracle bar was started in New York City by Greg Boehm five years ago and other bars joined in until it spread around the world.
The Ordinarie converted its menu to include festive food, drinks and special cups as part of this pop-up chain. Some of the festive choices on the food menu include Christmas duck, Holiday Ham Dinner and Gingerbread Sundae for dessert.
The cocktail menu ranges from drinks that already match the season like “Jingle Balls Nog” to cocktails that have been given a Christmas rebrand like the “Christmapolitan.”
According to the Ordinarie’s website, the novelty cups that some of the cocktails are served in, are available for sale and a portion of the profit goes to the Seva Foundation, a charity that specializes in eye care accessibility.
The cups include a ceramic unicorn-shaped cup, a Santa head mug and glasses with festive patterns.
12/03/23- These drinks (from left to right) are "Rudolph's Replacement," "Yippee Ki-yay Mother F....," "Christmas Crickett," and "Chrismapolitan." The "Santarex" and Santa pants mugs are available for purchase. Photo credit: Elizabeth Basile
Smriti Chadha, director of marketing and communications at Seva, said that Miracle chooses a charity to support every year and the pop-up reached out to the foundation for this year’s event.
“So they basically reached out to us, and, you know, thought we were a great organization doing some really good work, and, yeah, they wanted to support us,” Chadha said.
Chadha also shared that the Seva Foundation has worked in over 20 countries to develop eye care resources like vision centers where services are closer and more affordable.
Sadi Driggers, server at the Ordinarie, said that one of her favorite drinks is called Carol Barrel. This drink is a mixture of alcohols including Irish whiskey, banana liqueur and chocolate bitters.
“It just works with everything all the time and I feel like the ingredients are scary, but I have definitely convinced a lot of people to get it,” Driggers said.
For the underage customer or those who do not drink, there are still festive food and drinks to experience. Driggers also said that the servers get to develop their own mocktails for customers.
There is also a nostalgic atmosphere. Characters from famous Christmas movies are present throughout the tavern. Towards the entrance is a life-size blow up of Ralphie from the movie “A Christmas Story” in the infamous bunny suit. The TV by the bar was playing the claymation movie of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”
“What I like the most about this is it feels like we’re in a movie and that makes me really happy,” English teacher Jessica Inguez said.
According to the website, the Ordinarie location of the Miracle is open Tuesday through Sunday from noon to 1 a.m. and Monday from 6 p.m. to midnight at 210 The Promenade N. Miracle runs until New Year’s Eve.
