08-04-2025
This quiet coffee shop turns into one of Tacoma's best bars five nights a week
When this coffee shop closes, a cocktail bar opens.
Five nights a week, Proof — a new concept from one of Tacoma's most respected bartenders — takes over Anthem Coffee in Tacoma's Old Town off Ruston Way, transforming the cafe into a neighborhood haunt with excellent drinks and snackable food to match.
Owner Chris Keil and his team, including fellow en Rama vet, chef Meghan McLean, introduced the project in mid-February.
The industrial space, simply adorned with dark-wood tables and Edison pendants, is surprisingly adept at its new evening persona.
When Anthem closes at 3 p.m., Keil and his team get to work. A heavy curtain covers the ordering counter, hiding the espresso machine and other coffee happenings from customer view. They 'just kind of straighten up the room,' said Keil, 'setting the vibe' in just under an hour. 'It's weird because it seems like a bigger lift than rolling into a pre-existing space, but oddly enough it's easier than any other bar.'
The cafe, one of six Pierce County locations for the Puyallup-based company, already served beer and wine. It expanded the liquor license to allow for spirits. Proof added a backbar, the shelves now stocked with spirits and liqueurs. A display nook shows off various ingredients that, along with two decades of experience and experimentation, make the drinks here special: super-fruity and floral beeswax, loose-leaf teas, whole spices.
The cocktail menu offers three styles: Jesus Take the Wheel (spirit-driven), It's an All Night Thing (low-ABV or 'sessionable drinks for the long haul') and Let's Party (batched drinks that use time and hyper-specific dilution to create 'approachable' sippers).
For the uninitiated, that all might sound terribly intimidating — but don't be.
'Proof is just a neighborhood cocktail bar,' said Keil in a March phone call. 'We want it to be pretty low-key, pretty casual, no reservations. We wanted to be the kind of place that people drop in, like, once or twice a week, maybe for a happy-hour drink and a snack or something.'
Working in the confines of the modest cafe setup, McLean serves house focaccia to enjoy with pimento cheese and pickles, as prosciutto toast with whipped citrus and herb ricotta and lightly dressed arugula, or as the vehicle for a BLT and tuna melt. Truffle-salt popcorn, a generous vegan Caesar umami-ed with miso, new spring potatoes with 'dilly-dally' sauce, and hand pies with pizza vibes or broccoli cheddar complete the drink-friendly menu.
'It's kind of based around being snack-y and having fun,' said Keil.
For anyone who has followed Keil through his many years at the forefront of Tacoma's cocktail scene, the candid description might sound familiar.
He opened en Rama, the intimate Courthouse Square restaurant known for handmade pastas and cocktails, in 2018, hanging that hat in the summer of 2023. (The developers of the building sold the restaurant to new owners last year.) Before then, he operated 1022 South J in its original form, Hilltop Kitchen and Marrow, that Sixth Ave space now home to Busy Body. In the past couple of years, Keil has spent his professional energy largely on bar consulting; locally, he helped build the cocktail program at Holy Moly, a similarly chill neighborhood spot with light bites and board games.
All of the above rolls into what Proof is offering out of the gate: some of the finest cocktails in Western Washington blended with mindful service and food you'll want to eat.
Take, for instance, the Woman in the Dunes, already a leader among the spirit-forward, stirred numbers. Japanese whiskey rests in a big, beeswax-lined jar before infusing with apple blossoms in a sort of fat-washing technique. It's stirred simply with a pinch of salt and poured over a big, clear cube.
From the session section, the sherry old fashioned stands to alter any lingering confusion around this mystifying fortified wine, combining a medium-dry amontillado and darker, sweeter Pedro Ximenez with amargo de chile and moscatel. They 'took the architecture of the old fashioned and made that, just using sherry,' explained Keil. 'You get this big, flavorful, chewy drink, but it's not high-octane.'
The 50/50 martini takes a similar tact, splitting light and floral Japanese gin with a Spanish vermouth blanc, not the typical dry, diluted precisely by 20% with flat mineral water.
Other drinks imbue unique flavors through sourced ingredients, such as Naomi Joe Coffee beans co-fermented with watermelon in the boulevardier, yerba mate in the sake-based Check Mate with house ginger beer, and coconut-washed gin with lime leaf and lime juice in the delicately tropical gimlet.
Things have already grown more playful from there. The name Proof doesn't so much honor the colonial-era term coined for liquor tax as it does the notion of 'proof of concept,' said Keil, which, in practice, means an opportunity for this group of pros to showcase 'different concepts, genres and styles of bar programs.'
Like a band might cover songs of their good friend's band, Proof will play with themes every third Wednesday. Recently they created limited-edition menus for Mardi Gras and a Daylight Savings-induced ode to beachy drinks, including a tea punch and a classic daiquiri. Throwback Thursdays will provide a field for retro recipes, forgotten cocktails and favorites from the crew's previous bars. (Baby Netflix and Chill, with multiple rums, grapefruit, ginger beer, grenadine, lime and Jäger — yes, that Jäger, which is really just a German digestif! — is always on the happy-hour menu).
The idea will extend to collaborations with other bars and bartenders, said Keil, who also wanted Proof to serve as a testing ground for consulting clients.
Word of this 'unqiue situation' of coffee-shop-by-day/bar-by-night has spread quietly online and organically around the neighborhood, which has become something of a haven with the recent additions of Tacoma Wine Merchants and Bordeaux Wine Bar, joining one of the city's oldest bars in The Spar.
▪ 2312 N. 30th St. (inside Anthem Coffee - Old Town), Tacoma,
▪ Tuesday-Saturday 4-10 p.m. (happy hour 4-6 p.m.)
▪ Details: neighborhood cocktail bar from Tacoma industry vets in coffee-shop-by-day; follow Instagram for specials and limited-run menu updates
▪ Need to know: walk-ins only, 21+, NA drinks available but no coffee
