Cedd Moses

There's a great piece on Food Republic about the impresario behind the 213 Nightlife group. You'll know them best as the collection of bars throughout Downtown LA, though they've recently expanded into San Diego as well. This interview takes place after one of 213's bars, The Varnish, took home best American cocktail bar at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans.

“My grandmother taught me how to drink whiskey,” says Cedd Moses in a slight drawl that tips to his Bristol, Virginia roots. We’re sipping glasses of the 107 proof “good stuff” in a padded booth at his Los Angeles bar Seven Grand, where Moses tells me about the lady who may have just inspired her grandson’s rise as the king of downtown nightlife — 12 bars and restaurants and counting. “My grandmother was the most social woman in town and she would drink mint juleps all afternoon until the fireflies came out,” he recalls. “When that first firefly came out, she would switch to bourbon and branch water. They drank a lot of bourbon there and she could outdrink all the men in that town.”

Like his grandma (god bless her), Moses’ thirst not only runs strong for darkly aged spirits, but for selling those spirits — with a little L.A. vibe — in a roster of bars artfully wedged into the formerly gritty warehouse spaces and smoky backrooms lining the downtown expanse.

[Continue reading at: Food Republic]