The founders of Jungle tiki bar in Boulder have expanded with a new nautical-themed bar, Siren, now open in South Boulder.
Tapping into a fondness for the lakeside and seaside environment that many of them grew up around, partner and general manager Cassidy Bradley said they were aiming for an East Coast-style watering hole atmosphere.
“We were looking for almost Titanic-era decor meets a ship meets a New England tavern,” the former Massachusetts resident said. “Understandably it’s a landlocked state, but we wanted to create that tavern feel that just feels homey and that we could have fun with.”
The spot was previously an adjacent part of the Tandoori Grill known as the South Boulder Speakeasy or Tandoori Next-doori. Bradley and her partners, Jake Novotny and Yoav Monjack, had been looking for a second space but had been striking out with every spot they looked at from Boulder all the way down to Arvada.
“It’s a dream location. They had such a following,” Bradley said. “They were here for so many years and then they were just moving in a different direction and wanted to focus on that [restaurant] space.”
The Siren team saw a gap in the South Boulder offerings, where there aren’t locations with a strong cocktail program.
“We wanted to lean into a martini bar because you don’t see that as much, especially in South Boulder where there really isn’t a cocktail program,” she said. “There’s excellent beer and food and stuff like that, but no cocktails.” Cocktails are where the team made their bones, and she said they decided to both embrace that strength and take it in a new direction.
“That’s how we’ve grown Jungle. So we’re like, ‘How do we make this different from our downtown location? Let’s lean into martinis,” she said. Siren has a whole menu of martinis that run the gamut, from standard versions to the pornstar martini or espresso martini, to farther-out varieties with mezcal, rhum and corn whiskey.
There’s a variety of other upscale cocktails on the menu, also taking a different approach than at the tiki bar with more complex and more involved concoctions.
“Jungle is built for speed and volume, and we felt that we would maybe have the opportunity to move a little bit slower here, so drinks that take a little bit more time,” Bradley said.
Siren also has five draft beer taps and a short but carefully selected wine list. While the cocktail menu doesn’t lean as heavily into non-alcoholic drinks as Jungle does (where half of the cocktail list has an NA version), every section on the cocktail menu except “boozy” has an NA offering. That includes both the regular and NA mai tai from Jungle because, she said, if they were going to bring one item from the Pearl Street location, it had to be the mai tai. There are also a couple of NA beers on the menu, she added.
“We have so many things available, because we want to be something for everybody,” Bradley said.
They also have a small kitchen space that allows for some quick-and-easy food options, ranging from grilled cheese (albeit five cheese with onion jam) and Dry Storage sourdough bread and whipped butter all the way up to caviar service. Befitting a fisherman’s tavern, there’s a wide range of tinned seafood available — tuna, salmon, scallops, cod, vegan crab, mussels and others — served with toasted sourdough, whipped butter, chives and pickles.
She said it’s been a whirlwind few months getting Siren dialed in and ready to open, but the way the local community came out for its opening was wonderful.
“[Opening] weekend went better than we could have ever imagined,” Bradley said. “We had a bunch of families in here, which is awesome. Especially in South Boulder, there’s a lot of families around here.” With Tandoori still next door and Southern Sun just up the stairs, as well as a number of other dining options in the complex at the corner of South Broadway and Table Mesa, she’s hoping they can find a unique spot in the local ecosystem — and that having something for everyone doesn’t mean they need to have everything.
“We don’t have everything and that’s kind of intentional. My dream is if someone goes on a wait list [at a nearby restaurant], they can come here for a cocktail and then go right back,” she said.
While the short-term plan is mostly to keep their feet under them and start figuring out what works, what doesn’t, and how best to make Siren thrive, at the end of the day it’s also a space that she looks forward to enjoying from the other side of the bar.
“It’s been a ride,” Bradley said. “Excited to be on it, but I can’t wait to come in here myself and just relax.”
Siren is open from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 4 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.