After its speakeasy-style opening, Conway Social Club is still honing its identity and cuisine, but it already has a big personality. Designed to foster conversation between friends and not-yet friends, this club is handsome, narrow, and cozy. Formally framed prints populate a forest green wall; living room areas beckon near small tables. The two glittering chandeliers seem to signal the unexpected elevated notes worth anticipating in both cuisine and cocktails at Conway. It’s like your friendly hangout, an old British social club (minus the dues), and your favorite restaurant merged.
Tucked above Annie Bailey’s, Conway Social Club sits where a popular men’s clothing shop reigned for eight decades—thus the barkeeps’ suspenders and the posh ambiance. Barstools offer a front row seat to the bar’s half of the foodie chemistry and collaboration that sets this social club apart.
LIQUID MAGIC
Here, Beverage Manager Ben Hash (formerly of The Horse Inn) offers up one of his 200+ inventions, which surprise the palate. This is a bar where standard meets quirky. Just reading the menu is fun, and that’s just the launch menu. Hash promises the next menu “will be bad-ass” and feature around 30 house cocktails. One of them, Jansen to Kyushu, blends Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish gin, matcha tea, honey, lime, grapefruit, coconut cream, Chartreuse, and tropical pandan leaves. Sampling Hash’s concoctions, you discover something so intriguing, it makes you savor each sip.
“[My] job,” says Hash, “is to get the best expression of an ingredient, and you can’t just give up at cooking the syrup.” So he super-concentrates, shaves, and coaxes herbs, fruit, nuts, and spirits into bitters, foams, mists, tinctures, cordials, what have you. Every drink has a story. Hash is like storyteller/mad scientist, adding just the right salty, savory, sweet or smoothing note to boost each cocktail experience.
PALATE WAKE-UP CALLS
“With Ben, it’s truly inspiring to watch,” says Executive Chef Corinna Killian. “He’s constantly teaching me things.” Killian’s such a team player she tells you this before she admits she teaches him things, too. Her era at the Belvedere Inn won awards, but she’d rather talk about her mentor, Beau MacMillan, of Food Network and Iron Chef fame. After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Scottsdale, Killian worked with MacMillan at a spa resort in Arizona. It served to expand her culinary repertoire and heightened her instincts. A native of Lancaster County, Killian says it’s “motivating to be around such an amazing place. Just walking down the city streets, I can feel the energy. Farmers are our neighbors, and we want to use what’s around us, which helps the community.” Among her plans are adding some British flair, some French, some comfort foods with a twist, continuing to learn and pairing her food well with the drinks.
“Corinna wants to make sure everything that goes out is amazing,” says Joshua Funk of TFB Hospitality, which owns the building housing both Conway and Annie Bailey’s. They’re also behind the cuisine at the new Rock Lititz Hotel. When Killian adds a “twist” or “flair” to a dish, it’s not a small reimagining: she’s invigorated standards into shareables like Black Garlic Sage Deviled Eggs with Candied Smoked Bacon; entrees like Brioche & Goat Cheese-Stuffed Quail with Purée of Parsnip, Asparagus and Blackberry Beurre Rouge, and Miso 4-Hour Braised Short Ribs with Carrot Mousse, Banana Apple Smash, Local Baby Top Carrots, and Brûléed Banana, which customers try to convince her to keep on the menu.
LOCAL AND MINDFUL
These and other layered flavors (roasted bone marrow, carrot-cumin risotto, lavender caramel sauce) invite you to linger, especially when Killian appears to gauge your reaction to your fare. With the farmers’ market just two blocks down and the city sparking with music and art, inspiration for both Hash and Killian is handy. Close to Killian’s heart, one tattoo proclaims, “Awake, My Soul”—an apt invitation to leisurely dining in this calm space.
So, are the cocktails or the cuisine the star at this new venue? Does it matter? Nope. What matters is that the vision Funk and his team brought to life encourages its culinary artists to innovate so freely that the word was out before it even officially opened.
Conway Social Club
28 East King Street, Lancaster, PA 17602
