Mezcla Owner Plans Coldbar Cocktail and Cold Tapas Spot in Italian Village
Garrett Talmage's Coldbar at 1049 N. Fourth St. will lean on chilled plates and Jackson Proctor cocktails, with no firm public open date yet.
Italian Village is getting a cocktail room built around cold plates, not a roaring hot line.
Coldbar is the new concept from Mezcla owner Garrett Talmage, planned for 1049 N. Fourth St. in the former Mission Coffee Co. roasting facility Talmage took over in May. The pitch is cocktails first, then a menu of oysters, caviar, tartare, potato salad, deviled eggs, and other chilled snacks. There will be no full hot kitchen with a hood. The food framework is cold preparations done well enough to anchor a night out.
Details in this story draw from What Now Columbus coverage of Coldbar and earlier May reporting on Talmage's Italian Village plans.
Who is building the drinks
Jackson Proctor, who also works the bar at Mezcla, is developing Coldbar's cocktail list. Talmage has described the drinks as thoughtful and stylized without turning approachability into an afterthought. The menus at Mezcla and Coldbar will not be copies of each other, though one shared cocktail, Pondon Monium, is expected to appear at both rooms.
Happy hour is part of the early thinking. One example floated publicly is a Bloody Mary finished with an oyster for roughly $8 during those hours, sitting alongside higher-ticket pours. The range is deliberate: a neighborhood bar that can host a casual first round or a celebratory second.
Timing that slipped past summer
An exact public opening date still has not been announced. In May, when Mezcla was preparing to reopen after a van crash closed the Summit Street restaurant, Talmage talked about an early August target for Coldbar. September coverage now frames the timeline as hoping to open soon. Treat the August date as outdated planning, not a missed soft opening you somehow overlooked.
Mezcla, Talmage's mixed Latin kitchen and cocktail lounge at 1022 Summit St., remains the operating sibling nearby. Coldbar is the quieter Fourth Street experiment: long bar energy, cold snacks, and a room that leans gathering over spectacle.
Why the address matters
North Fourth Street already pulls coffee, brewery, and Budd Dairy traffic. Sliding a cocktail-and-cold-tapas bar into a former roasting plant adds a late option without forcing every night onto High Street. It also keeps Talmage's projects clustered in Italian Village, where patio spillover and walkable second stops actually work.
Orient yourself with our Italian Village page, then cross into the adjacent Short North if the night expands west. Festival weekends on nearby parish grounds still land on Columbus Italian Festival. For rooms that chase unusual formats instead of standard dinner, skim Best Unique Dining Experiences.
Coldbar is not open yet. When it is, expect oysters, potato salad, and Proctor's glassware in a room that never needed a fryer to make the point.
