After a long day at sea — reeling in metaphorical nets, cursing imaginary gulls and slowly losing my grip on reality during a six-hour writing session — I crave a warm, dry place to drop anchor. A place with flickering candlelight, a stiff drink and maybe a sardine or two.
The fact that my “long day at sea” took place at the base of the Flatirons is beside the point. The feeling still applies. The digital waters are choppy, the inbox is tempestuous, and one still ends the day salt-crusted in spirit. What a weary traveler really needs is a place to dry off, rejoin polite society, and clutch a martini completely indifferent to the fact that your most treacherous voyage today spanned the harrowing distance between the couch and the kitchen.
In an inland city full of landlubbers, has emerged as a surprisingly seaworthy answer.
Siren, which opened in November at 623 S. Broadway in South Boulder, is a new cocktail bar from the same ownership and management team behind that sometimes arrive at the table aflame. This new outpost is different. It’s quieter. It’s less like a cruise ship at full throttle and more like the captain’s quarters of a lovingly haunted schooner.
This is not only a bar with a maritime theme, but a maritime state of mind.
Boulder, for all its topographic grandeur, offers very little in the way of brine. We have mountains, yes. Wind-scoured prairie, yes. But those who grew up near coasts have long made their peace with being very far from the sea.
Siren exists to scratch that itch.
“We were kind of missing that nautical vibe here in Boulder,” said Cassidy Bradley, general manager and one of five partners behind the bar. “We’re all from coastal towns.”
Bradley describes Siren simply as a neighborhood bar, a phrase that comes up often, and intentionally.
“You could bring your kid, you could go in for a date,” she said. “So kind of just checking all the boxes and being available to the community.”
Location is a major part of the story. For the past decade or so, South Boulder residents have had to Uber, bus, or guilt a sober friend into hauling them downtown if they wanted a proper cocktail. Meanwhile, downtowners could shimmy from license-holding establishment to license-holding establishment on a whim. It was unfair.
For two years, the team at Siren looked tirelessly for a second location after Jungle, scoping everything from Longmont to Denver. They were not specifically targeting South Boulder, but when the former Tandoori Grill speakeasy (aka South Boulder Speakeasy or the Tandoori Next-doori) space became available, the team moved quickly.
“South Boulder is definitely a dream,” Bradley said. “There are so many amazing businesses there already, but there’s no bar. So to be able to complement that is, quite literally, dreamy.”
Now, finally, the tables have turned. North and central Boulder folks may need a rideshare to reach Siren — but for south Boulderites, itap hoof-able.
“There’s been a lot of folks saying, ‘I live right down the street. So happy you guys are here,’” Bradley said. “Everybody’s like, ‘Oh my God, I can finally walk home.’”
Which is probably for the better, because anyone familiar with the beverage program at Jungle knows that a cocktail will put some hair on a drinker’s chest. It’s hard to find an alcoholic beverage stronger in Boulder than at Jungle (one of which is so potent that customers are limited to ordering only one). At Siren, the bar leans heavily into martinis.
“You can go to a steakhouse, like Corrida or Steakhouse 426 and get a nice martini,” she said. “But we wanted a place where you didn’t have to get all fancy to have one.”
The martini menu runs the familiar and the playful side-by-side. There is a Classic Martini, an Espresso Martini topped with mascarpone crème, and a Pornstar Martini, with an optional champagne sidecar. And then there’s the house Siren Martini, which adds sherry and bitters, plus a spoonful of caviar, if you’re feeling bold and…fishy.
“They’re strong. I mean, because of the nature of a martini, right? Thatap just a strong drink. We never want anybody to feel like they’re not getting what they paid for. We put a lot of thought into that,” Bradley said.
Bradley noted that the team also put thought into potential guests who may not want to get three sheets to the wind. Siren offers both low-ABV and non-alcoholic options, including a zero-proof martini called the Mutiny Haven, made with verjus, peach, ginger and a non-alcoholic aperitif.
Beyond martinis, the menu includes drinks like the Flip Ship with pear brandy and Génépy, the mezcal-based Oaxacan the Dog, and the ominously named Shipwrecked, which combines rhum, tomato gin, vermouth and Thai basil into a beverage that will certainly pack a wallop.
If cocktails are the main event, the food menu knows its role.
“Cocktails are our strength. We always want food to be secondary,” Bradley said. “But when I go to a bar, I want to eat something.”
Instead of a formal test kitchen, the team gathered at Bradley’s house one Saturday, each person bringing an idea and asking the same questions: What does this fill, and how easy can we make it?
“I always say I want it set up so that a toddler could walk up and build something,” Bradley said.The result is a tight, high-low menu designed for a galley-sized kitchen. Tinned fish anchors the nautical theme, served simply with Dry Storage sourdough, whipped butter, chives and pickles. Bradley is candid about the economics.
“The margins on tinned fish are not good,” she said. “So we wanted something in between.”
That in-between includes beer-battered cod fish sticks with tartar sauce, a five-cheese grilled cheese with onion jam, a sardine caesar and caviar in varying degrees of commitment, from full service to a $25 slider.
The sourdough, sourced from Boulder’s Dry Storage, gets special praise.
“Itap so freaking good,” Bradley said. “You could honestly just eat bread and butter.”
If the team expected Siren to operate at a gentler pace than Jungle, they were wrong.
“We thought it would be a little bit slower,” Bradley said. “That has not been true so far.”
Despite the smaller footprint and off-Pearl location, Siren has been packed since opening. The staff slipped quickly into what Bradley called “Jungle protocols,” skipping certain steps of service to make sure everyone gets seen and gets drinks as fast as possible.
“We pictured slower, but so far, not slower,” she said. “And thatap a wonderful problem to have.”
Siren may be smaller than its downtown sibling, but it already feels lived-in, like a place people were waiting for without totally realizing it. The lighting is warm. The tartare is cold. The martinis are strong and salty.
“Itap been an overwhelmingly wonderful opening,” Bradley said. “We’re very happy to be here.”
And if you wash up at Siren a little damp, a little weary and slightly dramatic about the day you’ve had, that is apparently fine too.
Siren is open from 4 to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 4 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. Happy hour runs daily from 4 to 6 p.m., with an additional late-night happy hour from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday and Tuesday. Check out the full menu at .
