A Capitol Hill restaurant is headed down the rabbit hole on an adventure to maintain a thriving food and drink business during the challenges of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The change has transformed Remedium Island Grill and its Cure Cocktail bar into a performance space where Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat have joined the cast along with the chef, line cooks, servers, and bartenders. CHS visited as rehearsals were still underway earlier this week.

“It’s a whole dinner and a show kinda thing,” Sean Sheffer tells CHS.

The Alice – An Immersive Cocktail Experience has landed at Remedium through the holidays and through the slow winter months into 2022, taking over the venue at 15th and Pine with a daily slate of ticketed meals and performances that will keep the young restaurant busy like never before. And that is saying something. In the months of pandemic business it has so far weathered, Remedium and Cure Cocktail have added new ventures and business lines like cocktail class Zoom calls and cocktail deliveries at a nearly exhausting clip as Sean and his brother Joe Sheffer try to stay one step ahead of the virus and its impact.

They are trying to keep the restaurant alive and trying to keep their employees working.

“We are able to keep them during the holiday season,” Sheffer said. “We’ve never actually shrunk our staff. Because of all these — let’s just call them projects — that we want to take on, if they get shut down because of mandates to close and the safety stuff… we can still continue a full time gig. Help us here. Help us at the Alice show. Help us with deliveries. Help us with Zoom calls. Help us in our full service kitchen.”

The Sheffer brothers opened Remedium with Hawaiian and Filipino BBQ a year ago, taking over the large, two-level space formerly home to Shota Nakajima’s upscale Japanese joint Adana. Nakajima knows a little bit about hype opportunities in modern day food and drink after his stint on the Top Chef reality show. Previously, the brothers took over Cure in 2017 after six years of business on the west edge of Cal Anderson. With the opening of Remedium, Cure Cocktail now lives on — and is marking its tenth year of business on Capitol Hill — as part of the mix at 15th and Pine.

The Alice is the latest opportunity — and this is a big one. CHS reported here on the arrival of “Immersive experiences” joining “ghost kitchens” in Capitol Hill’s curiouser and curiouser mix of revenue opportunities for the surviving players in its battered but still fighting food and drink economy.

The promoters hype Alice as a “whimsical, alternate reality experience” that the company says lasts for 90 minutes and “includes two bespoke cocktails, riddles and challenges guests will have to solve, ‘Eat Me’ cakes, and plenty of bonkers photo opportunities.” $40 per person tickets are currently on sale.

Sean Sheffer tells CHS the show produced by a company operating here as Viral Ventures Global rents out the restaurant space from Remedium for the daily schedule of performances. It’s only six weeks but the deal means booked income at what could be the most challenging time yet for some struggling venues through the holidays. There’s also a bonus. “For any Alice cocktails they sell, we get a cut,” Sheffer said.

Drink up.

While it’s not clear what the long term impacts for restaurants participating in these kinds of events will be — Sheffer said customers are still able to visit Remedium and Cure upstairs during the ticketed show — it is clear that the opportunity is coveted. Sheffer said Remedium faced competition from other Capitol Hill restaurants to host Alice but the producers ultimately selected the 15th and Pine restaurant and bar.

The deal means work for Remedium employees and stable revenue during a challenging period. It has also been kind of fun to see a set get built out in just two weeks — usually the crew has more like a month and a half — and be part of the show biz, even if the Sheffers weren’t exactly sure what part they’ll serve as the performances play out over the coming weeks and lots of questions still remain about how it will all come together and work.

Will the brothers have to wear Alice costumes?

“We don’t know.”

The Alice – An Immersive Cocktail Experience plays daily at Remedium at 1449 E Pine through February. You can learn more and purchase tickets here.

PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.