Augusta Eats: Drinks or dessert? Lounge on James Brown Boulevard has plenty of both
A popular downtown Augusta sweet spot had a bitter beginning for Troy and Amy Adamo.
Within a month in 2017, Troy’s mother and Amy’s father died. Troy was just a couple of years from mustering out of the U.S. Air Force. Amy had just earned her master’s degree in international human resources from Penn State. The family tragedies led the Adamos to a moment of clarity.
“And we looked at each other and said, 'What would you do if you could do anything?’” Mrs. Adamo said. She chose baking. “He said, ‘I want to open a bar.’ I said, ‘OK, let’s do that.’ He said, ‘Which one?’ I said, ‘Both.’”
The result, which opened in March 2021, is Vance’s Bakery Bar, 123 James Brown Blvd. The lounge with a 1950s/60s décor is where the cocktails taste like desserts and the alcohol-infused desserts complement the cocktails.
And the answer is no; customers cannot get drunk from eating the desserts. It’s perhaps the biggest misconception among new customers.
“People will say it’s not boozy enough, but it would be slushy. You have to know that fine line,” Mrs. Adamo said. “You add white wine to shrimp scampi, red wine to beef bourguignon. It’s a flavor enhancement. You’re not just going to take a bite out of it and get drunk off of it.”
At one downtown event, she said, a deputy ate two Vance's cookies and two cupcakes then couldn’t produce a reading on a breathalyzer.
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The Adamos enrolled in mixology school to become bartenders, but more importantly to learn more about transforming cocktails into desserts. Vance’s bartenders and bakers experiment with flavor palettes to develop the next popular menu item.
“A big part of what we do is to encourage our staff to create cocktails to help create the desserts,” Mr. Adamo said. “Their ideas are instrumental in the success that happens here. They have ownership in the products that we produce.”
Some of the desserts might make you feel like a kid again, but Vance’s still is a bar. Only 21-and-older customers are allowed inside to order items such as the Lil Vance Cosmic Brownie, the Adamos’ take on a Little Debbie Cosmic Brownie. It's a moist fudge brownie topped with Mozart dark chocolate liqueur ganache, rainbow crunch chips and a mini scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Whenever possible, Vance’s prefers to locally source its alcohol ingredients. A recipe requiring beer might include a pale ale from Savannah River Brewing Co. One popular dish, Ric Rac Bread Pudding, is drizzled with a sauce made in-house from 2nd City Ric Rac Salted Caramel Whiskey, distilled in the Augusta area. The “bread” in the pudding is freshly baked pound cake.
Perhaps the sweetest part of Vance’s is the name. The Adamos named the bar for Mrs. Adamo’s father, whose jovial, athletic life ended with a fatal heart attack on his 80th birthday.
“His mother was the one I got my baking skills from,” she said. “He loved life, he loved a good cocktail and he loved desserts.”
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Augusta Eats bakery bar combines drinks and desserts downtown
