Sonder, A Listening Bar Mixes Tunes Like Craft Cocktails

Ambience can matter to some bar owners and patrons just as much as the drinks they enjoy. Sonder, A Listening Bar is one such lounge converted from a vegan cafe by Natasha Stille and her partner Tyson Koski, a well-seasoned house DJ who’s no stranger to packing sweat-slickened dance floors to capacity. Since opening its doors in the Hollywood District in 2023, Sonder has proved over 18 months to offer as good a nightcap for audiophiles as for cocktail lovers.

No matter what’s playing on a given night, one thing is certain: Sonder sounds great. Stille and Koski spared no expense updating Sonder’s hi-fi system, clearly the establishment’s crown jewel. After its inaugural Music Fans First showcase last August, where turntables are spun open for slumming mix masters and first-time DJs reserving half-hour time slots between 6 pm and midnight on the first Wednesday of every month, Sonder has fully booked out each of the event’s dozen 30-minute increments every time. It’s not a drop-in open mic, so make sure to reach out to Sonder ahead of time to dive into its library of deep cuts.

When designing the new interior, the couple took advantage of the former operation’s cultivated overgrowth and readied the tallest, most unnerving, altogether flora-forward species already bursting from pots as party vegetables ever threatening to dance the night away. Against all expectations, the blond wood and aggro fern bar specimens shouldn’t mesh nearly so well with more traditional nods to timeless club-kid aesthetics, like a disco globe and outsized artwork pairing heavenly bodies with feminine lips. It might not look like the jazz kissas unique to Japan, but they clearly hold heavy influence over Sonder’s creative direction.

While Sonder sounds exquisite, it also consistently looks good, feels comfortable and, importantly, never lacks for taste. But perhaps inevitably, given the location’s past decade of service as a vegan restaurant, the small plates menu approaches cruelty-free variants with greater confidence and skill than some newly expanded prospects. Most edibles are appetizers like spinach and artichoke dip ($10) or baked pretzels with dijon mustard ($8), but the filling options at the taco bar ($5) are varied enough between carnivorous options (buffalo chicken, curried fish garlic shrimp) and vegetarian choices (soyrizo sweet potato, walnut “meat”) to encourage exploration.

A cocktail menu and inventive mocktail menu, meanwhile, lean heavily upon thoughtful preparation of south of the border staples. For a lovely, deceptively subdued impression of Brazil’s national drink, Stille happily lends the caipirinha ($10) brief historical context, reminds tipplers that the sugarcane-distilled spirit cachaca resembles a grassland mezcal far more than the rum its origins suggest, and presents within an intriguingly neutral froth teasing spice and citrus in equal shares. The Lonely Sunset ($14) offers a more compelx, mezcal-forward take on the tequila sunrise. Mocktails are no less creative, like the turmeric paloma ($10) or Eva’s Spritz ($10), a blend of citrus, rhubarb and so-called sunshine.

Purists might encourage newcomers to develop their own relationship with the unmuddled before mishing and mashing sweet spots for summer bangers—whether that’s on the menu or in the vinyl library—but self-led experimentation lets the imagination wander at Sonder.

TRY IT: Sonder, A Listening Bar, 1925 NE 42nd Ave., 971-940-9924, thesonderbar.com. 5 pm–midnight Wednesday, 5 pm–2 am Thursday–Saturday.