Vinoteca Pompette is taking the philosophy “New year, new me” to heart, as the Italian-French eatery will be kicking off 2026 by being transformed into an aperitivo bar with a new space, a new menu and a new name.
With a planned opening for early 2026, Bar Allegro promises to be a welcoming and easy-going bar to spend the night dining on cocktails, wines and elevated share snacks.
Head sommelier Jonathan Bauer says Bar Allegro will be closer to the original vision for the Little Italy restaurant that he, chef Martine Bauer, and head bartender Maxime Hoerth had when they founded what was then called Pompette in April 2020. Though he says the plan had been to open a “simple” cocktail and wine bar with snacks, the pandemic severely altered the trajectory into a French restaurant.
The team is not new to a rebrand, as just a year and a half ago, Pompette transformed into Vinoteca Pompette, symbolized with a paint job to create the restaurant’s iconic green exterior. That time, the idea was to give the French upscale dining room a more accessible feel with more Italian flavours on the menu.
“Because we are in a corner unit, we had a lot of walk-ins come in so we wanted to have something more approachable to be able to satisfy all the requests for most spontaneous experiences,” says Bauer.
Bar Allegro will cater to the spontaneous experience even more, Bauer says, and even be more accessible to the crowd at sister cocktail bar, Bar Pompette.
“I wanted to have a place more alive from the beginning of the night to the end of the night and that’s we came up with the idea of Bar Allegro,” says Bauer.
The new name will still be paying homage to its roots as “allegro” is often used to mean feeling “tipsy” after a drink in Italian — just as “pompette” means the same in French.
“We wanted to change the name because we realized it was sometimes confusing for our customers to have two different Pompettes,” says Bauer, referring to Bar Pompette. “But we wanted to create a link. You don’t have to understand the link, but if you’re curious about it, you’ll get it.”
While Bauer is remaining tight-lipped about what we can expect from the snack menu, he assures it will be “elevated” and not only focus on Italian but various flavour profiles. Think bar favourites — savoury, cheesy and fried snacks all meant to be shared.
Where Bar Pompette is focused on creating a cocktail experience, Bar Allegro will be serving quality classic cocktails alongside beer and cider. As you’d expect from the Pompette team, there will be a selection of wine by the glass as well as about 100 wines by the bottle that are largely European, biodynamic and artisan-made.
“We really want a place that’s casual and you go out with friends,” Bauer says. “You don’t have any plans and you just plan to stay for a drink for half an hour and just stay two hours instead. That’s out dream.”
Vinoteca Pompette’s final day of service will be Sunday, January 4, after which the restaurant will be closed for renovations for three weeks to a month. After the soft opening, Bar Allegro will be ready to welcome diners seven days per week.
“We love to create some new stuff — new drinks, new food — and see the reaction of the neighbourhood,” says Bauer. “What we’re most excited about is creating a place where we feel that we’re going to have a lot of customer who make this their place to be a few times a week.”
