I'd been hoping to check out the Drop: Bar and Bistro for a while now. A friend recently told me, &ldquo;I never expected such fancy food on Martini Corner. It&rsquo;s a lot more than bar food.&rdquo;</p><p>So on a recent Saturday night, just as the autumn chill was starting to make al fresco dining a little less tempting, four of us gathered to put that high praise to the test. </p><p>Each of us had been in the historic brick building on 31st Street just west of Gillham during other restaurants&rsquo; tenures there, but none of us had sampled the Drop&rsquo;s menu, which was revamped recently by new chef Kelli Daniels.</p><p>We started out with a round of drinks (a Diet Coke for the designated driver) and then made our way to the dining room, a comfortable space separated from the bar by a row of empty window frames. </p><p>The room is clubby and dark, not dim, with a whimsically clever chandelier of wine glasses suspended upside down from a tiered metal frame.</p><p>&ldquo;I have boxes of glasses from Costco in the basement,&rdquo; said a friend who&rsquo;s known for his craftiness. &ldquo;I should make one of those for my dining room.&rdquo;</p><p>We took our seats at the black-lacquered table and perused the menu, which was surprisingly lengthy for an establishment that clearly caters to the cocktail crowd.</p><p>Chef Daniels said she set out to remake the Drop&rsquo;s menu with an eye toward streamlining the already-established favorites.</p><p>&ldquo;When I first got here, the food was all across the board &mdash; you could get a Cuban sandwich and hummus,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;My question to myself was, &lsquo;Where does my cooking fit into this concept?&rsquo;&ensp;&rdquo;</p><p>The Drop&rsquo;s bill of fare is divided into five main sections: starters, &ldquo;spoon and fork,&rdquo; &ldquo;with your hands,&rdquo; bruschetta and small plates. The appetizers and bruschetta seemed suited to sharing.</p><p>I asked our server about the small plates &mdash; are they three- or four-bite affairs like in a traditional tapas bar?</p><p>&ldquo;Not really,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re more like a regular entr&eacute;e, but it isn&rsquo;t a really huge serving. But it&rsquo;s still a lot of food.&rdquo;</p><p>My friend added, &ldquo;As you get further out from the city center, in the chain restaurants, everyone expects the plate to get bigger, piled with more starch. You don&rsquo;t need all that anyway.&rdquo;</p><p>We started with the house-cured olives, a variety of shapes, sizes and tastes that ranged from pleasantly mild to pungent with a bit of heat. They were fantastic with our drinks. </p><p>We also ordered the crab cakes, which Daniels is particularly proud of.</p><p>&ldquo;I will say they&rsquo;re the best in town,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to the point of people requesting them on the lunch menu.&rdquo; </p><p>They were served on a pool of avocado puree with a squiggle of what the menu called sriracha aioli. The plump pucks, fortunately, weren&rsquo;t full of bread, egg or especially bell pepper. Instead, they let big chunks of crab do the talking, while the avocado&rsquo;s smoothness lent a velvety richness. The aioli didn&rsquo;t have much garlic/chili kick, but too much would have overwhelmed the sweetness of the crab.</p><p>As far as libations go, we sampled a well-balanced Manhattan. I decided to stretch my boundaries with a &ldquo;Ryan&rsquo;s Sazerac.&rdquo; I&rsquo;ve never quite developed the taste for New Orleans&rsquo; classic blend of dark spirits (usually whiskey or Cognac), bitters and some form of licorice-flavored pastis. But the Drop seems to be onto something with its version, which isn&rsquo;t overwhelmed with anise.