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  • Food Cocktails -- the next trend?

    • 07/08/2016
    • ADB
    • 0 Comments

    Yes, late night TV is filled with all manner of ways to drink your fruits, vegetables, and vitamins. There are also the county fairs this summer that dip virtually anything edible into a deep fat fryer just for fun.

    Well, you knew it was coming. From inventing new cocktails to using fresh local, ingredients to finding innovative ways of presentation—bartenders are shaking up the cocktail this summer.

    The usual suspects—Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Whisky Sour, LIIT (Long Island Iced Tea), Martini and its different interpretations—aren’t going anywhere, fresh twists are reviving these cocktails in the face of fierce competition from craft beers and ever-improving local wines.

    Now they are putting actual food in the drink.

    Baconique, essentially a quirky take on the classic Whisky Sour. Bacon and mushroom-infused bourbon, mixed with lime juice and topped with mushroom foam, crushed nutmeg and black pepper. It’s virtually a meal in itself. It makes your mouth hungry. Smoked pancetta fat is added to bourbon every day for 7-10 days for the bacon flavor. The fat is filtered out and the bourbon double-strained. Infusing the drink with mushroom flavors takes another five-six days. In all, it’s a month in the making. American Bars has no idea if it tastes any good…we just report the news.

    A number of trend setting places have many such complex craft cocktails that take anywhere from a couple of weeks to three months to create. A lot of research goes into creating a craft cocktail with food in it. So there are a lot of hits and misses. Cocktails infused with food are essentially a work-in-progress.

    American Bars has heard of a variety of craft cocktails, from the Bacon Old Fashioned (bacon-infused bourbon, bitters, orange, sugar and ice), Matcha Daiquiri (matcha tea, white rum, honey, lime and ice) and Royal Bengal Mojito (gold rum, lemon, mint, pineapple, tonic and ice) to a number of gin and tonics (G&Ts).

    G&Ts are making a huge comeback globally and many bars are racing to eventually make tonics in-house because the domestically available tonic is generally too sweet and the imported ones are too expensive.

    Till that happens, they are infusing tonic with local herbs and spices for their gin and tonic. A vinegar-and-water base is infused with ingredients such as lavender, orchids, lemons; 5-8ml of the “shrub” (the shrub-infused vinegar-water base) is added to a 60ml pour of gin, followed by a topping of flavored ice and tonic water for a gin and tonic.

    We have no idea of the calorie count or nutritional values to be found here. Once again, we just report what is trending.

     
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Food Cocktails -- the next trend?

Yes, late night TV is filled with all manner of ways to drink your fruits, vegetables, and vitamins. There are also the county fairs this summer that dip virtually anything edible into a deep fat fryer just for fun.

Well, you knew it was coming. From inventing new cocktails to using fresh local, ingredients to finding innovative ways of presentation—bartenders are shaking up the cocktail this summer.

The usual suspects—Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Whisky Sour, LIIT (Long Island Iced Tea), Martini and its different interpretations—aren’t going anywhere, fresh twists are reviving these cocktails in the face of fierce competition from craft beers and ever-improving local wines.

Now they are putting actual food in the drink.

Baconique, essentially a quirky take on the classic Whisky Sour. Bacon and mushroom-infused bourbon, mixed with lime juice and topped with mushroom foam, crushed nutmeg and black pepper. It’s virtually a meal in itself. It makes your mouth hungry. Smoked pancetta fat is added to bourbon every day for 7-10 days for the bacon flavor. The fat is filtered out and the bourbon double-strained. Infusing the drink with mushroom flavors takes another five-six days. In all, it’s a month in the making. American Bars has no idea if it tastes any good…we just report the news.

A number of trend setting places have many such complex craft cocktails that take anywhere from a couple of weeks to three months to create. A lot of research goes into creating a craft cocktail with food in it. So there are a lot of hits and misses. Cocktails infused with food are essentially a work-in-progress.

American Bars has heard of a variety of craft cocktails, from the Bacon Old Fashioned (bacon-infused bourbon, bitters, orange, sugar and ice), Matcha Daiquiri (matcha tea, white rum, honey, lime and ice) and Royal Bengal Mojito (gold rum, lemon, mint, pineapple, tonic and ice) to a number of gin and tonics (G&Ts).

G&Ts are making a huge comeback globally and many bars are racing to eventually make tonics in-house because the domestically available tonic is generally too sweet and the imported ones are too expensive.

Till that happens, they are infusing tonic with local herbs and spices for their gin and tonic. A vinegar-and-water base is infused with ingredients such as lavender, orchids, lemons; 5-8ml of the “shrub” (the shrub-infused vinegar-water base) is added to a 60ml pour of gin, followed by a topping of flavored ice and tonic water for a gin and tonic.

We have no idea of the calorie count or nutritional values to be found here. Once again, we just report what is trending.

 
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