The Rise of the Cocktail
October - November 2010
Liquor and Food Pairings Usher in a Fresh Culinary Breath
UNDERSTANDING THE LATEST FOOD AND DRINK TREND might be more about moving mindsets than it is about changing palates. Of course you enjoy a glass of Riesling with your spicy and seared opakapaka, and naturally reach for a bottle of Pinot when you’re ordering duck. But in the raw, edgy world of global cuisine, where foams and sprays are all the rage – and where dining is part theater and part culinary treat – wine is moving in a lateral direction. What, after all, would you serve with “Frozen Air of Parmesano and Muesli,” a la Ferran Adria? Or “Sea Buckthorn Leather and Pickled Rose Hip” a la Noma? Somehow, a crisp, dry Riesling doesn’t seem to cut it.
Enter the cocktail.
Harboring the ability to be tweaked and twisted, sipped and shaken until its flavors match any menu, the cocktail can be quite diverse.
“Cocktails are unique pairings,” says one of the city’s prominent mixologists, Joey Goettesman. “You can add almost anything to pair with food. There are infinite possibilities with a cocktail and a menu. With wine you just have to hope that the wine shows well enough or that the chef can make a dish that pairs. Wine is unilateral. Cocktails have way more flexibility.”
Restaurants are already stepping up to the bar and creating a wide range of cocktails designed specifically for their food. Consider the cocktail menu at BLT, where instead of a martini you can start the evening with a Royal Bianco (Leblon Cachaca, Martini Bianco, pink grapefruit and fresh basil). Or begin with a Blue Basil made with Ketel One Citroen, muddled blueberries, basil and mint.
At Sansei Seafood Restaurant and Sushi Bar, cocktail-whiz Christian Self, who recently took the $10,000 cash prize for the Best Mai Tai in The World contest, designed a menu for the restaurant based specifically on Asian flavors.
“We asked him to design cocktails that would complement our style of sushi and Japanese-influenced food, not just a list of cocktails to drink before or after dinner,” says managing partner Ivy Nagayama.
At Azure, the list of cocktails is a stunning as the oceanfront setting: sparkling hibiscus gimlets, and fresh raspberry essence Collins’ are just some of the enticing drinks on the current menu.
“Munch at Apt 3″ is a series of monthly cocktail dinners that focuses on the extraordinary. This fall the focus is on tequila, as well as buttered rums.
“At Munch, we are showing how incredibly flexible cocktail pairings can be,” says Goettesman, whose favorite autumnal pairing is buttered rum with applewood-smoked bacon and Hawaiian vanilla. “It’s full of smoke and depth.”
This is surprisingly good news for chefs who’ve spent the past decade creating often intimidating wine dinners.
“They don’t have to worry anymore about whether they’ve got the right wine,” says Goettesman. “Now the pressure is all about the cocktail.”
