Why are cocktail bars so drawn to a catch-all, international drinks offering, when they could represent something unique - a showcase of place, says Hamish Smith.
Running my eye over the over-sized menu of a smart brasserie in London, I’m taken by the internationalism of the offering. Like room service, it’s an orbital of the culinary world, from American-style burgers and high-end steaks to cannelloni from Italy, Indian-inspired butter chicken curry and our own fish & chips. I mention this not because it’s something new, but the opposite. It felt a throwback to a time when the catch-all menu meant more people pleased, not less. Times – and tastes – have changed. Now if feels like every new restaurant has a finely chiselled niche, a precise purpose and pitch.
But not so much in the cocktail world, where themes are common but quite often finish at the décor. The big-brand liquids representing major categories from around the world and their set-recipe vehicles are quite often shoehorned into the concept as if a cocktail bar isn’t a cocktail bar without the familiar actors. Bars very rarely have a sense of place.
Intrinsic to this internationalism is a reverence to classic cocktails. As an industry we’ve arrived at a collective appreciation for what we consider the benchmark drinks – our Old Fashioneds, Negronis and Margaritas are our burger, lasagne and tacos. These may be the best drinks in drinks-making history, but we play them like a greatest hits album on repeat. Or we take the template, spin out an ingredient for something different and call it a signature. We are more often editors than creators.
Even more so, classics have become the prism through which we view the infinite universe of mixed drinks. As if left to our own devices, without their doctrinal commandments, we couldn’t hope to comprehend cocktail balance.
I’m a true hypocrite. I too am drawn to the familiar, looking for guarantees and soft landings in unsure surroundings. Classics, as I wrote early this year, are the “perfect product” because “at the point you drink one, it has received the collective feedback and blessings of a million mouths before yours”. But I might as well have said: “Play safe in cocktail bars – other mixed drinks are not to be trusted.”
So, I ask this question somewhat ambivalently: does our industry’s reverence for classics go too far? Through this, have we cultivated the equivalent of fussy eaters – people who pick through a menu looking for something they’ve heard of? And should off-menu ordering be so normalised – appreciated even – as we tangle up our eagerness to please every customer with good hospitality? Perhaps a shout out for a Dry Martini when the menu doesn’t offer you one, mostly isn’t cool. Is it that far removed from footballer John Terry demanding a burger in a Lebanese restaurant?
Or, perhaps we should just accept that ‘cocktail bar’ is the concept, and inherent to the concept is internationalism – mirror-image back bars and classically constructed cocktails from Tokyo to New York and everything in between. I just can’t help thinking that through this shared standard we have achieved a great product, but a homogenous one.
So where will be in 50 years? Still on repeat? Perhaps the classical tradition can be preserved, but adhered to with slightly less ubiquity.
Clear identity
I wonder if we can look to the kitchen to read the tea leaves. The broad trend towards specialisation has, over the past few decades, seen within it the emergence of a clear identity of Modern British cuisine. It is influenced by British multiculturalism, rather than arbitrary exoticism. British cocktails do not yet have this identity. We are certainly digging deeper into Britain’s larder for ingredients, but we are still a long way short of creating drinks that are a coherent expression of our traditions, land and seasons. And yet our pantry is vast, our techniques are space-age.
I get the defence. Average Jo(e) has just got their head around Old Fashioneds and Margaritas – why on earth are we rotovapping sea buckthorn? Well, the approach could be more accessible, more in touch with everyday references. And anyway, is it ideological to think drinks can be more in tune with the environment, consuming ingredients at their best rather than in shelf-stable form? Is it that fanciful that consumers could one day walk into a bar not with the assumption that they’d order a classic but a drink with a sense of place and time? Could drinks starring rhubarb be what we look forward to in spring, plum cocktails in summer and appley mixed drinks in autumn? The Peach Bellini was invented in 1948 by Giuseppe Cipriani at Harry’s Bar in Venice because of the abundance of white peaches in the Italian summer. I suspect he didn’t envisage the drink being made in the British winter from commercial peach purée.
Just scanning the list of The World’s 50 Best Bars you can see the movement is in action: Line in Athens is built around its seasonal ferments of Greek fruit, Röda Huset showcases Scandinavian produce – not easy given the climate – and there’s Byrdi working with Australia’s rare cornucopia. Similar expressions of place exist at Zest in South Korea, Himkok in Norway and Lady Bee in Peru. We have examples here too. Ugly Butterfly in Cornwall has gone to great lengths to make its drinks follow the same local ethos as its food, as has Henrock in Windermere. Nipperkin and Tayer + Elementary have followed the likes of Scout to showcase a way of working that’s more in sync with the seasons, while Pal in Grimsby goes beyond just British produce to mix drinks with almost entirely English spirits – a sourcing theme the new Gallery at The Savoy and Muse at RSA House have both explored in their debut cocktail menus.
Localism sometimes gets lost in the sustainability conversation, but it doesn’t need to. A showcase of provenance is about authenticity and added value. For want of a better phrase, this is bar terroir – the idea that our mixed drinks can have a sense of place. If there can be Modern British cuisine, there can be Modern British cocktails.