Mixability: maximizing your bar business with color, flavor and excitement

Cheers, May, 2004 by Nancy Backas

Klemm makes sure to work closely with the chefs when developing cocktails for a restaurant. For BR Guest Restaurant's Dos Caminos in New York, he came up with creative brightly colored Margaritas that matched both the decor and the cuisine including a prickly pear-strawberry Margarita, passion fruit Margarita and guava cranberry Margarita.

Sushisamba offers an array of drinks that reflect the Latin-Japanese theme using both tropical fruit flavors and South American spirits (cachaca, pisco) and Japanese liquors (shochu and sake). The result is cocktails like the Mora Negra (rum with muddled blackberry, sugar, fresh lime and mango juice), Honeyed Shochu Chu-tini (shochu with a dash of honey) and the Capairinha (lime juice, sugar and cachaca).

Many restaurants keep patrons interested by continually changing the cocktail menu. Sammi Scott, bar manager at Sonoma County's Mixx, Santa Rosa, CA, brings out a new list once a month. The entire staff is involved in the tasting and decision process, including the culinary staff. "I come up with the ideas and the staff does the testing and what everyone likes, we put on the menu. Even some of the waitstaff who don't drink are part of the process so they can answer customers' questions about what's in a drink," she says. "People these days are good consumers. They pay a lot for a cocktail so they want something made properly with a healthy balance between alcohol and flavor."

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Lucy Brennan, owner of Mint and 820 North (located next door), created 40 custom cocktails for the 820 North lounge. She changes the bar menu seasonally, but has some staples such as her Avocado Daiquiri and a cilantro-laced Ad Lib. Seasonal drinks include a Rhubarb Cooler made with a hand-made rhubarb simple syrup and gin and Absolut Mission (Ruby port, fig puree, lemon-lime juice and Absolut Vanilia). She recently started sharing her knowledge teaching cocktail classes one Sunday a month at 820 where groups of 8 to 10 participants learn how to make three unique cocktails, a perfect sugar rim, how to pour and measure and what Brennan's key cocktail ingredients are, while nibbling on appetizers.

The cocktail menu is becoming as important as the food menu. Mixologists are just starting to consider that their profession can be serious, as serious as being a chef with their own requisite set of tools, just as a chef has a tool kit. Taking the cocktail menu seriously means figuring out what purpose the cocktail holds in the context of the restaurant. "When I was at the Rainbow Room, a lot of people asked me what to drink. No one had a clue. When I go to a bar, I go there because I like the bartender, not the bar," says DeGroff.

People want bartenders to help them make selections, educate and excite them with new flavors. Bartender knowledge as well as the cocktail menus are starting to reflect more depth of understanding of how flavors work, and what cocktails belong at what part of the meal. "Pre-dinner drinks should be on the dry side. If you are going to have a canape, for example, you have to have a dry cocktail that matches the salty, creamy nature of the appetizer. You should not be having a chocolate Martini prior to dinner. It's a matter of education," adds DeGroff. His biggest criticism of many of the popular Martini menus today is that they are too sweet. When he teaches mixology classes, he focuses on the sour drinks and how to make them properly, and that means with fresh juices.