Earth Shakers
Across the country, market-minded bartenders are taking vegetables from the side dish to the Sidecar.
Jeffery Lindenmuth
Posted: December 4, 2007
In the mid-19th century, the formative years of cocktails, an era before whirring blenders and chrome juicers, the likelihood of getting juice from a carrot was about the same as getting blood from a stone. Most bartenders invented new spiritous concoctions by reaching for low-hanging fruit—juicy fare like lemons, limes, grapefruit, and apples.
By the early 1900s, the Victorians were slicing the occasional cucumber into their cups, alcoholic or nonalcoholic punches, often made with wine. And liquefied celery and rhubarb enjoyed considerable popularity, the oat bran of their day. Now, more than a decade after Jack LaLanne hawked the "power that's in the juice" to American homemakers, cocktail enthusiasts are prepared to drink their vegetables, often subjecting them to the centrifuge before shaking the results with a chiffonade of herbs and some savory vodka, served in a sea salt–rimmed glass.
Ryan Magarian of Liquid Relations, a cocktail and spirit consulting company based in Portland, Oregon, has fallen for the bell pepper, in all its hues. For Hyde Lounge, an SBE Entertainment Group nightspot in West Hollywood, he created the Love Unit No. 2—with muddled red bell pepper, vanilla vodka, grapefruit juice, basil leaves, and simple syrup. "Bell pepper has become my de facto signature. I change it every few years because part of the fun in creating cocktails is shocking the guest, giving flavors that they wouldn't expect. Bell pepper is an incredible flavor that balances beautifully with herb accents. That's a key with vegetables for me," says Magarian.
In a nod to early bartenders, who often created numbered variations on popular cocktails like the Alexander, Magarian likes to swap out single ingredients, or change base spirit, to spawn new drinks. For the Pepper Delicious, Magarian muddles 2 large red bell pepper rings with 8 mint leaves, 1 ounce lime juice, and 3/4 ounce simple syrup. He then adds 2 ounces Aviation gin, shakes with ice, and strains through a fine mesh strainer into a cocktail glass. For the Pepper Delirious, a cocktail in development for Magarian's client S Bar, a new hotel bar concept for SBE Entertainment conceived by restaurateur/designer Philippe Starck, he substitutes yellow bell pepper, capturing Starck's sometimes eccentric aesthetic.
Greg Best, house mixologist at Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta, created a drink for Georgia Organics, a nonprofit educational group, using their dinner's theme ingredient—carrot. Down the Rabbit Hole combines 3 ounces fresh carrot juice, 3/4 ounce fresh cucumber juice, 3/4 ounce artichoke-based Cynar, and 1 ounce Square One organic vodka. After shaking with ice and straining into a cocktail glass, Best garnishes the drink with a sprig of sage.
"One of the most beautiful pairing agents are these amari, like Cynar, that have all this eucalyptus and clove and coriander and savory flavor. They plug in so well with vegetables, and they make a great bridge ingredient. Almost all my savory cocktails have amaro in some representation," says Best, adding that beet, fennel, and celery all make an occasional appearance on his rotating cocktail list.
Best also finds that savory cocktails are better suited to enjoyment with food than the traditional before dinner high-acid cocktail. On Friday nights, Restaurant Eugene offers a Flight Night, with three cocktails and three paired hors d'oeuvres for $25. "Drinks like Down the Rabbit Hole are never going to be hot sellers, but I want them to be there for the person willing to try," says Best.
Just as Best reaches for amaro, Adam Seger of Nacional 27 in Chicago has his own go-to spirits for vegetarian drinks. "I think gin, in particular, works with vegetables and savory flavors. Even though a lot of people say they don't like gin, the combination of fruits and vegetables mellows out the gin. I also really like blanco Tequila because it comes from a plant versus a grain and retains that vegetal quality," says Seger.
Rather than fire up the juicer, Seger prefers to infuse and muddle firm vegetables. "I love to muddle because we're using local organic produce from the Green City Market, and I like playing with texture as well. It sends a message about using fresh fruit and vegetables instead of prefab juices," he says. With a market cocktail list that changes weekly, different fruits and vegetables often rotate through the same drink at Nacional 27. The Mojitonico, "a savory gin Mojito," might contain cucumber one week and green tomatoes the next. For his Gazpacho and Tonic, Seger first infuses a liter of gin for one week with 2 sliced fennel bulbs and equal amounts of seedless watermelon and cucumber. To make the cocktail, he fills 1/3 of a rocks glass with some fennel slices and 4 lime wedges, muddles them firmly, then adds 1 ounce of the infused gin and tops with tonic.
Like so many pastry chefs, Ryan Butler of Django in New York City is equally adept behind the bar, bringing with him a passion for balance and experimentation. It's easy to spot his fondness for vegetable flavors in a baked apple dessert with apple confit and carrot tuile with carrot sorbet. "I like vegetables in desserts, especially the natural sweetness of carrots. I have another dessert called The Roots, with sweet potato ice cream, parsnip cake, carrot ribbon, and salsify puree."
Asked to create a healthful drink for the bar, Butler conceived the Vitamin Dj, made by muddling a few pieces of ginger root with a splash each of simple syrup and Key lime juice. Next, he adds 2 ounces fresh organic carrot juice, 3/4 ounce fresh organic Granny Smith apple juice, 3/4 ounce elderflower liqueur, and 2 ounces vodka, finally shaking with ice and straining into a cocktail glass.
Eben Freeman, bartender at Tailor in lower Manhattan, says, "The idea I start with in vegetable cocktails is finding vegetables that have an inherent sweetness, and the sugar in beets is quite pronounced. They are sweeter than a lot of fruits." At Tailor, beets lend their distinct color and flavor to Beet Sangria, while other original cocktails include butternut squash or parsnip.
When Freeman uses an unusual ingredient, like beets, in a cocktail, they always assume a leading role, not that of some mere character actor to add color. "It's amazing how many times people ask, 'How's the Beet Sangria?' and I say, 'It's great if you like beets.' They have no suspicion there are so many beets in it."
Freeman juices his own vegetables in a Champion juicer, shying away from frozen purees and juice bar renditions. He says the problem with obtaining juice from the local juice bar is that many different vegetables pour from the same juicer, destroying the purity of flavor. For certain vegetables, like squash and tomatillos, he extracts the juice and then reduces it on the stove to concentrate the flavor.
To make 1 quart of Beet Sangria, combine 11 ounces beet juice (about 2 pounds of beets, put through a vegetable juicer), 3 ounces fresh orange juice, 1 ounce fresh lime juice, and 3 ounces ginger beer. Add 4 ounces sugar and a pinch of salt, then stir until dissolved. Add 8 ounces red wine, 6 ounces brandy, 1 ounce Cointreau, and serve garnished with thin slices of watermelon radish or seasonal fruit. "This is not beet for beet's sake," says Freeman. "It's not one of 90 versions. For me, it's the idea for beet. I want to nail one version of it."
At Mint/820, a cocktail lounge adjacent to Mint restaurant in Portland, Oregon, owner Lucy Brennan found inspiration in a beet salad, creating a Martini with beet infused vodka. She peels and quarters 4 pounds of raw beets, then covers them with five 750 ml bottles of vodka for about three days. After removing the beets and straining the results, she shakes 3 ounces of the infused vodka with 3/4 ounce fresh lemon/lime juice and 3/4 ounce simple syrup and strains it into a cocktail glass. "It's not a sweet-and-sour cocktail. It's very earthy and savory," says Brennan, who is also renowned for an Avocado Daiquiri, and drinks using chile peppers and rhubarb syrup. "It's also one of our most popular drinks."
