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Cheer up: Cocktails are going clear, cheeky and Insta-ready. Want a sip?
Hold up. There might be cheese or chilli in your drink. Mixologists are creating cocktails with Maggi, kasundi, and more. Can they draw in the sober-curious?
A Gen Z customer walks into a bar. There’s no punchline, just vibes. Going to bars, like everything else for today’s 20-somethings, is more about doing it for the plot than to get wasted. They invented the term sober-curious. They prefer coffee raves to the OG kind. The kids that grew up on Freakshakes are all grown up and want their cocktails to be ’Gram-ready too. They don’t have a signature drink. An Old-Fashioned is so old-fashioned.
So, what is a bartender to do? Bring the drama to cocktail hour, of course. Here’s how.
Bells and whistlesEvgenya Prazdnik, 39, Goa
Prazdnik, head mixologist at Panaji’s MTW Bar, has spent 20 years working in bars in Russia, Qatar, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and India. “When I started out, we were in the era of disco drinks,” she recalls. This meant Cosmo, Long Island, Sex on the Beach - sweet, showy cocktails that tied into the party and nightclub aesthetic. It gave way to craft cocktails: “Having one standout, refined ingredient in your drink”. Cool bartenders put lemongrass and passionfruit into drinks. Cool punters lapped it up.
Cocktails have been shaking their tailfeathers a bit more since the pandemic. “There has to be a surprise element – either the name, or the look, or the ingredients,” Prazdnik says. Barkeeps stock up on black lime, tobacco cordial, fat-washed ice cream foam and cockscomb flowers. Niche ingredients are the big draw.
At MTW, the premises functions as an office in the day and opens as a bar space at night. The drink names match the officey décor: Please Find Attached, Early Login, Gentle Reminder. One drink, PFA, is made with cask-aged gin, rooibos tea, and palm jaggery, and is served in two beer glasses linked with a chain. Another drink, Chai Break, is served with a pack of sweet cigarette candies on top of the glass. Menus change every three months. “We have a brainstorming session for creative concoctions every week.”
Clearing it upYangdup Lama, 53, Delhi
Lama loves telling stories about growing up in Darjeeling. So, it’s natural that some of the lore makes its way into the menu of his Gurugram bar, The Brook. Their bestseller, Maggi Point, is a nod to the ubiquitous instant-noodle stalls in the mountains. It’s a clear tequila cocktail – no noodles, no broth – made by clarifying milk with the Maggi masala flavouring. “You feel the touch of spice after you’ve gulped it down.”
It’s a hit because practically every Indian customer has grown up on instant noodles. Hitting that personal spot is the key to the business, he says. At Sidecar, his other bar, the cocktail menu is travel-themed. One celebrates K-pop and is made by fat-washing bacon or lard with whisky. Texas is represented in a corn-and-cheese cocktail. “Savoury flavours are the next big trend,” Lama says.
All the experimentation takes place in their lab on Sidecar’s rooftop. “We break down every ingredient. Is it creamy, oily, or pungent? Then we decide on the appropriate techniques to use – clarification, sous vide, maceration, distillation.” But ultimately, lab-grown excitement must feel real, so honest marketing matters. “Customers know when you’re cooking up a story.”
Magic in the mixShatbhi Basu, 65, Mumbai
Basu has been bartending since 1981; she’s been crafting drinks for five generations of Indians. The overarching change? Cocktails have got more and more specific over the years. “Mixologists don’t copy global trends anymore. They look at what’s around them, what’s local,” she says. “That means discovering what each region — even each neighbourhood — has to offer, and drawing from local culture and history.”
Basu is now an independent director at Mount Everest Breweries. But last year, for the Kolkata bar LMNOQ, she created a vodka drink with bandel (a local smoky cheese), blueberries, and clarified it with milk and cream. “The drink was a beautiful pale purply-blue colour, smoky, salty and sweet, Most importantly, it was a nod to something that Kolkata’s known for.”
Indian flavours are a hit at the bar. Basu has created an Aam Papad Whisky Sour, Kasundi Gin Fizz, Nimbu ka Achar Old Fashioned, and Puchka Gin and Tonic. “My team thinks I’m mad sometimes,” she says. “I call it a mix of research, intuition, and imagination.”
Technique matters, but so does having fun. Basu is currently designing cocktails for an upcoming magic-themed Mumbai restaurant. “Each drink plays with a bit of surprise, maybe through visual effects, unexpected flavour changes, or presentation tricks,” she says. “There’s a little bit of magic and alchemy in everything a mixologist does, anyway.”
Every lightbulb momentSahil Essani, 26, New York
At two-year-old Muro, there’s a large whiteboard in the back of the bar. Whenever an aha! moment strikes, Essani, who was beverage manager until last month, and his team run to it to note down their ideas. “Your brain doesn’t brain when you want it to, if you know what I mean,” he says. “So, you have to capture that spark before it fizzes out.”
The whiteboard is where several of their top cocktails were born. “One of our team members once remarked that a Blue Lagoon doesn’t actually taste like a blue lagoon. So, we made one that does. It’s blue, salty, bright, and even has jelly that looks like seaweed floating in the glass.” Another hit: The Dirty Ceviche, made with a dirty martini and fresh shrimp. “I had a ceviche in Mexico that blew my mind. I wanted to capture that raw freshness in a cocktail.”
Every drink gets a taste test and then some. “We use a method we call Granny-proofing: If I can explain the drink to my grandma in 15 seconds, it’s a winner. So, instead of saying, ‘It’s distilled Tabasco with clarified tomato,’ we just say, ‘It’s a Dorito in a glass’.”
Up the garden pathAmi Shroff, 40, Mumbai
Shroff has been a freelance flair bartender for two decades. She knows the power of a drink with a little show - juggling, fire acts, a surprise element. And she know what the incoming generation of drinkers wants: Something new, something fresh. So, before each event or workshop, she creates a fresh cocktail menu with the vibe of a salad, with a zero-waste theme (fruit peels or leftover lime skins) or spicy drinks made with jalapeno and chilli.
The big craze: Flowers in your drinks. Shroff has worked with dried marigold, rose, hibiscus, jasmine and dandelion root. She went through a phase when she was obsessed with watermelon feta salad and Thai raw papaya and mango salad. Of course, she worked on turning them into drinks.
A menu of 10-12 drinks takes three or four days, maybe a week, to finalise. During that time, Shroff is usually changing one ingredient at a time to learn how the cocktail tastes. “You have to get the flavours and colour balance right”. Even tweaking the salt rim can change how a drink blooms in the mouth. “A Tajín versus a black pepper rim can make all the difference.”
