2024-04-17 14:03:12
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Cocktails made with unique ingredients… Popular with a menu that goes beyond imagination
‘Truly seasonal’ new cocktails every three months
More and more bartenders are interested in ingredients
Fill a highball glass with ice. Add 50mL vodka, 10mL lemon juice, 5mL simple syrup, 100mL tomato juice, horseradish sauce, 20mL kimchi broth, and a drop or two of Tabasco, shake, pour into a glass, and finish with kimchi, pickles, lemon, and red pepper powder. This is a method of making the ‘Kimchi Blood Mary’ cocktail developed by a foreign bartender in London, England. At first glance, you may be wondering what kind of kimchi is put in the cocktail, but the secret to the taste chosen by the bartender is none other than the taste of kimchi and red pepper powder. The unique sourness, coolness, and spiciness of kimchi is a bartender’s unique kick that enriches the taste of cocktails. It is also a fairly popular signature menu item along with tacos and buffalo wings at the ‘Mexican Seoul’ store in central London. In the 1990s, sweet cocktails such as Sex on the Beach, Junebug, and Cosmopolitan were popular, but the cocktail trend taking the world by storm in 2024 is savory cocktails using various and unique ingredients.
‘Asia’s 50 Best’, known as the Academy Awards of the gastronomic world, selects and awards 50 of the best restaurants and bars in Asia every year. The Michelin Guide booklet has a long history and is highly recognized, so much so that it is said to be the second best-selling book in the world after the Bible, but in fact, the trend of flavors loved by gourmets these days can be seen by looking at Asia’s 50 Best.
In particular, last month, the 2024 Asia 50 Best Restaurants Awards ceremony was held in Seoul, and more than 2,000 foreigners visited Korea. The chefs and bartenders of the selected restaurants are receiving attention on the global stage and enjoying the highest honors.
If you look at the cocktails of the places selected as Asia’s 50 Best Bars, there is one big thing in common. It is a savory cocktail. In the dictionary, savory means delicious, fragrant, savory, enjoyable, or pleasant. Classic cocktails such as gin and tonic, martini, and Old Fashioned continue to sell well, but the signature cocktails at the front of the menu are savory cocktails that are more diverse and interesting than the restaurant’s dishes. From a guest’s perspective, when visiting a bar, rather than enjoying your favorite whiskey on the rocks, if you ask the bartender for a cocktail recommendation, you will have more fun enjoying the amazing menu that you have never imagined before.
‘Soy Caramel’, one of the signature cocktails of Seoul’s ‘ZEST’, which was selected as one of Asia’s 50 Best Bars, is made with buttery bourbon whiskey and aged rum, aged soy sauce and unrefined sugar, so you can enjoy a salty and sweet taste at the same time. Bar ‘Le Chamber”s ‘Italian Salad’ is a cocktail made with vodka, tomatoes, lemon juice, dry vermouth, and egg white. It has an impressive refreshing taste, like eating a fresh tomato salad.
Lim Byeong-jin, bartender at ‘Cham’, a bar in Seochon that ranked 13th on Asia’s 50 Best Bars, recently opened a bar called ‘Cham Season’, and the cocktails I had there were so shockingly delicious and impressive among the cocktails I’ve ever tried that I still can’t get over them. Cocktails using seasonal ingredients in Korea are introduced once every three months. The cocktail called ‘Paloma in Season’ uses tequila infused with cabbage as the base, grapefruit juice fermented with lactic acid, and homemade red pepper paste. It was seasoned with syrup and lime juice and finished with thin, crispy dried cabbage kimchi as a garnish. When I said, “I like tequila, gin, and acidic cocktails rather than whiskey,” the bartender recommended this cocktail, and it was full of sweet, salty, sour, sour, and spicy flavors. It’s true that I was puzzled at first when I saw the ingredients of the cocktail, but it was the first time I emptied a glass of cocktail like a person drinking dongchimi broth from the bowl. Even though I hadn’t eaten dinner, drinking a glass of this cocktail made me feel like I had eaten a simple meal and made me feel somewhat full. It was the beauty of the savory cocktail that I had only heard about.
A method called fat-washing has recently been used by many bartenders, and is a method of adding flavor to cocktails using animal fat, a solid ingredient. By mixing fat with alcohol using bacon, butter, oil, etc. and infusing it in the freezer for a sufficient period of time, the unique aroma and taste of fat can be dissolved in alcohol. Table ingredients that give off unique flavors that have not previously been used in cocktail making, such as coconut oil and sesame oil, are being created into new flavors through the hands of bartenders.
As the mixology culture of mixing low-alcohol alcohol, experimental flavors, challenging recipes, and highballs with drinks of your choice is expanding mainly among people in their 20s and 30s, savory cocktails will continue to be popular in the future. It is expected that Bartenders must be as interested in ingredients as chefs and be able to juggle the taste of ingredients to survive the changing times.
Yukyung Kim Food Director
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2024-04-17 14:03:12