Each ingredient in the $13 Firenze-Palermo cocktail is carefully weighed on one of a dozen digital scales that sit on top of the bar. The resulting drink is topped with ginger beer and olive oil and clocks in at 340 grams. Cheers! (Zandy Mangold)
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Salvatore Tafuri is standing behind the new bar at the recently expanded Caffe Falai in SoHo, wielding a paintbrush. He dabs it into a pot of squid ink, then smears a black swath around the rim of a chilled martini glass.
Next, he carefully weighs baby spinach leaves, vodka and Fernet Branca on one of the dozen digital scales sitting atop the white onyx bar.
Finally, he mixes up the concoction, pours it into the garnished martini glass, tops it with a splash of ginger beer and a touch of olive oil, and voilà, Caffe Falai’s $13 Firenze-Palermo cocktail is served.
Here’s squid ink in your eye!
PHOTOS: NY’S SILLIEST COCKTAILS
Caffe Falai is just one of a new wave of bars using esoteric ingredients, time-taxing techniques and even baffling terminology to set themselves apart.
But according to some NYC bar operators, the race to break the novelty barrier has become a mad dash into the absurd.
“There are some bartenders that get carried away with what I call culinary masturbation,” says P.J. Clarke’s bartender extraordinaire, Doug Quinn.
So, in all his years tending bar, he’s never gotten the urge to reach for the squid ink?
“[Not] unless that person really got on my nerves,” jokes the 25-year bar vet.
And yet you’ll find squid ink, black Hawaiian sea salt and house-made cotton candy at the new Theater Bar, which features four different “bar chefs” and a Playbill-inspired menu divided into “Acts.”
“To make a cocktail isn’t enough anymore,” says the bar’s owner Albert Trummer, who was arrested by fire marshals last year for literally setting the bar top ablaze when he was a partner at Chinatown lounge Apotheke.
“You have to be almost like an artist,” he adds.
Trummer isn’t playing with fire at Theater Bar, which opened last month. But he continues to shock, awe and intoxicate with a $15 “Houdini” cocktail — made with, you guessed it, squid ink, vodka, his “special orange elixir No. 2” and “homemade elderflower essence No. 5.” It’s garnished with a sprig of fresh thyme and served covered by a glass dome.
Now that speakeasy-style lounges have become something of a cliché, bartenders are pushing boundaries by borrowing from the kitchen.
“Drinks have definitely become more culinary,” notes master mixologist Dale DeGroff, author of “The Craft of the Cocktail” and founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans.
Still, he concedes, “Some of it is downright silly.”
As an example, DeGroff cites “fat washing” — a process in which fat from some sort of meat, usually bacon, is added to a spirit, then the drink is frozen, skimmed of its fat and used as a cocktail ingredient.
Other newly fashionable bar terms include “bespoke cocktails” — as if the drinks were custom-tailored on Savile Row — and “emotions in a glass.”
“We see emotions everywhere: in the media, and now even in a cocktail glass,” says Duane Fernandez — who’s created drinks for lounges such as Chelsea’s new DBar and Theater Bar — in a recent press release for Russian Standard Vodka.
The release continues, “I challenged the limitations of the classic cocktail and thought, ‘What Would Surprise Taste Like? How about Happiness?’’
Apparently “Surprise” tastes like vodka infused with — zoiks! — habañero pepper.
“It was like when nouvelle cuisine was popular,” says DeGroff, referring to the precious culinary trend that swept the nation in the mid-’80s, when he was the toast of the town, making drinks at the storied Rainbow Room.
“You’d get a little something in the middle of the plate with a few dots around it, and that was it,” he laughs. “It was a joke we’d have that for dinner, then go to P.J. Clarke’s for burgers at midnight.”
Seasoned bartenders say that while experimentation is well and good, one-upsmanship among mixologists shouldn’t be without limits.
“Absolutely it can go too far,” says Johnny Swet, who oversees the drink menus at hip subterranean Greenwich Village eatery Hotel Griffou, as well as The Jimmy, a rooftop lounge atop SoHo’s James Hotel.
Hotel Griffou’s cocktail list includes a concoction made from tobacco extract, and another that calls for green-tea ice cubes. However, Swet says he draws the line at turning cocktails into edibles.
“Maybe six months ago, I went to a place that had churrasco-infused rye. I don’t need meat in a cocktail,” says Swet, who also calls out a drink made from ramps that he recently encountered. “Why would you want a garlicky cocktail?”
Showy cocktails also seem to signal the demise of the friendly, fleet-footed bartender who can whip up a classic sidecar in 15 seconds.
“It’s great that people want to be chemists, but you have to keep a bar moving,” says P.J. Clarke’s Quinn. “You can’t make drinks with an eye dropper.”
Similarly, Swet says he appreciates that downtown bars such as Little Branch and Employees Only pull out all the stops to keep their drink menus interesting, but wonders if it’s always practical.
“I remember being at [West Village cocktail den] Little Branch and watching a guy carve the ice until it looked like a diamond,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘Wow, that’s beautiful’ — but it took 20 minutes.”
Back at Caffe Falai, it’s the moment of truth for 34-year-old
bar patron Ricken Patel and his squid-ink-garnished Firenze-Palermo cocktail. He takes a sip, furrows a brow and, after a long pause, diplomatically says, “I’ve never had anything like it.” While his date wants no part of the experience, Patel adds, “My taste buds aren’t computing. It’s a drink that’ll take some getting used to.” He won’t be getting used to it tonight. The cocktail goes unfinished.