Bartender, there's a crab in my cocktail
Summary
A handful of bars in India now have non-vegetarian ingredients like crabs, chicken and mutton in their cocktails. What gives?
It’s called Bad Boy Martini. The cocktail at the restobar For The Record (FTR) in Goa was born last year when its founder and chef, Buland Shukla, had paan cravings and sought to create a Betel Leaf Margarita. Shukla took betel leaves, cardamom, fennel, and rose petals – and, in the spirit of adventure, mixed in some prawns. He blended them together and let them ferment for half a year to create a garum, a fermented fish sauce that was eventually used in a Martini. The first sip feels light on the palate, but the umami burst quickly takes over, balanced with vermouth that leaves faint traces of the sea as the drink washes down your throat.
Across Goa, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata, a select few bars are experimenting with cocktails using non-vegetarian ingredients that are sure to make you sit up and take notice. While bartenders use seafood in their recipes to stand out during cocktail competitions or for occasional takeovers, these experimental drinks have gradually entered bar menus.
At Bumipura in Mumbai, founder Ming Yang Chai offers options like crab in a drink called Gloves and Bibs, chicken in another cocktail named Old Hen and a mutton libation Fat in Between. Bumipura’s concept is to bring Malaysian and Singaporean flavors to India, and Chai wanted to introduce a taste of Malaysia’s Nasi Lemak, Singapore’s Chilli Crab, and Chicken Rice in a glass.
Also read: How Singapore's bar culture has influenced the way Asia drinks
Across the sea link in Bandra, Sixteen33 has a compact cocktail menu of six signature drinks dedicated to the suburb’s original villages. To represent the neighborhood of Chimbai, head mixologist Denzil Franklin uses a shrimp liqueur in a vodka-based drink named after the neighbourhood. It as an ode to the fish that are dried in the sun along the coast in the locality.
Bengaluru’s newest Siren-Cocktail Bar features the drink Peking Duck, which aims to translate the popular dish’s savory notes with duck fat-washed whisky and hoisin sauce, among other ingredients. In Kolkata, Sienna’s brand-new bar menu features both a seafood and a chicken drink.
“Bars and restaurants need to push the palate of consumers. You just need to be brave enough to do it. For us, the bar is an extension of our kitchen. We use prawn heads, a by-product from our kitchen, in our Prawn Cocktail, and we have a Chicken Stew because we enjoy Tangra-style chicken and wanted to put chicken in a drink too. The cocktails, both vodka based, are named after the dishes Prawn Cocktail and Chicken Stew," shares Avinandan Kundu, head chef at Sienna.
Most bars using non-vegetarian ingredients say their aim is to experiment and encourage their guests to try new flavors. For instance, Shukla of FTR aimed to make a simple Margarita with paan flavors before the idea evolved into a prawn garum Martini reminiscent of the sea.
“I wanted to use a fermentation style where the digestive enzymes of the prawns’ guts would break down the prawns into simpler proteins. I also feel using condiments such as fish sauce or even Worcestershire sauce that sometimes have anchovies in cocktails can be used to push flavor boundaries. We have reached a stage where we want to explore every available resource to us as mixologists. The driving force here is not customers looking for non-vegetarian cocktails, but the availability of a new channel for bartenders to explore flavors – just that it happens to be meat," explains Shukla.
Storytelling is the primary factor when it comes to curating non-vegetarian cocktails, be it Sixteen33’s story about featuring Bandra’s villages or Bumipura’s focus on highlighting Malay and Singaporean flavors. “Curious customers are always looking for something new, and if you get the story of your offbeat drinks right, you can get them to try your experimental cocktails," believes Chai.
It is also more challenging to create non-vegetarian cocktails for several reasons. Chai says that the biggest problem he faced was the lack of online resources to help him curate his non-vegetarian cocktails, since these are not mainstream drinks. He also had to figure out the right size of the crab—how big and fresh it needed to be, and whether it had to be broken into several pieces or used whole. He created a crab distillate for the drink that took several iterations before being added to the menu.
These experimental cocktails are not the showstoppers on any bar menu. Franklin says the Chimbai sells about 60 units compared to around 200 of their bestselling drinks, like Pali made with rum and Sherly made with millet-infused whisky. Siren has sold about 500 units of Peking Duck in the five months it has been operational. Chai also says neither of his three non-vegetarian drinks are the bestsellers on the menu, prompting his decision to add more palatable and mainstream cocktails when the menu is refreshed.
Although non-vegetarian cocktails are slowly appearing on menus, nearly every bartender shared they are a fair bit away from growing into a full-blown trend. They also said bigger cities with a well-traveled population would be the first cohort to adopt them. Kundu highlights, “No one’s first choice of drinks is non-vegetarian cocktails. It will take the collective effort of restaurants to create a sense of intrigue so discerning patrons can say – ‘this is interesting, and maybe I can try one’."
Priyanko Sarkar is a Mumbai-based writer covering the F&B industry.
