Three delicious new cocktail recipes to make at home
How to make Maybe Sammy's Harlem Shake and other modern classics taking over from beer and wine as Australia's favourite tippes.
After he opened MuMu restaurant in Sydney’s CBD in December, Sam Egerton had to take his bar staff aside to offer some reassurance.
As general manager of new projects for hospitality giant Merivale, which owns MuMu, Egerton has seen it all. But for the bar staff at the hot new South Asian street food restaurant in the flashy Ivy complex, something particularly unusual was happening – guests were ordering cocktails at an unprecedented pace.
“About 50 per cent of the drinks sold at MuMu after opening were cocktails,” says Egerton. “I had to take the staff aside after the first couple of days and say, ‘it won’t always be this hard, it will settle down.’ But there’s a lot of interest in cocktails right now.”
Bar staff may be under pressure as they spend long nights mixing drinks to perfection, but they had better get used to it. The tastes of diners and drinkers across Australia are rapidly changing, moving away from our traditional beverages of choice, beer and wine, to something more exotic.
At MuMu, the cocktails range from a drink called Lost in Bangkok, comprising gin and white rum, watermelon and lychee, to the fresh and zesty Riot Rose Spritz, a floral concoction built on rose mixed with blood orange, rhubarb and passionfruit. The blends make a perfect fit for chef Dan Hong’s take on the flavour-packed cuisines of Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam across dishes like a pipi jungle curry and nasi goreng.
Egerton says it’s not only at MuMu where the taste for cocktails is surging. At Merivale’s 70-plus restaurants and bars, cocktails are a growth sector.
“Post the first lockdown, we saw an increase in cocktails as a total share of the beverage ‘market’ of 30 per cent across the business,” Egerton says. “We have also definitely noticed an increased desire from guests to drink classic cocktails like margaritas, negronis, espresso martinis, in abundance.
“We were very fortunate to have started a centralised production facility (making batched classic cocktails) to mitigate the increased volume given the staffing shortage that the industry has faced over the last 18 months.”
Ever responsive to consumer demand, restaurants and bars have reacted to Australia’s new-found thirst for cocktails with passion and inventiveness.
No serious restaurant would dare to not offer a thoughtful and well-constructed cocktail list, while dedicated cocktail bars are springing up from Brisbane to Perth. In December, the World’s 50 Best Bars featured four Australian entries, three in Sydney and one in Melbourne, with Sydney’s Maybe Sammy topping the locals at No.22. Fellow Sydney bar Re won the sustainable bar award for offering “delicious drinks in service of a more considerate future”.
“Australia has become one of the best places in the world to drink cocktails, and I really think that Sydney now has one of the best cocktail scenes in the world,” says Maybe Sammy’s Stefano Catino. “There are many, many cocktail bars opening and actually it is quite hard to get a bad cocktail in Sydney.”
At Maybe Sammy, located in The Rocks, Catino and business partner Vince Lombardo have focused on creating an experience of old-world entertainment and escapism. The 100-seat bar, which features baby pink velvet booths and palm-print wallpaper, takes its name from the pair’s muse, Sammy Davis Jr.
Waitstaff wear pink dinner jackets, there are Rat Pack-era beats and incredible cocktails served with European-inspired nibbles (olives and charcuterie plates). Find, too, a martini trolley (choose between classic, dirty, Gibson or Australian varieties) and a segment of the cocktail list in which drinks are named after songs on the playlist of Davis’s 1977 performances at the Sydney Opera House. Who could go past an All of You, with carbonated Roku gin, pink lady apple, chardonnay and kombucha? Or a Once in a Lifetime, with vodka, Rhubi Mistelle apple liquor, toasted coconut, coconut water, citrus and, the piece de resistance, a bergamot “bubble” - literally a bubble that sits on top of the drink?
The Italian-born Catino says cocktails are all about fun and creating a sense of time and place.
“We really love hospitality,” he says. “From the moment that anyone comes in, we want to give them a smile.”
Maybe Sammy is not the only venue mining inspiration from quirky sources. At hot Brisbane restaurant Agnes, cocktails are named after scenes from the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Sit down for a Don’t Cry in Front of the Mexicans (tequila, poire William, wood-fired pear, cinnamon, lime) or a Pretty Like a Stuntman (gin, limoncello, “river mint”, lemon and egg white). The mixes are delicious and the vibe is geared towards fun times.
While quirky cocktails are on the rise, bartenders say there’s renewed interest in the classics, too. Read through the menu at chef Andrew McConnell’s beautiful new Melbourne restaurant Gimlet – itself named after a cocktail – to find vintage cocktails, each offered with a twist. Go, of course, for a gimlet, traditionally mixed with gin and lime juice, but made modern here via the addition of moscato, triple citrus cordial and Geraldton wax, or for other heritage offerings that include a sidecar, a smash, a collins, a negroni, a margarita, an americano or a martini. Spritzers are also big, and not just the ever-popular Aperol variety. Try, for example, a P&B spritz with vermouth, elderberry, sugar snap peas and sparkling raspberry wine for a taste of summer.
Leading Melbourne bartender Michael Madrusan, of The Everleigh and Bar Margaux, says cocktails have the ability to transport the drinker to another time or place.
“If you look at the classic cocktails we still drink today, a lot of them were created in the 1800s – these are 150-year-old drinks,” Madrusan says. “You can get kind of wrapped up in that. What kind of feeling or emotion does that bring? Where does it transport you to? Does it take you to a different time? There’s a lot of romance attached to these drinks.”
Madrusan says cocktails are the ultimate mood setters, jolting the drinker from where they were, to where they want to be.
“Cocktails are a bit like time travel,” he says. “They tell a story. ”
Perhaps the answer to the rise and rise of the cocktail in modern Australia can be found in our collective desire for escapism after almost two years of pandemic life. If a martini takes you to the Savoy Hotel of roaring 1920s London, or a Cosmopolitan situates you in 1990s New York, then we’re here for it.
Merivale’s Egerton says that while drinks at home or bottled cocktails are enjoyable, there’s something about entering an acutely realised bar or restaurant and seeing a beautifully attired bartender that sets you into a different dimension.
“Bottled cocktails are great,” he says. “But there’s a quote from (seminal English bartender) Harry Craddock about the best way to drink a cocktail: ‘Quickly, while it’s laughing at you.’
“And I think there’s something about a freshly made margarita in a cold glass, in a beautiful room, with music and friends that can’t be replicated at home.”
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Now, let’s try these at home
Harlem Shake No. 22
(from Maybe Sammy)
INGREDIENTS
● 40ml Mr Black Amaro
● 20ml Hennessy VS cognac
● 15ml Raspberry syrup
● 30ml espresso
● Fresh cherry to garnish
METHOD
Shake ingredients and pour into a rocks glass over a block of ice and top with a fresh cherry.
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Alameda Swizzle
(from The Everleigh)
INGREDIENTS
● 45ml Arquitecto Blanco tequila
● 30ml fresh lime juice
● 22.5ml sugar syrup
● 8-10 mint leaves
● 3 dashes Angostura bitters
● 3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
METHOD
Add all ingredients except bitters to a shaker and press mint gently. Transfer to a tall highball glass and add crushed ice. Give a little swizzle with a spoon and add the bitters. Top up with more crushed ice and garnish with a large mint sprig.
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10th Floor Fizz
(from the Sky Bar at Shell House)
INGREDIENTS
● 30ml milk-washed Tanqueray gin
● 10ml apricot brandy
● 5ml Mr Black amaro
● 5ml yuzushu
● 10ml quandong syrup
● 30ml rose water soda
METHOD
Combine ingredients into a shaker tin, add ice and shake vigorously to liven the drink up. Strain over cubed ice into a highball glass. Top with rose water soda and garnish with a halved strawberry.
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The hot lists
Restaurants to try cocktails
● Agnes, Brisbane
● SK Steak & Oyster, Brisbane
● MuMu, Sydney
● Icebergs, Sydney
● Gimlet, Melbourne
● Aru, Melbourne
● Society, Melbourne
● El Publico, Perth
● Restaurant Botanic, Adelaide
Bars to try cocktails
● Maybe Sammy, Sydney
● Re, Sydney
● Cantina, OK!, Sydney
● Sky Bar at Shell House, Sydney
● Above Board, Melbourne
● Byrdi, Melbourne
● The Everleigh, Melbourne
● The Gresham, Brisbane
● Maybe Mae, Adelaide
● Foxtrot Unicorn, Perth
● Faro, Hobart
