We’re living in a Golden Age of creativity for bartenders, many of whom are energetically pushing boundaries in both culinary and scientific ways — as I discovered when I was researching my article “Cocktail Science Simplified” in the latest issue of the magazine.
Some of the most inventive bartenders seem an awful lot like chefs. Few ideas (and still fewer ingredients) are dismissed as too outlandish. If you’re like most people, you probably don’t have a centrifuge or a dehydrator, or, for that matter, a torch or a soda siphon at your disposal, or the time and patience to make bitters and infusions, or to create dried-mushroom lattices for garnishing, or to make flavored syrups — but you can still pick up some ideas and inspiration from the likes of Jamie Boudreau and Gabriella Mlynarczyk to make your cocktail parties at home more fun, and more surprising.
I wondered where and when people started applying techniques from restaurant kitchens (and perhaps science labs) to drinks. David Wondrich, the drink historian and cocktail authority, traces the genesis of this strain of drink-making (some people call it “molecular mixology,” but I’d rather not) to Tony Conigliaro.
“Tony was first,” Wondrich says. “Working in restaurant bars in London more than a decade ago, he started doing crazy infusions. He was a real pioneer. So was Eben Freeman.” (Freeman worked at Wylie Dufresne’s restaurant WD-50; he’s now the director of bar operations at the Butterfly, in TriBeCa). “And Dave Arnold is naturally insane. I insist that you quote me on that.”
If you’re interested in becoming even more adventurous behind the bar, you might want to do some reading before you take out that mixing glass and light up that torch. The Drink Factory, a bartenders’ collective founded by Conigliaro, has created a new quarterly publication called Drink Factory Magazine. Its debut issue focuses on the idea of “the Gothic.” And Dave Arnold’s first book, “Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail,” will be out in November.