Squid ink, a slab of pork, chives and cilantro. Those aren't the ingredients for dinner, though if they were, it'd surely be a delicious one.
These are the savory ingredients showing up on more cocktail menus as bartenders experiment with off-the-beaten-path flavors that go well beyond simple syrup and a curl of lemon peel.
"With savory things, flavors come out more and more, the more you sip from it," says Luke Young, a bartender at Skaalvenn Distillery in Brooklyn Park, a cocktail room known for its experimentation with unexpected ingredients, from bell peppers to chicken skin.
"It kind of draws you to try it again," Young says.
At Skaalvenn, Young devised a cocktail that uses a Hmong-spiced and smoked slab of pork belly in multiple ways. The fat is rendered as the meat cooks, and is then used to "wash" the vodka, giving it depth and a fuller texture. The pork then becomes a deep, rich broth with flavors of Chinese five spice that's mixed with the infused vodka, smoked plum, pomegranate molasses and more. It's served in a ceramic pig.
"A lot of our guests describe it as being a cocktail they think they should chew," Young says.
Soy sauce and fish sauce are both employed in some cocktails to add savory depth, or umami.
At Layline in Excelsior, umami is summoned by the addition of dehydrated squid ink to its Negroni. The unique black swirl of the ink on top lends a funkiness to the famously bitter cocktail, and balsamic vinegar rounds it out with a sweetness.
