If you’ve been to a bar recently, chances are you’ve seen a culinary-inspired cocktail on the menu. These are the drinks loaded with savory ingredients straight from the kitchen like herbs, cheese, broth, crackers and even mushrooms, modeled after popular food dishes and deconstructed in your glass.
New York City bars have been serving up these savory sips for a minute at places like Double Chicken Please, where they take iconic dishes (such as the Waldorf Salad) and craft it into a drink with similar flavors. Bangkok Supper Club has a Fish Sauce cocktail made with, you guessed it, fish sauce, napa cabbage broth and gin.
But it’s not just the Big Apple making a meal out of your cocktails. Nashville’s Blueprint Underground Cocktail Club mixes hot chicken syrup in its Tennessee whiskey. Chicago’s Dearly Beloved crafts a Margarita with Indian flavors like cinnamon, cumin and saffron, topped with a naan cracker. And San Francisco’s Corzetti constructs a Pizza Spritz with Lambrusco and oregano. From coast to coast, everyone seems to be on the culinary cocktail wagon.
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The co-founder of New York’s hippest bar takes home the prestigious drinks honor from the 2023 edition of The World’s Best 50 BarsWhile this latest trend offers some shock value to the eyes and the palate, we have to ask: what’s the real inspiration behind these drinks? For Sean Umstead, co-owner of Kingfisher in North Carolina and maker of the Roast Beast (which uses beef fat–washed bourbon), inspiration comes from the local growers in his state. “In our climate, most of the best produce has a savory side to the sweetness,” he says. “For much of the year, beets, carrots, squash, sweet potatoes and greens are our best produce. We won’t grow passionfruit or papaya here.”
Jonathan Stanyard, 2024 U.S. World Class Bartender of the Year, says incorporating local ingredients to showcase a specific region is great inspiration, but it can be simpler than that. He says this trend simply allows us to “reimagine some of your favorite dishes as cocktails.”
Aistis Zidanavicius, mixologist and bar manager at Miami’s Panamericano Bar, did just that with his Taco Martini. Built with cilantro, tomato, black garlic and lime, it’s all the familiar ingredients found in a taco but in drinkable form. “I love Mexican food and tacos, which sparked the idea for the Taco Martini while developing the Panamericano menu,” he says. “The goal wasn’t to create a ‘liquid taco’ but to deconstruct the flavors of a taco, reimagine them and bring them together in a delicious cocktail.”
Josh Renfree, bar manager at The Whaling Bar in La Jolla, California, says it’s more about the challenge when making culinary-style cocktails, such as the Pink Royale that infuses vodka with cream cheese and brioche. “You can always pull back a sweet cocktail and keep it balanced, but it’s difficult to have an idea for a savory drink — there’s more room for error,” he says. “The challenge of taking a savory flavor profile and incorporating it into a beverage is something that is inspiring a lot of bartenders these days.”
However, it’s not just bartenders who want to test their skills on these food-focused drinks. Top Chef winner Kristen Kish recently teamed up with Yobo Soju Spirit House to create a line of chef-inspired aperitifs, including one called Earth with flavors of smoked mushroom and umami. “I approached the flavors like I would any dish, pulling from the stories and memories that got me to this exact moment,” she says. “Earth’s inspiration came from my favorite flavors in cooking: umami, earthy, sweet and savory all harmonized together.”
While the inspiration behind these drinks may vary from each person preparing them, the reason we’re seeing more and more of this trend seems pretty universal: to create innovative cocktails that riff off the classics but resonate with today’s consumer. “Cocktail creators are leaning more into the savory realm in response to the current wellness trends, focused on less sugar and the guest’s frequent request being something ‘less sweet,’” Renfree says. “It’s kind of the last unexplored realm of cocktails.”
In the past, savory cocktails were more limited to certain drinks like classic Dirty Martinis and Bloody Marys. But as bartending methods advance, so do the cocktails. “With modern techniques and equipment, bartenders can distill pickles, Doritos, pepperoni and other savory ingredients directly at the bar,” Zidanavicius says.
Andrew Davis, beverage manager at AC Hotel Columbus Dublin’s rooftop lounge VASO, is known for making culinary cocktails like the Hedge Maize, made with Watershed Vodka, Ohio sweet corn cordial and black walnut bitters. He thinks people want a new dining and drinking experience. “Both within and outside of the hospitality industry, people are really opening up to the idea that a cocktail menu at a restaurant can be, and often is, just as carefully crafted and important as the food menu,” he says.
And he thinks the trend is here to stay. “In the past few years, it has been a bit of a niche trend reserved for the craftiest of craft cocktail bars,” he adds. “But I would expect to see that change and grow in the near future.”
Danny Childs, former mixologist at New Jersey’s Farm and Fisherman and author of Slow Drinks, says we can expect to see more savory cocktails on the menu, with one technique to help get it right. “Lots of bartenders are relying on clarification,” he says. “So the drink looks clean and simple but tastes infinitely complex.”
For those who haven’t tried a savory drink yet and are tempted, it’s important to go at it with an open mind and palate. “If something sounds interesting, give it a try but realize it’s going to be a bit of a shock to the taste buds,” Renfree says. “Just like the bartender is exploring new territory, the customer has to have the same attitude as the test pilot.”
If you’re going to do it, Davis recommends going all out and trying the “weirdest thing” you can find. “When you see something like that on a menu, it means someone behind the scenes was feeling inspired and ambitious,” he says. “I often find these are the drinks that are crafted with the most love.”
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