“It’s a really well-known drink, however that doesn’t imply lots of people order it,” says Margot Lecarpentier of the Perroquet, a French drink consisting of pastis, mint syrup and water. The serve is ubiquitous—particularly within the south of France, the place the custom of consuming pastis flavored with syrups is deeply ingrained—although hardly ever given a lot thought in cocktail circles.
For the Paris-based bartender and proprietor of Fight within the metropolis’s Belleville neighborhood, the ignored simplicity of the recipe is a part of its enchantment. “I actually, actually love discovering these sort of previous, forgotten drinks and simply placing them again on folks’s radar as like, that is sort of cool, possibly we needs to be consuming this extra,” she says.
The Perroquet—which interprets to “parrot,” a nod to its shiny inexperienced hue—belongs to a canon of pastis-plus-syrup mixtures that may be discovered all through France, together with one other fashionable rendition made with grenadine that’s merely referred to as Tomate, or “tomato.” “I just like the names which can be tremendous easy and tremendous cute and really descriptive,” says Lecarpentier. “It’s sort of old style.”
Earlier this 12 months, she posted a video on her Instagram feed spotlighting her tackle the drink and the right way to make it at residence. “Mint syrup plus pastis isn’t good—it’s too candy,” says Lecarpentier. As a substitute, she makes a straightforward mint shrub with rice vinegar to deliver some acidity to the three-ingredient system.
“For many French folks, the Perroquet isn’t a ‘cocktail,’ it’s simply syrup and pastis,” says Lecarpentier of the drink’s long-standing function in apero tradition, which existed lengthy earlier than fashionable cocktail tradition took form in France. However that simplicity is exactly its attraction. “I like that it’s nothing fancy,” she says.
