theme isn’t a requisite for a standout cocktail menu, nevertheless it positively makes cocktail hour extra enjoyable. Working example: the brand new California street journey–impressed menu at Los Angeles’ Massive Bar, a 13-year-old neighborhood bar nestled beneath the long-lasting Griffith Observatory. “I get probably the most excited for a cocktail that tastes nice and has a story layer,” says longtime bar supervisor Eugene Lee. “Even higher, when it connects to an even bigger image/theme.”
For the Los Feliz neighborhood bar’s spring/summer season menu, the bar group sought to create 12 drinks impressed by their travels throughout the Golden State. They usually went the gap to make them each evocative and transportive of their theme, like topping a Gold Rush variation with “honey fog” for San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.
Vacation spot Inspiration
A few of the cocktails on Massive Bar’s spring menu characterize a private journey. Bartender Kathleen Garcia’s Every thing Whale Be Alright spritz symbolizes her “love of Monterey Bay and the quite a few street journeys she’d taken there rising up together with her mom and sister, then, later in life together with her boyfriend,” says Lee. Garcia’s recipe combines the area’s flora—almonds, artichoke, and elderberries—with Grey Whale Gin, a small-batch spirit made with botanicals from areas alongside the grey whale’s migratory path.
Bartender Julia Depp aimed to highlight plants in and across the caves of her favourite California attraction, Lava Beds Nationwide Monument. The cocktail, known as the Flora Volcanica—made with two varieties of whiskey, genepy, manzanilla sherry—evokes not solely of the volcanic panorama however the flavors of the shrubs rising from it. “I needed to make one thing that tasted deep and wealthy whereas nonetheless tasting gentle and natural,” she says.
And together with her Kidnapped Cow Margarita, Shannon Murphy captures the thought of roadside sights. Many Southern Californians who’ve made the trek to Vegas have stopped on the oddly themed Alien Recent Jerky stand off Interstate 15 in Baker, California, for a midpoint snack. Murphy pulled the flavour profile for her cocktail from the model’s Kidnapped Cow pineapple and teriyaki jerky, creating an umami pineapple gomme (with fenugreek, sage, cumin, and bay leaf) and mixing it with mezcal. “The result’s a savory/tropical margarita for summer season, garnished with a bendable alien holding some tasty jerky,” says Lee.
Going the Further Mile
What ties this California street journey theme collectively and takes it to the subsequent degree is the menu’s graphic design by Dave Stolte of Wexler of California, which has created menus for Smuggler’s Cove, Palm Springs’ Truss & Twine, and Disneyland’s unique bar 21 Royal. Designed to resemble a spiral-bound Thomas Information—the atlas that individuals relied on earlier than smartphones—Massive Bar’s menu comes full with a pull-out state map and a MapQuest-like printout for beer, wine, and NA choices.
This isn’t the primary time Massive Bar has gone all-in on a theme. Considered one of Lee’s favorites was the 2019 Recreation of Thrones menu created in honor of the collection’ last season. “We launched a limited-run menu (whereas the present was on air) and featured some basic GoT moments, like Lancel Too Late, The Night time King, the Imp’s Delight,” Lee says. “The menu itself was a raven holding a fabric scroll with an ironed-on cocktail checklist, full with burnt edges—4th-grade Eugene was more than happy.”
Down the Highway
Lee attributes Massive Bar’s continued creativity to the employees, a few of whom have been with the bar for a decade. “I feel all of this contributes to working at a degree that’s unfastened sufficient to be collaborative/inventive however tight sufficient that it’s not simply all dreaming, no execution,” he says.
Now that the spring/summer season menu has launched, the Massive Bar group has set their sights on the subsequent menu, which is slated to launch in 5 months. “I feel the autumn/winter menu wants to satisfy the second,” says Lee. “It’s going to be a tense time with the election round nook … individuals will need some respite.” However he provides, “I can let you know this: It is going to be unbelievable.”
