When Austin Hennelly joined Los Angeles’ Kato as bar supervisor in 2022, he had been tinkering with nonalcoholic cocktails for a while, notably since he stopped consuming earlier within the pandemic. The Taiwanese American restaurant additionally went by a metamorphosis that yr, transferring up from small digs at a strip mall to a 4,000-square-foot high quality eating house. There was now room to supply an alcohol-free pairing to accompany chef and co-owner Jon Yao’s boundary-pushing tasting menu, which reinterprets nostalgic Asian flavors.
“A big contingent of friends already didn’t drink alcohol, so [the restaurant] knew {that a} sturdy nonalcoholic program was one thing that they needed to supply,” says Hennelly, who beforehand labored at L.A.’s Majordomo and New York’s Booker and Dax, Amor y Amargo and Maison Premiere.
At Kato, Hennelly gives greater than a dozen authentic cocktails, 5 of that are nonalcoholic, featured alongside an in depth wine choice and what Hennelly believes to be the most important alcohol-free wine, beer and ready-to-drink cocktails listing of any bar within the nation. His drinks usually function elements present in Taiwanese cooking, corresponding to salted egg yolk or five-spice, making them a pure complement to Yao’s dishes. Whereas the cocktail menu is ever-evolving, Hennelly’s nonalcoholic Backyard Tonic is a continuing. The drink epitomizes the ethos of the bar and restaurant, not solely in its execution of high-level methods and use of Asian elements sourced from partnering farms, but additionally in its singular strategy to the N/A format.
“The simplest method to make a nasty alcohol-free cocktail is to try to make a traditional cocktail with out alcohol since you’re already working at a deficit,” says Hennelly. “It’s very straightforward to make a scrumptious vegetarian meal, however it’s very arduous to make a scrumptious vegetarian beef Wellington, so simply don’t do it.” When Hennelly concocts a nonalcoholic cocktail, he as an alternative begins with an ingredient or N/A product after which builds upon that, with a deal with construction, flavors and textures.
The seed of the concept for the Backyard Tonic grew out of Hennelly’s want to make a drink utilizing a base of bitter melon and cucumber. He discovered that the cucumber’s cool and refreshing taste counterbalanced bitter melon’s aggressive sharpness. His star ingredient is Korean cucumber, sourced from Woman & Dug Farm in San Marcos, California, a fruit with an excellent concentrated taste. As for the bitter melon, it’s laborious to prep, as peeling the bumpy pores and skin and coring and de-seeding the spongy insides requires endurance, particularly because it yields little juice. However it’s value it to Hennelly, who twists the flavors right into a form resembling a Gin & Tonic. “The bitter melon does the job of tonic water and the cucumber provides an herbaceous taste that’s simply wanting the juniper taste {that a} good vegetal gin would have,” he says.
To allow most carbonation, Hennelly clarifies the juice to take away any solids, which might intrude with bubbles. To take action, he provides the enzyme Pectinex and wine fining brokers earlier than operating the juice by a Spinzall centrifuge. The clarified juice is then steeped with bai mu dan white tea to melt the intensely bitter and grassy flavors earlier than it’s strained. A small measure of Hamilton Petite Canne Sugar Cane Syrup from Martinique is added for sweetness and physique, then the combination is acid-adjusted with an answer of citric, malic and succinic acids, which make up the acid profile of lime juice. Vegetable glycerin can also be combined in to provide the drink some viscosity that may usually be supplied by alcohol.
It’s then time to force-carbonate the drink, a method Hennelly realized at Booker and Dax, the place he lower his enamel. “I realized how you can make force-carbonated cocktails earlier than I might make a Negroni,” he says. One-liter bottles are stuffed to 80 p.c capability, air is squeezed out, after which a carbonator cap is connected. The bottles are pressurized with carbon dioxide fuel (CO2) after which sit beneath strain in a single day within the fridge to make sure the carbonation is robust.
When served à la carte, the Backyard Tonic is poured into a relaxing classic Collins glass over an ice spear imported from Kuramoto Ice in Kanazawa, Japan. “The ice has the bottom elements per million of solids or minerals of any commercially accessible ice and their product all the time arrives in good situation, higher lower and extra aesthetically pleasing than any of the home ice producers that I’ve encountered,” says Hennelly. The garnish is an easy lime wedge, with its rind superbly carved with a citrus zester into crisscrossing patterns, an aesthetically interesting flourish that additionally makes the drink extra fragrant.
Texturally, the primary sip is aggressively carbonated, just like the sharp bubbles of a freshly cracked Topo Chico. “It needs to be invigorating,” says Hennelly. The bubbles convey up a few of the vegetal aromatics and minerality of the bitter melon and cucumber. “It actually disarms individuals who could be skeptical of the entire enterprise of alcohol-free cocktails, as a result of I don’t assume that most individuals have had one this subtle,” he explains. “They have a tendency to then belief no matter’s coming subsequent. They’re extra prone to say, ‘OK, I’m in your palms.’”
