The Fancy Food Show wrapped up Wednesday, capping off three days of specialty food sampling at the Moscone Center. More than 1,400 food and beverage makers showcased 80,000 newly available snacks and spices, desserts and drink mixes, health foods, and hedonistic indulgences from around the world.
As a cocktail writer, I was mostly interested in the booze-related products, so I put a call out to the show's vendors for innovative cocktail ingredients and recipes. I am now on a first-name basis with the FedEx lady, the UPS guy, and two USPS workers.
Some of the samples that arrived were self-explanatory. GuS Grown Up Soda; Q Drinks, which are clearly mixers; Owl's Brew bottled tea, which says "crafted for cocktails" right on the label; and the Spice Lab's Gin & Tonic Collection, a wooden box outfitted with 10 botanicals, a twisted bar spoon, and a beautifully designed set of cocktail recipe cards.
Some items seemed simple enough to incorporate into a cocktail, like organic maple syrups from Runamok Maple in Vermont and Crown Maple in New York; a selection of flavored, bottled coffees from Chameleon Cold Brew Coffee in Austin, Texas; and Tea Drops, which are organic, lightly sweetened tea bombs pressed into pretty shapes that dissolve in hot water. But other samples I received seemed like a bit of a stretch: What exactly was I to do with the GoodPop, an all-natural frozen popsicle, and the SmashMallow organic marshmallows, in flavors included Meyer lemon, chia seed, and root beer float.
Still other ingredients seemed just plain wrong. The thought of making a cocktail with Bonafide Provisions' turkey bone broth made my stomach turn, while the Moringa Green Energy shots and Pure Moringa Vegetable Powder (made from dried moringa, a spinach-like superfood) from Oakland-based Kuli Kuli Foods struck fear in my tastebuds. But, I womaned up to take one for the team, vowing to test as many recipes as I could without doing permanent damage to my liver. To help with the more challenging ingredients, I called on my friend Eric Nyeste, formerly a chef at Bergerac, who agreed to concoct drinks for a few friends with whatever ingredients I threw at him.
Experiment #1: Little Bird Fire Syrup
(Renee Alexander)
We were all intrigued by the bottle of Little Bird Fire Syrup, emblazoned with the words, "It's hot but it's sweet but it's hot." I'm a sucker for a spicy margarita, so we decided to stick with tequila and lime—flavors most often associated with piquant drinks. Because this jalapeño-infused syrup is sweetened ("like honey, but with a kick!), we were able to skip the agave nectar, which is what I normally use to make margaritas at home.
Mood Swing
1.5 oz El Jimador tequila
.5 oz Little Bird Fire Syrup
Juice of 1 lime
1. Shake with ice in cocktail shaker
2. Pour into Collins glass
3. Top with Harmless Harvest organic coconut water and two slices of GoodPop coconut lime frozen pop.
This drink is sweet and spicy, with a lingering, nutty aftertaste. The coconut-lime pop provided a creamy, cooling counterpoint to the fire syrup. We named it Mood Swing in honor of the distinct flavor contrasts.
Experiment #2: Mint Chocolate Chip SmashMallows
(Renee Alexander)
When Eric heard we had mint chocolate chip SmashMallows (gluten-free artisanal marshmallows made with organic sugar) to work with, he immediately asked, "Can we melt one over a grasshopper?" Fortunately meant the classic drink from the 1920s, which gave us an excuse to dig out a couple of liquor bottles that rarely see the light of day.
Grasshopper
1 oz Creme de Menthe
1 oz Creme de cacao
1 oz Black Cow Vodka
1. Shake with ice, strain into a fancy glass
2. Attempt to melt SmashMallow over open flame on stove with tongs. Resort to microwaving SmashMallow and spooning it (quickly!) over the top of the drink
Let's just say that melted marshmallows and cold drinks don't mix, particularly if you have facial hair, which, as one of our male tasters noted, acts like velcro. The cocktail is tasty, though - chocolatey, minty, and creamy, all at once.
Experiment #3: Bonafide Bone Broth
(Renee Alexander)
For his next challenge, Eric turned to the chicken bone broth from Bonafide Provisions, a San Diego company that specializes in an organic, non-GMO broths from free roaming chickens and grass-fed cows. (Look for it in the freezer section at Whole Foods.)
Turkey Buck (aka Tryptophan Dram)
2 oz Maker's Mark (or Wild Turkey, if you have it)
.5 oz Bonafide Provisions turkey bone broth
Juice of ½ lime
Q ginger beer
1. Shake whiskey, broth, and lime juice with ice; pour into rocks glass
2. Top with Q ginger beer
This cocktail has a frothy top and starts off smooth and soft before the turkey soup flavor takes over. The whiskey is surprisingly subtle in this drink, considering how much bourbon we used. We also detect a nip of tart pickle at the end, which we attribute to the combination of bone broth and ginger beer.
Experiment #4: Entube Spice Paste
(Renee Alexander)
Spice paste in a tube, however beautifully packaged, is certainly not the most obvious cocktail ingredient. Add to that flavors of harissa, Indian curry, and umeboshi (ume is a Japanese pickled plum) and we were somewhat stumped. Of Entube's three flavors, the latter (made with shiso leaves, umboshi vinegar, sea salt, beets, and cayenne pepper) seemed most amenable to cocktail-making. Eric spotted some plum bitters in the liquor cabinet and decided to make a Japanese-inspired sour.
Japanese Whiskey Sour (aka Umeboshi Antoinette)
1.5 oz Maker's Mark
1 tablespoon Entube Umeboshi paste
Juice of ½ lime
1 egg white
.5 oz simple syrup
3 dashes plum bitters
1. Shake all ingredients with ice.
2. Strain into a Champagne coupe.
This drink is a gorgeous hue of purple (even if the photo doesn't do it justice). Salty, frothy, lots of umami. This savory cocktail should be on a bar menu somewhere.
Experiment #5: Kuli Kuli Moringa Vegetable Powder
(Renee Alexander)
Perplexed by the Kuli Kuli Moringa Vegetable Powder, and flagging after four rounds of drinks, we opted to make the next cocktail with a shot of Moringa Green Energy, which has a half-cup of moringa superfood greens per bottle (as well as green tea extract, natural coconut flavor, and lemon juice extract).
Club Drink
3 count of well vodka
1 tiny bottle Moringa Green Energy (Raspberry flavor)
Splash of Q club soda
1. Pour all ingredients over ice.
2. Squeeze lemon wedge over drink, and stir gently.
This was not our favorite drink (one taster compared the silty consistency and flavor to pencil shavings), but we could definitely see it working at an impossibly hip nightclub, as a superfood alternative to Red Bull and vodka—after midnight.
The Takeaway
We discovered a few standout products in this project. When we mixed Q's sparkling grapefruit soda with gin, it was like taking a bite out of a juicy pink grapefruit. Runamok Maple's elderberry infused syrup is a delightful substitute for a sugar cube in an Old Fashioned. Caged Heat Cocktail Syrup—made with tamarind, cardamom, and ghost pepper—is downright addictive with bourbon.
After several days of cocktail testing, what we really needed was a specialty hangover cure. I shall forever be grateful to Harmless Harvest for generous shipments of pink coconut water and to Chameleon Cold Brew Coffee for the ready-to-drink organic vanilla coffee. I wouldn't have survived this story without them.
