Out of the brew

Hold up. There might be cheese or chilli in your drink. Mixologists are creating cocktails with Maggi, kasundi, puchka and more. This isn’t your dad’s Whisky Sour or your Mums Cosmo. Can they draw in the sober-curious?

- Christalle Fernandes

Gen Z customer walks into a bar. There's no punchline, just vibes. Going to bars, like everything else for today's 20-somethings, is more about doing it for the plot than to get wasted.

They invented the term sober-curious. They prefer coffee raves to the OG kind. The kids that grew up on Freakshakes are all grown up and want their cocktails to be “Gram-ready too. They don’t have a signature drink. An Old-Fashioned is so old-fashioned.

So, what is a bartender to do? Bring the drama to cocktail hour, of course. Here's how.

Bells and whistles

Evgenya Prazdnik, 39, Goa

Prazdnik, head mixologist at Panaji's MTW Bar, has spent 20 years working in bars in Russia, Qatar, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and India. “When I started out, we were in the era of disco drinks,” she recalls. This meant Cosmo, Long Island, Sex on the Beach - sweet, showy cocktails that tied into the party and nightclub aesthetic. It gave way to craft cocktails: “Having one standout, refined ingredient in your drink”. Cool bartenders put lemongrass and passionfruit into drinks. Cool punters lapped it up.

Cocktails have been shaking their tailfeathers a bit more since the pandemic. “There has to be a surprise element - either the name, or the look, or the ingredients,” Prazdnik says. Barkeeps stock up on black lime, tobacco cordial, fat-washed ice cream foam and cockscomb flowers. Niche ingredients are the big draw.

At MTW, the premises functions as an office in the day and opens as a bar space at night. The drink names match the officey décor: Please Find Attached, Early Login, Gentle Reminder. One drink, PFA, is made with cask-aged gin, rooibos tea, and palm jaggery, and is served in two beer glasses linked with a chain. Another drink, Chai Break is served with a pack of sweet cigarette candies on top of the glass. Menus change every three months. “We have a brainstorming session for creative concoctions every week.”

Clearing it up