Small-town buzz

For a good cocktail, one no longer needs to be in a metro city, as a new crop of bars in India's tier 2 cities is changing the landscape

- BY SHUBHANGI SHAH

If one were to take a shot every time the Patiala peg showed up in pop culture, the buzz would last a while.

Generous to a fault, the drink has come to signify not just a measure of alcohol, but also an attitude of excess, indulgence and camaraderie. At popular restobar Social, the idea gets a playful spin: a generous amount of rum or vodka meets sugarcane juice and chaat masala in its viral 'Banarasi Patiala'-two small-town Indias distilled into a single glass. “Ek se zyada abhi nahi, do se zyada kabhi nahi (More than one, not now. More than two, never),” its tagline playfully warns. For long, India’s cocktail culture has been associated with its metros, their bars setting the tone for what and how India drinks. Meanwhile, in its smaller cities and towns ran a parallel, deeply rooted drinking culture: mahua in central India, feni in Goa, chhang in the Himalayas and toddy along the southern coast. And then there are the country liquor staples like santara and narangi. Interestingly, once confined to theka (liquor store) counters, they have, like their more extravagant counterpart—the Patiala peg—entered the pop culture lexicon, and are now finding their way into urban bars, but with a modern twist. At the same time, bartenders are turning to hyperlocal ingredients: Gondhoraj lime, Himalayan honey, kapur kachri.... Increasingly, India’s cocktail imagination is looking beyond the metros and drawing from smaller cities, towns and regional influences.

The exchange is not one-sided. Across tier 2 and tier 3 cities, a new crop of bars is experimenting with equal confidence. And they aren’t shying away from going beyond the classics, but infusing local influences and global inspirations, changing the cocktail landscape of India, one shot at a time.

Beyond the metros

Born and brought up in Bhopal, bartending was not a conventional career choice for Karan Dhanelia, head mixologist at Atelier V, Indore.