Anyone for a mushroom cocktail?

Fancy shiitake in your sidecar or porcini in your punch? You will once you’ve tried one of these mushroom cocktails, says Frankie McCoy
Frankie McCoy14 July 2017

Umami old fashioned

The Ivy

Rich, fruity whisky seems to be a natural pairing for the savoury, earthy taste of mushrooms — that’s why The Ivy’s bar manager Darren Ball came up with the Umami old fashioned for the contemporary section of their 100 Years menu. A 10-year-old Glenmorangie is slow cooked with porcini mushrooms (pre-soaked in water to reduce their earthiness), then stirred up into an old fashioned with apricot brandy and cardamom bitters. ‘So often the umami taste comes with an abundance of salt, which we wanted to avoid,’ says Ball. ‘Mushrooms neutralise the salt.’ The result is almost cream smooth, slightly herby and oh-so sophisticated. (the-ivy.co.uk)

Mushroom and sha ren nuts

Tea Room

The Hong Kong speakeasy Tea Room, hidden below Soho’s Chinese street café Bun House, doesn’t shy away from eyebrow-raising cocktail flavours such as cigarette and palm or kumquat and wormwood. But this one in particular looks as though it belongs on the food menu. The mushrooms in question are fragrant Chinese flower mushrooms (shiitake), made into a liqueur in-house and mixed with Taiwanese malt whisky and menthol-tasting bitters, then topped with dehydrated mushroom dust and dry-fried shimeji. Far more savoury than your average cosmopolitan and with an intensely smooth, umami taste, you’re unlikely to find anything like it outside of China. As owner Alex Peffly insists, ‘There is no gimmick behind the cocktail itself, or why we use mushrooms — our entire cocktail list is simply based around using common Chinese ingredients that aren’t so rare in traditional Chinese cocktails.’ (bun.house)

The Iron Lady

Scarfes Bar at Rosewood London

Named after whisky-partial Margaret Thatcher, The Iron Lady involves infusing 10-year-old Talisker whisky with dried porcini in a sous-vide bag for an hour, then straining with cheese cloth. The resulting liquor is blended with a spiced malbec reduction and galangal, the citrusy root that looks like ginger. Bar manager Martin Siska admits the mushrooms are a means to seduce adventurous guests. ‘The use of porcini mushrooms in cocktails is not yet mainstream, and we find that our guests are really intrigued by the use of the infusion in the The Iron Lady,’ he says. The savoury vegetable softens the intense smokiness of the Talisker and the sweetly perfumed malbec reduction rounds out the whole. ‘At first taste it can be quite strong; a deliberate choice as it was inspired by Thatcher,’ says Siska. He adds ice to take the edge off — but ask for it without if you’re feeling as hardcore as the Iron Lady herself. (scarfesbar.com)

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