Drink your veggies in this broccoli-infused cocktail.
Drink of the week: You Remind Me of the Babe ($12) at South Water Kitchen
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225 N. Wabash Ave. 312-236-9300
Don’t let South Water Kitchen head bartender Dan Rook’s cocktail menu fool you. It’s not you who reminds him of the babe. It’s the weird magic dancing in the glass of one of his latest creations, You Remind Me of the Babe, an odd combination of tequila, lavender syrup, charred broccoli shrub and herbaceous tonic water.
“Some people think it’s about a girl and are like, ‘So who’s the babe?’ ” said Rook, RedEye’s 2015 Best Bartender. But David Bowie fans know what babe. (It’s a “Labyrinth” reference, for everyone who’s still lost.) The day Rook was pondering whether or not to include the broccoli shrub on the menu was the same day Bowie died. “I thought, ‘Is it too weird?’ ” he said. “But nothing’s too weird for David Bowie.”
Though broccoli and booze are an unlikely pair, the cocktail is less vegetal than expected. It teeters the line between sweet and savory, but the botanical elements make the drink truly interesting. It’s part of Rook’s “From the kitchen” section on the menu, with cocktails including food components and seasonal ingredients such as watermelon radish, beet and horseradish.
For cocktail inspiration, he often consults “The Flavor Thesaurus,” a book recommended by one of his regulars. It’s where he found gai lan broccoli, a Chinese cross between broccoli and kale, and paired it with some ingredients typically found in Asian cuisine to make a shrub, or a sweet vinegar-based syrup.
On its own, the shrub—charred gai lan broccoli, fresh ginger, cayenne, rice wine vinegar, fennel seed, coconut sugar and orange and lemon peel—is pretty abrasive, like something your grandma would concoct to cure a cold. But in the cocktail, it works in harmony with the earthy broccoli, which is especially subtle, while ginger and lavender notes are most prevalent. The herbal characteristics from the tonic and lavender syrup complement the shrub rather than compete with it.
Getting weird is kind of Rook’s thing. You Remind Me of the Babe is definitely that. We think Bowie would approve.