This is not a flash decision, in fact long before the word quarantine life, we were becoming very aware of the fact we had a lot of work to do on addressing our mistakes.
We've made the conscious decision to remove "tiki" from our name. There is a growing amount of articles & conversations out there that we see as a huge learning opportunity in for all.
An outrageously good spread of game-day eats and fancy drinks that will be flowing all set with in walls (and parking lot) of America’s most hyped sandwich shop.
Bars that use fresh citrus juice waste several gallons a week—it's an uncomfortable and inconvenient fact. At Harvard and Stone, we've slowly started to implement a system that gives a second use to this juice. We're lacto-fermenting our two-day old lemon and lime juice into citrus soda, sometimes with the addition with flat champagne and tired citrus garnish for extra complexity and waste-fighting power
One very, very cool thing we did recently was firm up a long standing relationship we've had the with Pernod Ricard and their Global Sustainability department, as the Global Sustainability Ambassadors for Pernod Ricard in conjunction with the launch of their 2030 Roadmap, "Good Times From A Good Place".
Citrus is like the final frontier of modern craft cocktail culture. First, we burned the 90’s thinking with truly “classic” bars that used fresh squeezed to order. Then as the movement spread and fresh reached bigger volume bars, the question was about how long fresh could last so that “to order” could be done away with in the name of speed of service. Molecular saw the advent of manipulating flavour and textures within citrus and the ascent of citric, malic, et. al. acids into our lexicon. Hell, some jack asses even had a whole bar with no fresh products ;)
Balance is shaping up to be our industries 2019 buzzword, and if with that comes some more honest accounts of the realities of the job, and in turn some healing and better practices, then let the haters hate and here’s to the rest of us making sure we take care of ourselves. Having wanted to write this for a long while, consider this my (Kelsey’s) own account of the swings & roundabouts life on the road in this industry can bring.
Holy hanna have we been asked this question a lot! So we figured fuck it, let’s get these thoughts down on paper and share with all, so that everyone knows what's up with this awesome city.
In case you haven't picked up a food and drink publication in the last year, everyone is kinda getting sick of straws. The poor turtle with a straw being pulled out it's nose really seemed to bring this issue into the main stream, and since then this movement has sky rocketed.
Guest shifts & pop ups have become an important and major part to our industry and a big benefit to becoming a bartender has become the chance to be able to travel the world and doing what we do in the cities we visit. They keep us trading ideas and bringing our world-wide community closer together. And for a large part so far, this is all made possible by brands, who usually treat us like royalty while we’re travelling too.
Because of such, it has long been the question people have asked us the most… “who’s paying for all of this?”
The almighty avocado, it has become to coffee shops what the pineapple has become to bartenders. A symbol to be made into pins, tattooed on oneself and 'gramed ad-fucking-naseum. Great that we know we can waltz into any city and be guaranteed an avocado toast with our flat white, but what the hell happens to all the pits once we're through?
After bringing Trash Tiki to Asia, North America and South America over the last 5 months there has been one ingredient that we have come across many times, espcially in the heat of summer. Watermelon.
One of summers favourite flavours winds up in everything from mojitos to margaritas, but what we have found in common with all this summery business though is three things.
This guy was one of our first ever classics, and uses our most OG recipes. It's big on spice, fermenty pineapple and booze. While we originally made it from some of the baller fuck off tequilas we had lying around the house, feel free to swap in your favs or split your sprit base however you think is best. For it's use here, we've just simplified it to 2 tequilas plus a dash of mezcal...
This drink has definitely followed us along to many of our pop-ups and was one of the first we came up with! It was that first time we touched up #gintiki and were blown away from the get go with how an easy spirit sub gave this classic tiki number a nice little update in terms of flavour.
Changing texture in classic cocktails, 99% of the time means egg white. While in Tiki drinks, texture is a lot more of a focus as when you start working with puree’s and sweet nectar of the gods like coco Lopez. What we learnt quite quickly when making anti-waste tiki drinks, is that texture is a mother fucking pain in the arse to figure out how to add in to a drink.
This is one of our favourite recipes/ingredients to date and probably the one we’ve been asked for the most. Something that started from our time rolling with the Dandelyan homies and continues to feature there in various incarnations, as well as being championed at the WastED London at Selfridges Rooftop pop up we rocked and now on pretty much every menu we drop.
When thinking of liquor (other than rum) that provides the backbone to many a Tiki classic, it's hard not to arrive at the equally beloved and bastardised curaçao. However, somewhere along the way this classic ingredient got mixed up in a myriad of colour experimentations that we're just going to pretend don't exist just now
