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Tiny cocktails are big news in the bar world right now. It’s all about shrinkflation, from mini Martinis and Snaquiris to fun-sized Old Fashioneds and Baby Guinnesses.
“It’s partly a response to people drinking less, but better; visually, tiny cocktails are also very cute,” says Tyler Zielinski, author of the newly published Tiny Cocktails: The Art of Miniature Mixology (Clarkson Potter). “And for taste-hunters they’re great, as they make it possible to try a much wider variety of flavours.”
The tiny cocktail, in its simplest form, might just be an amuse-bouche. At the bar at The Connaught, for example, guests are often welcomed with an aperitivo taster in a doll-sized coupe. But an increasing number of bars now offer ambitious “tasting menus” of bite-sized cocktails paired with snacks. Washington DC’s new Press Club bar serves a $95 Playlist menu featuring four elaborate recipes mixed tableside and served with teeny canapés. Offerings include an espresso Martini-style Day N Nite, made with tequila, coffee liqueur and salted caramel dust, and a sake-based French 75, served in paper-thin, nano-glassware.
Diners at De Vie, the stylish new Paris bar and restaurant from Alex Francis and Barney O’Kane, formerly of the renowned third arrondissement bar Little Red Door, can pair its six-course dinner with a €55 selection of low-abv sips. Thimble-sized drinks include Apple, a blend of poached-apple sorbet, calvados and dry cider, and Hay, a cocktail of “hay spirit, grass soda & yuzu sake” served in a custom porcelain cup by artist Silke Wellmeier.
A mini Martini can be exquisite – and is often more practical, too, as you can see it off, in the words of The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) “while it’s laughing at you”. East London’s ever-inventive Bar With Shapes For A Name recently created a flight of three micro Grey Goose Martinis that explored the interplay of sound, light and taste. It featured a spiky “Kiki” Martini distilled with black pepper, a classic control and “Bouba”, infused with rounded almond and sweetcorn (£21 for the flight) for guests to compare and contrast by the light of an installation inspired by Josef Albers’ colour theory. A flight riffing on rare teas will follow.
Do you pine for the Three Martini Lunch but fear you’ve no longer got the chops? Then head to the TY Bar at the Four Seasons in New York, where you can enjoy a trio of 2oz Martinis: dry, dirty and espresso. Meanwhile, a tiny ‘tini made with genever distilled on site is the signature serve of Advocatuur, the cocktail bar at Amsterdam’s new Rosewood hotel. In true Dutch style, it’s served in a nip-waisted glass alongside a shot of house lager and a quail’s egg (a nod to an ancient law that decreed bars should offer snacks – which were often eggs – to fortify their guests). Short and sweet.
@alicelascelles
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