Page 40 - MENU Magazine - Jan/Feb 2018

BEHIND THE BAR
atmosphere. They want to try more of your menu. What
if they want to try all the cocktails in one seating? At the
SpiritHouse we have created our house cocktail flight— sipping-sized samplers of our four house cocktails: Netflix and Chill, Macadamia Mai Tai, Cucumber Basil Smash and our Harvest Daiquiri. Guests have responded with great enthusiasm. Be confident in your o erings and unleash your creativity with your menu. The divide between kitchen and bar shrinks every year. There is so much more of the culinary and visual behind today’s bar. Packaging is presentation. Your visual presentation is your package. There has to be synergy between the chefs and the kitchen. m
Len Fragomeni is a hospitality consultant who works with clients and brands across Canada, in all facets of their businesses. He owns and operates one of Toronto’s top whisky and cocktail hot spots, SpiritHouse, as well as the Toronto Institute of Bartending, which has trained over 65,000 industry individuals since 2002. He’s most recently started a new premium cocktail company called “founder’s original,” which will see its products sold in the LCBO in 2018.
health-conscious cocktail
Kombucha, activated charcoal—these ingredi- ents and recipes have been around in ice cream and juices, so it’s a natural progression to see a demand for health-conscious cocktails. Watch for vegetable-based drinks, and bold, flavourful ingredients like carrot juice.
HOUSE VERMOUTHS
House-made vermouths and bitters have also come into fashion. Vermouths are made the same way as bitters. Bitters are non-potable as is; vermouth is a type of bitter that is potable. We’re seeing bars in North America making their own vermouth. There isn’t a big selection yet in Canada, so there is a lot of room for experimenting.
great glassware
Bartenders everywhere know that it’s hard to find three dozen of the same vintage glassware. They might find two or three here and there scouring through the flea mar-
ket. At high volume bars, bartenders or mixologists want the style of glass to be uniform. Libbey produces glass tableware in five countries and sells their products in over 100 countries. The company has seized the opportunity to innovate with its new 1924 Libbey Vintage stemware range, which fuses jazz-age flair with exciting new cocktail trends.
40
MENU JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2018