New Delhi-based Sidecar, India’s only bar in Asia’s 50 Best Bars’ list has a menu inspired by authors and their favourite drinks
In their book, A Sidecar Named Desire, authors Greg Clarke and Monte Beauchamp write that throughout history there has been no greater catalyst for creativity among writers than a good, stiff drink. Whether it is Jane Austen’s beer brewing or James Joyce’s passion for Guinness or E B White’s cure for writers’ block – a dry martini – our 19th and 20-century playwrights and authors loved their tipple.
New Delhi-based Sidecar, helmed by award-winning mixologist Yangdup Lama is rated as India’s best bar. It is the only one to feature in Asia’s 50 Best Bars – it was number 40 last year and number 16 this year. Sidecar has a new menu called ‘A Literary Bar Crawl’ inspired by writers and their favourite drinks. We bring you three of their recipes.
Scott Rickey
Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the Jazz Age’s greatest stars and is considered one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. With his wife, Zelda, he was one half of the 1920’s most glamorous couples. Also, known as a celebrity drinker, his favourite drink was a Gin Rickey. He openly confessed to and talked about his obsessive drinking and about how the only way he could write was after being appropriately inebriated.
Ingredients
- 30ml Gin
- 30ml Scotch whisky
- A few dashes of Sidecar local spice bitters
- Madagascar vanilla
- 75ml grapefruit tonic water
Preparation
Fill a Collins or Highball glass with ice and add the gin, whisky, bitters and vanilla.
Top-up with tonic water
Garnish with a grapefruit wedge
El Floridita Daiquiri
Due to a hereditary disease, Ernest Hemingway avoided sugar. During his many stints in Cuba, the writer tried various versions of his favourite cocktail, the Daiquiri. It was at El Floridita that he found his favourite. This is Sidecar’s version of it.
Ingredients
- 45ml figs infused white rum
- 15ml Sidecar kaffir lime liqueur
- 30ml fresh orange juice
- 15ml lime juice
Preparation
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add all the ingredients. Shake it vigorously till the outside is frosted.
Transfer it into a mug or glass
Garnish with fig leather roll, kaffir lime leaf, edible flower, orange peel, dehydrated lime.
Gin Martini
Dorothy Parker famously said, “I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. Three, I’m under the table, Four, I’m under my host.” Here’s a cocktail dedicated to the writer, whose life can be traced to a series of bars in New York City that she frequented and was a patron of.
Ingredients
- 50ml gin
- 10ml Sidecar in-house cumin orange cordial
- 20ml Chardonnay wine
Preparation
Fill a mixer with ice and add all the ingredients. Stir it till the outside is frosted, generally around 45 seconds.
Strain it into a Nick & Nora glass
Garnish with bourbon-soaked Marasca cherry
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