The very best modern mixologists connect the bar and the kitchen by using culinary components to bring intrigue and richness to drinks in an often resourceful manner. This week, I sampled two Old Fashioned-style drinks balanced with miso — a component traditionally used to season Japanese dishes — and its forerunner, koji.
At the Tom Dixon-designed Silverleaf facing Liverpool Street Station, manager Liam Broom and head of development Rueben Clark dispense the layered Pineapple and Miso in the cocoon-like environment. With notes of burnt pineapple and smoky bacon, this savoury, garnish-free drink fuses homemade, clarified pineapple-miso caramel with Craigellachie 13-year-old Speyside Scotch. Meanwhile, it gains its aesthetic identity from the coaster on which it is served, showing a magnification of the drink through a microscope.
Two stops away on the Elizabeth Line away is Dram Bar. The tardis of a bar unravels beyond a nondescript door on Denmark Street. Two counters, a whisky shop, a courtyard, and a private, Bruichladdich branded pool table room with an RTD vending machine span three storeys.
A highlight snack is fresh bread slathered with marmalade-coloured miso butter. This is dispensed from ‘Soho’s smallest kitchen’, says Jack Wallis, who previously worked at Silverleaf with Dram’s co-founders, Chris Tanner, and Martyn ‘Simo’ Simpson. The bread is a natural companion to the umami to the fore, Koji, Miso, and Birch cocktail, available at the concrete counter in the low-lit basement. This gains lasting sweetness from Brugal’s 1888 demerara rum, and brightness and balance from coconut bitters and green apple-like malic acid — as well as my undivided attention.
