There’s magic in the small ceramic tea cup Bambudda bar manager Buck Friend fills, pouring from a white teapot on high to aerate the golden liquid therein.
Of course, this isn’t the usual Chinese restaurant staple he’s preparing.
The Tsui Hang “cold tea” cocktail is Friend’s cheeky homage to the infamous late night Granville Street hole-in-the-wall that has been a familiar haunt for the city’s hospitality workers for decades.
The concoction of Dark Horse rye infusion, sherry, bitters, oolong tea, and Budweiser reduction is as delicious as it is playful, and that’s the point.
“We love to have fun with things,” he says. “Everything doesn’t have to be stirred and shaken.”
Friend is one of a handful of skilled gourmet mixologists at the forefront of the local cocktail revival, for which Gastown is ground zero. In fact, the restaurants and cocktail bars that surround the site of Gassy Jack Deighton’s long-gone Globe Saloon are serving up some of the most progressive and innovative libations being made anywhere, and attracting talent from all over the world.
“It’s the reason I came here,” says Friend, who grew up in Australia before moving to Vancouver in 2011 to further his cocktail career.
“Vancouver is in easily in the top five in the world for cocktails.”
The appeal of the cocktail is simple of course: It’s delicious! It’s fun and versatile, so it can suit any mood, occasion, or food pairing.
So what is a cocktail, exactly? Well, anything you want it to be, says Friend.
Traditionally a cocktail is defined as a beverage consisting of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters. But modern bartenders like Friend have increasingly taken their inspiration from molecular gastronomy, incorporating elements like hibiscus bubbles, sake foam, and homemade infusions into their creations.
“We try to have fun with everything we do,” he says. “But it’s important not to be too self-indulgent.”
He’s quick to note that there’s no right or wrong way to make a cocktail, just as there is no right or wrong way to order one.
“If a paramedic comes in after his shift and orders a vodka soda, who am I to look down on him?” says Friend. “It’s our job to serve the people, so drink what you want.”
Steps away from Gastown is the tiny Keefer Bar, where owner Dani Tatarin has made a name for herself putting unique spins on classic cocktails.
Taking its cues from its Chinatown surroundings, the Keefer is decorated to look like a Chinese apothecary. Indeed, some of the homemade infusions and tinctures use traditional Chinese herbs and ingredients, like cordyceps fungus and even seahorse (yes, SEAHORSE!).
Tatarin’s take on the Old Fashioned includes a dollop of traditional Chinese cough syrup, a nod to The Simpson’s Flaming Moe (aka The Flaming Homer).
The traditional elements of cocktail making have always intrigued Tatarin, and form the starting point for many of her creations.
“There’s flips, fizzes, sours, slings, high balls, punches,” she says. “And if you play with the base spirits, it’s going to taste very different.”
The history of the cocktail goes back to the early 1800s, when the first published references to the mixed drink began to appear in print. The cocktail took off on the West Coast during the California Gold Rush at San Francisco’s Occidental Hotel, while Prohibition led to an increased popularity in gin, which was easier to make illicitly than whiskey. The casual alcoholism of the post-war era, combined with the increased disposable income of the middle class, saw the cocktail reach its zenith in the 1950s. This was the era of the tiki bar and the three martini lunch, when Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra crooned glass-in-hand.
The 1980s brought about a new - and perhaps forgettable - era in the cocktail. The classics gave way to sweet sugary concoctions like the Midori splice and the piña colada. While Hollywood movies like Cocktail glamourized the bartender, their portrayal was not as a skilled gourmand, but instead as a shaker-juggling bar clown.
The 1990s weren’t much better, as classics such as the martini were twisted into sickly sweet perversions that contained just about anything except gin and vermouth.
Thankfully, there were those who knew better. Legendary bartender Dale DeGroff helped pioneer the gourmet approach to cocktail-making at New York’s Rainbow Room in the late 1980s when he resurrected a number of nearly forgotten classic cocktails.
Instead of merely masking the presence of alcohol, DeGroff helped popularize “spirit forward” cocktails to showcase the quality liquors the cocktails contained instead of hiding them with globs of syrups, sugars, and fruit juices.
“He’s really the father of the modern day cocktail,” says Friend.
The past decade has seen the cocktail return to prominence, such that any restaurant worth its salt now carries a cocktail program.
“Seven or eight years ago, there were only three or four bars you could even get cocktails,” says Shaun Layton of Gastown’s award-winning L’Abbatoir restaurant. “Now every restaurant is expected to have a cocktail program.”
Layton has travelled the world to hone his craft; visiting distilleries, attending seminars, and learning new techniques. Layton won the Canadian Giffard Cocktail Championship in 2010, and was recognized at the 21st Annual Vancouver Magazine Restaurant Awards as Bartender of the Year.
Layton specializes in creating cocktails to please diner’s palates, including drinks that are savoury, rather than sweet, such as his signature avocado gimlet. But it’s not enough to simply be different, he says. Successful bartenders need to provide top-notch customer service, and that means ditching the pretentiousness.
“Vancouver is a small city, but it’s a fickle city,” he says. “There are a lot of options, so you really have to nail it.
Despite the wide variety of choices available to local tipplers, Tatarin says the city’s cocktail scene is supportive, rather than competitive.
“It’s not competitive at all,” she says. “There’s no animosity towards other bartenders. We help each other, we encourage each other, and we all drink at each others bars on our days off.”
