Sipping a good gin and tonic is like finding a 20th-century oxford shirt in the closet and realizing that you can still wear it downtown tonight without looking out of step with the century we’re stuck in.
It just works.
But that hasn’t stopped mixology-besotted bartenders from trying to make it better. You’ll
find a few of them who can’t resist filling a glass with more and more
flavor dimensions, creating a gin and tonic that’s such a complicated
spectacle, you barely recognize it. The good
news, though, is that plenty of fresh and successful variations are
being dreamed up by bartenders and restaurateurs who don’t view the word
“restraint” as an epithet.
Now, kitchen-brewed tonic is a badge of honor at certain places around the country.
Consider Pedro Gonçalves, the man in charge of wine and beverages at Oceana,
a Midtown restaurant that prides itself in stocking not only gins from
around the world, but four different shades of tonic: sweet, bitter,
citrus and spicy. A while back, Mr. Gonçalves, a lover of G&Ts who
has family roots in Portugal, found himself wondering: “Why do people
have such a great gin, and then ruin it with a generic tonic? It kind of
bothered me.”
So, with an eye toward conjuring up his own quinine syrup, he ordered a
stash of powdered cinchona bark from Peru. “I was like, ‘O.K., what the
hell do I do with this?’ ” he recalled. “Honestly, I didn’t really have
any idea.” Filtering out the sediment turned out to be a challenge, but
through trial and error, Mr. Gonçalves figured out how to make tonic.
“Quinine has quite a history,” he said. “The native South Americans used
to use it as a muscle relaxant. It’s good for you. After a hard day’s
work, your body is fatigued.”
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