More than a few restaurant operators are making lemonade their main squeeze this summer, using the familiar iced and tangy beverage as a springboard for some of the season’s most cooling cocktails.
They say that the riffs that result — simple but pleasing, relatively low in alcohol and modestly priced — are hard to beat for sheer refreshment.
“Everyone has a mojito now,” said Wil Quijano, beverage director of the eight-unit Hartford Restaurant Group based in Hartford, Conn., explaining why he launched a five-item slate of hard lemonades for warm-weather sipping. “I wanted something different, because we try to keep things here upbeat and new.”
The drinks, which showcase a variety of spirits and flavored syrups, are selling “like crazy” in HRG’s five Wood-n-Tap Bar & Grill locations in the Nutmeg State. Each is priced at $6.
Quijano starts with housemade lemonade prepared simply from freshly squeezed lemons, sugar and water. To this, he adds silver rum and ginger-infused simple syrup to create the Ginger Rum Lemonade, and silver tequila and Serrano chile-infused simple syrup to make the Mexican Spicy Lemonade.
“Serranos are a little fruitier than jalapeños, so they’re spicy but not overpowering,” Quijano said, noting that the spicy concoction is one of the most popular of the drinks. He added that the ginger syrup, with its flavorful fresh ginger root infusion, has an affinity for rum.
To flavor two of the Wood-n-Tap’s other hard lemonades, he reaches for tea-flavored vodkas. The Arnold Palmer, inspired by the half-iced-tea, half-lemonade combination favored by the legendary golfer, has a shot of Jeremiah Weed Sweet Tea Flavored Vodka, while the Georgia Peach Tea Lemonade sports Jeremiah Weed Sweet Peach Tea Flavored Vodka. The branded spirits spare him from making his own tea infusions for the five units.
“They’re a big help, because I can’t be in each restaurant all the time,” said Quijano. “And they help keep the quality of the drinks consistent.”
With the mercury rising in Atlanta, lemonade libations are moving well at Room at Twelve, one of the 15 Concentrics Restaurants based there, reports head mixologist Steven Kowalczuk.
“The key to success with something as simple as a lemonade drink is to use really good lemonade and a really good spirit,” he said.
His lemonade drinks, which are priced at $8, have as their base a signature rosemary lemonade that he makes by brewing chopped rosemary leaves in water in a drip coffeemaker, mixing the liquid with sugar to make simple syrup and combining that with freshly squeezed lemon juice.
“I chose rosemary because it goes so well with citrus,” Kowalczuk said.
Thus rosemary is the hard-to-identify perfume in the popular Watermelon-Ade, a hazy pink elixir spiked with ouzo and watermelon schnapps, garnished with a cube of fresh watermelon on the glass rim. In addition, the flavor of licorice “takes people by surprise if they’re not familiar with ouzo,” said Kowalczuk.
Although very mixable spirits like vodka, rum and tequila are natural partners for lemonade, some barkeeps dial up the flavor with bolder liquors. Two of Kowalczuk’s examples are the Vanilla Daisy, a mixture of Scotch whisky, Navan Vanilla Liqueur, rosemary lemonade, grenadine and soda, and the Bob Collins, made with Bourbon whiskey, fresh lemons, rosemary lemonade and orange liqueur.
At Shokolaat in Palo Alto, Calif., Maker’s Mark Bourbon is the fillip for Leo’s Lemonade, along with triple sec, fresh squeezed lemons, fresh sour mix and a spritz of lemon-lime soda. It is priced at $9 per glass, $36 per pitcher.
“Lemonade is the simplest drink you can make,” declared Shekoh Moossavi, executive chef-owner of the restaurant and patisserie. “But if you put in a little of something complex like Maker’s Mark, it adds layers of flavor without diminishing the lemon aspect.”
Ajolt of rye whiskey helps make the Mean Streets cocktail a box-office smash at the Laszlo bar of Foreign Cinema, a San Francisco restaurant that screens foreign and independent films in its covered courtyard. The lemonade spinoff, which bar manager Bryan Ranere created and dubbed in honor of the famed Martin Scorsese film of the same name, consists of muddled lemons shaken with sambuca and strained over ice, finished with a float of Rittenhouse 100-proof rye. It is priced at $10.
“You have to strike the right balance of acids with sambuca or it can be cloyingly sweet,” said Ranere. “The lemon makes it refreshing and the flavor of licorice runs throughout. Finally, the Rittenhouse 100 cuts the sweetness further and gives it kind of a mean punch.”
