While cocktail lists are becoming ever more complicated - using home-infused liquors, flaming techniques and nitrogen canisters to make foam - it isn't necessary to go to such lengths in search of originality. At Azure, the spacious sky bar and restaurant of Hotel LKF, beverage manager Tim Alpe says he devised the new list with simplicity in mind, preferring original but built and frozen (blended) cocktails that don't require time-consuming kitchen techniques.
'These days it can take five or 10 minutes just to make two cocktails,' says the New Zealander. Alpe encouraged his bartenders to contribute mixes that utilise less-common liquor bases, such as vermouth and rum, to the bar's new cocktail list. The result is a colourful and bright range of drinks that can be made quickly and easily - perfect for the home mixologist.
Azure barman Mark Ramirez recently won a runners-up award at the food-industry fair Hofex for his creation - Mark's Myers - that combines strong-tasting dark rum with ginger, strawberries and sweetening elements such as honey, raspberry and melon liqueurs to mellow the flavour. It involves muddling but can be made relatively quickly. Alpe, meanwhile, devised the Kiwiana, a simple frozen drink that can be made in a blender - probably the best cocktail method when entertaining at home as several can be made in one go.
Azure is not without touches of flair, however, and Alpe is not against adding food ingredients to a mix. Some of the bar's cocktails sound more like desserts than drinks, such as the Apple Lemon Tart, which uses the juice of a whole lemon and crushed biscuits on the rim of the glass. Delicately rolled chocolate cigars are used in Dirty Chocolate, a vodka mix that looks stunning with a twirl of chocolate sauce around the inside of the glass. Try the cocktails at Azure, 28/F, Hotel LKF, 33 Wyndham Street, Central, tel: 3518 9330.
Mark's Myers
1 shots vodka (Skyy)