What Clio’s Todd Maul is Making This Spring
Perhaps you’ve noticed – back-of-bar tools are starting to look an awful lot like the back-of-house tools in a molecular gastronomist’s restaurant. Sous-vide cookers are one thing, but iSi machines and nitrous oxide gas? Pretty heady stuff. We asked Todd Maul, Bar Manager at Clio, to break it down. The most effective way to do that? Tell us the trend and the technique, then tell us the drink that uses it – better yet, make us the drink that uses it). Here’s what’s on tap this spring:
Smoke & Infusions
With an iSi machine in hand, Maul whips up one of his specialty seasonal cocktails. Named Spring in the Afternoon (a riff off the classic Death in the Afternoon) this beverage combines fava leaf-infused white rum, lemon juice, simple syrup and champagne poured into a glass in which dehydrated kumquat limes have been flamed and smoked. The fava leaf infusion captures the high notes of fresh grass while the lime smoke evokes earthy tones for a sparkling ode to the coming season (no matter how slow a start it’s getting).
Sugar Cane
Forsaking plain old table sugar (too bleached and boring), Maul uses a sugar cane water to give his simple syrup a bit of a boost. With thirty different types of sugar cane to choose from, and a sugar cane extractor on order, he plans to pair the water with different drinks but for the time being he’s introducing his secret ingredient to the masses in a Ti Punch. Traditionally made with lime, Martinique Rhum Agricole and sugar cane water, Maul’s version uses Brugal rum for a drink that’s slightly more accessible but just as tasty.
Ice Cubes as Garnish
You may think of ice as nothing more than a device to keep your drink cool – perhaps that’s why you’re not behind the bar at Clio and Maul is. He makes these little blocks of frozen water perform double duty in his cocktails as conveyors and distributors of ingredients. Take for example the Todd Collins, Maul puts crystallized violets into ice forms and then the blast freezer and then into a glass with shaved ice, Old Raj 110, Haymann’s Old Tom’s Gin, lemon juice and simple syrup. Don’t drink it too fast – no matter how good it tastes – as the ice melts the violet turns the drink blue.
Maul’s new spring cocktail menu is expected around April 1st – no fooling – so plan a trip to Clio to try some of his inventive new beverages.
Posted:03/29/2011
Category: Cocktails,
Written By: Cathy Huyghe, RedWhiteBoston
