The Bitter Lemon.
Photo: Courtesy of Cafe Mado
Recently at Cafe Mado in Prospect Heights, before a dinner of fries and a Caesar salad that was one-third dressing and one-third cheese, I drank an aperitif that I can’t stop thinking about. It was straw-toned and slightly hazy, and a sip revealed a drink that was as vibrantly citrusy as it was mellow and earthy. The medium-bodied liquid, prickled with a light frizzante, and emitted a dried floral fragrance upon swirling its thin-stemmed wineglass. I had the same thought as my dining partner, who tried my drink and said, “I thought it was wine.”
This was not the latest vintage of Chablis or even a cocktail, but the Bitter Lemon. It’s the latest addition to the Prospect Heights café’s nonalcoholic drink list, which I became curious about after the meal started with a free pour of the Grand Fir, a sparkling drink flavored with the needles of a Pacific Northwest tree whose coordinates are known only to their forager, Tama Matsuoka Wong.
The first thought I tend to have when drinking even the best mocktails is, This would be better with some gin in it. But the Fir was crisp and dry, evoking a proper G&T without the alcoholic bite, while the Bitter Lemon offered enough dimension from the structure, aroma, and bitterness that I didn’t have the urge to guzzle it down. I pictured myself having a glass at lunch or bringing it to a party, or drinking it on tap if I ever decide to do a dry January.
Cafe Mado’s beverage director, Piper Kristensen, became a specialist in complex “non-alcs,” as he calls them, while opening this restaurant’s predecessor, Oxalis, in the same space in 2018. Upon launching its multicourse tasting menu, the restaurant lacked a liquor license but still wanted to offer a serious beverage pairing. Kristensen was tasked with developing a full range of drinks that could live up to the food as well as the wine might.
“If you take away alcohol, which is a huge built-in reward for your brain, you’re like, How can I make this exciting?” says Kristensen, who achieves winelike equilibrium in spirit-free drinks using traditional cocktail techniques, like making lemon oleo saccharum, wherein sugar is macerated with the citrus zest to draw out the oils before turning everything into a syrup. This gives the Bitter Lemon drink its bright top notes as well as some coloring, as does a base of chrysanthemum tea. Since fresh juice loses its pop over longer periods of time, Kristensen tweaks the drink’s tartness with citric and malic acids that “mimic the lemon profile,” plus tartaric acid for “rigidity that makes it not just like a juice.”
Then there are what Kristensen calls nonalcoholic modifiers for that “X factor”: products such as Seedlip, which in this case rounds out the middle palate in ways that sugar and acid cannot achieve alone. Seedlip is basically flavored water, but it’s got a lush texture and well-calibrated tang that even a professional like Kristensen can’t replicate, which is also why a bottle costs $35 at my local market. The Bitter Lemon employs two varieties: the citrus-forward Grove 42 with a touch of Spice 94.
Tonic water adds the grounding bitter note, then Kristensen lightly carbonates the batch for a textural element that ties the drink together: “All of our nons are kind of bubbly. Carbonation really ejects aroma and flavor outward.”
It also helps preserve the drinks in their canned versions, which are sold in the retail section for takeout, but since I’m not in the neighborhood of Cafe Mado, I decided to try my hand at a pared-down home version that nixes the acid adjustment and carbonation rig, and only uses one type of Seedlip. I think it’s pretty close to the real thing.
First, I have to assure you that making an oleo saccharum is both easy and worth the (minor) trouble of zesting four lemons with a vegetable peeler and mixing them in an airtight container, or sealed ziplock bag, with two cups of sugar. The whole process took me maybe ten minutes. Then just let it all sit for a day or so, swishing it around a couple of times, and by the end, the oils in the citrus peels should have visibly transferred to the sugar, giving it a clumpable texture in the process. To make a syrup, combine the sugar and peels with two cups of boiling water and whisk until everything is dissolved. Let it cool, and you can keep it stored in the refrigerator for a month.
To replicate the tea, I bought whole dried chrysanthemums from Ten Ren on Mott Street, but you can find them, or a bagged equivalent, at most Asian supermarkets. I steeped a heaping tablespoon in 20 ounces of boiling water until it cooled. Then, to make the actual drink, make sure everything is completely chilled so you don’t have to use any ice that might dilute the mixture. Combine two parts of the chrysanthemum iced tea with one part Seedlip Grove 42 and one part of the lemon syrup; you can do this directly in a glass, or make a larger batch, which can also be stored in the fridge for a couple days. When you’re ready to drink it, top each glass off with a splash or two of nice tonic water, like Fever-Tree.
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